The GSMA has released a major new report at the GSMA Mobile 360-Europe event being held in Brussels today, outlining its perspectives on the development of 5G.
The new GSMA Intelligence report, ‘Understanding 5G: Perspectives on Future Technological Advancements in Mobile’, provides an overview of network technology innovation today and how this is setting the agenda for the 5G future.
It outlines the technical requirements of future 5G networks and explores potential use cases as well as the implications for operators and other mobile ecosystem players.
“Already being widely discussed, the arrival of 5G will help deliver a fresh wave of mobile innovation that will further transform the lives of individuals, businesses and societies around the world,” said Anne Bouverot, Director General, GSMA.
“Of course, 5G is still to be standardised by the industry and it has not been fully agreed what 5G will look like or what it will enable. However, the GSMA is already collaborating with operators, vendors, governments and other industry organisations in ensuring that the future 5G standard is both technically and economically viable.”
The new GSMA report provides clarity on the industry’s evolutionary path towards 5G and addresses many of the misconceptions around 5G.
It examines the two main views on 5G that exist today, which are frequently mixed together to form the basis of the 5G definition: View 1 – The hyper-connected vision.
In this view, 5G is seen as a blend of existing technologies (2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and others) that can deliver greater coverage and availability, higher network density in terms of cells and devices, and the ability to provide the connectivity that enables machine-to-machine (M2M) services and the Internet of Things.
View 2 – Next-generation radio access technology:
This perspective outlines 5G in ‘generational’ terms, setting specific targets that new radio interfaces must meet in terms of data rates (faster than 1Gbps downlink) and latency (less than 1ms delay).
These two views identify eight core technical requirements for 5G that set targets for: data rate; latency; network densification (both number of connections and number of cells); coverage; availability; operational expenditure reduction; and the field life of devices.
However, only two of these – data rates and latency – relate to a true generational shift, with the remaining six being either economic objectives or aspirations applicable to all network technologies.
Many of the 5G technical requirements already form part of the network innovations being undertaken by operators today.
For example, technologies such as network functions virtualisation (NFV), software-defined networks (SDN), heterogeneous networks (HetNets) and Low Power, Low Throughput networks are being bundled under the title of 5G despite the fact that they are already being brought to market by vendors and deployed by operators.
Meanwhile, there remains considerable opportunity for growth in 4G, which still only accounts for 5 per cent of the world’s mobile connections.
4G penetration as a percentage of connections is already as high as 69 per cent in South Korea, 46 per cent in Japan and 40 per cent in the US, but 4G penetration in the developing world stands at just 2 per cent.
According to the report, mobile operators will invest US$1.7 trillion globally in network infrastructure over the period 2014-2020, much of which will be spent on 4G networks.