Telefónica said it has already deployed nearly 6,000 5G antennas in the 3.6 GHz frequency
German telecom operator Telefónica Deutschland/O2, controlled by Spanish telco Telefónica, said its 5G network is operating around 14,000 antennas in the country.
The telco said that this network infrastructure is enabling the provision of 5G services to half of the German population.
The operator also said it has already deployed nearly 6,000 5G antennas in the 3.6 GHz frequency. By the end of this year, the carrier aims to reach 60% of Germany’s population with 5G technology, while nationwide 5G coverage is expected by the end of 2025.
“5G is not only particularly fast, we are also rolling it out quickly. We already provide half of the population with high-performance 5G via our O2 network. We have thus achieved our 5G roll-out target for 2022 six months earlier than planned. We are connecting millions of consumers in Germany even faster with 5G and enable new digital applications. We will continue to invest massively in our network expansion to strengthen Germany as a digital location,” said Markus Haas, CEO of O2 Telefónica.
Telefónica is also using the 700 MHz frequencies for the provision of 5G services.The 5G rollout is complemented by the use of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing technology (DSS) on 1800 MHz.
Telefónica Deutschland has said that it is technically ready to deploy a nationwide 5G Standalone network but noted that the infrastructure will be fully activated as soon as 5G Standalone offers real added value for customers, and when enough devices in the market support 5G SA.
In related news, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) is currently conducting research on concrete applications via a 5G campus network set up by Telefónica Deutschland.
The carrier noted that the 5G campus network at TUM provides a secure research and development environment without connection to the public mobile network. It delivers high-performance network coverage in the chair’s own research and development labs. The aim of the Chair of Materials Handling Material Flow Logistics is to use the latest technology to explore the various functions and possibilities of 5G in the field of technical logistics and to test them in feasibility studies. The focus is particularly on the autonomization of robotics solutions in intralogistics and the collaboration of robots.
In addition to setting up and operating the 5G campus network, Telefónica will also support the university with engineering consulting.
“We want to find and further develop use cases in technical logistics that make technological as well as economic sense. In addition, we want to demonstrate the advantages of 5G technology over existing communication technologies, especially for the production and logistics sectors, and make them usable in practice,” said Johannes Fottner, Head of the Chair of Materials Handling Material Flow Logistics at the Technical University of Munich.
