What Carriers Expect for 5G

This article is excerpted from "The Promise of 5G" originally published on August 22, 2017, in Consumer Technology Association's flagship magazine i3. 

The next generation of wireless technology (5G) promises huge opportunities across the country for business growth and innovation. Leaders of mobile technology are coordinating to define initial platforms for innovation and establish 5G industry standards.

Here are 5G perspectives from the major U.S. wireless carriers.

AT&T President of Internet of Things Solutions Chris Penrose

While speed is important for 5G, the true 5G promise is much more. 5G will unlock new experiences such as augmented realities, virtual presence, driverless cars, telemedicine and connected homes, and it will help enable management of the upcoming “massive” IoT explosion, which is projected to bring 20 billion connected devices in coming years. 5G will add a new dimension to our multi-network strategy that enables us to address a full range of use cases for our customers via cellular, satellite, Wi-Fi and low-power wide area networks.

Our goal is to create a seamless fabric of networks. We expect 5G technology to enable lower latency, increase battery life and handle more data. We’re making great, tangible progress in 5G through real-world field trials and lab testing to help set 5G industry standards. We currently have 5G labs operating in Austin, TX; Middletown, NJ; Atlanta, GA; and San Ramon, CA; as we march toward full commercial deployment. We’re not waiting until the final standards are set to lay the foundation for our evolution to 5G. We will support next-generation applications with our software-based, Big Data and Open Source network approach, combined with our spectrum position and broadband build-out commitment. As the industry works toward 5G standards, we’re promoting open collaboration.

T-Mobile Vice President of Technology Development and Strategy Karri Kuoppamaki

Nationwide consumer mobility is the biggest 5G opportunity. We expect to see new innovations and applications built for nationwide 5G. Smartphones will be much, much faster. 5G enables low-cost, continually-connected, embedded sensors with decade-long battery life so everything you own is trackable. Imagine augmented reality heads-up displays with real-time information and real-time augmented reality translation.

You can see more of what T-Mobile envisions 5G will bring in our vision video and our nationwide 5G video. T-Mobile expects to bring 5G services across the U.S. starting in 2019, with nationwide coverage in 2020. We believe that true mobile 5G must be nationwide and T-Mobile is committed to deliver nationwide 5G coverage.

Sprint Vice President of Technology Dr. Ron Marquardt

Sprint’s priority is mobile 5G. We expect augmented reality and virtual reality to be important in the consumer space. This is unique and different from LTE, and it will require different business models from today’s handset-based model. For example, smart factories will likely generate a great deal of traffic, but most of it is expected to remain private to the enterprise or factory and will not be transmitted across our entire network.

 We also see great promise with IoT. 5G will make IoT much more scalable and cost-effective to deploy widely. Sprint, Qualcomm Technologies and SoftBank have jointly agreed to develop technologies for 5G, including the 3GPP New Radio (NR) standard in Band 41 (2.5GHz) for accelerated wide-scale 5G deployments. The companies plan to provide commercial services and devices in late 2019. Sub-6 GHz spectrum such as 2.5 GHz will be foundational for providing nationwide 5G coverage. Millimeter and centimeter wave bands will serve as capacity hotspots, providing the highest capacity and throughput where needed. Some early deployments of 5G in the U.S. will be for fixed services. To the degree that our competitors label this as 5G it will cause confusion in the marketplace because consumers are used to each generation as being a service specifically tethered to their phone.

Verizon Vice President of Network Function Virtualization and Edge Compute Adam Koeppe

Fixed wireless use cases and applications that require very low latency are the focus of our pre-commercial 5G network deployments. VR, robotics and autonomous vehicles are initial examples of applications that 5G will power. Longer term, 5G will enable a new class of mobile applications and provide tremendous growth opportunities in IoT. Pre-commercial trials are underway in 11 markets, and we expect to have trial customers in the second half of 2017. With continued success of the trials, we expect to launch our fixed commercial 5G service in 2018, with mobility expected in the 2019 timeframe.

Our positioning will remain the same for this network technology launch as every other launch. We’d like to see a standard set as soon as possible by the 3GPP. We’re working hard with our 5G Technology Forum partners to help influence that. Another potential challenge could be marketplace confusion created by players who claim 5G, but are not delivering true 5G. As we’ve done before, we’ll educate customers and industry observers alike by showing them, not telling them, what true 5G technology is capable of delivering.