O2 Telefonica now reaches more than 98% of the German population with its 5G service
In sum, what to know:
Over 1,000 sites upgraded to 5G – O2 Telefonica has upgraded more than 1,000 mobile sites with 5G this year as part of a broader infrastructure push across Germany.
3,500 total expansion actions – The company completed 3,500 measures to boost network quality, including 1,700 capacity upgrades and 200 new mobile sites.
5G now covers 98% of Germans – The telco now provides 5G access to more than 98% of the population, including rural areas and transit routes, aiming for a stronger, more inclusive network.
German carrier O2 Telefónica said it has upgraded more than 1,000 mobile sites with 5G technology since the beginning of the year, the telco said in a release.
The carrier, owned by Spanish telco Telefonica, also said it has completed around 3,500 expansion measures since the beginning of the year to improve its network infrastructure.
As a result of the expansion measures, O2 Telefonica now reaches more than 98% of the German population with its 5G service.
“We are maintaining the high pace of expansion to bring Germany forward digitally. Whether in the city, in rural areas or on the move by train or car, we are investing where our customers need our network… We want to create an even more powerful network for everyone,” said Mallik Rao, Chief Technology and Enterprise Officer at O2 Telefónica.
The telco recently carried out more than 1,700 capacity upgrades at its 28,000 mobile phone sites across Germany. The telco also put 200 new mobile phone sites into operation across the country since the beginning of the year.
In October 2023, O2 Telefonica announced the launch of its 5G Standalone (SA) network in the country under the 5G Plus brand. Until this launch, the German telco had been offering 5G services through the NonStandalone (NSA) 5G architecture partly via its LTE/4G core network.
The carrier noted that the 5G SA network will enable customers to have access to voice-over-new-radio (VoNR) technology, which enables them to make calls with even better voice quality over the 5G network.
O2 Telefónica said it has already been using the 5G SA technology in 5G campus networks for companies and public authorities since 2020. With this new launch, the company noted that more companies in different sectors such as industry, healthcare and the public sector will have access to improved connectivity.
The carrier’s 5G Plus uses frequencies in the 700 MHz, 1.8 GHz and 3.6 GHz bands.
The telco said it expects its 5G SA service to reach full coverage in Germany by the end of 2025.
O2 Telefónica and Ericsson had previously completed a proof of concept (PoC) with the aim of paving the way for the development of 5G cloud RAN technology in Europe.
Ericsson and O2 Telefonica noted that this collaboration “validates the feasibility” of cloud RAN for enterprise and industry-specific use cases as well as fixed wireless access (FWA) use cases.
The telco has recently selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its cloud provider for network workloads.
The multi-year agreement, signed during Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025, builds on the previous deployment of O2 Telefónica’s 5G SA Core on AWS in July 2024. As part of this expansion, O2 Telefónica will extend its 5G core implementation on AWS, deploying the 5G core data plane within its data centers using AWS Outposts racks to support network-intensive workloads. Additionally, the company will begin deploying IMS voice services on AWS Graviton processors this year.
O2 Telefónica will also use a unified set of AWS services, including Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus and Amazon Managed Grafana, to monitor its entire 5G network.
