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Network testing will be carried out by Companies, Universities and start-ups that form part of the Vodafone 5G Hub innovation centre

• The operator has today deployed the first 5G antenna in the Country
• Anacom have temporarily provided the spectrum to allow these tests to be performed in a real environment

Vodafone Portugal has today deployed the first 5G antenna in the country. Situated at its headquarters building in Parque das Nações, Lisbon, Vodafone’s 5G network is now available for all companies, universities and start-ups located at the Vodafone 5G Hub innovation centre to test their projects.

“With the installation of this inaugural 5G antenna, Vodafone Portugal meets yet another of its commitments: to foster innovation, openly providing for society, for purposes of development and competitiveness of the Country, this state-of-the-art technology for the creation of projects, research, products, services and business models based on the mobile network of the future,” reveals João Nascimento, CTO of Vodafone Portugal.

Just three months after connecting the first 5G in Portugal using a prototype 5G smart phone, Vodafone now takes another significant step in it’s journey towards the commercial launch of fifth generation mobile communications. “We believe that the projects being developed in our innovation laboratory for the 5G network will contribute to deepening our knowledge about this technology and, therefore, to explore its future use in a far more concrete way”, explains Pedro Santos, responsible for the Vodafone 5G Hub.

Created in June with the aim of being an open centre of knowledge production and innovation to take advantage of all the potential that 5G can offer, Vodafone 5G Hub currently has seven partners: the companies Ericsson, Altran and Celfinet, the start-ups Nimest and Parkio, and the Further Education Institution, the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). Along with Vodafone, these will be the first organisations to take advantage of this network testing.

Vodafone highlights Anacom’s readiness to respond positively to the request for temporary use of the spectrum in the 3.6 GHz range, providing a real environment for testing all the possible uses this technology can provide.

With the installation of the inaugural 5G antenna, deployed by Ericsson – Vodafone Portugal’s strategic partner in developing 5G -, Massive MIMO and beam-forming technologies will be available, two of the innovations that will support the next generation of mobile communications. These characteristics allow the network to be distributed much more selectively and in a targeted manner, maximising the propagation capacity, reducing interference and making full use of the available spectrum.

The 5G testing network will also take advantage of Vodafone’s current 4G network, which has been consistently ranked as the country’s best mobile network by several independent studies. An achievement that also results from the Company’s modernisation plan for the mobile network, with the installation of 5G-ready equipment placing Vodafone in the best position to lead the deployment of the fifth mobile generation in Portugal.

This 5G antenna is also connected to a common infrastructure with all its functions being fully virtualised, a configuration that will allow us to get a sense of some of the immediate characteristics of 5G, namely the lowest latency and the highest throughput.

By the year end, Vodafone Portugal will install more 5G antennas between Lisbon and Porto, as announced by FEUP, the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.