Sky Italia and Vodafone Italia have teamed up for the first live 5G news broadcast in Europe.

On the occasion of the annual opening night of the La Scala opera house in Milan, a Sky TG24 crew used a camera connected to the 5G network of Vodafone to report live from the prestigious event.

This represents an important step of a larger project of the mobile telephony operator that aims to make Milan the European 5G capital. In fact, coverage of the new technology in the city has already reached 80 per cent.

The new 5G network made available by Vodafone makes it possible to transfer almost instantaneous content, and the very high-resolution video stream can go on the air at almost the same time as it is sent. The low latency and the large data transfer capacity of the 5G allow such activity even in mobility, in crowded areas as well as in the more remote areas.

The project was developed by Sky Italia and Vodafone with French company Altran, with further collaboration from D1 Group.

At the same time, Vodafone is working with 38 other industrial and institutional partners in 41 projects involving various sectors, from smart city to entertainment and digital divide, in the framework of the commercial roll-out of the 5G technology in 2019.

In October, Vodafone Italia acquired frequencies in the 700 MHz, 3700 MHz and 26 GHz bands for the development of 5G services, investing a total of €2.4 billion.