Taking a fresh look at 5G – Technology enablers III

Roberto Saracco May 20, 2017 Blog 252 Views

A cartoon illustrating an article published on China Daily discussing the visit of Commissioners from EU to China to discuss the opportunities of 5G. The claim reported is “5G will be 1,000 times faster than 4G”. Of course it is not true but who cares! 1,000 is such a round number. Credit: ChinaDaily

Wrapping up the technology part

There are several more aspects in the technology evolution from 4G to 5G. However, all of them are general evolution aspects, they are happening everywhere and are not driven, nor peculiar to the transition from 4G to 5G. Actually, one might say that 4G is evolving (and it will do so with an already well defined roadmap till 2023) and there will be a seamless continuation into 5G. No disruption is on the horizon, in technology terms, in the shift from 4G to 5G.

This was also recognised in an interesting panel, surely worth listening to, organised by COMSOC at WCNC in San Francisco in March 2017, titled “Evolution or Revolution: 5G technology and what it will enable beyond 4G”.

What I found interesting in this panel was the effort of the panelists, all coming from major industries that are looking at 5G as “the opportunity to generate revenues”, to emphasises the tremendous advances that 5G will bring (marketing speech) with the truth that evolution is going to be linear, that 4G is delivering now, and through its already planned evolution, most of what we are expecting from 5G. I should also say that I spoke recently with a key person in the industry, that I cannot name, responsible for 5G technology who told me: “you are completely right, but if I were to say the things you are saying, and writing, my company will fire me!”

These set of considerations on technology evolution and architectural evolution may have a profound impact on business and market scenarios in the next decade and this, in turns, will influence the adoption and time of deployment of technology, as I will explain in a coming post.

5G, at the moment, is still a nebula in an intergalactic space that will condense into a planetary system during the next ten years. How this condensation will look like, how many planets (players), and their dimension, will be remains to be seen. The standardisation work has started but won’t be completed before the end of this decade (2019). In the meantime a few players are declaring to have started 5G trials. In reality they are experimenting with technology and frequency that might be used in 5G. From this to a real 5G trial there is quite a gap that only the marketing imagination is able to fill.

For the time being the 5G architecture is 5GTTP, 5G To The Press, as you can see by the avalanche of headlines on 5G. Many statements awaiting facts.