Together the two have deployed 5G across 10 cities around Australia and over the next year, this number will increase to at least 35 Australian cities.
In addition to the launch of the 5G smart hub, Telstra has also launched commercial 5G mobility, available with commercially available 5G smartphones. The news comes eight years after Telstra launched 4G in the country and almost seven since the first 4G smartphone.
Earlier this month, Andrew Penn (pictured), CEO, Telstra, in a blog post said: “5G will be a game changer for a range of applications where speed and quick response times (latency) are important, including 4K video, gaming and other new technologies that require advanced connectivity such as autonomous driving.
Our investment in bringing 5G to life for Australia is significant. It’s the culmination of our investment of around $8 billion in our mobile network over the last five years (to 30 June 2019) to enhance the capacity, capability and reach it provides.”
From Ericsson’s standpoint, the company has 18 publicly announced 5G contracts and this Telstra partnership means Ericsson is now supporting six live 5G networks globally, with Telstra’s being the first in the southern hemisphere.
The news follows Swisscom’s securing a commercial 5G licence, and as all the other components were already in place, the partners only had to switch on the network. As a result of the collaboration, 5G services are bow available in 54 cities and communities in Switzerland including major hubs like Zürich, Bern, Geneva, Basel, Lausanne and Lucerne.
