Telefónica has signed a deal with Spain’s Banco Santander to leverage 5G in two banking offices in the city of Alcobendas, Spain. Telefónica already deployed a trial 5G standalone network in Alcobendas. ZTE provided the radio, core network and the terminals for the trial.
Touting that wireless technology will bring “new services to the financial sector,” the two companies said they have developed three use cases for customers in the offices using 5G.
“The initiative with Santander Spain is the result of the collaboration with our corporate customers to ensure that 5G technology is deployed in a way that fully meets their needs, prioritizing the development of the most demanded capacities,” said Emilio Gayo, CEO of Telefónica Spain, in a statement.
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The network will support 4K video conferencing between the two bank offices in Alcobendas, supporting 4096 x 2160 resolution and 30 frames per second. The network will also support a low latency cloud storage solution that’s based on the Hitachi Content Platform Anywhere Edge solution embedded on Telefónica's edge computing infrastructure.
The final use case involves virtual reality. The service enables customers to “remotely visit” co-working spaces such as the Santander Work Cafe located at the Santander banking office in the center of Madrid, using virtual reality, 360-degree video and edge computing.
The project is the first 5G deployment in the banking sector in Europe. Banking applications could emerge as an early use case for 5G networks. Despite the hype around rolling out 5G networks, operators around the world have been hard pressed to find monetizable use cases for the technology.
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Earlier this month, Vodafone and Ericsson held an unusual “gaming mobility” demo that involved roaming on 5G networks across the border between Spain and Portugal.