Italian carrier Vodafone announced the launch of commercial 5G services in five cities across the country.
Initially, the 5G service will be available in Milan, Turin, Bologna, Rome and Naples. The company used equipment from Nokia and Huawei for the deployment of commercial 5G.
The telco, part of U.K. telecommunications company Vodafone Group, said it expects to add around 45 to 50 cities to 5G coverage next year. Aldo Bisio, Vodafone Italy’s CEO said that the telco’s 5G technology will reach more than 100 Italian cities by 2021.
Bisio also said that despite being the first telco to launch commercial 5G in the country, fierce competition from rival telcos TIM and Fastweb is expected in the coming months.
With the launch of 5G, Vodafone will also offer three smartphones that can actually use the new networks – Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G, LG V50 ThinQ 5G and Samsung Galaxy S10 5G.
Vodafone also expects to launch 5G services in Spain next month, according to press reports. The company said that the first cities to receive 5G coverage will be Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Malaga, Bilbao and Valencia.
In July 2018, Vodafone Spain started to deploy its 5G network in these six cities with the deployment of a limited number of 5G nodes. The company also said that it was working with Huawei and Ericsson in the deployment of the 5G network.
Vodafone also announced that it will commercially launch its 5G network in seven cities across the U.K. on July 3. The telco said that the new technology will be commercially available for both consumers and business customers. Vodafone also said that it will also offer 5G roaming in the U.K., Germany, Italy and Spain over the summer.
Initial 5G services will be available in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and London, while Birkenhead, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Guildford, Newbury, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Reading, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington and Wolverhampton will follow later this year.
Huawei signs 5G agreement with Russian telco MTS
In related 5G news, Huawei has signed an agreement with Russian mobile operator MTS to cooperate on the development of 5G networks.
The Chinese vendor and MTS will work together in areas such as indoor coverage, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband, IoT and the development of new 5G use cases over the next 12 months.
“We are very pleased to conclude a new agreement with MTS, especially in such a strategically important area as the development of 5G,” said Huawei Chairman Gou Ping.
The announcement coincides with a three-day visit to Russia by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
