Vodafone Germany said its 5G network is now available to more than 25 million people across the country.
In a release, the telco said it plans to continue to expand the mobile network through more than 7,000 construction projects, including 3,000 5G projects to activate 9,000 antennas. The company aims to service over 30 million people with 5G in Germany by the end of this year. Vodafone had originally announced that it would reach around 20 million people with 5G by the end of 2021.
“Our 5G network is growing even faster. In the past few days, our technicians have connected hundreds more 5G antennas to the network. Today, our 5G network is already available to almost every third German citizen where they spend their everyday lives. In total, Vodafone has already switched more than 10,000 5G antennas live at more than 3,000 locations,” said Vodafone Germany CEO Hannes Ametsreiter.
“Our networks have always been able to cope with the high loads. And we will continue to improve the quality. In the new financial year we will build additional stations where there are still annoying dead spots. We are switching off 3G to free up even more space for LTE,” the executive said.
Vodafone is planning around 4,000 LTE construction projects in order to bring this technology to places where it has not yet been available or is only available with limited capacities. In addition, there is the large-scale reallocation of 3G frequencies, which will also be used for LTE at 18,000 cell phone locations from June, the telco said.
Last month, Vodafone Germany launched its 5G standalone (SA) network in partnership with Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm and OPPO.
Vodafone upgraded 1,000 sites to SA 5G, covering 170 cities and municipalities via 3.5 GHz spectrum. The new network was initially launched in some major cities including Frankfurt, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Düsseldorf.
The telco said that it aims to have 4,000 live sites in the 5G SA network by the end of the year.
“For the first time in Europe, 5G is available at full power. For us, 5G brings high bandwidths, low latencies and network slicing,” the telco’s CTO Gerhard Mack said.
Vodafone’s network will also support network slicing, which means that different parts of the network can be allocated for different specific use cases.
Vodafone Germany said that it will be operating a total of ten 5G data centers by 2023, with the aim of managing the new 5G SA network. The first data center is already operational in Frankfurt, while new 5G data centers in Berlin and Munich will go online later this year. The other 5G data centers will follow by 2023.
Vodafone initially launched its 5G network in Germany in 2019, on 3.5 GHz frequencies that it acquired from Telefónica in 2018.
