Vodafone Germany has announced that the first small antenna has been installed in a car park in Düsseldorf.
German telecommunications operator Vodafone Deutschland has started deploying small base stations developed by Swedish vendor Ericsson to expand 5G coverage across the country.
Vodafone Germany said in a statement that the first small antenna has been installed in a car park in Duesseldorf, and the company said it aims to deploy up to 500 small antennas to extend 5G coverage across Germany by the end of 2025.
Mark Helzer, head of network development at Vodafone, said: “Strong winds put pressure on roof-mounted antenna surfaces. The more mobile phone antennas there are on a roof, the higher the wind pressure. This also increases the requirements for wind resistance and statics, so not all existing roof locations can be upgraded with active 5G antennas. Finding new mobile phone locations on roofs is a major challenge for our network expansion in Germany.”
Vodafone noted that cell towers can deliver 5G up to a one-kilometre radius, adding that these active 5G antennas are typically installed on top of existing LTE antennas. But a lack of rooftop space makes 5G expansion impossible in some places, the company said.
The new 5G compact antennas developed by Ericsson are installed directly behind the existing LTE technology, leaving space requirements on the roof unchanged – Vodafone said 5G radio signals from the additional active antennas can still get through.
“To make 5G more widespread in cities, we need fewer antenna towers and rooftop space. Innovations like this will further accelerate the rollout of 5G in Germany and help us cope with data traffic growing by more than 30 percent per year,” Holzer said.
Daniel Leimbach, head of Ericsson Western Europe, says: “The use of compact active and passive antennas will improve mobile broadband experiences in cities in the future. Ericsson’s Interleaved AIR 3218 will significantly simplify site upgrades and accelerate 5G rollouts in areas previously limited by building regulations, urban planning laws or static reasons.”
Vodafone Germany recently announced that it completed more than 1,400 LTE and 5G network construction projects in the second quarter of this year.
Vodafone said it has commissioned more than 500 new construction sites and installed around 900 additional antennas for LTE, 5G and 5G Standalone (5G SA) to boost broadband capacity.
According to the company, around half of Germany’s population is already connected to Vodafone’s 5G SA network via 5,500 5G SA locations, of which more than 4,000 stations have antennas in the 3.5 GHz frequency band.
Vodafone Germany has partnered with Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm and Oppo to launch its 5G SA network in 2022. Vodafone is currently using frequencies in the 3.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz and 700 MHz bands for its 5G expansion across metropolitan areas, residential areas, suburban and rural areas across Germany.
Vodafone was the first to launch a 5G network in Germany in 2019, using the 3.5GHz frequencies it acquired from Telefonica in 2018.