Austrian operator Drei started trials of a 5G standalone network in capital Vienna, the telco said in a release. Drei claimed to be the first of the three telecommunications providers in Austria to start tests for this technology. The operator is carrying out these 5G SA tests at its headquarters and the surrounding area in Vienna’s Floridsdorf district.
For the commercial launch of 5G standalone, Drei bought its own 5G licenses for 700 and 1,500 MHz frequencies last year, which the company will fully use for 5G standalone.
Drei also said that it aims to reach nationwide coverage with its 5G SA network in the future.
Matthias Baldermann, CTO of Drei, said: “Drei was the first pure 3G provider in Austria. We have made mobile Internet at home suitable for the mass market and launched our 4G network as the first operator across Austria. After the pandemic, we are once again proving our pioneering role with one of the first 5G standalone test companies in Europe. Based on a joint new core network, we will start commercial operation of 5G standalone in a few months. With the largest 5G network in Austria, we will bring households and companies in every corner of the country the full potential of 5G in addition to the very fast Internet.”
“As part of the largest network expansion program in the history of Drei, we will open doors for new business areas with 5G standalone. In the future, we will be able to tailor the quality and speed in our network to the needs of our customers. Comparable to a multi-lane motorway, we can offer the speed that customers need in every lane, we can reserve entire lanes for customers and areas that rely on a permanently available connection and enable connections almost in real time — so you can rightly do 5G standalone speak as the next evolutionary step.”
Drei, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings, also launched commercial 5G services in Austria after the company had secured 100 megahertz of 5G-suitable 3.5GHz spectrum covering all twelve designated regions of Austria in March 2019.
Drei has been working with Chinese vendor ZTE in its commercial 5G deployment.
Some of the cities in which the telco provides 5G are Linz, Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck and Salzburg.
In September of 2020, local operators obtained frequencies in the 700 MHz, 1.5 GHz and 2.1 GHz bands in a second 5G spectrum auction.
