The trial, which included several other technology partners, saw Ericsson provide the 5G backbone that enabled the technology breakthrough. Voice over New Radio (VoNR) is set to play a key role in enhancing mobile voice quality, as well as enabling new immersive video and extended reality services in coming years.
The demo, which took place on 5G standalone network infrastructure in test mode at Deutsche Telekom’s innovation lab in Warsaw, Poland, also successfully showcased 5G voice and 5G data services running in parallel.
The achievement is a step towards the commercial launch of superior quality 5G voice services on cloud-native 5G standalone networks, offering improved HD voice+ speech quality, improved video calling quality and the opportunity to serve both 5G voice and 5G data services simultaneously.
5G VoNR is expected to boost new revenue opportunities such as immersive video conferencing and 5G interactive calling through augmented or virtual reality technologies.
Alex Choi, SVP Strategy & Technology Innovation, Deutsche Telekom, says: “High quality and seamless voice calling remains a must-have service for our customers in the 5G era. The addition of 5G VoNR can be a differentiator for next-generation immersive applications that integrate highspeed 5G data with high-definition audio. Our collaboration with best-in-class partners to validate end-to-end 5G VoNR interoperability is an important step towards the future of 5G voice services for our customers.”
Jan Karlsson, Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Services, Ericsson, says: “The end-to-end 5G voice-over-new-radio going live with the first call in Deutsche Telekom network further demonstrates the strength and recognition of our cloud native 5G Core network for standalone 5G networks.”
Ericsson provided key 5G solutions as part of the trial, including its cloud-native dual-mode 5G Core platform and Ericsson Radio System products such as Baseband 6630 and Radio 4422 for mid-band 5G.
Ericsson recently partnered with T-Mobile US, a subsidiary of the Deutsche Telekom group, to deliver several 5G standalone milestones. These included the first low-band 5G standalone voice call using an Evolved Packet System (EPS) fallback to voice over LTE (VoLTE), which enables high quality voice services based on 4G LTE technologies in 5G standalone architecture.