Why 5G Isn’t Here Yet Even Though We Are Being Told It Is

#Discussion(IoTStack) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

This is a 5G phone. It’s a reference device built to allow networks to experiment. There is however a problem. The first 5G standards have not yet been ratified. While most people are used to a ten year cycle – Analogue in the mid 1980s, 2G in the mid 1990s, 3G in the mid 2000s and so on, which means mass adoption of 5G in 2025 or so the 5G marketing machine is running at full tilt
What’s not running as fast as the marketing is the technology development and the standards approval. There is an engineering definition of what 5G is. While the different G standards run at ten year intervals there are stricter standards for the technologies in the form or 3GPP releases. There is a slow drift across the G type technologies adding techniques for more bandwidth, lower power requirements and features such as broadcast video or push to talk.
The next release, release 15, is the one which is officially designated as 5G. A release 14 phone, network or whatever isn’t 5G but a release 15 one is. Despite being the first release to support NR or New Radio which is the important bit for 5G it’s an artificial designation, not only because releases 16, 17 and so on are also 5G but because release 15 is running late and has been split into three parts and now won’t be frozen until March. Then there are a lot of stages before it turns into a commercial product.
None of that will stop the marketing departments selling you something they can call 5G. Even when they do have a 5G network and 5G products not all of the network will be 5G, it’s going to be a slow burn. While mobile networks, particularly American mobile networks will be selling 5G in 2019, the landmark event will be in 2020: The Tokyo Olympics.
what Vodafone, Qualcomm And Ericsson did was make a 3GPP Rel-15 spec compliant 5G NR call device which looks like a smartphone using the 39 GHz spectrum. It utilised Ericsson’s commercial 5G NR radio AIR 5331 and baseband products and a mobile test device with integrated Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem and RF subsystem. Doing this in the Ericsson Lab in Kista, Sweden in February must have been, er, interesting for the Qualcomm engineers visiting from San Diego.
The lab data call is a continuation of the interoperability development testing (IODT) that was announced in 2017 which used Ericsson’s 5G NR pre-commercial base stations and Qualcomm Technologies’ 5G NR UE prototypes, and further shows the companies’ commitment and ability to achieve milestones that pave the way for commercial launches of 5G NR standard-compliant infrastructure, smartphones and other mobile devices. In addition, these early trials and milestones will enable global operators and OEMs to conduct tests in the field using their own networks and devices.

Using 39 GHz is interesting, this millimetre wave frequency is one of the features which distinguishes 5G from those technologies which are an evolution of 4G. It’s certainly not one that will be in the shops any time soon. And it may prove to not be that important.

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