Rogers launches Canada’s first commercially available 5G Standalone Network

TORONTO – Rogers Communications announced today it has launched the first commercial 5G standalone (SA) network in Canada and one of the first globally, turning on the next-generation service after completing the rollout of Canada’s first national standalone 5G core and the country’s first 5G standalone device certification, continuing its leadership in the rollout of 5G technology.

“We are thrilled to be the first in Canada to launch a commercial 5G standalone service,” said Jorge Fernandes, Chief Technology Officer at Rogers Communications. “This milestone underscores our ongoing leadership in 5G and will bring immediate benefits to customers by increasing coverage, scalability and availability, and improving network response times, enabling a world of new use cases and applications.”

Rogers 5G SA Core network has been built from the ground up based on the latest cloud native technologies, enabling more advanced wireless capabilities like ultra-low latency, network slicing and mobile edge computing and expanding Rogers 5G footprint. Rogers 5G SA is built to scale massively and will support the unprecedented growth of IoT devices in the years to come. 5G Core and 5G RAN slicing enables Rogers to deliver innovative new services to customers such as dedicated private networks, public safety applications and access to edge compute for AR/VR consumer applications.

“Today’s launch delivers exciting new opportunities and capabilities to industries, businesses and consumers across Canada,” said Yasir Hussain, Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson Canada. “Ericsson is collaborating with our partners at Rogers to deliver 5G advanced services and innovative network solutions to meet the growing demand from Canadian companies and consumers.”

The launch allows wireless customers with 5G SA capable devices like the Google Pixel 6 and the Google Pixel 6 Pro to connect to the 5G SA network. Wireless customers with capable devices will automatically connect to the 5G SA service where it has been rolled out and Rogers will be onboarding other major devices later in the year.

With today’s launch of commercial 5G SA, Rogers combines the new 5G Core Network technology with 5G RAN unlocking the full benefits of 5G for the first time in Canada, in addition to extending Rogers 5G coverage footprint even further. Rogers is also one of the first carriers in the world to achieve this milestone.