Mobile operator Vodafone and TV broadcaster ITN have today announced that the Coronation of King Charles III will be the first UK broadcast to be enabled by a public 5G Standalone (SA) network, which will harness a specific “network slice” on the operator’s trial network.
Existing 5G deployments in the United Kingdom tend to harness Non-Standalone (NSA) hardware and systems, which can deliver impressive mobile broadband download speeds, but they’re often hobbled by some dependence upon existing 4G services. By comparison, Standalone setups are pure end-to-end 5G networks that can deliver improvements such as faster latency times, better upload speeds, network slicing capabilities and more.
Vodafone has already launched a large-scale field trial of their 5G SA technology across parts of London, Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Bath, Glasgow and Birmingham (here), which seemed to be targeted at only selected customers with supportive hardware. But now this network also looks set to form the backbone of the latest TV broadcasting test.
The operator thus intends to dedicate an exclusive “slice” of Vodafone’s public 5GSA network to ITN in order to support the swift and secure transfer of the live Coronation broadcast coverage from Westminster to ITN’s HQ newsroom in Gray’s Inn Road. From here it can then be shared across the nation, and then worldwide.
Nick Gliddon, Vodafone UK Business Director, said:
“This innovative partnership will make HRH King Charles III Coronation the first 5GSA coronation. We are proud to be working with ITN to play our part in helping make this special event happen. Innovation is at the heart of Vodafone, from the first text message to the first mobile call, we have been central in the UK’s adoption of digital technology.
Now we are continuing this tradition by being the first to switch on 5GSA for the public to trial and providing a slice of this network for the Coronation. The possibilities with 5GSA are very exciting – AI, autonomous vehicles, holographic calls, IoT and more, 5GSA will turbo-charge the UK’s digital economy and pave the way for our next digital age.”
Previously, broadcasters might have attempted to setup a private mobile network in order to achieve a similar outcome, but that takes time, hardware, spectrum licensing and planning to arrange. By comparison, establishing a dedicated network slice within the existing public 5G network is a lot quicker and easier to achieve, assuming there’s enough capacity spare.
However, deploying 5G SA across more of the UK will be a much slower and more expensive process, since it requires operators to upgrade equipment at each of their mast sites. The complexity of this ensures that it won’t be an easy task.
So you’re telling me there isn’t a fibre they can’t just plug into rather than 5g? Seems like a lip service for no apparent reason.
I guess they are not constrained by having a fixed line to connect to.
of course there is. there’s also satellite uplinks and also camera crews have had portable backpacks with multiple 3G/4G connections for live streams for decades now. But I would imagine what would happen would be they have multiple cameras and one of them will be using this magic new 5G SA technology. The editors and producers in the studio will swap over to those cameras occasionally when everything is working as planned, and swap back to regular setups if anything goes funky.
od ve the ing
Excellent!
Roll on the Republic
I lost the will to live when I read the phrase “holographic calls” !
who’d stoop so low to use the coronation in some way to promote its 5g? Vodafone. Bet Threes marketing department are seething they didn’t think of it first!
Best part to this story is since it’s gone live I’ve not been able to connect 5G in any fashion.
Obviously I’ve checked phone settings…. Normally I’m able to detect the standalone 5G broadcasts to when setting device to NR only mode.
Seems suspect…. Seems like they’ve lost my business and my businesses businesals by doing this…
Will be reaching out to Anderson this afternoon