For the first time, Deutsche Telekom has used a drone to provide mobile network coverage to customers on a live commercial network.

From an altitude of 2.3km, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with an integrated mobile basestation provided coverage on the slopes at the legendary Jizerská 50 race, part of Ski Classics, in the Jizera Mountains.

Deutsche Telekom teamed up with UAV expert Primoco to develop and test the drone for temporary mobile coverage. During its first deployment, the drone provided continuous coverage under favourable weather conditions for four hours to an otherwise uncovered six kilometre stretch of the Jizerská 50 route. This makes Deutsche Telekom the first ever carrier in Europe to deploy this type of flying basestation.

“In inaccessible terrain or crisis situations, a flying antenna drone provides resilient connectivity, wherever it is needed, and very effectively,” said Claudia Nemat, board member at Deutsche Telekom. “This approach complements Deutsche Telekom’s broad toolbox to reliably provide mobile communications in many scenarios.”

Jizerská 50 offered an ideal deployment scenario for the flying antenna system. The Jizera Mountains protected landscape area is a frequent venue for sporting events and at the same time a nature reserve. Without interfering with the protected area, T-Mobile Czech Republic could ensure the 4460 participants in the 50km main race were always connected, reaching download speeds of up to 95Mbit/s and an uplink up to 34Mbit/s. This year more than 23,600 visitors were on the site.

Deutsche Telekom has a toolbox of technologies it can flexibly deploy to cover areas depending on the situation and requirements on the ground. Temporary coverage options include cells on wheels, cell-tower-to-go or flying basestations.

The drone, which was developed by a Deutsche Telekom innovation team based in Czech Republic, can be deployed in diverse scenarios, for example for large sporting events or cultural events in areas with special legal requirements or with inaccessible terrain. These are typically mountainous and densely forested areas or protected areas, where it is not possible to deploy a permanent basestation, and even the use of temporary basestations in the form of containers often do not offer an efficient option.

Another important application is the use of the flying antenna as a flexible alternative in crisis situations, such as floods, earthquakes or fires when the terrestrial infrastructure no longer works. The drone can quickly provide mobile communications for those affected and emergency services.

The Primoco One 150 drone (www.uav-stol.com/en/primoco-one150), which was used as the flying basestation, is designed and manufactured in the Czech Republic. The built-in basestation can be connected air-to-ground to a terrestrial backhaul as well as via satellite air-to-space. The system enables download speeds of up to 200Mbit/s and upload speeds of 75Mbit/s. It can supply up to 1200 users simultaneously. The employed drone is 3.65m long, 1.25m high and has a wingspan of 4.85m.

At next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, experts from Deutsche Telekom (www.telekom.com) will demonstrate one of the drones and how it can support customers with mobile communications in the future.

• Deutsche Telekom and Google Cloud (cloud.google.com) have announced a partnership to improve radio access network (RAN) operations through the development of a network AI agent. Built using Gemini 2.0 in Vertex AI from Google Cloud, the agent can analyse network behaviour, detect performance issues and implement corrective actions to improve network reliability, reduce operational costs and enhance customer experiences.