Ericsson and China Telecom said they have successfully completed what they claim is China’s first 5G Standalone (SA 5G) data call on a commercial network using Ericsson’s spectrum sharing technology.
In a release, the Swedish vendor said that the milestone was achieved recently on China Telecom’s 2.1 GHz commercial 5G network in Deyang City, Sichuan Province.
The Ericsson Spectrum Sharing data call over China Telecom’s commercial network was carried out while simultaneously serving both 5G and 4G commercial users on the same 2.1 GHz spectrum. Multiple brands of third-party terminals were used in the Deyang field tests, the vendor noted.
Ericsson said that the demo shows that its spectrum-sharing technology can be deployed on a dual-mode 5G Core-enabling Standalone 5G network, which it said provided another option for operators such as China Telecom to speed up the roll-out of 5G services.
Ericsson said that its Spectrum Sharing tech enables 4G, 5G NSA NR and 5G SA to be deployed simultaneously across FDD spectrum without the need for dedicated 5G spectrum.
“This achievement shows how communications service providers can use the advantages of the fast and cost-efficient 5G coverage enabled by Ericsson Spectrum Sharing to deploy 5G Standalone,” said Per Narvinger, head of Product Area Networks at Ericsson. “This will create business opportunities for our customers and deliver superior user experiences for 5G subscribers. This is a key milestone for bringing 5G to everyone.”
Ericsson also said that the successful test paves the way for China Telecom to accelerate its 5G rollout in Deyang using 5G SA Ericsson Spectrum Sharing.
Ericsson and China Telecom also completed verification of basic services such as interoperability with the existing 4G base stations and voice over LTE (VoLTE).
In May, China Telecom selected Ericsson for the provision of 5G products and solutions such as Ericsson 5G Core portfolio solutions, which include Cloud Packet Core, Cloud Unified Data Management and Policy products. The Chinese operator will deploy the core network on Ericsson Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) along with Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration.
Chinese carriers China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly built and currently operate over 300,000 5G base stations across China, according to recent press reports.
In September 2019, China Telecom and China Unicom announced that they would jointly build a 5G network in certain parts of China and that they were working together to build 5G networks in 15 cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Nanjing.
In June 2019, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially issued licenses for the launch of commercial 5G networks in the country. Those 5G permits were granted to China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and state-owned broadcaster China Broadcasting Network.
