Vodafone UK claims to have conducted the country’s first live holographic call using 5G technology, calling the development a ‘significant milestone in UK communications’.
In a press release, the cellco noted that the call had been made from its office in Manchester, using 5G technology to transmit a live 3D hologram to an audience at the company’s headquarters in Newbury. The development comes in the wake of an announcement in June 2018 in which Vodafone UK named seven of the country’s largest cities as locations that will become its ‘5G trial areas’. As previously reported by CommsUpdate, Vodafone confirmed at the time that it expects to begin the trials between October and December this year, and said its engineers were already laying the groundwork at more than 40 sites across Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Manchester. Now, alongside making its live holographic call over 5G, Vodafone UK also announced that it plans to roll out 5G in Cornwall and the Lake District ‘during 2019’, while it confirmed it is aiming to have 1,000 5G sites in operation by 2020.
Commenting on the latest developments, Vodafone UK CEO Nick Jeffery said: ‘Vodafone has a history of firsts in UK telecoms – we made the nation’s first mobile phone call, sent the first text and now we’ve conducted the UK’s first holographic call using 5G. We also lead the industry in Internet of Things (IoT) technology, with the world’s largest dedicated global IoT network.’
