Verizon late on Tuesday announced plans to trial potential 5G technologies in 2016.
It is partnering with Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung on 5G, and recently held its inaugural 5G Technology Forum in a bid to identify emerging mobile technologies that can be brought to market in the shortest possible time to address specific use cases.
"We feel a tremendous sense of urgency to push forward on 5G and mobilise the ecosystem by collaborating with industry leaders and developers to usher in a new generation of innovation," said Roger Gurnani, Verizon’s chief information and technology architect, in a statement.
Verizon is establishing 5G ‘sandboxes’ at its R&D facilities in Waltham, Massachusetts, and San Francisco, where the telco and its partners will work together on candidate 5G technology.
"When you’re planning a technological evolution at this scale it must be a collaboration of players in the ecosystem," said Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer of Alcatel-Lucent and president of Bell Labs.
Ericsson’s chief strategy officer Rima Qureshi said Verizon’s efforts will help maintain the U.S.’s global competitiveness.
"A lot of development and requirements for 5G networks have so far come from Asian operators," she noted.
Indeed, a lot of attention has been paid to the efforts of Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and South Korea’s SK Telecom. The former plans to have 5G up and running in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, while the latter aims to launch a ‘pre-standard’ 5G service in time for 2018’s Winter Olympics in Seoul.
"It’s exciting to see a U.S. company accelerate the rate of innovation and introduce new partners," said Qureshi.
"Together we represent more than $50 billion in annual research, development and technology investments and thousands of patents," added Gurnani. "Collectively we are bringing to bear an incredible amount of resources and intellectual capital to introduce the next generation of wireless technology."
