EC, South Korea to work towards common 5G standard

The race towards the next evolution of mobile technology received a boost today as the European Commission and South Korea announced plans to work towards a common definition of “5G” technology.
The Joint Declaration on Strategic Cooperation in Information Communications Technology and 5G agreement calls for the EC and South Korea’s Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning to work towards a “global definition of 5G and to cooperate in 5G research.” That work will include a need for harmonized radio spectrum to ensure interoperability, and plans to coordinate research project proposals to be launched in 2016.
Industry vendors are also getting in on the agreement, with a memorandum of understanding set to be signed by the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, Atos, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Nokia, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telenor, Telefonica and South Korea’s 5G Forum.
Ryan Heath, spokesman for Digital Agenda, provides more information on the agreement.

The move comes as the two regions have aggressively moved towards the next-generation wireless technology standard. The EC late last year signed a contract with the 5G PPP Association to create a public-private partnership to support the development and standardization of technologies that are expected to be deployed in the next decade. At the same time, South Korea’s SK Telecom has also been dabbling in the 5G space and is seen as one of the leading carriers in rolling out advances to the current LTE-based 4G standard.

Outside of Europe and South Korea, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo last month announced an agreement with a half-dozen equipment vendors to conduct trials of its own on a 5G standard. The carrier said the trials would focus on spectrum bands above 6 GHz, with an emphasis on providing high-density capacity in small areas. The carrier added that the trials will include “new radio technologies to support diverse types of applications including machine-to-machine services.” The trials are to begin at its Yokosuka research and development site this year, followed by outdoor trials beginning next year.
While talk is beginning to heat up in the 5G space, most don’t expect the technology to see the light of day until 2020 at the earliest. The EC’s work has been focused around its Horizon 2020 and Mobile and wireless communications Enablers for the Twenty-twenty Information Society initiatives. Last week, a task group within METIS published the first channel models for 5G.
According to the ITU’s definition, there are not yet any commercial wireless systems that meet all of the requirements for the 4G standard, which are to provide network speeds of up to 1 Gbps in low-mobility situations and more than 100 megabits per second in high-mobility environments. LTE-Advanced and WiMAX-Advanced were singled out as having the potential to meet those requirements.
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