More than 90% of households in Germany can already access Deutsche Telekom’s 5G network
German carrier Deutsche Telekom said it has built up 5G capacity at 834 sites nationwide over the past six weeks, the telco said in a statement.
The operator said that LTE technology can also be used at these sites because of the use of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) technology.
In addition, Deutsche Telekom has created additional LTE capacities at 517 locations, while 175 new LTE sites were built across Germany.
More than 90% of households in Germany can already access Telekom’s 5G network, while LTE household coverage is now 99%, the carrier said.
“We’re pushing the pace of mobile communications expansion,” said Walter Goldenits, managing director of technology at Telekom Deutschland. “More than 32,000 locations are currently transmitting in the Telekom network. In addition, we put more than 1,500 new locations into operation every year. In addition, there are LTE and 5G expansions at thousands of existing locations. As part of our massive expansion activities, 5G will become the new standard in Telekom’s mobile network.”
Goldenits recently said that Deutsche Telekom expects to launch its 5G Standalone (SA) network in the country, depending on the use cases for the technology as well as the availability of devices.
Deutsche Telekom said that a total of over 63,000 antennas are already transmitting 5G across the country. The European telco noted that it currently has more than 4,000 5G antennas in operation in the 3.6 GHz band, with more than 180 cities and municipalities already benefiting from it. Some of the cities where the telco offers 5G via 3.6 GHz spectrum are Aachen, Augsburg, Berlin, Bonn, Braunschweig, Bremen, Darmstadt, Dortmund, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt/Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Jena, Kiel, Cologne, Leipzig, Ludwigsburg, Munich, Nuremberg, Saarbrücken, Schwerin, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden and Wolfsburg.
Deutsche Telekom currently uses two frequencies for 5G. The 3.6 GHz frequency enables the fastest download speeds. This high-speed 5G is mainly used in densely populated regions. In addition, Telekom uses the longer-wave 2.1 GHz frequency.
During the course of this year, Deutsche Telekom also wants to use its 700 MHz frequencies for the provision of 5G services.
The telco kicked off the rollout of its 5G network in a limited number of cities across Germany at the beginning of July 2019.
Over 53% of the German territory is covered by at least one provider supplying 5G as of the end of October 2021, according to the latest available data from the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur).