Sprint and Nokia recently reached a big milestone in 5G New Radio (NR) development. Together the companies were the first to show a live demonstration in the U.S. of a 5G NR connection over a dual mode-capable Massive MIMO radio, bringing this revolutionary technology one step closer to reality.

Shown at Sprint’s booth during Mobile World Congress Americas, the companies used Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum, Nokia’s commercial AirScale Base Station and Massive MIMO Active Antenna, and a VIAVI TM500 5G test device emulator. The demonstration highlighted Sprint’s approach using its 2.5 GHz spectrum and game-changing Massive MIMO technology to deploy mobile 5G in the first half of 2019.

This 5G NR system connection used a Massive MIMO Active Antenna that can support up to 120 MHz of spectrum in 2.5 GHz. The Nokia AirScale Massive MIMO Active Antenna is expected to deliver up to 3 Gbps peak downlink throughput for a single sector over 5G and LTE simultaneously using Sprint’s spectrum. This enables Sprint to offer both 4G LTE and 5G on the same radio to continue meeting its customers’ demand for unlimited data and high-bandwidth applications.