Verizon Communications announced an aggressive roadmap to 5G wireless technology in the United States today. The company is partnering with technology leaders to create innovation systems in two Verizon innovation centers.
The 5G technology is expected to be available in the country by 2020. However, the Verizon is accelerating the pace of innovation and plans to conduct field technology trials next year.
In March, Nokia and NTT Docomo demonstrated the indoor trial of the 5G technology and achieved more than 2 Gbps of down link speeds using higher frequencies in the 70 Ghz spectrum.
Verizon plans for 5G technology
Verizon together with Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Nokia Corporation, and Samsung Electronics established working teams to ensure a speedy pace of innovation on 5G.
The company and its partners are creating 5G network environments or sandboxes at its Innovation Centers in Waltham, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California.
In a statement, Roger Gurnani, executive vice president and chief information and technology architect at Verizon emphasized that the company and its partners are committed to start the testing the 5G technology in the field in 2016.
“5G is no longer a dream of the distant future. We feel a tremendous sense of urgency to push forward on 5G and mobilize the ecosystem by collaborating with industry leaders and developers to usher in a new generation of innovation,” said Gurnani.
Additionally, Gurnani emphasized that each of Verizon’s partner is a leader. The companies collectively represent more than $50 billion in annual research, development and technology investments as well as thousands of patents.
“Collectively we are bringing to bear an incredible amount of resources and intellectual capital to introduce the next generation of wireless technology,” said Gurnani.
Benefits of 5G technology
The 5G technology is expected to offer 50 times faster than the current 4G LTE. Its latency is in the single milliseconds, and it can handle exponentially more interconnected devices to accommodate the expected growth of the Internet of Things.
Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer at Alcatel-Lucent and president of Bell Labs, said a collaboration of players in the ecosystem is necessary when planning a large technological evolution. He said, “Having Verizon initiate this effort now, even as 4G LTE technology has so much headroom left, will no doubt add to the rich fabric of our digital lives for many years to come.
Ericsson Chief Technology Officer Rima Qureshi said, “A lot of development and requirements for 5G networks have so far come from Asian operators. It’s exciting to see a U.S. company accelerate the rate of innovation and introduce new partners.”
