Telecom Italia (TIM) has teamed up with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies to conduct the first live trial of its network using a 5G prototype smartphone. The pilot was conducted at TIM’s Turin lab, with the operator claiming the first use in Italy of a smartphone equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G chipset, set to be included in 5G-compatible handsets to be launched next year. The OTA (Over the Air) connection trials also used Ericsson equipment compliant with the 3GPP 5G NR (New Radio) Release 15 specifications as well as Massive MIMO technology.

TIM said it used a portion of 3.4-3.8 GHz spectrum assigned to it by Italy’s Economic Development Ministry to connect the prototype 5G device to its network. Alongside the Turin-based tests, TIM is carrying out trials in many other cities all over Italy including Bari, Matera and the Republic of San Marinoand last month shelled out nearly EUR 1.7 billion to acquire spectrum in the in 694-790MHz, 26.5-27.5GHz and 3.6-3.8GHz bands.