T-Mobile on Monday announced several important milestones, which it claims are the world's first for standalone architecture (SA) 5G, with its newly built 5G core.
T-Mobile said it has partnered closely with leaders across the industry to notch several “world-first” achievements:
- The first SA 5G data session between commercial modems from two suppliers on a production network with Cisco, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia and Qualcomm Technologies.
- The first low-band SA 5G voice call using Evolved Packet System (EPS) fallback to VoLTE with Cisco, Ericsson, MediaTek and Nokia. This enables high quality voice services utilizing VoLTE in the SA architecture while the industry is fully developing voice over new radio (VoNR) 5G technology.
- The first low-band VoNR call on a production network with Cisco, Ericsson, MediaTek, and Nokia. VoNR allows for voice calls to run over 5G.
- The first video over new radio (ViNR) call on a production network with Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm Technologies. ViNR allows for high quality video calls to run natively, instead of on an Over the Top (OTT) data service.
- Several 5G firsts with a commercial smartphone on a production network, including the first low-band SA 5G data session, first call with EPS fallback, and first VoNR & ViNR calls. These were pulled off alongside Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, OnePlus and Qualcomm Technologies.
All of these milestones were achieved with T-Mobile’s new multi-vendor 5G production core on its commercial nationwide 5G network, which paves the way for the Operator's launch of standalone 5G later this year. During the tests, standalone and non-standalone (NSA) 5G devices were operating with active sessions at the same time in the same cell.
