Partners carried out this 5G trial on the telco’s commercial network in Berlin
HONG KONG–Deutsche Telekom (DT) has announced what it claims to be Europe’s first 5G connection based on the under-development 3GPP standard, which is set for completion in Q3 next year. The German telco said that the 5G connection reached more than 2 Gbps and a latency of three milliseconds over a 3.7 GHz spectrum link on a commercial network in Central Berlin.
The connection used Huawei user equipment, DT said. “5G New Radio will be critical for meeting our customers’ ever-increasing connectivity requirements that are steadily growing with more and more network connections,” said Claudia Nemat, Deutsche Telekom board member for technology and innovation.
“These achievements highlight the capabilities of the 5G NR equipment to meet operators’ requirements for addressing new business opportunities for end users,” Taihua Deng, president wireless network, at Huawei, said. “Huawei is confident that the partnership with Deutsche Telekom can fully prepare the commercial launch of 5G NR services in Europe by 2020 thanks to 3GPP standardization efforts.”
“When the standard is defined, we will trial it in 2018 to prepare the ground for a wider deployment of commercial sites and the offering of devices for the mass market as they become available,” said Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, CTO at Deutsche Telekom.
SK Telecom, Bharti Airtel inks deal to collaborate on advanced networks in India
In related 5G news, Korean telecommunications operator SK Telecom and Indian telco Bharti Airtel have signed a strategic partnership under which SK Telecom will provide its expertise to build an advanced telecom network in India.
The partnership will work across several areas including developing software to improve network experience, leveraging advanced digital tools including machine learning and big data.
The two Asian telcos will also collaborate on an on-going basis to evolve standards for 5G, network functions virtualization (NFV), software-defined networking (SDN) and internet of things (IoT), and jointly work towards building an enabling ecosystem for the introduction of these technologies in the Indian market.
“SK Telecom will work closely with Bharti to achieve new network innovations so as to deliver a greater value to Bharti’s customers,” said Park Jung-ho, president and CEO of SK Telecom.
“This partnership will bring a dramatically improved experience to Airtel customers in India by leveraging the expertise of a company that has built one of the best mobile broadband networks in the world,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel.
