Deutsche Telekom said it has built up 5G capacities at 958 sites nationwide over the past six weeks, the telco said in a statement.
In addition, Deutsche Telekom has created additional LTE capacities at 745 locations, while 352 new LTE sites were built across Germany.
More than 90% of households in Germany can already access Telekom’s 5G network, while LTE household coverage is now 99%, the carrier said.
“We’re pushing the pace of mobile communications expansion,” said Walter Goldenits, managing director of technology at Telekom Deutschland. “More than 32,000 locations are currently transmitting in the Telekom network. In addition, we put more than 1,500 new locations into operation every year. In addition, there are LTE and 5G expansions at thousands of existing locations. As part of our massive expansion activities, 5G will become the new standard in Telekom’s mobile network.”
Goldenits had recently said that Deutsche Telekom expects to launch its 5G Standalone (SA) network in the country, depending on the use cases for the technology as well as the availability of devices.
The executive noted that the carrier continues to expand its 5G network in the 3.6 GHz band but said that it will take time to deploy it to reach certain areas in the country.
Deutsche Telekom has previously said that its 5G service based on 3.6 GHz frequency is already available in around 50 cities across the country, where the telco has already deployed over 1,800 antennas.
Some of the cities where the telco offers 5G via 3.6 GHz spectrum are Aachen, Augsburg, Berlin, Bonn, Braunschweig, Bremen, Darmstadt, Dortmund, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt/Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Jena, Kiel, Cologne, Leipzig, Ludwigsburg, Munich, Nuremberg, Saarbrücken, Schwerin, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden and Wolfsburg.
The German telco had previously said that it expects to deploy a total of 60,000 5G antennas by the end of 2021 to provide this technology to 90% of the country’s population.
Deutsche Telekom currently uses two frequencies for 5G. The high 3.6 GHz frequency enables the fastest download speeds. The high-speed 5G is mainly used in densely populated regions. In addition, Telekom uses the longer-wave 2.1 GHz frequency.
The telco kicked off the rollout of its 5G network in a limited number of cities across Germany at the beginning of July 2019.
