Kit vendor Ericsson has revealed the first major additions to the ‘5G platform’ it launched earlier this year, featuring its first FDD radio to support Massive MIMO.

The AIR 3246 is being positioned as a piece of 5G future-proofing thanks to its support of both LTE and technologies expected to form part of 5G NR. Support for FDD is, of course, a key part of this as much of the world’s mobile networking uses that technology. The first lot of products launched with 5G branding was all TDD.

“We now expand the 5G platform that we introduced last February,” said Fredrik Jejdling, Head of Business Area Networks at Ericsson. “The new radio will enable operators to enhance 4G capacity for their subscribers today and be ready for 5G tomorrow, using the same hardware. We also complement the products with a set of network services, simplifying the journey to 5G for our customers.”

“Just as carrier aggregation has been key to adding needed capacity to mobile broadband networks, Massive MIMO has the potential to be the primary capacity enabler in the next upgrade phase, providing a smooth transition towards 5G,” said Stefan Pongratz of telecoms research firm Dell’Oro Group. “With an expected 2021 installed base of 10M LTE macro radios in high traffic and metro areas, service providers are expected to capitalize on the improved spectral efficiency made possible with Massive MIMO.”

Apparently T-Mobile US has included FDD Massive MIMO in the 5G trials it keeps banging on about, using ‘mid-band’ FDD spectrum. It’s not clear precisely what frequencies that refers to but presumably not 600 MHz. TMUS CTO Neville Ray also provided a quote but we’ll spare you the usual chest beating and over-use of exclamation marks. AIR will be commercially available in Q2 2018.