Telefónica overtakes its competitors in the race for 5G.

This week, Telefónica announced through its website the launch of its 5G network. In this statement, they affirmed that its 5G network would reach 75% of the Spanish population by the end of the year.

The start of 5G in Spain.

Telefónica started its tests for 5G cities in 2018 with its ‘live labs’ in Segovia and Talavera de la Reina. In 2019, Vodafone already implemented its network in a small number of cities. However, Telefónica and Orange declared that they would wait until the technology was more developed and more devices were supporting it.

How to reach 75% of the population in such little time?

According to this percentage, Telefónica will overtake and leave far behind its competitors regarding 5G coverage. The ‘trick’ should be updating the software of its current 4G antennas to incorporate the DSS (Dynamic Spectrum Sharing) technology. This allows to use the bandwidth 4G does not use to offer 5G coverage.

Another advantage of doing so is that the cost of this type of deployment is very low. They will get it by simply updating the software of its thousands of antennas, without changing a part. Indeed, Telefónica already activated the DSS 5G signal in eight cities of Brazil last August through its trademark Vivo.

According to experts, DSS technology does not offer a full 5G experience.

5G rates.

Until the date, no operator has published their rates including a cost for using 5G network. However, it is important to point out that 5G experience is not adequate without unlimited data or with a short data rate.

Telefónica partners for the deployment of its 5G network.

Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia will be the chosen ones. According to the agreement reached in last December, Huawei will develop the core of the deployment.

Ericsson and Nokia already collaborated with Telefónica in 2018 when the operator launched its pilot test in Segovia and Talavera de la Reina and, in this new deployment of 5G coverage, the distribution should be equally divided.

Regarding the Chinese manufacturer Huawei, the idea is to do without it at a middle term, a decision motivated by refusing to share its deployment in the future ecosystem of Telefónica’s 5G networks.