RCR Wireless News recently had the opportunity to discuss the transition from LTE to “5G” with Chris Cave, director of research and development for InterDigital. We discussed four topics: spectrum; ongoing LTE evolution; network infrastructure differences between LTE and 5G; and shared our thoughts on 5G use cases.
Without giving away the details of the video interview below, I will touch on the highlights. Related to spectrum there are really two areas for consideration – above and below 6 gigahertz. Although new spectrum will be required in both scenarios, existing spectrum below 6 GHz will be leveraged from 4G into 5G deployments. While beginning this fall, 5G specific spectrum work is expected to be completed in 2019.
If we consider that spectrum needs to be finalized before 5G deployments can take place, it’s apparent that there’s still a good five years to go with LTE. During this time LTE will continue to evolve. Some of the key topics to be explored during this time will include LTE-U for unlicensed bands, LTE-M for M2M and device-to-device communications that could play a major role in the connected car discussion.
The 5G deployments will be all about use cases. In prior evolutions of the mobile data network, the discussion has really been all about going faster for the end user. In 5G it will be all about the right network offering to suit the needs of enterprise-oriented use cases. Operators will need to utilize spectrum and network virtually across these use cases as it would be unreasonable to dedicate network resources full time. Network slicing is a topic you will hear about more and more to address these requirements.
The video interview below touches on these topics and more with some great insights into the path to 5G to come.
You can also hear more from Cave and other industry experts by watching RCR Wireless News’ Path to 5G webinar on demand, or download the companion feature report.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
