ST. PETERSBURG, May 24. /TASS/. VimpelCom [Beeline brand] and China’s Huawei agreed upon a strategic partnership in the sphere of pilot testing and integration of 4.5G and 5G process solutions and the Internet of Things for the term of two years. The parties signed a relevant agreement at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

VimpelCom and Huawei intend to develop and test 4.5G and 5G technologies for development of the fifth generation telecom infrastructure. "In particular, partners will test the Huawei Massive MIMO solution in a commercial network, making it possible to achieve Gigabit rates of data transmission in LTE networks," the companies said. The agreement also provides for pilot launch of the LTE License Assisted Access technology.

One of key areas of the partnership is to implement pilot testing of the Nb-IoT technology, which is scheduled to 2018-2019, the companies noted.

According to the agreement, VimpelCom and Huawei will also work out an opportunity of holding a joint pilot project of the 5G network with use of the New Radio interface and test new products and services for VimpelCom subscribers.