In June 2021, Hutchison Drei Austria launched the 1st Pilot 5G SA network with ZTE as one of the first 5G standalone in Europe, enabling a new and open telco ecosystem to improve flexibility, efficiency, openness and customer experience, supporting the full 5G-SA capabilities including eMBB, mMTC, uRLLC, Edge computing, slicing, third party integration, orchestration and automation, layer 2/3 decoupling.

Speaking with ZTE Technologies Magazine, earlier this year Drei CEO Rudolf Schrefl said “With ZTE as a partner on the 5G journey of Drei, we were able to perform the first public 5G NSA call just two weeks after we acquired the frequency. In June 2019 have have launched the first continuously covered 5G region in Austria in and three months later, in September 2019, we have offered the first commercial 5G tariffs in Austria. From March to November 2020, we have completed core network commissioning and debugging, acceptance test and access network cutover successfully one and half months earlier than planned, by applying the ZTE pandemic-driven Digital Remote Delivery & Deployment Process.”

Drei Austria is the pioneer of the digital transformation and is leading the 5G development in Austria providing top quality services benefiting end users as well as enterprise customers. The deployment of a full 5G SA network with ZTE enables the use of network slicing including 5G quality of services. It ensures enhanced network security, high flexibility, low time to market and higher levels of radio resource management. This is one of the first telco ecosystems supporting end to end Stand Alone solutions utilizing an open platform enabling successful use cases with 2C and 2B customers, for example the Bee-o-meter, which is a remote monitoring solution for assessing the health and operating environment of commercial bee hives and enhancing user experience.

Some of the key innovations incorporated into ZTE’s solution include our micro-service based, orchestrated core network, which is able to support 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G SA and NSA, and Fixed networks enhancing efficiency, quality and end customer perception with reduced time to market for new service deployment which has been further stressed by ?Mario Paier, Head of Strategy and Technology at Drei Austria.

ZTE’s Network Slicing Store provides enterprises with a platform through which they can directly buy specific network slices tailored to the needs of the service they are providing to their end customers, enables B2B2C applications which can be translated to any market globally for any operator ready for the investment and spectrum.

The technical benefits of 5G are now clear and the standards mature, with the conversation shifting to how the next-generation technology can be used to create value across all sectors of society and be the foundation of growth.