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Vodafone claims it has completed the world's first 5G call based on the 3GPP NSA standard, followed by the first 5G video call, using Huawei's Radio Access Network equipment.
It wasn't quite as dramatic as Alexander Graham Bell's groundbreaking call to Mr. Watson in 1876, but it is nonetheless notable. According to a story in Newsweek, Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD)'s Director General Albert Buxadé placed the call earlier this month from a computer in the carrier's innovation center over 3.7 GHz spectrum to a mobile phone answered in Madrid by José María Lassalle, Spain's secretary of state for inflation society and digital agenda.
The call was made on Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd 's RAN equipment and completed using the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 's Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G New Radio standard. While AT&T and Verizon have both claimed to have made "over the air" 5G calls in the past, Vodafone and Huawei say this is the first to be based on the standard.
The operator used a dual 4G-to-5G connection for the voice call, and a 5G data connection for the video call. It said it reached speeds exceeding 2Gbps and latency of 10 milliseconds. Huawei and Vodafone plan to start testing a commercial network in the near future, Yang Chaobin, the president of Huawei's 5G product line, said at an event in Spain on Tuesday. The first smartphones to support 5G with Qualcomm chipsets on board are expected in 2019. (See Qualcomm Sets Out Its 5G Stall for 2018.)
— Sarah Thomas, Contributing Editor, Telco Transformation
