As one of the first 5G SA networks globally, the new service was activated after completing the rollout of Canada’s first national standalone 5G core as well as the country’s first 5G standalone device certification.
“We are thrilled to be the first in Canada to launch a commercial 5G standalone service,” said Jorge Fernandes, chief technology officer at Rogers Communications.
“This milestone underscores our ongoing leadership in 5G and will bring immediate benefits to customers by increasing coverage, scalability and availability, and improving network response times, enabling a world of new use cases and applications.”
Partnering technology company Ericsson, Rogers 5G SA core network was built from scratch based using cloud-native technologies, enabling more advanced wireless capabilities such as ultra-low latency, network slicing and mobile edge computing, while at the same time expanding Rogers 5G footprint.
The 5G SA network was designed to scale massively and is futureproofed to support the surging growth in IoT devices. With 5G core and 5G RAN slicing Rogers can deliver new services to customers such as dedicated private networks, public safety applications and access to edge compute for AR/VR applications.
“Today’s launch delivers exciting new opportunities and capabilities to industries, businesses and consumers across Canada,” said Yasir Hussain, chief technology officer at Ericsson Canada.
“Ericsson is collaborating with our partners at Rogers to deliver 5G advanced services and innovative network solutions to meet the growing demand from Canadian companies and consumers.”
In addition, the launch of this new network allows wireless customers with capable devices to connect to the 5G SA network. Such customers will automatically connect to the 5G SA service where it available and Rogers has confirmed plans to onboard other major devices later this year.
In related news, earlier this month Rogers inked a five-year deal with Microsoft to help small and medium business customers accelerate digitization through Microsoft Azure.
