1&1 said its O-RAN network will be soon available in Hamburg, Essen, Düsseldorf, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Munich and Freiburg

German operator 1&1 announced plans to expand its cloud-based Open RAN in new cities across the country in the coming weeks, the telco said in a release.

Some of the cities where the operator expects to launch 4G and 5G services include Hamburg, Essen, Düsseldorf, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Munich and Freiburg where nearly 50 mast are technically ready.

1&1 recently launched 5G services via fixed wireless access (FWA) technology in Frankfurt and Karlsruhe.

The new offering, dubbed “5G at home”, is a replacement for conventional DSL, fiber optic or cable internet connections. 1&1 said it will initially offer three different packages with tariffs ranging from 20-40 euros.  All tariffs offer up to 500 Mbps in download and up to 40 Mbps in upload speeds.

At the beginning, servers from Dell and Supermicro, routers from Cisco, software from Rakuten, Mavenir and Altiostar as well as antennas from NEC and Communications Components (CCI) will be used, 1&1 has said.

In August 2022, 1&1 said it had completed the first live test in its new 5G network. In the tests, 1&1 said that it achieved speeds of over 1 Gbps and stable data transfers of around 8 terabytes per customer within 24 hours.

1&1 also noted that the first interim target of 1,000 radio masts is to be reached in the course of the year. “Despite the delays in recent months, we want to continue to meet our supply obligation for 50% of all households by the end of 2030 at an early stage,” said Ralph Dommermuth, CEO of 1&1. “Around 12,600 radio masts and over 500 regional data centers will be putoperation for this purpose,” he added.

Since the acquisition of its 5G license, the German telco has been selecting tech partners for the construction of its network. 1&1 had selected Japanese company Rakuten Group to design, build and operate a fully virtualized mobile network based O-RAN technology. The telco has also signed a long-term tower rental agreement with Vantage Towers AG.

In August 2021, 1&1 and Rakuten Group announced a long-term partnership to build the former’s mobile network in Germany. Through this deal, Rakuten became the general contractor for the 1&1 mobile network.

Last month, 1&1 Towers, a subsidiary of 1&1 AG, and Eubanet signed an agreement to acquire up to 7,500 new 5G antenna sites.