South Korea, Japan and North America to lead future deployments of 5G
While the telecommunications industry still needs to fully define standards for “5G” development, and 4G LTE has room to continue expanding in both advanced and emerging markets, telecom equipment vendors and mobile operators in the most developed markets are currently running the race for the future deployment of 5G networks. Countries in Asia-Pacific and North America seem to be the markets that will lead the 5G wave.
Specifically, South Korea is seen as the most advanced market in terms of 5G development. The government of the Asian nation expects that its local mobile operators, including SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus, will be able to trial 5G services during 2017 and then introduce commercial services in December 2020. The government said the operators will be able to launch 5G service demos during the XXIII Olympic Winter Games, which will be held during February 2018 in the city of Pyeongchang.
SK Telecom signed a number of agreements with Nokia Networks, Samsung and Ericsson to develop 5G technologies, while rival operator KT signed 5G agreements with ZTE, Alcatel-Lucent and NEC. Meanwhile, LG Uplus inked deals with Ericsson, Huawei and Samsung. “Through close collaboration with mobile operators and vendors around the world, we are working toward one goal: to reach a consensus on requirements and timeline for the 5G system and key 5G enabling technologies that will help enable successful commercialization of 5G,” a SK Telecom representative told RCR Wireless News.
The representative also said the telco has been dedicated to research and development investment for the development of 5G since 2013. “SK Telecom aims to make pre-5G trials in 2018 and start commercialization, hopefully in 2020. … We have been actively working with a number of network and IT manufacturers in order to build 5G testbeds in 2015.”
The development of 5G technology is a priority for the South Korean government. In January 2014, the country’s Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning announced it was committing $1.5 billion to its “5G Creative Mobile Strategy.”
In May 2014, the government of South Korea established the 5G Forum, with the main goal of assisting in the development of the standard and contributing to its globalization. Forum members consist of public and private sectors, including mobile telecommunication carriers, manufacturers and academic professionals.
Also in China, the development of 5G technology is a key issue for the government, which created a promotion group in 2013 to coordinate all the activities related to the development of 5G.
Chinese vendor Huawei is carrying out 5G research and development with mobile providers such as Vodafone and Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo. Huawei and NTT DoCoMo have recently launched a multiuser testing site in Chengdu, China.
The Chinese vendor said it plans to invest $600 million in 5G research and innovation globally between 2014 and 2018. Huawei also said it’s committed to developing 5G standards before 2018. Toward that end, it plans to launch its first pilot network with partners in 2018, work to improve the industry chain, complete interoperability testing in 2019 and commercially launch networks in 2020. Huawei and Russian mobile operator MegaFon will collaborate to trial 5G networks during the FIFA World Cup 2018, which will take place in Russia.
Huawei also recently signed a partnership with the University of Surrey for the opening of a 5G Innovation Centre at Surrey University’s campus in Guildford, U.K. The Chinese firm currently employs a team of more than 500 dedicated to 5G research.
Japan intends to launch a 5G trial network for the Summer Olympic Games in 2020 in Tokyo. Since May 2014, local mobile operator NTT DoCoMo has been collaborating in the 5G field with leading vendors including Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Nokia and Samsung. The Japanese telco signed additional 5G collaboration agreements with Intel, Keysight Technologies, Panasonic, Qualcomm and Rohde & Schwarz with respect to trials and technological development of 5G mobile communications. Rival operator SoftBank inked a deal with Ericsson to test 5G capabilities in Tokyo.
North America is also expected to take the lead in terms of 5G development. U.S. operator Verizon Wireless announced last month plans to carry out field trials of 5G technology in 2016. The partners for the telco’s 5G push are set to include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Nokia Networks, Qualcomm and Samsung. Verizon also said that it expects a limited commercial deployment of 5G services by 2017.
The telco said that it is currently working to create network environments, or “sandboxes” at its Waltham, Mass., and San Francisco innovation centers. While international standards bodies are still in the process of defining what will encompass 5G, Verizon Wireless said it expects the standard to support 50 times the network throughput of current LTE networks.
Rival operator AT&T Mobility recently showed its skepticism about Verizon’s 5G plans. The telco said that 5G will become a reality around 2020 and pointed out that it is still too early to even know what 5G is exactly, as standards are still being defined and that process is expected to continue through 2018.
In Europe, vendors including Nokia Networks, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are very active in terms of 5G initiatives including research, memorandums of understanding and partnerships. However, the region is expected to be behind South Korea, Japan and the United States in terms of future 5G deployments.
In 2013, The European Commission signed an agreement with the 5G Infrastructure Association – which represents major industry players – to establish a public-private partnership on 5G. This is the EU flagship initiative to accelerate research developments in 5G technology. The European Commission has earmarked a public funding of 700 million euros ($795 million) through the Horizon 2020 Program to support this activity.
Also established by the European Union, the The METIS-II project will develop the overall 5G radio access network design, facilitating the upcoming standardization of 5G.
The METIS-II project has 23 partners co-funded in the European H2020 research program. Ericsson is the project coordinator and Nokia Networks the technical coordinator. Additional partners are Alcatel-Lucent, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, Intel, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Samsung, Telecom Italia and Telefónica, among others.
Last month, the European Union and China signed an agreement for the future development of 5G networks. South Korea and Japan have signed similar agreements with the European Union in recent months.
