5G Technology would Be a Reality By 2020 – ITU

The ITU has chosen IMT-2020 as its official designation of what will one day be standardised as 5G.

ITU-R Working Party 5D of the UN’s telco arm finalised its 5G vision and rubber-stamped it as IMT-2020 at a meeting in San Diego, California last week.

In a statement on Friday, the ITU said the next step is to establish detailed technical performance requirements for the radio systems to support 5G, taking into account a wide portfolio of future scenarios and use cases.

It will then set out its evaluation criteria for how it will assess candidate radio interface technologies.

“The buzz in the industry on future steps in mobile technology – 5G – has seen a sharp increase, with attention now focused on enabling a seamlessly connected society in the 2020 timeframe and beyond that brings together people along with things, data, applications, transport systems and cities in a smart networked communications environment,” said ITU secretary general Houlin Zhao.

It is probably premature to claim that 5G hype has reached fever pitch, which if nothing else, means there is plenty more hype to come.

Japan stole a march on the industry when it declared that it would have 5G networks up and running in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. This was before the industry had only the vaguest idea of what 5G might possibly look like.

Since then, telco players have drawn up a wish-list of 5G capabilities, but the industry is still some way off working out exactly how they will be achieved.

This has not stopped the hype machine though, and South Korea has pledged to launch ‘pre-standard’ 5G in time for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018 – two years before the ITU is due to finalise the 5G standard.

Source: Nick Wood for Total Telecom