O2 Germany last week announced that it has become the first German mobile network operator to successfully make a voice call purely over its 5G Live network.
The technological innovation Voice over New Radio (VoNR) makes voice telephony in the 5G network possible in the first place. To date, voice calls in all German mobile networks still run via predecessor technologies. VoNR establishes telephony connections directly within a 5G network. The fact that voice calls with VoNR remain in the 5G network and do not leave it is new in the German mobile communications market.
The advantage for customers: Voice calls with smartphones that are logged into the 5G network no longer take the detour via the 4G/LTE network. And: Thanks to VoNR, a call no longer leads to interruptions of an ongoing 5G high-speed data connection. The smartphone can easily continue file downloads in the background during a call at a stable high speed. 5G voice calls also conserve the smartphone's battery, as energy is no longer consumed for the switch to 4G network technology.
VoNR is currently possible in the live network at O2's first 5G mobile stations in Potsdam and Munich.The direct connection setup of voice calls within 5G as a so-called VoNR call is much faster and because the switching effort in the background is reduced. The paths for message transmission become shorter and thus significantly relieve the technical systems that have been involved up to now. VoNR is currently possible in the live network at O2's first 5G mobile stations in Potsdam and Munich. An important prerequisite for use is a VoNR-enabled smartphone.
Mallik Rao, CTIO of Telefónica / O2
Voice over New Radio will enable our customers to make optimum use of the network in the future. We are introducing the technology for voice transmission much faster than with the LTE standard. With 4G, the simultaneous transmission of voice telephony and data took about five years after the introduction of the mobile standard; with 5G, it took only a few months.
