Vodafone starts the deployment of pre-commercial 5G in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville, Malaga, Bilbao and Valencia

After the spectrum auction, Vodafone has the largest volume of frequencies to offer the new 5G services (90 MHz in the 3,700 MHz band -TDD- and 20 MHz in the 2,600 M MHz band -TDD-).

After the allocation of the new frequencies, Vodafone Spain pre-commercial deployment of the first nodes of its 5G NSA network in central areas of Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville, Valencia, Bilbao and Malaga.

Vodafone has deployed, in collaboration with Huawei, more than 30 5G antennas in the different cities. 5G coverage has been provided to central areas, technology parks and university areas where the first pilots of the new technology will be carried out. This deployment has been carried out using the 3.7Ghz band.

Fifth generation technology allows data download from the network with speeds up to 2.2Gbps, as well as increasing network capacity. Furthermore, with 5G reduce latency reaching response speeds of less than 5 milliseconds. Lower latency is key in real-time applications such as autonomous cars, virtual reality, telemedicine, veven Ultra HD from 8K, gaming, etc.

In February 2017, it presented the first commercial NB-IoT network in the Spanish market with more than 1,000 network stations updated with this technology. Each base station can connect more than 100,000 devices in IoT environments.

Furthermore, in June 2017, it commercially introduced 4.5G, which combined advanced functionalities of 4G and Massive MIMO, one of the engines of 5G. With 4.5G, latency was reduced by 5 times and network capacity was quintupled.

Last February, Vodafone and Huawei completed the first 5G call in the world, carried out from Castelldefels (Barcelona) to Madrid, using the specifications of the commercial standard NSA (Non
Stand Alone) approved by 3GPP and the 3.7 GHz spectrum band, specifications and spectrum that are now used in pre-commercial deployment.

In March of this year, thanks to the tecnología MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) and virtualized infrastructure, Vodafone managed to reduce the delay in applications related to virtual reality by more than half, an especially important advance for sectors such as telemedicine, education, tourism, industry and entertainment.

Live virtual reality with 5G

Vodafone has today shown, for the first time, in a real 5G NSA network environment, the possibilities of the new technology in virtual reality applications, improving the experience thanks to lower latency and faster download speed.

Citizens will be able to test the new 5G speeds thanks to several WiFi routers that will be available in different parts of Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville, Bilbao and Valencia during the coming months.

Vodafone's 5G network will enable new multimedia services and applications that require ultra-fast connections. It will also facilitate the development of smart cities and new business and public administration services in areas such as automotive, healthcare...

Available spectrum

After the auction of licenses called by the Ministry of Economy and Business, Vodafone has 90 MHz of contiguous spectrum in the 3.7 GHz band, to which are added the 20 MHz TDD available in the 2.6 GHz band. All this makes Vodafone the operator that has the most spectrum to offer the new 5G services.

Ismael Asenjo, CTO of Vodafone Spain, stated that "the fact that we have 90 MHz contiguous and in immediately usable conditions puts us in the best position to offer the new 5G functionalities and bring its applications closer to all our customers."