The CTIA Conference in Las Vegas brought the major carriers together on Wednesday to share their thoughts on 5G deployment and the road ahead for wireless at a session entitled: “Building the Road to 5G.”
AT&T’s Tom Keathley, SVP, Wireless Network Architecture and Design, said that the commercial deployment of 5G could come sooner than later as AT&T is already in the midst of trials for the new technology. Keathley said a ratification of the 5G standard Phase One could come as soon as late 2017, although mid-2018 was a more realistic benchmark.
T-Mobile’s Karri Kuoppamaki, VP, Network Technology Development and Strategy, said their own field trials in 5G were moving along smoothly from the lab to on-site testing. “We’ve been able to see some of the things associated with 5G – millimetre wave, low latency and massive MIMO,” he said.
VP of Technology Innovation and Architecture for Sprint, Ron Marquardt, said over 200,000 people in their Copa America Trials could actually see the technology in ‘real time’ usage. Adam Koeppe VP, Network Technology Planning for Verizon said their work is supported by the same group of vendors from their Phase One trials. “We could also fix any changes with software,” he said.
U.S. Cellular will begin trials in 28GHz spectrum next week, then progress to a 15GHz trial. “Then maybe we’ll look at a third trial,” said Michael Irizarry, CTO.
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