Australia’s 5G rollout is continuing at a breakneck pace, but while the focus is on the coverage area, Telstra has been working with Ericsson on extending the range of 5G.
Today the companies announced the successful completion of a 100km long-range 5G data call on a mid-band Time Division Duplex (TDD) Advanced Antenna System (AAS) radio in a live commercial network.
This world-first achievement was conducted at Burra in South Australia and made possible through a new software feature that extends the maximum cell range from 15km out to 100km. The extended range feature will enable Telstra to broaden the benefits of 5G Massive MIMO AAS radios to even more rural and regional areas, delivering 5G capacity and downlink speeds to more customers.
We have a responsibility to deliver the very best connectivity to regional customers including the benefits and the experience of 5G. We’re working hard and making sure we invest in the world’s best technology to make sure all Australians have access to the largest and most reliable network now and in the future. This world-first achievement is just one of the ways we are committed to improving coverage over time.
Nikos Katinakis, Telstra Group Executive Global Network & Technology
While this feature will not extend reach where it is already limited by terrain, vegetation or other obstructions, in situations where an area has clear line-of-site to the antenna on an enabled site, a connection can be established as far as 100km.
Although situations allowing a full 100km extension will be limited, there will be many areas in regional/rural Australia where effective 5G coverage will now reach well beyond 15km, meaning more 5G coverage in more places.
Telstra will selectively enable this long-range capability where it can provide a coverage benefit based on each mobile site’s local requirements and environment. Once testing is complete, and based on device dependencies, it is expected selective field deployments will start later this year.
Emilio Romeo, Head of Ericsson, Australia and New Zealand
Once again Telstra and Ericsson are leading the industry to extend the reach of new mobile technologies. This milestone is another example of how we’re innovating to deliver connectivity to more Australians.
Mobile World Congress is currently on in Barcelona and Telstra has a could of other announcements from the conference.
5 Years of 5G:
Five years of 5G: How we built our world-leading network (telstra.com.au) we thought would be of interest given Telstra have taken a leadership position since starting testing and demonstrations in 2016 to building Australia’s best 5G network. So much has changed since that world first call was made in 2018 over a 5G network to today
Over that period we have come a long way, working with industry, communicating and demonstrating 5G and now utilising the latest technology advances to give our customers the best experience possible on our Network all through a period where mobile network traffic has increased by 5 times.
Devices have gone from scarce to being the norm, some even with mmWave and our 5G network now covers over 81% of Australians and counting, with peak speeds more than 7x faster than it did at launch. Our network is more intelligent, more reliable and supports more types of connected devices than any mobile network before it. Oh, we’ve also won some independent awards, showing the strength of our mobile network with umlaut awarding our network “Best in Test” in Australia after an extensive 55 days of testing.
Network Slicing:
We also published a blog on Network slicing – Connecting construction sites months sooner with 5G Standalone enabled Network Slicing (telstra.com.au) and demonstrated this in Barcelona overnight.
We’ve been working to bring more capability into our 5G network to support adaptable network experiences for our customers – demonstrating this at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.
Early last year we began trialling with customers on our commercial network a new 5G Standalone technology, known as network slicing. This 5G Standalone technology feature allows us to carve up our world-leading mobile network into separate, secure slices that can be finely tuned to suit the needs of many customers and customer applications.
