5G+ is increasingly meaning different things to different operators as branding begins in earnest
Finland’s Elisa has begun rolling out consumer services on its 5G standalone network using 5G+ branding and has promised to increase its range of plans and supported handsets in the coming months. The telco is also planning to launch business bundles in the Spring. The 5G+ network is available almost everywhere in Elisa’s current 5G network, which covers more than 92% of Finns, and is expanding all the time, according to the operator.
Elisa’s choice to brand its standalone service follows the pattern set by Spain’s mobile operators and 3 Austria but Swedish operators in contrast are using 5G+ to describe their services running on 3.5GHz. A bunch of North American operators use it even more loosely, describing any higher frequency 5G service.
From launch, Elisa’s 5G+ services will support the following handsets: Samsung Galaxy S23 all models; Samsung Galaxy A34 5G; Nokia G42; Nothing Phone 2; Sony Xperia 1 V and the Sony Xperia 5 V. The operator likes to point out it was the first in the world to bring a commercial 5G network and sold the Nordic countries’ first 5G phone to its customers in 2019. It also introduced standalone in the summer of 2021, while in June last year Elisa and Ericsson claimed they were the first in Europe to implement an in-service software upgrade on a live production network.
Only last week, Elisa, Ericsson and Qualcomm announced they had achieved an upload speed of 230Mbps in a live 5G network using Uplink Carrier Aggregation. For this test, a 25MHz 2.6 GHz FDD (frequency division duplex) band was combined with a 100MHz 3.5 GHz TDD (time division duplex) band running on a mobile test device powered by Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System.
Ericsson’s Uplink Carrier Aggregation software combines mid-band FDD and mid-band TDD within the frequency range 1 (FR1) – a software feature which only became commercially available in the fourth quarter of 2023 – boosting speeds to enable uplink-heavy applications such as live streaming, broadcasts, cloud gaming, extended reality, and video-based use cases.
Elisa is offering two packages that work on the standalone network. The first, Elisa 5G+ Unlimited 1000M, offers unlimited internet in Finland, the North and the Baltics and 53 GB/month in the EU – for €49.99/month. The second, Elisa 5G+ Premium, promises the operator’s “fastest connection” while offering unlimited internet: Finland, the North and the Baltics and 100 GB/month in the EU – for €60/month.
Standalone is better
Elisa likes to point out that because 5G standalone calls don’t faff about with 4G network hand-offs, users may see an up to 50% shorter delay. In addition, the battery of a device connected to a standalone network lasts up to 15-20% longer.
“In addition to the benefits and power savings for the user, the independent 5G network continues to improve the energy efficiency of the mobile network, and less energy is consumed per transferred amount of data than with older network technologies,” said Elisa’s business director responsible for consumer subscriptions, Ilkka Pohtola.
Last Autumn, Elisa piloted how best to get added value for users with standalone 5G network services. The first consumers from Helsinki and Vantaa were able to use a home connection, where each one was allocated their own slice (slicing) from the 5G SA network. In a survey conducted during the pilot, consumers commented, for example, that the speed of the new connection remained at a better level throughout.