Cirtek unit bags contract for US telco’s 5G expansion

Manila Bulletin

by James A. Loyola

Quintel USA, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cirtek Holdings Philippines Corporation, has signed a Master Purchase Agreement with a telecommunications operator ranking among the top five full-fledged wireless carriers in North America.

Cirtek said the product approval is for Quintel to be able to actively promote and sell into this telco’s market. The market potential is hundreds of million US dollars because it caters to high-density 5G markets.

“Having spent close to half a billion dollars in acquiring new spectrum in auctions alone, the carrier is primed to launch full commercial services on fresh spectrum for 5G services 2021 beyond,” Cirtek said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

As part of providing pioneering and constantly evolving innovative antenna solutions to the market, Quintel will be launching a new platform of small cell antenna products to complement its growing Multi-port Base Station Antenna portfolio designed and tailored specifically to its new customer’s next generation network.

This is to be built around existing frequencies as well as overlaying newly assigned 5G spectrum under a compact, feature-rich form factor with 4G and 3G backwards compatibility.

The operator is projecting annual spend to end close to a billion dollars this year alone, up by 27 percent from its capital expenditures in 2019 while the overall US wireless carriers are projected to grow spend by 11 percent to $35 billion in 2021.

“Quintel is pleased to take part in building and transforming the information technology and connectivity revolution ahead as networks transition to 5G,” Cirtek said.

It added that, “Among the portfolio being launched, is our flagship 14-Port Small Cell Canister solution specifically optimized for exploiting radios with 4T4R configurations at Low-Band frequencies to maximize radio channel spectral capacity in dispersive radio channels.”

Quintel President and Cirtek Holdings Philippines Corp Executive Vice President Michael Liu said Quintel’s 14-Port Canister covers all Low-Band spectrum (600, 700 and 850MHz) and Mid-Band spectrum (1.6-2.6GHz, 5GHz) in North America (US, Canada, Mexico) and is future-proofed in supporting the new 3GPP Band n77 for C-Band spectrum and encompassing CBRS (3.3-4.2GHz).

It is vital for delivering bulk of what will be 5G services in sub 6GHz spectrum critical of the deployment, a feature first and yet unseen in the market.