The demonstration used Vodafone's 5G 3.5-GHz trial spectrum, and involved projecting a hologram of Vodafone Germany's CEO Hannes Ametsreiter in a moving, electric minibus. The CEO was at the company's Düsseldorf lab around 70km away from the bus.
Ericsson and Vodafone Ireland collaborated on a similar demonstration during the launch of the operator's first live 5G network site.
Fellow European operator COSMOTE from Greece has also demonstrated a holographic music concert in which band members in different physical locations were ‘holoported’ on stage and were able to play together, in real time, as one band.
The Greek demonstration used an Ericsson 5G trial system operating in millimeter wave spectrum and capable of transmitting at speeds reaching over 7Gbps.
Ericsson said 3D holographic communication has potential applications for medical imaging, video conferencing, but requires about four times as much data as a streamed 4K video, making it a perfect early use case for 5G.
