ZTE and Airtel Gabon Put the Industry’s First FDD Plus TDD Massive MIMO Unit Into Commercial Service, With Site Throughput Up 107 Percent

ZTE and Airtel Gabon announced on October 13 the successful commercial deployment of what they describe as the industry’s first FDD plus TDD Massive MIMO solution on a live network, with site-level user throughput up 107 percent, traffic capacity up 20 percent and physical resource block efficiency up 41 percent. The deployment is the first time the two duplexing modes have been combined in a single active antenna unit in commercial service.

The architecture is the claim. The solution integrates FDD and TDD bands into one active antenna unit, which ZTE says maximises spectrum utilisation, boosts network capacity, streamlines deployment and improves energy efficiency. Multi-band coordination and intelligent network resource optimisation allow the operator to leverage existing spectrum assets while establishing a smooth evolution path toward 5G, without adding tower load.

The numbers are specific to the 2.6 GHz layer. At that layer, user throughput rose 86 percent, traffic capacity grew 92 percent and spectrum utilisation efficiency gained 60 percent. The site-level figures of 107 percent throughput, 20 percent capacity and 41 percent PRB efficiency are the aggregate across the deployed configuration, which matters because site-level and layer-level gains are not the same and the two should not be conflated when sizing a rollout.

Razvan Ungureanu, chief technology officer of Airtel Africa, framed the deployment as a response to surging mobile broadband traffic driven by digital financial services, cloud applications and digital entertainment, against severe tower spatial constraints and high power consumption costs. The single-box multi-band configuration is aimed at squeezing higher throughput out of existing 4G spectrum without adding tower load, which is the constraint that matters in markets where site acquisition is slow and power is expensive.

The context for the deployment is visible in industry data. GSMA’s Mobile Economy 2025 notes that mobile data traffic in sub-Saharan Africa is growing at roughly 40 percent annually, while tower counts and power budgets are not, which is the constraint that makes a single-box multi-band radio attractive to operators in markets like Gabon. Airtel Africa serves more than 150 million subscribers across 14 markets, and its Gabon unit is one of the smaller footprints in that portfolio, with 2.6 GHz as the primary band.

The deployment also carries a 5G positioning claim that should be read as intent, not commitment, by the operator. ZTE and Airtel say the solution establishes a foundation for Gabon’s future 5G development, which is a planning statement instead of a committed timeline. What is verifiable is the live-network measurement: a 107 percent throughput gain on an existing 4G site is a checkable number, and the 2.6 GHz layer figures give a second, independent data point.

Supplier’s note: We stock ZTE Massive MIMO and active antenna units with typical lead times of 8 to 12 weeks for carrier orders, and we hold buffer inventory for multi-band AAU units given their longer factory lead times. Cross-reference equivalents from Huawei AAU and Ericsson AIR families are available for buyers comparing radio architectures. We have commissioned three radio access network upgrades in the past quarter with average turn-up of five weeks including integration testing and traffic migration. Stock levels for multi-band radio units are tracked weekly against carrier allocation schedules. Pricing is quoted per unit with volume discounts for orders above 10 units, and extended warranty options up to five years are available. All units ship with full manufacturer warranty and bulk orders over 50 units qualify for dedicated account management and on-site commissioning support, with spare parts kits, installation supervision, remote diagnostics, training and extended warranty available for remote sites on request. (Source: ZTE newsroom, October 13, 2026; ITWeb Africa, October 14, 2026.)