Spanish telecommunications operator Orange has selected Chinese vendor ZTE for the provision of 5G infrastructure in certain Spanish cities, local newspaper Expansion reported, citing market sources.
Under the terms of the agreement, ZTE will deploy 5G infrastructure in the cities of Bilbao, San Sebastián, Vitoria, Logroño and Zaragoza.
With this deal, ZTE joins Ericsson and Huawei, which are also working with the Spanish carrier in the deployment of 5G infrastructure.
According to the report, Huawei now has 50% of Orange’s 5G network deployments, followed by Ericsson, with 45% and ZTE with approximately 5%.
In June this year, ZTE and Orange carried out a number of demonstrations of the potential of 5G technologies in the fields of automation, robotics and entertainment.
The demos were unveiled at the Global 5G event, which took place in Valencia, Spain.
The first demo applied 5G technology to remote driving and was carried out with the collaboration of Valencia’s Universitat Politecnica (UPV). Cameras were used to capture high-resolution images of the vehicle’s environment and, through the Orange 5G network, reach the remote driver in real time.
The second demo showed one of the possible applications of 5G technology to the development of Industry 4.0: the handling of industrial robots. The 5G technology eliminates the problems of latency and delay in the transmission of data, which allows the operation of a robotic arm remotely and in real time, ZTE and Orange said.
In this experience, which also involved the participation of the Universitat Politècnica de València, a high-resolution camera collected the movements of the human arm that managed the robot, which were recognized, interpreted and converted into commands that were transmitted instantly to the robot via the 5G network. In this way, the movements were reproduced by the robot in real time.
The partners also demonstrated the use of 3D holographic technology for broadcast and reception of audiovisual content in real time.
The 5G network trial being used by Orange in the city of Valencia was deployed by ZTE.
Wang Jiayi, director of 5G RAN Solutions at ZTE, told reporters at the Global 5G event that the company had been engaged with Orange Spain for two years to prepare the 5G field trial.
“The 5G trial in Valencia was launched last year. We have built a standalone 5G network for this field trial,” the executive said on the sidelines of the 5G event. He added that the network solution includes 5G new radio (5G NR) as well as ZTE’s Common Core solution.
The executive also said that ZTE expected to continue with the 5G trial with Orange throughout the rest of the year in order to complete the two phases of the trial.
In April, Orange Spain and ZTE completed what they claimed was the first voice and data call over a standalone 5G network in Europe.
The trial was carried out in Valencia via a 5G New Radio base station, 5G core network and test devices, reaching speeds of 876 Mbps with a single user handset and 3.2 Gbps with 12 handsets working simultaneously.
Rival operator Movistar is working with Ericsson and Nokia in the deployment of 5G while Vodafone Spain is deploying its 5G network with Huawei and Ericsson. MasMovil is working with Ericsson.
