By Juan Pedro Tomás
Australian operator Optus announced the launch of a 5G Standalone (SA) trial prior to the commercial launch of this technology, expected for 2022, the telco said in a release.
Optus said it will be using multiple bands to conduct limited trials for retail customers using the Oppo X3 Pro handset.
“The evolution of 5G is moving almost as fast as our 5G speeds and it’s important to us that we continue to deliver our customers with innovative technology that improves their lives. As it matures, 5G Standalone is going to play a critical role in enabling a multitude of use cases thanks to its incredible responsiveness and bandwidth. This really is the future of 5G and it’s exciting to be able to get this into the hands of customers so that we can start to test and learn in a real-world environment what 5G Standalone is capable of,” said Optus VP of network, Lambo Kanagaratnam. “As we build out our Standalone network, together with technology partners Ericsson and Nokia, we anticipate a strong gain in our 5G network coverage. For our enterprise customers 5G Standalone will provide the ability to slice the network into different virtual segments which will offer increased flexibility, maximum efficiency and importantly the opportunity for them to increase revenue through automation.”
Managing director at OPPO Australia, Michael Tran, said: “We’re excited to be launching this pilot with Optus and to be making lightning fast connectivity accessible as soon as the standalone network is commercially launched next year.”
Optus is working with Ericsson on its 5G Standalone core network.
In May, Optus switched on its first six 5G mmWave commercial sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as the carrier reached 1 million 5G-capable devices on its network.
In July 2020, Optus had announced it was testing 5G mmWave technology in partnership with Ericsson. In January 2020, Optus had successfully implemented spectrum sharing technology from Ericsson to made an end-to-end 5G video test call while simultaneously streaming video content on a 4G device. The Optus network was able to assign spectrum resources on both 4G and 5G switching between them in milliseconds to support the different service video demands from both users, Optus said. Dynamic Spectrum Sharing is a technology that allows an operator use the same spectrum at the same time for LTE and 5G, with the network base stations controlling the allocation of spectrum.
