Seamless 5G SA Roaming along the Greece-Bulgaria Cross-Border Corridor
A proud moment for European 5G connectivity has come to pass in the South-Eastern part of our continent: two mobile operators, COSMOTE Greece and A1 Bulgaria, have launched 5G SA roaming between their mobile networks as part of the 5G SEAGUL project, an endeavor co-funded by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) program.
The project’s goals include deploying fully operational state-of-the-art 5G networks along more than 450 km of the Greece-Bulgaria highway from Velestino to Sofia, as well as validating real-life Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) applications. Furthermore, the undertaking examines the complexity and challenges of seamless 5G roaming in the border area between Promahonas (GR) and Kulata (BG).
The 5G SEAGUL Project actively contributes towards the EU Gigabit Society Strategy and the EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy objectives by upgrading the 5G connectivity along a significant part of the Orient - East Med Corridor which is a major EU transport path. There are currently 31 such projects with 25 participating EU member states and a total investment of €308 million (of which €146 million are covered by EU grants).
The joint 5G SA roaming launch represents an important milestone towards enabling next-generation mobile services along major transport routes such as roads, railways and waterways to establish a pan-European transport network of 5G corridors by 2027. 5G corridors are 5G systems that meet the EU’s very stringent service requirements of transport safety and digital rail operations, which include security, ultra-high reliability, low latency, and high throughput.
Supporting the evolution of the European 5G ecosystem
At T Wholesale, we have long been a proponent for advanced mobile connectivity, sustainable transportation and cross-border digital services in Europe and has worked on numerous PoCs with industry players both on the European continent as well as across the globe.
We have participated in the 5G SEAGUL project by enabling our Deutsche Telekom mobile subsidiary COSMOTE Greece reach these goals through our innovative outsourced SEPP solution.
Security in roaming is one of the key considerations for cross border roaming which we can guarantee by strictly implementing our Group-hosted SEPP for Family & Friends proposition which is part of our security-by-design concept called Magenta Security Roaming. The 5G SA roaming enablement service is designed to avoid hubs and ‘man-in-the-middle’ security risks in 5G SA roaming and comes with a built-in firewall fully compliant with the GSMA’s FS.36 recommendations.
“The 5G SEAGUL project is the first in a series of EU-funded projects to go live and an important step for the future of European cross-border connectivity,” notes our Vice President for Voice, Mobile & Digital Solutions, Nicholas Nikrouyan.
“Testing 5G SA roaming with seamless handover for data and voice is crucial to prepare more advanced use cases that are yet to come. One need that many of these services have in common is security in roaming. We have been the industry’s forerunner in solving this issue with the introduction of our Group-hosted SEPP service which guarantees operators such as COSMOTE Greece the possibility to enforce their own security guidelines in each roaming relationship.”
