but the shape and structure of 5G NR has been crystal-
izing for several months. “Final” solutions will inevitably
need some tweaking to meet the standard; however,
progress toward the creation of the ecosystem has al-
ready started with a path toward commercialization.
Service operators have announced 5G plans in all
shapes and sizes: SKT and KT are gearing up for 5G
trial services to accompany the 2018 PyeongChang
Winter Olympics in South Korea. In the U.S., Verizon
has aggressively purchased spectrum in the 28, 37 and
39 GHz bands and driven the development of the 5GTF
standard, primarily for ber to the premises (FTTP) ap-
plications. Verizon has been trialing pre-commercial
equipment in 11 cities in the U.S. since the beginning
of this year and announced plans for initial commercial
deployments in 2018. T-Mobile, the big winner in this
year’s FCC auction, won 31 MHz of spectrum around
600 MHz and announced plans to build a “nationwide”
5G network using their newly purchased spectrum.
Sprint has approximately 120 MHz of spectrum in the
2.5 GHz band and has been working with Qualcomm
and SoftBank, its parent company, to plan 5G rollouts
in 2019. Meanwhile, AT&T has announced plans for IoT
services in spectrum it currently owns and acquired Fib-
erTower to obtain licenses at 24 and 39 GHz.
Since the 3GPP kicked off the 5G standardization ef-
fort in 2015, the mMTC use case has been deprioritized.
The 3GPP continues to evolve LTE; in release 14, the
3GPP made several enhancements to LTE specically
targeting the mMTC use case, with development of the
NB-IoT and LTE CAT-M standards. The mMTC use case
elevates connectivity as a goal, driving device manufac-
turers to incorporate wireless capabilities into many de-
vices not previously connected, expanding their utility.
We have seen a glimpse of the possibilities with new IoT
devices, but there are signicant challenges: there is no
pervasive or ubiquitous wireless IoT standard. As such,
there are challenges with interoperability and seamless
connectivity to infrastructure and smart devices. With
the 3GPP addressing the mMTC use case in release 14
impacting construction, medicine, manufacturing, re-
tail services and safety. Latency in this context also in-
cludes delivering timely information from the cloud or
deployed sensors to the brains of these devices, so that
decisions can be made on the y to enhance safety. In
this case, the data is delivered real-time, and the control
mechanism is deployed on the device.
In 2015, when the 3GPP kicked off the 5G standard-
ization effort, the group outlined the timelines and
key performance objectives for this new standard. The
3GPP stated unprecedented guiding principles for the
denition process to follow. First, 3GPP broke compat-
ibility with prior releases, setting a goal of forward com-
patibility. By breaking with LTE and prior-generation
standards, the 3GPP opened a path for innovation to
meet these very difcult objectives. Second, the 3GPP
divided 5G into phases. The rst phase, or Phase 1, fo-
cused on mobile access below 40 GHz and set a frame-
work for Phase 2 to investigate spectrum above 40 GHz.
In all, the 3GPP has been working on 3GPP release 15,
also known as 5G New Radio (NR) Phase 1, with an ex-
pected release date of June 2018 (see Figure 2).
WHERE WE ARE TODAY
As I write this article, the 3GPP is closing in on the rst
draft of the physical layer of 5G NR Phase 1, targeted for
December 2017. This rst draft is critically important, as
it establishes the foundation upon which semiconductor,
device, infrastructure, test and measurement and other
wireless ecosystem players will plan and build their busi-
nesses. Until this point, the development has evolved us-
ing system prototypes for eld trails with service operators.
With a rmer standard in place, the players can develop
tangible plans and targets for product and service rollouts.
Interestingly, there have been announcements re-
garding the availability of 5G technologies—speci-
cally by Intel and Qualcomm—and these early develop-
ments are intended to seed other companies to drive
adoption. It may seem strange to announce products
compliant with a standard before the standard is nal,
5
s Fig. 2 Timeline for 5G radio access network standardization. The rst NR specication release is scheduled for late 2017, with
updates during 2018.
RAN #80
(Rel-15 Completion)
RAN
#78
RAN
#74
RAN
#75
2016 2017 2018
Q4Q3
Q2
Q1
Q4
Q4
5G Study
5G NR Work Item
NSA = Non-Standalone = EPC Core (”Option 3”) & LTE Anchor
SA = Standalone
5G NR NSA
Completion
Stage 3 Completion
for Non-Standalone 5G-NR
Stage 3 Completion
for Standalone 5G-NR
NSA Option 3 Family ASN-1 Rel-15 ASN-1 for SA & NSA
5G NR SA
Completion
Further Evolution
Q3
Q2
Q1