Huawei recently completed the world’s first voice over NR (VoNR) call on a 5G standalone (SA) network and using two Huawei Mate 20X 5G phones. One of the mobile phones was placed in a 5G test field at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology while the other was placed in a 5G test field at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Both sites are in Beijing, but the distance between them is over 60 km.
The test 5G VoNR call used Huawei’s end-to-end 5G commercial products, including a 5G radio access network, core network, bearer network, and 5G chips and terminals.
Huawei said the test call showed that the 5G new radio (NR) leverages the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) to provide 5G voice services (VoNR). The test was also a dry run of interoperability on the 5G air interface.
VoNR is a voice and video solution using in the 5G SA network architecture. The test call was based on a 5G network that Huawei built under the auspices of the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group.
The Huawei Mate 20X 5G mobile phone used for the call is equipped with Huawei’s Balong 5000 5G multi-mode chip. The Balong 5000 is the world’s first single-core, multi-mode 5G cellphone baseband processor. It is the first baseband processor compatible with SA and NSA network architectures and that fully supports 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G networks. The Balong 5000 supports peak downlink speeds of 4.6 Gbps on the sub-6GHz frequency band, 6.5 Gbps on the mmWave frequency band, and 7.5 Gbps in 5G NR+LTE dual-connection mode.
Huawei also noted that it has signed more than 40 5G contracts with operators worldwide, and shipped more than 100,000 5G base stations.
