Late last week it was discovered that AT&T had filed a request with the FCC to test 5G wireless service in Austin, Texas. Today AT&T announced their roadmap for development of their 5G network that explains some of the steps that will take place to get them to the point where they are conducting field tests in Austin and what they see happening beyond that.
According to their plans, AT&T plans to start working with Intel and Ericsson in the lab starting in the second quarter of this year on implementing the technologies that have been under development for several years. The carrier will quickly move to outdoor testing and trials during the summer months. Assuming all goes smoothly, AT&T expects the 5G testing in Austin will commence before the end of 2016.
One of the key targets for AT&T is being ready for 5G standards being established in 2018. With development and testing starting now though, AT&T has to factor in how to be prepared to modify their own implementation to comply with the new standards. To do that, AT&T says they are employing software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) to separate the software components from the hardware components of the network. They expect this to make it easier to deploy changes to the network if necessary while keeping their hardware investment safe. AT&T Chief Strategy Officer John Donovan noted,
“5G will reach its full potential because we will built it on a software-centric architecture that can adapt quickly to new demands and give customers more control of their network services.”
AT&T says they expect the new 5G network to deliver speeds that are 10 to 100 times faster than today’s typical 4G LTE networks with speeds measured in gigabits per second instead of megabits per second. Another key factor for new networks will be the increasing number of devices expected to tap into the wireless network. This will include traditional user devices like smartphones and tablets. However, carriers are also looking at Internet of Things, wearables, sensing equipment, self-driving cars and other devices wanting their own connection.
AT&T noted that from 2007 to 2015 they saw data traffic on their network grow by over 150,000%. The majority of this growth was in video with that type of traffic now accounting for 60% of usage in 2015. This trend is expected to continue as 4K video is more widely adopted along with technologies like virtual reality. So besides the explosive growth in the number of devices connecting, carriers like AT&T also have to plan for some of the usage to bandwidth hungry.
source: AT&T
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