5G services to dawn earlier than expected

The 5G services will manifest earlier than expected, now with industry players predicting initial deployments and commercial roll outs by 2019. Earlier, they were of opinion that the technology, which is 10-100 times faster than 4G, would debut only by 2021.

Many countries across the world is working for the technology’s faster rollout and its India debut would not be far behind.

“Experiments have started, I was thinking of 2021, but it looks like 2019 now. Lots of things are getting ready and 5G is going to come in much faster. We will see commercial rollouts in 2019, while 2020 will see a lot of action. In India, 5G application is more of an Internet of Things (IoT),” Bharti Airtel Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Bharti Mittal said.

Apart from the high-speed broadband speeds, 5G is the latest wireless technology that promises connections without drops nor latency and facilitates complex mobile internet applications. The high-end applications that the technology, which is still under in development, would range from remote driving to advanced healthcare and agriculture among others.

“India is also ready for the technology, with all the policies in place,” Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman RS Sharma said, adding that a lot of operators and vendors are conducting experiments and use cases.

The biggest bottleneck for the industry – operators, chip-makers and device manufacturers – is the need of a standard technology and protocol. Sensing the urgency, a number of industry players under the aegis of the specifications group 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is slated to meet in a couple of weeks to thrash out a common standard.

The companies that have promised to reach a standard for 5G included a mix of wireless carriers, chip providers and device makers — such as Intel, Qualcomm, Intel, AT&T, Sprint and Deutsche Telekom – all of them part of the 3GPP standards group.

Qualcomm is readying for 5G rollout, with its earlier launch of Snapdragon X50 5G modem. It has also collaborated with Ericsson and Vodafone for 5G trials, while device-makers such as ZTE and Ericsson and operators such as Telstra and DoCoMo are also ready for the challenge.

“We will be completely ready by 2019. However, the success of 5G would depend upon the seamless transformation from 4G to 5G, while countries such as Germany, Japan and America are moving much faster on this line,” Cristiano Amon, Executive Vice- President at Qualcomm, said.

Spectrum for the technology is also not finalised. Operators are experimenting with various frequencies such as 600-700 MHz (Europe), 3.4-3.6 GHz (China) and 4.4-4.9 GHz (Japan) among others.

“It’s not an overnight emergence of 5G, as there is a 10-year research cycle leading up to its culmination,” Magnus Ewerbring, chief technology officer-APAC region at Ericsson, said.

“We wouldn’t be seeing massive deployments in 2019, as there is a lot of complexity to the technology. However, this is a good start,” Julie Coppernoll, vice-president, client computing at Intel, which has several chairs on 3GPP, said.

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