Defining a Vision and Road Map for 5G Mobile Development

In my previous blog post, I announced that ROI3, Inc. joined ITU's new focus group to identify the network standardization requirements for the 5G development of International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) for 2020 and beyond. I participated in the first meeting of the ITU-T Focus Group on IMT-2020 (FG IMT-2020) that was held from June 8-9, 2015 in San Diego, Calif. where we "established the overall roadmap for the development of 5G mobile and defined the term it will apply to it as 'IMT-2020,'" according to an ITU press release of June 19, 2015. "The meeting also agreed that the work should be conducted under the name of IMT-2020, as an extension of the ITU's existing family of global standards for International Mobile Telecommunication systems (IMT-2000 and IMT-Advanced) which serve as the basis for all of today's 3G and 4G mobile systems."

Furthermore, "With the finalization of its work on the 'Vision' for 5G systems at a meeting of ITU-R Working Party 5D in San Diego, California, ITU has now defined the overall goals, process and timeline for the development of 5G mobile systems. This process is now well underway within ITU, in close collaboration with governments and the global mobile industry."

60 individuals from 18 countries representing a wide-array of stakeholders from the mobile broadband industry attended the two-day meeting. Among the 33 contributions presented and discussed, one presentation noted that 5G technology will change people’s lifestyle and enrich society through hyper mobile connectivity with projected data delivery speeds in excess of 10,000 megabits per second (Mbps) compared to 450 Mbps and 14.4 Mbps provided by 4G/LTE and 3G, respectively. Another presentation noted how the jump from 4G to 5G is an evolutionary as well as a revolutionary process.

The next step to identifying the network standardization requirements for 5G development, according to ITU's announcement, "is to establish detailed technical performance requirements for the radio systems to support 5G, taking into account the needs of a wide portfolio of future scenarios and use cases, and then to specify the evaluation criteria for assessment of candidate radio interface technologies to join the IMT-2020 family. These new systems, set to become available in 2020, will usher in new paradigms in connectivity in mobile broadband wireless systems to support, for example, extremely high definition video services, real time low latency applications and the expanding realm of the Internet of Things (IoT)."

My colleagues and I are planning to participate in the second FG IMT-2020 meeting from July 13-14, 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland. We will continue to learn how 5G will lead to the development of IoT, cloud computing, virtual reality (VR), and 3D content accessible through a mobile device such as a smartphone, tablet, or smart watch.