The Hungarian subsidiary of Norwegian telecoms group Telenor showcased its first 5G (fifth generation) video call on a mobile phone in the north-western city of Győr on Wednesday.
According to Rmx.news, the 5G call was made between two base stations in downtown Győr – not yet available for the public, as they are in a closed test system - and with existing equipment achieved a data throughput of 1.7 Gbps (Gigabits per second), which in practice means that a high-definition movie can be downloaded in about 20 seconds.
Telenor added, however, that once the 5G network becomes commercially available, bandwidth will be even higher as the theoretical limit of the system they are building is 3 Gbps.
The network equipment was that of Telenor’s main contracted firm, the Shenzhen-based Chinese ZTE Corp.
Telenor officials said that because very few commercial applications support the bandwidths that are 10 to 20 times higher than those on existing 4G networks at present, the business potential of 5G is as of yet unclear.
Photo credit: telenor.com