Release 17 completion dates were initially expected in 2021 but the process was delayed due to the pandemic
Together with enhancements aimed at existing use cases such as mobile broadband, industrial automation and vehicle-to-everything, 3GPP Release 17 introduces support for new ones including public safety, non-terrestrial networks and non-public networks.
In December 2020, the plenary meetings of the 3GPP Technical Specification Groups (TSG) approved the new Release 17 timeline.
3GPP, the global telecommunications standards body, agreed that the schedule would be completed this year, with a freeze in March 2022, followed by coding protocols frozen and stable in June 2022.
Release 17 completion dates were initially expected in 2021, but the process had been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced 3GPP to continue working via virtual meetings.
In reaching this new scheduling decision, the technical specification groups considered the effects that e-meetings in 2020 had on the work’s progress and the pressure that cancellation of all face-to-face meetings has created, 3GPP said.
Due to this, TSG RAN, TSG SA and TSG CT Chairs had co-proposed a new schedule for the completion of Release 17 work:
-Rel-17 Stage 2 Functional Freeze, June 2021
-Rel-17 Stage 3 Protocol Freeze, March 2022
-Rel-17 Protocol coding Freeze (ASN.1, OpenAPI), June 2022
“With this revised timeline, the broader 5G industry can rely on an informed and well-considered schedule that takes into account the peculiar situation created by life during a pandemic,” 3GPP said.
3GPP noted the relevance of Release 17, and of its URLLC content, to the industrial IoT sector. It stated: “Release 17 features… include new work and enhancements for URLLC for industrial IoT over NR, NR support over non-terrestrial networks, MIMO, integrated access and backhaul (IAB), metropolitan beacon system (MBS) positioning, NR multicast and broadcast services, RAN slicing for NR, NR sidelink, multi radio-access technology (RAT) dual-connectivity, support for multi-SIM devices for LTE/NR, NR small data transmissions in inactive state and multimedia priority service, to name a few.”
“3GPP Release 17 builds on previous releases with the aim of improving 5G System performance, supporting new use cases and verticals, and providing ubiquitous connectivity in different deployment conditions and scenarios. In the next phase, Release 18 will create 5G Advanced, which will include new solutions and technology components that continue to boost network performance for mobile broadband and verticals,” Ericsson said in a previous report.
