EE Makes First UK Mobile Call via 5G Network – VoNR
At present most 5G networks are data-only (mobile broadband) services, but EE (BT) has revealed that it recently carried out the UK’s first call over 5G in the network using Voice over New Radio (VoNR or Vo5G) technology. But it’s unclear precisely how long we’ll have to wait before this becomes common place.
The technology is similar to the way 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE), which also started out as more of a data-centric network, evolved over time to adopt Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Such developments are necessary because older 2G and 3G networks are slowly being phased out, which will leave 4G and 5G to pick up the slack.
The big catch with VoNR (or Vo5G if you prefer) is that it requires a true end-to-end 5G Standalone (SA) network in order to function. Such networks can deliver other improvements too, such as ultra-low latency times, better upload speeds, network slicing capabilities, better support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, increased reliability and security.
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At present most existing 5G networks are non-Standalone, which means they retain some reliance on older / slower 4G infrastructure.
Howard Watson, BT’s Chief Security and Networks Officer, said:
“Why’s this important? At present, voice calls are supported by 2G and 4G, and the soon-to-be-retired 3G. Ensuring that 5G also provides this function is crucial to supporting a genuine 5G Standalone experience – as well as offering a further voice option for customers. With ever more 5GSA capable handsets coming onto the market, we’re making sure EE is in prime position to maintain its number one status for their performance.”
A lot of EE’s underlying / core network is already ready for Standalone 5G technology, and they’re also upgrading many of their key radio sites across the country to support it, as well as issuing 5G SA-capable SIMs to customers. But deploying this technology to every location is going to be a slow, expensive and very complex process – it won’t happen overnight. Customers will also need supporting Smartphones to fully benefit.
At present Vodafone are the only UK operator that has actually launched a package for customers based off their own 5G SA network – called ‘5G Ultra‘, but that is currently only available to parts of London, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff – all dense urban areas. No doubt EE won’t be too far behind this, but as we say, it’s going to take a lot of time before we’re all making regular calls via 5G.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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This is good, but I am skeptical of the value in charging for Standalone 5G.
So far non-Standalone 5G has been a bit of a disappointment. First, in terms of coverage, and second in terms of speed. That makes charging for Standalone a tough sell.
At least they didn’t charge extra for non-Standalone 5G. Of course, if 5G users get through more data, they make money that way.
It’s because the UK does everything half-arsed. SA works well in Korea/China.
I can remember getting hundreds of megabits on 4G in Denmark/Sweden/Norway, but at home you’d be lucky if it hit 30mbit. It’s not the technology at fault, it’s our implementation of it. I’m quite sure when UK has a full 5G SA network it will be rubbish.
I don’t see how they can charge customers again to have 5G (SA) if they already have 5G (NSA)
The customer wont care or understand what the difference is.
And operators like 3 / Smarty will more than likely offer full 5G to everyone anyway so that will decide the market (although their days are numbered)
Perhaps they should sort out their call quality in general first?
I’m currently in Malaysia, not in Kuala Lumpur but out in the sticks on the West coast surrounded by hundreds of acres of palm oil trees, the local tower for Digi is 1.08 miles away and 30mtrs tall, I’m getting 568mb/s download over LTE, what the hell is going on in the uk where the most I can get at 03:45 is 140mb/s on a good day when I really don’t need it.
Half arsed – half baked for top dollar.
does Malaysia have restrictive planning laws where NIMBYs try to block everything and land owners know they can fleece the telcos since it would be so hard to move?
I’ve been making calls on Vodafone Ireland over 5g since mid August using a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, oddly they’ve not advertised this or made any sort of publicity announcing the launch.
The UK is all about politics and profits. Mostly to satisfy mama America hence the quality of anything and everything in the UK is very low compared to the rest of Europe or world.
Besides the traffic in the UK is heavily spliced:
3/4 on spying of the public 1/4 for the public.
Did they have more than 2 bars of signal?
It don’t matter if they have 2 bars of signal or more. I live in London, and I’ve been on EE for years now, not only my bill keeps rising to the roof every year, but also there are times and in some places that I will have signal 2 bars or more, but I won’t have internet, things won’t load, my music stops playing when I’m in the car cause it can’t access the internet, waze stops working etc… so I think it’s time to leave EE
adding my anecdote since everyone’s having the usual predictable whinging
I can get 200Mbps on 5G where I am on EE. I got slightly better results – occasionally – in Amsterdam when roaming on KPN (but much worse on T-Mobile NL, amusingly).
Even more amusing was in Germany – T-Mobile DE seemed unavailable for roaming despite DTAG’s shareholdings in BT. I spent most of the time on O2-DE and I don’t recall any blistering speed results in Berlin or Munich, but it was absolutely fine for normal internet stuff.
The only truly impressive difference is how it works in the metro systems. London still hasn’t got there yet.
Odd I’ve made a few calls while been on 5G with EE and it’s never switched back to 4G.. I would say EE do seem to have the biggest 5G network but it’s really crap most the time, I’ve had issues when travelling in the car streaming music soon as my phone jumps onto 5G the music just stops and won’t load soon as your back on 4G no problem and it’s not the phone, have this issue on my Fold 5 and my previous phone S21 Ultra.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean to say your call is going over VoNR, it can still be handled by a different part of their service/network, even while primarily connected to 5G. You’d need a more detail network diagnosis app to see how this is all being handled under the hood, as those little Smartphone icons at the top don’t tell you much.
Came back from Crete yesterday to rubbish UK 4G and below, Crete on the other hand no matter where you went was full bar 5G excellent service and super fast
Yeah but it’s a much smaller much easier place to put phone towers and the planning permission and regulation is different. True 5G need Towers every few meters so Crete joins the UK with its non-true 5G.
Doesn’t Vodafone’s 5G SA have VoNR?
I live in Cyprus and get gigabit everywhere via 5g
It’s fantastic
Very bad service .I losing my work job for poor signal and they didnot cancel my contract
Don6trust them
I hope your spelling doesn’t look anything like that when you’re working?
Learn something new every day, I did not know that 5G did not carry voice. Not that I would trust it. Too many people complain about how bad 5G is. From what some people have told me, where I live it is non-existent.
Well it does because when people use WhatsApp or telegram or Skype or other apps that use only your data then it is carrying your voice it just doesn’t natively carry your voice and honestly I don’t think it really matters and I don’t think anybody really cares. As long as people can make their phone calls and talk to whoever they want to talk to then they don’t care if it goes over 2G 4G 5G 6g it just doesn’t matter and I just don’t think that this new 5G technology is really that important because 4G complements it anyway and it’s combined and very complicated. Stand alone 5G is a long way off and to be fair when that comes then that will be the end of 4G and then we will have to get your handsets so actually it’s a bit frustrating. Elixier22