5G Case Study

5G refers to a future, the fifth generation of mobile network telecommunications technologies. While research on the technical characteristics and potential uses of 5G is ongoing, a report from EU parliament states (European_Parliament, 2016) that 5G is expected to represent a major upgrade in telecom technologies that will include significant changes in radio interfaces and utilization of the spectrum. Consequently, 5G networks are expected to be much faster than existing technologies, improved reliability, and efficient for handling connected things. Figure 13 - 5G vs. 4G and 3G speed comparison
As per 3GPP (3GPP_Org, 2014), the term ‘5G’ has recently become part of extensive consultation, being driven directly by the industry’s demand
Services are expected to be more diversified in the future. As shown in Figure above (Docomo_NTT, 2014), a wide range of services will be provided over the mobile network.
As per EU parliament (European_Parliament, 2016), the evolution of 5G technology is critical to the growth of the EU economy as ICT accounts for 4% of EU GDP, and investments in ICT are responsible for approx. half of recent productivity growth in Europe. The report further suggests that 5G can be the trigger to create more jobs, introduce new business models and stimulate the growth in the EU. In the past, new generations of mobile technology proved to have contributed (European_Parliament, 2016) between 2% and 4% to levels of GDP in six countries at different stages of development.
5G wireless reports suggest that (Telecom_Reprots, 2016) although 5G standardization work in still under progress, telecom equipment vendors are heavily investing in 5G development mainly focusing on new air interface transmission schemes, higher frequency bands and advanced antenna technologies such as Massive MIMO and beamforming. It is expected that large-scale deployments should begin in 2020, and 5G networks will create approx. $250 Billion in annual service revenue by
Forecast further suggests that 5G network plans have started to be developed by various companies in 2016, thus creating an ecosystem that will lead to 7 percent of mobile connections on 5G networks by 2025. In China, the three big telecom players, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile are planning to invest (Kendall & Ukonaho, 2016) $45 billion in 5G networks and aiming to launch commercial services in 2020. Strategy Analytics expects that first 5G handsets will be commercialized in 2020 in South Korea and Japan and other countries like U.S., U.K., Sweden, U.A.E. and China, might launch 5G handsets in 2021 and by 2025 almost 300 million 5G-ready handsets will be