Telefonica and Huawei this week signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that will see them undertake joint research into 5G network requirements.
The companies aim to identify the network architecture needed to achieve extremely fast data connection speeds and extremely low latency. To that end, they will also work together on new air interfaces, as well as performance evaluation and prototype verification of 5G technology and equipment.
"5G will have [a] massive impact on the telecommunication industry and in society as a whole. Telefonica doesn’t want the 5G networks start-up to be a specific single event, but rather a process which we want to begin right now," said Telefonica CTO Enrique Blanco, in a statement on Tuesday.
Huawei’s partnership with Telefonica is in line with the Chinese vendor’s plan to invest US$600 million into 5G research in the five years to 2018.
"Huawei now is investing a tremendous research effort into the 5G key enabling technology," said David Wang, president of Huawei’s wireless product line. "Our collaboration with Telefonica is at the very heart of this commitment: to help build better connected societies, businesses and economies, and ensuring 5G success is essential in achieving this."
As well as Telefonica, Huawei is also working with China Mobile, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, LG Uplus and KT Corp, among others.
In October, Huawei and DoCoMo announced they had reached a peak conn ection speed of 3.6 Gbps using 100 MHz of sub-6-GHz spectrum.
