Vodafone deploys Europe’s largest commercial 5G SA network in Germany

The OPPO Find X3 Pro is the first commercially available smartphone that can be used in a standalone network - at 5G locations in more than 170 cities and towns. Later this month, the device will receive an automatic firmware update so that it can be used with the new 5G SA technology.

Vodafone has partnered with Ericsson, Qualcomm and Oppo to deploy Europe's largest commercial 5G Standalone (SA) network in Germany, beginning in major cities including Frankfurt, to unlock the full potential of the next-generation network.

For 5G standalone, Vodafone has activated all 1,000 antennas in the 3.5 gigahertz range. These antennas are spread across more than 300 locations across Germany-  including large cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and smaller cities like Magdeburg, Solingen, or Mainz. The company aims to quadruple the number of 5G SA antennas so that around 4,000 antennas are live by the end of 2021.

When downloading via 5G standalone, currently, bandwidths of around 700Mbps are possible and in the near future speeds of significantly more than 1,000Mbps are possible. 5G SA also enables lower latency as compared to current 5G non-standalone (NSA) networks and can network 10x more people and machines.

Vodafone's network will also support network slicing to meet different specific use cases. Besides, 5G SA provides a greater range - increased by around 20 percent - and reduces the energy consumption for mobile phone users by almost 20 percent as the device no longer has to engage with the 5G and the LTE network simultaneously, thereby lowering CO2 consumption.

With technology partner Ericsson, Vodafone has also activated the first 5G data center in Frankfurt where the data is processed in real-time in the cloud and the computing power can be expanded as required. The second 5G data center will go online later this year in Berlin, followed by others thereafter.

By 2023, Vodafone will operate a total of ten 5G data centers, allowing users to surf the web with latency times of 10 to 15 milliseconds across Germany in the future.

"With 5G standalone, Vodafone is switching the network completely to 5G for the first time, paving the way for data exchange in real-time and for the network slicing technology. Private and industrial customers can already use Vodafone's 5G standalone network for industrial projects and with the first smartphones this month," Vodafone said on Monday.

The OPPO Find X3 Pro is the first commercially available smartphone that can be used in a standalone network - at 5G locations in more than 170 cities and towns. Later this month, the device will receive an automatic firmware update so that it can be used with the new 5G SA technology.