Developments in 5G around the world

The transition of world to 5G network is the most trending topic in the telecom industry today. Every telecom leader globally has a perspective on the successful deployment of 5G in the coming years.

	3G	4G	5G
Implementation	2004-05	2006-10	by 2020
Bandwidth	2 Mbps	200 Mbps	> 1 Gbps

Table 1: Implementation and bandwidth timelines

The 5G ecosystem will provide a fully converged network environment where the same infrastructure would be used for wired and wireless communication resulting into ultra-high bandwidths and connectivity. 5G networks will bring about a paradigm shift in the mobile infrastructure as it will see new levels of investments in the world and increase the data capacities of the spectrums significantly. Data and Cyber Security will play a vital role as companies have started to look out for new and innovative ways to protect their customers. The increased data speeds will further add to this effort.

The traditional demands from 4G networks is focused more on downloads but as 5G steps in multiple streaming services will take the center stage as more and more consumers will focus on immersive experiences such as streamlined videos and remote entertainment avenues. Although there may be disruptions in the technology as the experts forecast atmospheric absorption and restrictions in transmission range.

Fig 1: 5G research/testing world map 2016

China, being the most populous nation is said to be working on the largest 5G telecom network in the world. It is reported to spend about $180 billion on the network infrastructure by 2024. This is about 4 times the budget of Japan for the same. According to some industry experts, China will have about 600 million users of 5G by 2022. This is about 40 percent of the total mobile users in the country. Chinese ZTE Gigabit Phone, promoted as the world’s first phone that will be using 5G connectivity was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February, 2017. The pre-deployment is scheduled in late 2018 and the rollout will be done in early 2019. In US, AT&T is done with the second testing of 5G network in Texas and is planning to implement it in about 20 major cities by the end of 2017. Europe is spending about $9 million on the concept of network slicing in 5G, which would help them to make best use of software-defined networking, network functions virtualization, orchestration, and analytics, to support a variety of vertical industries such as automotive, healthcare, and media. Arun Bansal, the Senior Vice President and head of Europe & Latin America in Ericsson said, “Ericsson is doing 33 trials with operators, almost equally distributed between continents, and we are working with many industries in Europe too. Europe needs to wait until the real 5G specifications are ready and the commercial 5G infrastructure is ready with latency requirements of sub 5 milliseconds.” In South Korea, Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson and Intel have completed the field trial in 5G whereas NEC is testing at Phoenix Park Ski World in Pyeong Chang. The 5G network will partially be available during the 2018 Winter Olympics. MegaFon and Huawei are testing the 5G cellular networks in Russia via the TV channel “Russia 24” and will be deploying it during the Soccer World Cup in 2018. In India, Nokia has signed a memorandum of understandings (MoUs) with Airtel and BSNL to further their technology partnership to work on 5G. Sanjay Malik, the head of Indian market at Nokia said that this is an introductory phase as the commercial roll out of the 5G connectivity is expected to take place during 2019-2020.

Rushal Arora

Batch 2017-19

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management