Rogers Communications on March 28 announced it has launched the first commercial 5G standalone (SA) network in Canada and one of the first globally, in conjunction with Ericsson.
Expanding the operator's 5G footprint, the Rogers 5G SA network is built to scale massively and will support the unprecedented growth of IoT devices in the years to come, said the company.
Rogers has turned on the next-generation service after completing the rollout of Canada’s first national standalone 5G core, and the country’s first 5G standalone device certification, continuing its leadership in the rollout of 5G technology, it said.
“We are thrilled to be the first in Canada to launch a commercial 5G standalone service,” said Jorge Fernandes, Chief Technology Officer at Rogers Communications. “This milestone underscores our ongoing leadership in 5G and will bring immediate benefits to customers by increasing coverage, scalability and availability, and improving network response times, enabling a world of new use cases and applications.”
The Rogers 5G SA Core network has been built from the ground up based on the latest cloud native technologies, said the operator, enabling more advanced wireless capabilities such as ultra-low latency, network slicing and mobile edge computing.
5G core and 5G RAN slicing capability enables Rogers to deliver innovative new services to customers such as dedicated private networks, public safety applications and access to edge compute for AR/VR consumer applications.
“Today’s launch delivers exciting new opportunities and capabilities to industries, businesses and consumers across Canada,” said Yasir Hussain, CTO, Ericsson Canada. “Ericsson is collaborating with our partners at Rogers to deliver 5G advanced services and innovative network solutions to meet the growing demand from Canadian companies and consumers.”
The launch allows wireless customers with 5G SA capable devices like the Google Pixel 6 and the Google Pixel 6 Pro to connect to the 5G SA network. Wireless customers with capable devices will automatically connect to the 5G SA service where it has been rolled out, and Rogers will be onboarding other major devices later in the year.