telecommunications
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Vodafone is launching limited 5G calls
A new 5G mobile phone mast from Vodafone is on a high-rise building at the Mörsenbroicher Ei intersection.
Photo: Roberto Pfeil/dpa/archive image
Dusseldorf 5G? Enables extremely fast data transfer, whether for streaming, file downloads or online games. The latest generation of mobile communications has been around in Germany for almost four years. So far, she has avoided one area.
Gentle on the battery and faster when establishing a connection: the 5G mobile communications standard is now also used by a small proportion of Vodafone customers to make calls. As the first German network operator, the company activated the corresponding technology within a limited framework – a total of a good 300 radio locations in Düsseldorf, Leipzig and Frankfurt, as Vodafone announced on Friday. Competitors Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica (O2) have yet to launch 5G telephony for their customers.
5G networks have existed in Germany since 2019, but only for data use. In the future, this will also be the case with Vodafone for telephony, which previously ran using the 2G and 4G radio standards. In the age of the Internet, data use is much more important than classic telephony, especially since many calls are now made via services such as WhatsApp and Signal, i.e. Internet data transmission.
Nevertheless, classic telephone calls remain important for many people. Vodafone is now heralding the 5G era for this area. According to the information, telephone calls via 5G go easy on the battery because the energy efficiency in the network is higher. The reason is that the mobile phone connection remains in one network and does not switch between 2G, 4G and 5G.