Sunrise: 5G for the People

Sunrise is the challenger in Swiss market, dominated by Swisscom. The following video was recorded at 5G World and was part of the session, '“First on 5G” Launch (April 2019)', presented by Bruno Duarte, CCO, Sunrise Communications. It gives an overview of their 5G network.



Here is a twitter moment of a technical discussion comparing Sunrise with Swisscom

Sunrise vs Swisscom

Related Posts:

• Switzerland 5G Spectrum Auctions Results
• Sunrise Communications Overview
• Swisscom launched 5G Fast and 5G Wide

Switzerland 5G Spectrum Auctions Results

According to Mobile World Live:

Switzerland’s Federal Communications Commission (ComCom) awarded 5G radio frequencies to all three mobile operators – Swisscom, Sunrise and Salt – raising CHF380 million ($379 million).

The frequencies will be assigned for 15 years, which the regulator said provides the “operators long-term planning security to develop their networks.”

...

Dense Air, a small cell player which launched in 2018, pulled out of the Swiss auction. Reuters noted this “removes a potential rival for the three companies in the already crowded Swiss mobile market”.

Swisscom, which paid CHF196 million, said by the end of 2019 it expects to roll-out 5G to 60 towns and communities.

Sunrise and Salt did not have such concrete plans. The former said the frequencies gained will help it to “deliver a world-class 5G network in the future” and the latter that it will “improve its high-quality mobile network” with “next-generation speed, latency and capacity”.

According to a media release by Sunrise:

At the 5G frequency auction, Sunrise has acquired the strategically most important frequencies in the 3.5 GHz band, which perfectly fit its "5G for People" strategy.

With its existing and new frequencies, Sunrise will be able to secure its existing 96% 4G area coverage and deliver a world-class 5G network in the future. This will provide outstanding area coverage and, notably, give suburban and rural areas "optical fiber speed over the air".

Thanks to a clever bidding strategy, Sunrise was able to acquire the most important bands at a favorable price of 0.077 CHF per MHz/Pop. With the frequencies acquired in the middle frequency range and combined with the existing frequencies, Sunrise will be able to provide the area coverage and capacities needed in the long term. 

This is what we estimate the real world 5G NR speeds will look like:
Coverage Layer: 10 – 50 Mbps (10 MHz bandwidth)
Capacity Layer: 100 – 300 Mbps (40 MHz bandwidth)
High Throughput Layer: 400 – 1500 Mbps (100 MHz bandwidth)
Any thoughts? pic.twitter.com/DKOLOvP10g

— 3G4G (@3g4gUK) November 7, 2018

According to the chart on top (from Sunrise media release), you can see that all the three operators are well placed with a reasonable amount of coverage and capacity layer 5G spectrum. The 5G future looks good for Swiss.

Sunrise Communications Overview

A short summary of Sunrise Communications from a presentation by Aaron Pearce

As can be seen seen in the picture above, SBB, UBS and Migros started NewtelcoAG. Then in 1997 British Telecom and Tele Danmark joined Newtelco as partners and investors and launched the Sunrise brand. Since then Sunrise has just been going from strength to strength. In 2016, Sunrise celebrated 20 years of success and was also the winner of the “connect” network test with a record score and the only provider to be awarded a rating of “OUTSTANDING.”

In fact in an Opensignal report on Switzerland last year, Sunrise won the crown for fastest download speeds while Swisscom had the best coverage.

.@Sunrise_de fastest, @Swisscom_de with best coverage in @opensignal's first report on Switzerland. https://t.co/HjR5jOPz2B pic.twitter.com/LLCXILcNDx

— tefficient 🚥 (@tefficient) May 24, 2017

In a nutshell, Sunrise is the largest private telecommunications provider in Switzerland with convergent solutions from one source as can be seen in the picture above.