5G trials driving ecosystem towards rapid commercialisation

Verizon’s 5G Technology Forum partners consist of companies from all areas of the telecommunications and technology industry including Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, LG, Nokia, Samsung, and Qualcomm. The collective 5G Technology Forum is working collaboratively to drive technical standards for 5G technology. In addition to working with communications and technology leaders, Verizon’s 5G Technology Forum also includes a group of leading east and west-coast venture capital groups focused on a variety of emerging technologies.

“Verizon continues to accelerate innovation around 5G technology by working closely with our partners,” said Ed Chan, Senior Vice President, Technology Strategy & Planning. “We were the first to launch 4G nationwide. With 5G, we will again drive innovation across the technology landscape to bring new solutions to market for our customers. Our field technical trials are proving that 5G is here and ready to be commercialised and we’ve constructed several test beds that represent real-world environments.”

Field testing with 5G technology partners covers a wide range of deployment scenarios. Fixed wireless and mobile 5G systems were connected to the Verizon network backbone and signals transferred between outdoor and indoor environments.

Testing was performed both in residential and commercial buildings. These tests mimic real world scenarios using millimeter wave bands, including bands in the FCC’s Notice for Proposed Rulemaking for 5G spectrum. The propagation characteristics of these bands were stressed across multiple fixed and mobile deployments, providing throughput in the multiple gigabits per second range. Latency was measured in the millisecond range across varied distances, delivering superb video quality.

In addition to the unique field trials being conducted with each of the partners, the following elements are being assessed across all sites:

• Antenna innovation with millimeter and centimeter wave spectrum using various deployment conditions
• Beamforming, beam tracking, massive MIMO (multiple input, multiple output), and wideband spectrum (200MHz – 1GHz swaths)
• Deployment flexibility and antenna form factors including size with mmWave antennas

Verizon is committed to being the network leader and is driving 5G innovation. The 5G technology being developed now is the foundation of our future connectivity and the center of our digital world. Multiple gigabits per second speeds and single-millisecond latency will deliver the benefits of fiber to wireless. In addition, 5G will have the ability to handle exponentially more connected devices and accommodate the explosion of the IoT.

“We plan to expand this testing significantly over the next several months. With innovation occurring so rapidly, we want to quickly make some key technical decisions and move rapidly to pre-commercial form factors and testing later this year,” said Adam Koeppe, Vice President Network Technology Planning, who is leading the technical trial efforts. “We are also collaborating closely with our peer operators in the Asian markets as we are very much aligned towards implementing 5G technology in 2017.”