5G: New Frontier for Mobile Carriers & Tech Companies
Fuelled by people's
insatiable appetite for accessing videos on their mobile devices, many of the
world's largest carriers are rushing to be the first to offer customers this next-generation
ultrafast wireless tech
On the outskirts of this
sleepy commuter town just south of London, plans are underway to build the
fastest cellphone network in the world.
The work is being done at
the University of Surrey , where a leafy campus is dotted with rundown
brutalist-style buildings.Here, researchers and some of the world's biggest
tech companies, including Samsung and Fujitsu, are collaborating to offer
mobile Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than anything now available.
Their work on so-called
fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless technology is set to be completed in early
2018 and would, for example, let students download entire movies to smartphones
or tablets in less than five seconds, compared with as much as eight minutes with
current fourth-generation, or 4G, technology .
Companies also could
connect millions of devices -including smartwatches and tiny sensors on home
appliances -to the new cellphone network, and automakers could potentially test
driverless cars around the suburban campus.
“A lot of the technology
already works in a laboratory environment,“ said Rahim Tafazolli, director of
the university's research centre that oversees the 5G project, which includes
almost 70 powerful radio antennas around the 2-squaremile campus. “Now, we have
to prove it works in real life.“
The work by Tafazolli and
his team puts them at the heart of a heated race. Fuelled by people's
insatiable appetite for accessing videos, social media and other entertainment
on their mobile devices, many of the world's largest carriers, like AT&T
and NTT DoCoMo of Japan, are rushing to be the first to offer customers this
next-generation ultrafast wireless technology .
The competition has led to
research worth billions of dollars from telecommunications equipment makers
like Ericsson of Sweden and Huawei of China, which are hoping to secure
lucrative contracts to upgrade the mobile Internet infrastructure of operators
like AT&T from the United States and China Mobile in Asia.Those plans have
become even faster paced as tech giants including Google consider their own
ambitions for the latest, and fast est, high-speed Internet.
“Everyone is rushing to
demonstrate they are a leading player for 5G,“ said Bengt Nordstrom, co-founder
of Northstream, a telecom consulting firm, in Stockholm.
The efforts around 5G is on
display at Mobile World Congress, a four-day tech and telecom event in
Barcelona, Spain that began on Monday . Most of the world's larg est operators
and device makers like Samsung are expected to announce their latest wireless
technology, including smartphones, wearable products and digital applications
at the trade show.
Not to be outdone, telecom
manufacturers also have announced glitzy demonstrations -including driverless
cars, remote-controlled drones and autonomous robots balancing balls on tablets
-to showcase their 5G credibility . The need to persuade carriers to buy the
latest wireless technology has become ever more important as operators consider
cutting investment plans in the face of a global economic downturn.
“If we miss the chance to
make our networks relevant, it will be a disaster,“ said Ulf Ewaldsson,
Ericsson's chief technology officer. “The billion-dollar question is, what will
a 5G network look like?“ Despite companies' efforts to outspend each other,
that question remains unanswered. A global standard for 5G wireless technology
will not be finished before 2019, at the earliest. Companies worldwide must
agree on how their networks talk to each other, so users' mobile connections do
not become patchy when travelling overseas.That involves lengthy negotiations
over what type of radio waves the new technology should use, among other
complicated global agreements, which can take years.
These challenges have not
stopped companies from staking a claim in hopes of being at the forefront of
5G.
That is particularly true
ahead of major global sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup, at
which carriers and national governments want to promote their technological
know-how. At the 2018 World Cup, which will be held in Russia, for instance,
the local operators MegaFon and MTS are expected to test 5G-style services,
including ultrafast mobile Internet, even without global standards in place.
The Korean mobile operator
KT also plans to offer its own version of 5G technology at the 2018 Winter
Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and NTT DoCoMo has said it will have
similar trials ready for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. “The only way of
learning is by doing,“ said Mats Svardh, head of networks at the Scandinavian
carrier TeliaSonera, which will test its own 5G technology in both Stockholm
and Tallinn, Estonia, in 2018. “It's about putting pressure on ourselves to
move forward with specifics, not just theories.“
US carriers have also jumped
on the 5G bandwagon, partly to offer people new services as current mobile
speeds have become relatively interchangeable between major operators
nationwide.
FACEBOOK TO TELECOM
COMPANIES: LET'S WORK ON 5G TOGETHER
Facebook needs mobile phone
data networks to work better and faster. So they're asking telecommunications
companies to part-ner with them and share designs, in an initiative that could
ac-celerate the spread of 5G connectivity.Facebook made the same pitch with data-centre
storage and networking equipment through its Open Compute project, ulti-mately
allowing the company and its partners to save billions in infrastructure costs.
The company's focus is moving to telecom-munications as it builds products for
live-streaming video and vir-tual reality, which require fast, high-bandwidth
connections. “By putting together flexible building blocks, we will be able to
build much more efficient networks in the future,“ said Jason Taylor, vice
president for infrastructure at Facebook. “No one company can do it alone.“
Bloomberg
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Mark Scott
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GUILDFORD, BRITAIN:
The New York Times
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