2023 rings in further 5G progress and Open RAN in Germany

January has ushered in a small flurry of 5G rollout announcements as deployments of the latest generation of mobile technology continue. Although it’s still early days, 2023 has already seen one of Open RAN’s early proponents finally launch services, albeit with little fanfare due to its limited scope initially.

Like Rakuten Mobile in Japan and Dish in the US, Germany’s 1&1 is pushing ahead with the deployment of a cloud-native, Open RAN network – with more than a little help from Rakuten Symphony.

1&1, Germany’s fourth mobile network operator, has launched a 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) service in Frankfurt and Karlsruhe. A 5G smartphone service is set to follow in the summer.

Only three antennas are currently in operation, but 1&1 hopes to increase this to 50 over the coming weeks with a focus on cities including Hamburg, Essen, Düsseldorf, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Munich and Freiburg. As things stand, 235 sites are under construction and the operator has a target of 1,000 masts this year.

1&1 also says it will be able to meet the license obligation to achieve 50% population coverage with its 5G network by the end of 2030. By then, it plans to have 12,600 masts and more than 500 data centers in operation.

The United Internet-owned operator is keen to underscore its Open RAN credentials, emphasizing that it is not locked into the “innovation cycle” of one particular vendor. As well as software from Rakuten, Mavenir and Altiostar, it is deploying servers from Dell and Supermicro, routers from Cisco, and antennas from NEC and Communications Components (CCI).

Iliad gets a helping hand in Italy

In Italy, the market’s newest mobile network operator Iliad Italia has joined forces with WindTre to accelerate its 5G network rollout in rural parts of the country. The two operators have set up a 50:50 wholesale network-sharing joint venture called Zefiro Net after securing regulatory approval. It had been previously reported that CK Hutchison-owned WindTre would shift around 7,000 mobile sites into the new JV, in which Iliad would then buy a 50% stake.

WindTre now claims to cover 95.9% of the Italian population with its 5G network. In November 2022, Iliad said its 5G network is available in more than 3,000 Italian cities.

France, meanwhile, had 37,968 authorized 5G sites as of 1 January 2023, of which 29,208 were declared technically operational, according to the latest monthly report from the country’s spectrum agency ANFR.

Iliad’s Free Mobile is well in the lead in terms of 5G sites, with 20,881 authorized and 16,524 operational. Bouygues Telecom is next with 13,906 sites of which 9,514 are operational, followed by SFR with 11,734 (8,388 operational) and Orange with 8,432 (5,601).

Notably, Iliad is currently deploying most of its antennas in the 700MHz band, while Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR are principally using the 3.5GHz and 2.1GHz bands.

As for other markets, O2 Slovakia expanded its 5G network to another 13 locations and reported 37% population coverage by the end of 2022; Deutsche Telekom unveiled plans to transform around 3,000 phone boxes into 5G small cells; Reliance Jio introduced 5G to four more cities in India, taking the total to 72; Airtel now offers 5G in more than 20 cities and is targeting coverage in all major Indian cities by the end of 2023; and Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) said Malaysia’s 5G network reached almost 50% coverage of populated areas with some 3,900 sites by the end of 2022, with a target of 80% coverage by the end of 2024.

Goodbye, 3G

Meanwhile, as 5G continues to advance around the world, more operators are switching off 3G to free up frequencies and capacity for the next-generation network technology.

At the end of 2022, Verizon became the last of the three mobile network operators in the US to shutter its 3G CDMA network. AT&T and T-Mobile US had already closed down their 3G networks a few months previously.

3G has already been completely turned off in Germany, and the UK is to follow suit in 2023 and 2024.