DT claims Europe’s first 5G antennas in Berlin

Deutsche Telekom has got four of its radio cells in Berlin pumping out shiny New Radio goodness in a real-world setting, claiming a European first.

Technically this is ‘pre-standard 5G NR’, but the lack of a standard hasn’t stopped everyone banging on about 5G for year and DT isn’t about to miss out on all the gun-jumping fun. We’re told this mini-network is managing a throughput of 2 Gbps so a single device and a latency of 3 milliseconds.

“We are demonstrating 5G live here, in the middle of Berlin, rather than in a lab. This is a very decisive developmental step on the way to the global launch of 5G, which is planned for 2020,” said Claudia Nemat of Deutsche Telekom. “If everything is connected to everything else, customers need a high-performance, reliable and secure network. Industry in particular will benefit from 5G as a powerful enabler for a wide range of applications. We are ready for 5G.”

That last statement, of course, is what this and a million other equivalent exercises are about. Everyone wants to be seen to be all over the latest megatrends and the stock statements about what a big deal it will all be have already been repeated to the point of cliché. This one was done with Huawei kit over the 3.7 GHz spectrum band.

“5G is getting close to prime time,” insisted Deng Tai Hua, President of the Huawei Wireless Network Product Line. “The successful live transmission over 5G is an important technical contribution to the 5G community for the two companies. Huawei will continue investing in R&D and enhance its cooperation with partners to make progress in 5G technology and the development of an industry ecosystem.”

It’s not really getting close to prime time, is it? We’re still a couple of years away from 5G being used by normal people and even then this robotic, virtual-reality utopia we’re urged to envisage with every announcement such as this isn’t going to suddenly spring out of these 5G labs cropping up left, right and centre. Still, well done DT, keep up the good work, etc.