Samsung and Orange Romania demo 5G VR live streaming in a real-world scenario

Back in 2018, Samsung and Orange Romania started their collaboration in the 5G field with a 5G Fixed Wireless Access trial in Cluj. Back then, Orange customers in the county became the first European users to gain access to home 5G services. This year, the two aforementioned companies ramped up their efforts and deployed a 5G New Radio network to demo a series of 5G use cases at this year's Untold Festival, which took place from August 1 to August 4 in Cluj.

One of the 5G demos involved capturing 360-degree live video on the main stage of the festival and streaming it to an Orange VR zone that was set up outside the arena. Another test held by Samsung and Orange Romania at Untold pushed the download speeds to more than 1 Gbps with a 50 percent reduction in latency when compared to the existing 4G LTE technology.

The trial used 5G Massive MIMO Units which support the 3.4 - 3.8 GHz frequency band — the same pieces of hardware that have been in use across South Korea since April. Samsung's 5G MMU is one of the smallest and lightest in the industry, so installing it in existing cellular sites is an easy task. 

Next year, it will be very interesting to see if those attending the Untold Festival will have 5G connectivity support and the deployed solutions will be able to handle the traffic generated by them. In the past, there were always cellular connectivity problems at the Untold Festival — at least as reported by many of those who were there.