Already 3 Versions of 5G?

The defining of 5G is still in the very early stages, with standards targeted for completion in 2020. Embracing some very lofty goals, 5G looks to provide 10-1000X capacity increases versus LTE, support for billions of devices, greater than 10 years battery life, sub 1 ms delays and network wide intelligence capabilities through SDN and NFV. What’s more, there’s a desire to have a single global standard covering all regions and uses. From the onset, this will prove to be very difficult given the very wide range of frequency options—from 900MZ to 80GHz—that may be adopted on a per country basis, and which have fundamental performance differences impacting network architectures.

 Complicating this central challenge, it seems operators’ intentions are geared toward the development and deployment of at least 3 versions of 5G (or some may call these variations 4.5G).  In recent months, Verizon publicly stated that they plan to deploy 5G technology in 2018, well before the standard is finalized. Their stated application as discussed in this article is not for mobile access, as many envision the standard. Rather, Verizon intends to deploy an early version of 5G for high-capacity, fixed access to the home.  It has also stated that the plan is to use the 28-38 GHz bands for this application.  At this time, it’s unclear if any other North American operators will also use this available spectrum for a similar application.

 A second version of 5G technology will likely be deployed in Asia, particularly in Japan and Korea, where operators have openly confirmed that they are targeting pre-5G deployments for the 2018 and 2020 Olympics.  The target application for these deployments is intended to optimize the Olympic experience, which will be focused on high-bandwidth, mobile access.  These deployments will be planned and designed before the 2019 global spectrum agreement, and therefore may utilize bands that don’t support global roaming.

 The third version will be the penultimate 5G standard that will attempt to capture all of the global frequency applications, and that will build upon the Olympic mobile deployments to have a much larger focus on low delay transmission and support connectivity for billions of devices.

 While it’s clear there will be at least 3 post-4G standards, only the coming years will expose exactly what capabilities and benefits each version will bring, as well as define whether additional 5G flavors are added to the mix.

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