Deutsche Telekom on Thursday announced that it has installed the first 5G Standalone antenna in the town of Garching near Munich.
The site will be the first in Germany with this innovative technology. Together with partners, the first steps for 5G SA are to be taken here. The antenna will soon be connected to a 5G Standalone core network. The core network will be implemented via a Telekom cloud infrastructure. The hallmark of 5G Standalone is that the infrastructure in the core network will also be fully upgraded to a new, cloud-based 5G architecture. This is the next evolution of 5G and also a prerequisite for new deployment options.
With 5G Standalone, the network structure and architecture is changing. The 5G technology currently deployed in Germany is based on the 5G Non-Standalone (5G NSA) network architecture. This means that today's 5G offerings are still technically dependent on a simultaneously available 4G network (LTE) and virtually "piggyback" on this network, i.e., they do not yet function completely independently.
There are currently no terminals for customers that support 5G standalone. Deutsche Telekom is therefore conducting the first tests with special development software on commercially available devices. The goal is to test various connections and applications that function completely standalone and without the support of 4G in the coming weeks.
Claudia Nemat, Board Member for Technology and Innovation at Telekom
To ensure that our customers can take advantage of technologies such as network slicing or edge computing in the future, we continue to actively drive the development of 5G and its features.
Walter Goldenits, head of technology at Telekom Deutschland
The network innovation in Garching is initially the first step for us into the 5G SA live network. It helps us to gain necessary and important experience with 5G SA. A rollout in the area will then also depend on the requirements of our customers.
