Telecom Industry Bets on 5G
Telcoms and networking firms test requirements for fifth generation wireless networks
BARCELONA—Telecoms and networking giants are placing a bet on fifth-generation wireless networks in a bid to fend off an assault by Internet companies that threaten their core business of connecting the masses.
Their main problem? The industry hasn’t quite figured out what fifth-generation infrastructure, or 5G, is yet.
Tom Wheeler, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission described the uncertainty last week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, saying 5G was like a painting by artist Pablo Picasso.
“I see something different from what you see,” Mr. Wheeler said in a keynote at the annual trade show for the telecom and tech industries. “I think that is where 5G is right now.”
Yet telecoms and networking firms from across the world, including AT&T Inc., Sweden’s Ericsson Telefon AB, Germany’s Deutsche Telekom , and China’s Huawei Technologies Co., are scrambling to paint a joint picture of what they hope will be the next generation of wireless network, even as much of the world is still rolling out the latest standard, called 4G.
Collaborating groups of U.S., European and Asian telcos, network equipment makers and research groups published two white papers on 5G last week at the congress, outlining a mobile future that moves beyond purely faster download speeds. The industry urgently needs to pool knowledge in development of 5G amid the threat of Internet companies, telecoms executives say.
Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are now laying broadband fiber cables, creating mobile wireless networks, and potentially beaming Internet to the developing world through drones and balloons.
“There is an urgency to cooperate more than in the past,” Ulf Ewaldsson, chief technology officer at Ericsson, said in an interview at the congress. “The threats for this industry come from others who want to eat the cake of the operators.”
Google and Facebook declined to comment.
Through research and development, telecoms executives hope to achieve a number of technical metrics that can spur technological advancements in other sectors. The industry aims to achieve a latency rate, or the speed at which two devices communicate with each other, of roughly one millisecond, from about 50 milliseconds for 4G. A reaction speed of one millisecond would enable driverless cars that could avoid potential accidents with other vehicles. Ultralow latency could also allow a doctor sitting in a hospital to conduct surgery at the scene of an accident via robotics.
Telecoms operators also want to run more reliable networks when customers are traveling at speeds of roughly 300 miles an hour, allowing connectivity on high-speed trains. They aim to reach peak data transmission speeds of 10 gigabits per second for 5G, thousands of times faster than current 4G speeds experienced by average users. At those rates, high-definition videos could be downloaded within seconds.
At the moment, however, the technology isn’t there.
Korean telco KT Corp. , in partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. , recently achieved data transmission speeds of 7.5Gbps in a test environment. Both Ericsson and Nokia Corp. ’s Networks business have been testing speeds above 2Gbps. Huawei in November invested £5 million ($7.5 million) in the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre in the U.K., which has also been testing ultrafast data rates on a small scale.
“We are going to have to work together with other people, European and Japanese,” said Changsoon Choi, a senior research manager at South Korea’s SK Telecom Co., which has been testing speeds for 5G with Nokia Networks.
Huawei, Nokia Networks and Ericsson have all joined with with telecoms operators from around the world in recent weeks to jointly research technical metrics for 5G. KT showcased ambitious plans last week at MWC to launch 5G when the country hosts the Winter Olympics in 2018. Japan also aims to offer 5G at the summer Olympics in 2020.
“There is still a lot to do,” U.S. chip maker Qualcomm Inc. ’s chief executive Steve Mollenkopf said at MWC. “The debate is when do we call it 5G.”