When will 5G be launched?

5G will be launched simultaneously across continents in 2018, says Ericcson.

18:40 02 November 2017

5G will be the first mobile network generation that will be launched simultaneously across continents in 2018, Arun Bansal, Ericcson’s head of Western Europe has claimed.

 

Bansal said that Europe would focus on using 5G to enable industrial and manufacturing automation as well as remote healthcare. In Japan and South Korea, the use of 5G will be mainly consumer-led, with much wider coverage and focus on apps such as AR and VR. In the US, 5G will be led by Fixed Wireless Access as operators use 5G radio capabilities to provide broadband to up to 38 million properties that cannot get fixed access.    

 

However, there are many challenges in using 5G, Bansal admits. He said that the industry must be able to define business models for the mobile network generation. This requires understanding and defining requirements with industry partners.

 

Ericcson has recently launched it 5GNow event where it showed a range of potential uses for 5G. These include immersive gaming, remote healthcare, security and industrial automation. Each is intended to relate to a specific network capability –NR for high throughput, federated slicing for differentiated SLAs, and MEC for low latency and embedded security.