Rogers Communications of Canada unveiled what it claims to be the country's first commercial standalone (SA) 5G network, highlighting the immediate advantages in coverage and scalability as well as the opportunity to introduce new use cases.
The carrier's SA 5G deployment features Ericsson equipment. The release comes on the heels of several national "firsts" related to the latest architecture, including obtaining grid access certification for Google's Pixel 6 series phones and completing the SA 5G core network ahead of its peers.
According to the GSMA think tank, Rogers Communications, Canada's largest operator, has 11.3 million connections.
Rogers Communications noted that the latest generation of 5G will reduce latency and introduce network slicing capabilities. It added that its deployment was one of the first in the world.
The operator said it has been "built at scale and will support an unprecedented growth of IoT end devices in the coming years," while noting potential new services including private networks, public safety applications and AR/VR services using edge computing.
In addition to the certified Google phones, Rogers expects to launch "other major terminal devices" later in 2022.
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