Globe Telecom, the largest mobile operator in the Philippines, teamed with Huawei to implement what the vendor said is the world’s first commercial deployment of FDD Massive MIMO technology.

In a statement, Huawei said FDD Massive MIMO could boost the operator’s LTE network capacity by two- to three-times without using additional spectrum resources.

Robert Tan, chief technical adviser at Globe Telecom, said Massive MIMO technology uses spectrum more efficiently and enables the operator to deliver a “superior customer experience with a tremendous boost in data capacity to support the exponential growth in wireless data consumption from our increasing base of MBB [mobile broadband] and WTTx [wireless-to-the-x] customers”.

Veni Shone, president of Huawei’s LTE product line, said: “We are pleased to see that Globe has chosen Huawei’s Massive MIMO solution to cope with its growing wireless data traffic.”

He said since the release of its commercial TD Massive MIMO products two years ago the technology had been deployed by more than 40 operators.