BT Group Chief Network Officer Greg McCall talks about how a mature device ecosystem and advances in carrier aggregation gave BT the confidence to launch 5GSA in the UK.
BT Group chief network officer Greg McCall said the operator would be ready to launch 5G standalone (SA) “later this year” once the network and device elements are in place.
“It’s not about being the first for us. It’s about delivering at the right time and focusing on giving customers a differentiated and great experience,” he said in an interview. mobile europe At Mobile World Congress.
BT’s 5G SA position provides device availability, SIM card support, 5G core network and ‘continuous’ 5G SA coverage before considering launching mobile brand EE. Mr. McCall shared the current progress in each area.
“We believe the ecosystem is now mature,” he said, with more device manufacturers supporting 5G SA and all carrier customers owning “an SA-enabled SIM card.” He pointed out that this will lead to a transition from 5G non-standalone. (NSA) Transitioning to SA is “much easier”.
On the network side, BT has deployed 5G cores in its private cloud environment as part of a broader program to replace Huawei cores with Ericsson cores. The carrier also “modernized” 7,000 wireless sites, replacing more than 5,000 of his Huawei sites with Ericsson or Nokia wireless sites.
“We will be preparing to launch what we believe will be the UK’s first full-scale 5G SA network later this year,” Mr McCall said.
BT is not the first company to offer 5G SA in the UK, with Virgin Media O2 announcing the service last week and Vodafone launching it in June last year.
Ideal for carrier aggregation
The rollout of 5G SA is not progressing as quickly as many in the industry would like. According to the GSMA, 261 carriers offer his 5G services, but only 47 of his carriers are offered via the SA network.
Mr McCall said from BT’s perspective, the transition to 5G SA has been delayed due to a lack of carrier aggregation technology to combine mid-band frequencies.
“The big difference between NSA and SA is carrier aggregation, which allows us to bring together multiple carriers to deliver the experience our customers expect.Until recently, carrier aggregation technology for spectrum bands was not available in the UK. “That’s what slowed it down,” he said.
“Now that we have demonstrated carrier aggregation around SA, we are ready to get started. We are now able to build that contiguous coverage within the wireless network, so when people use SA, , SA can now be used anywhere, not just in isolated patches,” he added.
Bring in the new, throw away the old
While BT talks about its next move to 5G, it also announced the suspension of its 3G network after 20 years, making it the first UK carrier to end its legacy service.
Mr McCall said the wind direction had been “excellent”. The carrier’s business and consumer customer service center did not see a spike in calls after the network outage and “did not have to roll back a single site.”
He explained that 3G is “incredibly energy-intensive,” so a traditional switch-off saves energy and allows spectrum to be rebuilt to support other services.
Operators are currently considering whether to “hold off” and use free spectrum when 5G SA launches, or start using it now. “We haven’t decided on that yet, but the process of reusing spectrum is simple,” he said.
