Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Technology, Telecomunications

Photo: elisa.ee

The world's first commercial 5G networks were launched on Wednesday in Tampere and Tallinn and a video call was made for the first time between two 5G networks. Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure Kadri Simson made a video call to her colleague Minister of Transport and Communications Anne Berner. A 3.5 GHz frequency was used for the establishment of the 5G network, which is also one of the first frequencies in the future 5G network.

"The volume of the movement of data in the world is ever increasing and therefore the introduction of new technology is extremely important. Estonia already today is contributing to the development of self-driving vehicles and without a 5G connection it is difficult to organize automated movement based on artificial intelligence on the roads," Simson said.

Elisa Eesti CEO Sami Seppanen said that he hopes that the preparations started in April for the auction of 5G frequencies will continue fast and Estonia can be the leader of developing and launching 5G in the world. "With the help of 5G, the speed of the mobile broadband connection will increase tenfold. With the help of such high speed connections, we can forward information more efficiently than before, which in turn provides opportunities for the development of wholly new applications. We wish for the state of Estonia to be at the forefront with Finland in developing 5G mobile networks," Seppanen said.

Already in the near future, it will be possible to multiply the mobile data communication speed thanks to 5G. The data communication speed in the world's first commercial 5G network used on Wednesday reached 2.2 gigabits per second.

The 5G network was created in cooperation with Huawei with the aid of the world's first 5G end devices. Huawei is an important partner for Elisa in developing the future network and the company today is one of the leading 5G developers in ther world, contributing over 10 billion dollars to network development last year.

"Elisa is moving fast toward the new 5G era, bringing better speeds and user experiences to their customers. Huawei is glad to for the creation of such a significant moment and in cooperation with Elisa we continue to be prepared to be the trailblazers in the field of 5G networks and applications," Zhang Xibo, Huawei's country manager for the Central, Eastern and Northern European region, said.

5G enables the creation of new type of applications, where the speeds of mobile internet are up to ten times faster. These speeds enable to transmit greater data volumes.