In a press release, Nokia confirmed it is deploying its latest generation of Interleaved Passive Active Antennas (IPAA+) to support Globe Telecom’s efforts to expand its 4G and 5G coverage across the southern islands of the Philippines. The Finnish vendor notes that IPAA+ is a modular design and supports all 5G frequency bands in a single compact antenna including the 2.6GHz spectrum band. Further, the platform can also support other bands, which it claims means Globe’s investments ‘are protected’ allowing the MNO to accelerate and simplify its 4G/5G rollouts going forward.

Nokia’s new IPAA+ is similar in size to a standard multiband antenna, making it ‘easier and faster for service providers to deploy their 5G networks through just a simple antenna swap’. The two companies successfully trialled a Globe Telecom-specific variant of the IPAA+ in Tantangan, South Cotabato in the island of Mindanao, making Globe the first operator in the world to successfully test the 2.6GHz IPAA+ variant, the vendor said.