Orange picks Transylvania for 5G FWA demo

Operator group Orange took its mate Cisco and Samsung on a road-trip to northern Romania to show off its 5G multi-vendor fixed wireless access skills.

Orange says the test is the first of its kind in Europe and is a key step in the development of 5G in the region. At its core it seems to be a classic FWA set up, but using 5G architecture and millimetre-wave spectrum. The radio base station of the virtualized access network connects through fiber to the virtualized Core network installed in the Orange datacenter.

It took place in a village called Florești, near the town of Cluj, which is apparently the capital of the province of Transylvania. 15 Orange residential customers got to live the 5G FWA dream, which also involved Samsung 5G ‘terminals’ (which seems to mean small cells in this case) and Cisco routers.

“This is a test which brings us closer to the future, an opportunity to better understand the way in which technology works in real usage environment conditions, the challenges that we can face while deploying new technology and the benefits it can bring to both our residential and business customers.” said Liudmila Climoc, CEO of Orange Romania (pictured, center).

Perhaps seduced by the prospect of encountering vampires, Iain Morris of Light Reading flew over to Transylvania to witness the demo first hand. And it looks like his wish was granted, in a way, because among the Orange execs he met was one Arnaud Vamparys. You couldn’t make it up! You can read more about his Romanian road-trip here.