Orange claimed to be the first operator in Spain, and one of the first in Europe, to commercially launch standalone (SA) 5G, rolling out the service in four cities in the country.

The operator stated Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville are the first locations in Spain to have access to the service it dubbed 5G+, providing more than 90 per cent coverage in each of the cities.

Orange added it would push the service out to more cities over the course of 2023 and upgrading to 5G+ will not mean an increase in price for end users.

Initially, 5G+ will be available on a select number of smartphones, including the Samsung Galaxy S22 and Xiaomi 12, with more models to follow.

Orange explained the SA 5G launch will enable improved indoor coverage thanks to the use of native next-generation bands, along with lower latency, security advantages and longer battery life in devices.

Other use cases include the capability for the network to serve an increased number of connected devices of up to 1 million connections per square km, 100-times more than the capacity of existing technologies, added Orange.

For enterprises, 5G+ was tipped to meet the need for flexible and scalable connectivity for real-time applications, pointing to network slicing to allow for the allocation of network resources to meet customer needs.

Orange’s commercial SA 5G comes around just under a year after it handed contracts to supply compatible core networks to vendors Nokia, Ericsson and Oracle, setting a timeframe at the time to begin its rollout during 2023.

The company told Mobile World Live there is no information currently on when it would roll out 5G+ to other countries.