Telekom starts 5G Early Access program in Berlin

Deutsche Telekom's 5G network will enable completely new use cases and significantly improve the customer experience. Open interfaces, known as application programming interfaces (APIs), will enable service providers to use certain functions of the network for their own offerings in the future.

Third parties will also be able to use parts of the 5G network exclusively via 5G network slicing, which is of great importance for the future autonomous control of cars, robots and the Internet of Things, for example.

To enable developers, startups, companies and hyperscalers to test their APIs before the public launch of these new capabilities, Telekom has set up a unique 5G test field in hubraum in Berlin. Application servers connected to Telekom's 5G standalone network and edge cloud are available for testing. An Internet breakout directly in the test field will also be provided.

This makes Telekom the first major network operator to make these features of the 5G network available to third parties via APIs.
The first 5G APIs available for testing can be used to configure key 5G network features such as bandwidth and latency, for example, with many more to follow. The APIs can be tested on a live, high-load network compared to the current best-effort network.

Participating developers, startups, enterprises and hyperscalers will learn early on how their products can leverage 5G functionalities. This gives them a head start in opening up new business models and opportunities. The hubraum team supports the participants throughout the lifecycle of the program, e.g. with workspaces as well as active mentoring and assistance with any questions that arise.

The existing 5G APIs will continue to be added to over the course of the year.

Interested parties for the 5G Early Access Program, which is now starting, can apply until March 31 at developer.telekom.com/5g-eap. The industry focus includes areas such as moving objects, entertainment, production, AR/VR or IoT.

First positive feedback

Back in November 2021, selected startups and developers were exclusively invited to participate in a first phase of the 5G Early Access Program in Berlin. Among the participants was startup Open Sesame, which is developing a social audio platform. "Synchronous real-time audio is critical to the growing demand for digital audio experiences in the real world, and will be as important as air for the upcoming metaverse," commented co-founder Julian McCrea.

"Deutsche Telekom's Early Access Program has given us direct access to the 5G latency APIs. It allowed us to successfully demonstrate how our synchronous audio technology 'SyncStage' provides application developers with consistent low latency to keep a group of devices in sync."

"It is key for us to work with Deutsche Telekom and the relevant standardization bodies to develop easy-to-use standard APIs for 5G edge cloud and network services that will benefit the entire mobile network operator community," commented Thomas Vits of MobiledgeX. MobiledgeX's edge cloud platform provides developers within the 5G Early Access program with easy access to edge and network resources.

From February 28 to March 03, 2022, you will find Deutsche Telekom in Hall 3 at Booth 3M31.