Deutsche Telekom said a total of 8,200 antennas are alraedy providing 5G in the 3.6GHz band
German carrier Deutsche Telekom said its 5G network already reaches 95% of the country’s population.
The European telco has said that it expects that its 5G technology could reach 99% of the Germany population by 2025.
The carrier also highlighted that more than 80,000 antennas are currently transmitting 5G, of which around 8,200 antennas are already providing the technology via the 3.6 GHz band.
Also, LTE coverage currently reaches 99% of Germany’s households, Deutsche Telekom said.
Deutsche Telekom also said it has expanded its mobile service offering at 1,327 locations nationwide in the last seven weeks. 320 locations were newly built and are now broadcasting with LTE and 5G frequencies. In addition, mobile communications capacity was increased at 1,007 locations already in operation.
In June last year, Deutsche Telekom announced it was for the first time using spectrum in the 700 MHz range to provide 5G service. The European operator said that the use of the 700 MHz band improve mobile communications coverage in rural areas across Germany.
With this latest addition, the telco is already offering 5G services via three different frequencies. In addition to the 700 MHz frequency, there are two other radio bands: 2.1 GHz and 3.6 GHz.
The telco said that 5G Standalone (SA) is technically available in the 2.1 GHz frequency band, adding that commercial use of 5G SA for residential customers will start as soon as applications are available.
Deutsche Telekom kicked off the rollout of its 5G network in a limited number of cities across Germany at the beginning of July 2019.
Last month, Deutsche Telekom announced a partnership with Nokia, Fujitsu and Mavenir for the initial phase of its commercial Open RAN (O-RAN) deployments across its European footprint.
The German telco noted that Nokia and Fujitsu have been chosen as partners for an initial commercial O-RAN introduction in Germany from 2023 onwards. Customers in the Neubrandenburg area will receive 2G, 4G and 5G services from the deployment in the ‘brownfield’ network environment of Telekom Deutschland.
In addition, Mavenir has been chosen as partner for an initial multi-vendor deployment in Deutsche Telekom’s European footprint starting in 2023.
Deutsche Telekom also highlighted that the sites at Neubrandenburg are built on a multi-vendor O-RAN architecture with open fronthaul support and equipment from Nokia and Fujitsu. Nokia will deliver the baseband units, while the O-RAN compliant remote Radio Units (O-RUs) will be provided by Nokia and Fujitsu.
For further deployments in the the telco’s European footprint, Mavenir will provide the Cloud-Native baseband software for the 4G and 5G distributed units (O-DU) and central units (O-CU), including for the open fronthaul based mMIMO radio units.
Deutsche Telekom also said that it plans to announce additional partners for O-RAN deployments.
