Vodafone Germany mentioned that the location, situated at Feuerseeplatz, is the primary of as much as 100 such columns the service plans to transform throughout the town
In sum – what to know:
Stuttgart’s first 5G advert column goes reside – Vodafone’s new website at Feuerseeplatz makes use of an promoting column to enhance cellular sign in central Stuttgart.
Plan for 100 5G columns throughout metropolis – Vodafone and Ilg purpose to equip as much as 100 columns to spice up capability and protection in busy streets and public areas.
Discreet design, quick speeds – Ericsson antennas are embedded contained in the column roof, providing as much as 500 Mbps over a 400-meter radius by way of fiber backhaul.
Germany telco Vodafone has reworked a standard promoting column in Stuttgart right into a 5G antenna website, marking the launch of a brand new initiative to enhance cellular protection in city areas of Baden-Württemberg.
In a launch, Vodafone Germany mentioned that the location, situated at Feuerseeplatz, is the primary of as much as 100 such columns the service plans to transform throughout the town.
The upgraded column options built-in Ericsson antennas and know-how constructed into its rooftop and concrete construction. The setup delivers high-speed cellular web with obtain speeds of as much as 500 Mbps and a protection radius of roughly 400 meters, utilizing a fiber optic backhaul. The design permits Vodafone to develop its 5G footprint shortly with out the necessity for big cell towers, that are more and more tough to website in dense metropolis facilities.
The initiative is a part of the telco’s broader community enlargement technique to make use of current city infrastructure in artistic methods. In Stuttgart alone, there are greater than 600 conventional promoting columns, and Vodafone intends to repurpose as much as 100 of them. The subsequent 5G-ready columns are already deliberate for high-footfall areas, together with the Mercedes-Benz Museum, MHP Area and Dangerous Cannstatt prepare station.
Michael Jungwirth, member of the administration board at Vodafone, mentioned: “Folks’s starvation for information is rising. That is additionally the case in Baden-Württemberg. However discovering new cell phone websites is tough, particularly in interior cities. That’s why we’re now additionally utilizing promoting columns and equipping them with state-of-the-art and notably small 5G antennas. That is considerably quicker than with typical cellphone masts and represents a technical renaissance for the nice previous promoting column.”
The German telco has already applied related deployments in Düsseldorf, the place over 100 promoting columns now function 5G micro-sites. Every of those websites handles hundreds of each day connections and transmits round 200 gigabytes of knowledge per week.
In October 2024, Vodafone introduced the activation of its 5G Standalone (5G SA) community nationwide. In a launch, the telco famous that this rollout permits all clients with suitable smartphones to entry 5G providers for each web and calls in any respect 5G areas, eliminating the necessity to depend on LTE know-how.
Beforehand, Vodafone Germany operated half of its 5G community utilizing the LTE/4G core infrastructure. With the 5G SA providing, clients will get quicker connections and considerably decrease latency, which is essential for clean, lag-free cellular gaming and for functions involving augmented actuality (AR) and digital actuality (VR), the telco mentioned.
Vodafone Germany had initially launched its 5G SA community in partnership with Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm and Oppo.
Vodafone’s 5G SA know-how makes use of frequencies within the 700 MHz, 1.8 GHz and three.5 GHz ranges. Thus far, the corporate has outfitted extra 16,000 of its 26,000 cellular stations with 5G know-how. Which means that Vodafone now offers 5G protection to roughly 92% of the inhabitants, with over 90% additionally gaining access to 5G SA. By mid-2025, this protection is anticipated to achieve 95%.
Vodafone Germany additionally famous that the 5G SA community helps the aggregation of a number of frequencies, enabling speeds in extra of 1,000 Mbps on some smartphones.
Regardless of the broad availability of the 5G SA community, Vodafone mentioned it continues to run a combined community, working each 5G SA and 5G NSA applied sciences concurrently. This enables smartphones that aren’t but optimized for 5G SA to nonetheless profit from Vodafone’s intensive 5G protection.