O2 Telefonica aims to achieve nationwide coverage with 5G by the end of 2025
German telecom operator O2 Telefonica, controlled by Spanish telco Telefónica, said its 5G network currently reaches 90% of Germany’s population.
In its earnings statement, the telco said that it is on course to achieve nationwide coverage with 5G by the end of 2025 at the latest.
“We are maintaining our strong momentum and continued to grow profitably in the second quarter of 2023 despite a slowing economy. The digitization of Germany is based on mobile data. We see this in the constantly increasing demand for our products and services from end customers and companies,” said O2 Telefónica CEO Markus Haas.
The German telco said its quarterly sales increased by 4.4% year-on-year to 2.091 billion euros ($2.32 billion). Mobile service sales increased by 4.3% year-on-year to 1.463 billion euros in Q2, while network sales climbed 2.1% year-on-year to 206 million euros.
O2 Telefonica ended June with over 42 million mobile connections after a net addition of 302,000 new mobile contract customers during the second quarter.
O2 Telefónica recently said it already offers 5G on the 700 MHz frequency band at around 600 locations across Germany. O2 Telefónica also noted that while it is ready to deploy a nationwide 5G Standalone (SA) network, it will only fully activate the infrastructure once 5G SA offers real added value for customers, and when enough devices in the market support 5G SA.
The European carrier activated nearly 1,000 new 5G sites nationwide during the first quarter of the year. The operator said it has been focusing on 5G network densification in both urban and rural areas of Germany.
O2 Telefónica and Ericsson recently completed a proof of concept (PoC) with the aim of paving the way for the development of 5G cloud RAN technology in Europe.
The joint PoC deployment was carried out at O2 Telefónica’s Wayra innovation hub in Munich, where the partners showcased the capabilities of Ericsson’s first 5G cloud RAN installation in Europe. The PoC utilized a centralized control unit (CU) and used mmWave frequency to achieve an end-to-end speed of more than 4 Gbps, the vendor said.
Ericsson and O2 Telefonica noted that this collaboration “validates the feasibility” of cloud RAN for enterprise and industry-specific use cases as well as fixed wireless access (FWA) use cases.
The implementation of Ericsson’s cloud-native software solution for 5G cloud RAN by O2 Telefónica will enable the operator to experience significant gains in flexibility, service delivery and improved network operations, according to the vendor.