Deutsche Telekom’s Claudia Nemat said the mobile operator is demonstrating a live 5G in Berlin — using pre-standard 5G New Radio (5G NR).

Four radio cells in the Deutsche Telekom network in Berlin are the first in Europe with a live 5G connection in a real world setting. The live 5G network is achieving throughput of more than 2 Gbps to a single customer device.

Latency of 3 milliseconds on commercial sites in Berlin’s Schoneberg district

“This is a very decisive developmental step on the way to the global launch of 5G, which is planned for 2020,” said Claudia Nemat, Member of the Management Board responsible for Technology & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom.

5G New Radio, the new 5G air interface, will work in combination with the 4G LTE technology. A key technology in 5G NR to increase capacity and data rates is the use of advanced antenna techniques called Massive MIMO that increases the number of antenna elements deployed at both the base station and in the subscriber device to increase spectrum efficiency.

“5G New Radio in Berlin is the first major step towards 5G for everybody,” said Deutsche Telekom CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn. “As soon as the standard is defined and is available, we will proceed in 2018 to lay the foundation for large-scale build-out.”

Deutsche Telekom is using the frequency spectrum in the 3.7 gigahertz range coupled with Huawei equipment for its implementation in Berlin. The four Huawei antennas are located at three different sites: Winterfeldtstraße (two cells), Martin-Luther-Straße and Pohlstraße.

“The live transmission over 5G is an important technical contribution to the 5G community for the two companies,” said Deng Tai Hua, president of the Huawei Wireless Network Product Line.

Deutsche Telekom demonstrated how the 5G network’s multi-gigabit data rates and low latencies can enrich an AR application around a slot car track. 5G network delivered additional context information from an edge cloud in real time using the AR glasses.

Deutsche Telekom is piloting the use of 5G for industry at the Port of Hamburg to tailor the 5G network to meet the requirements of the port. 5G will enable digital transformation of the port by offering traffic control data, reliable traffic light steering and environmental monitoring.