Carriers Moving Beyond Initial Stages of 5G

Carriers are starting to go beyond the early stages of 5G, with at least 60 operators across 34 countries moving to 5G stand-alone networks, Ruth Brown, Heavy Reading principal analyst-mobile networks and 5G, said during a LightReading webinar Thursday. Another 143 stand-alone networks are in progress, she added. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project has frozen Release 17, the first for 5G-advanced, Brown noted. Huawei, working with provider du, recently deployed the first indoor 5G-advanced network in the United Arab Emirates and T-Mobile made clear it plans to be the first U.S. carrier to adopt the new generation of wireless, she said. But not everyone is on board. Some question whether 5G has been “a little bit too ambitious” and whether 3GPP was moving too quickly to issue updated releases, Brown said. “There’s still quite a bit of concern" whether "6G is required.” Telefonica Germany expects it will spend the next few years working on 5G-advanced, while also getting ready for 6G, said Tilo Heckmann, senior technology strategy manager. The carrier expects the first commercial 6G deployments in 2030, in line with industry projections, he said. 6G promises "ubiquitous connectivity to everything and everyone” and will facilitate the integration of different networks and sensing. As a carrier, “we have to handle multiple access technologies” and “become a network of networks,” Heckmann said. Carriers also must manage expectations, he said: “Our resources are limited” as is the spectrum that will be available for 6G. The big question for carriers worldwide, said Tingfang Ji, Qualcomm vice president-engineering, is how to handle the massive increase in data expected in coming years. It’s not the “big, bad cellular industry” that needs spectrum for 6G, it’s the entire country. The power levels that are allowed are as important as the amounts, he said. “Do I need to deploy 10 million base stations to actually deliver the coverage the economy actually needs, the ubiquitous coverage?” If the power levels are similar to what’s allowed in 5G, engineers “will have a solution and give you the capacity that you need,” he said. “We need to be really careful when people talk about coexistence and pretend” a band is dedicated to 6G, “but it’s not useful.”