Ericsson and Qualcomm claim first 5G NR mmWave call to a smartphone

The incremental ‘5G first’ claims continue as Ericsson and Qualcomm say they’ve done the first 5G NR ‘call’ over the 39 GHz band to a smartphone-like device.

The test call was done in Ericsson’s labs in Sweden using the non-standalone flavour of 5G. It used Ericsson’s AIR 5331 5G NR radio and the test device (pictured) was running the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem. It comes just days after Ericsson announced a pretty similar test with Intel, which presumably made Qualcomm feel slighted and jealous.

“Mobilizing mmWave for the smartphone has been seen by many as an impossible challenge, but this demonstration validates that we are on track to bring groundbreaking 5G mmWave experiences to consumers,” said Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon. “This successful lab call is a testament to our continued innovation and collaboration with Ericsson, and we look forward to further industry-leading milestones with them as we progress to 5G commercialization of networks and mobile devices in early 2019.”

“Today’s data call milestone with Qualcomm Technologies shows the importance of building the 5G ecosystem,” said Ericsson networks boss Fredrik Jejdling. “We’re also making headway on commercial 5G by performing interoperability tests on new mmWave bands, giving our customers wider deployment options and the consumers, faster speeds.”

Elsewhere Ericsson has been quick to promote the fruits of its recent transport announcement involving Juniper. It has won a deal with Swisscom to deliver an ‘end-to-end 5G transport solution, that will feature both Ericsson and Juniper kit. Ericsson will now run the whole of Swisscom’s 4G and 5G networks, including all the latest virtualization cleverness.

“We have selected Ericsson’s transport solution for our 5G network,” said Heinz Herren, CIO and CTO at Swisscom. “Partnering with Juniper Networks, Ericsson has extended its transport coverage and can now take end-to-end transport responsibility all the way from the Radio Access Network to the next generation core. Seamlessly managed and orchestrated, this reduces our complexity and affords a more efficient, high-performing network.”

“Ericsson has stepped up and taken responsibility for transport,” said Arun Bansal, head of Erisson in Europe and Latin America. “This deal is an important proof point for the end-to-end 5G transport solutions that we recently launched. The ease of use of our one-stop shop reduces not only complexity for Swisscom but also their total cost of ownership.”

Here’s a photo of a bloke looking at some servers that Ericsson thought was apposite to the latter story. He clearly has more flexible knees than some of us.