On Thursday, 22 February, Vodafone together with Chinese telecoms company, Huawei, announced the completion of what Huawei calls the “world’s first call using the Non Stand-Alone (NSA) 3GPP 5G new radio (NR) standard and sub6 GHz spectrum.” The call took place in Spain, just ahead of Mobile World Congress, which starts on February 26.
According to a statement released by Huawei, the standards organisation 3GPP agreed the Non-Standalone global standard for 5G as part of its ‘Release 15’ in December 2017.
The dual connectivity 4G to 5G live call, was achieved using a test device and a test network. The voice over internet protocol (VOIP) connection started on 4G and then established the data connection on 5G. Also, using the same route, the engineers successfully tested a live HD video.
Santiago Tenorio, Vodafone’s Group Head of Networks Strategy and Architecture, believes that “this is a significant milestone for Vodafone towards the introduction of 5G,” adding that “the credit for this must go to the engineers in Huawei and Vodafone who have worked tirelessly since December. This successful test will enable us to move forward with further trials of 5G across Europe during 2018.”
Yang Chaobin, President of Huawei’s 5G product line, confirmed that “Huawei is fully committed to the further development of this end-to-end 5G network technology. This test result shows the maturity of 5G system based on the 3GPP standard. We are ready to continue our collaboration with Vodafone and enter commercial trial.”
According to Dr Peter Meissner, CEO and Member of the Board, Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance, “this first 5G call has been achieved only two months after 3GPP completed the Non-Standalone NR standard and so is much sooner than most in the industry were expecting it to happen. This sends out the very promising signal to the world that the industry is ready to introduce 5G services for customers in due course.”
Huawei has already confirmed that it would showcase its products and solutions at the Mobile World Congress 2018 (MWC2018) that is set to take place on 26 February to 1 March 2018 in Barcelona, Spain.
