The EU’s 5G public-private partnership (PPP) on Wednesday launched a new project tasked with developing an end-to-end network architecture that will meet the diverse requirements expected of the next generation of mobile services.
13 companies are involved with the project, called 5G Novel Radio Multiservice adaptive network Architecture (NORMA), including major European telcos Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefonica.
Alcatel-Lucent, NEC Europe and Nokia Networks will also contribute, as will the Kaiserslautern University of Technology in Germany, and the Carlos III University of Madrid.
In addition, research firm Real Wireless will assess the socioeconomic benefit of 5G for current and potential future users of the technology.
"Not following the ‘one system fits all services’ paradigm of current architectures, 5G NORMA will allow for adapting the mechanisms executed for a given service to the specific service requirements, resulting in a novel service and context–dependent adaptation of network functions," said the 5G PPP.
Or to put it another way, a 5G network will be smart; able to dynamically tweak resources dependent on time, location, the type of traffic it is carrying, and what else is happening on the network.
"5G NORMA will ensure economic sustainability of network operation and open opportunities for new players, while leveraging the efficiency of the architecture to do so in a cost and energy-efficient way," said the group.
The project begins today and is due to be completed in 30 months.
Wednesday’s news serves to illustrate that despite the hype that comes with numerous demonstrations of candidate technologies, and a laundry list of requirements and potential use cases, the industry is still far from working out exactly what 5G is and how it will work.
