South Korea’s KT and SK Telecom, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and US-based Verizon have formed a new global initiative to develop a common 5G trial specification.
The new 5G Open Trial Specification Alliance plans to develop a specification that can serve as a common, extendable platform for various types of 5G trial activities around the world, with a focus on 5G radio interface trial activities.
The operators are already co-ordinating on trial activity, with several technical trials planned for 2016-2018.
Besides the founders the alliance will seek to attract a variety of different industry partners, including other operators, network, chipset and device vendors and test equipment vendors. Several of the founding operators’ key suppliers are already involved.
Announcing the alliance, the operators said the trial specification is not intended to limit ongoing standardization discussions happening within the 3GPP.
“Rather its objective is to provide a common trial platform where different technology components can be trialed and evaluated in order to provide a better understanding of the value and performance of different 5G technologies,” the operators said in a statement.
“This can provide valuable input in the upcoming 3GPP discussions, by complementing simulation studies with real data from different trial deployments.”
The trial specification will cover multiple spectrum bands, both above and below 6-GHz.
Source: http://www.telecomasia.net/content/kt-skt-docomo-form-5g-trial-specification-alliance