Can we have just one 5G please?

February 22, 2013

1 Min Read
The 5G Landgrab

Uh oh… Ericsson AB plans to present its 5G "concept" to Mobile World Congress attendees in Barcelona.

"5G is not one, or a few, completely new radio access technologies. Instead, by adopting an experience-centric rather than technology-centric approach, it's focusing on offering an ultimate experience by integrating multiple radio access technologies fulfilling different needs," states the vendor in this press release.

Others beg to differ.

In the U.K., a team at the University of Surrey, backed by eight telecom equipment vendors and operators, is working on advanced orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) technology and non-orthogonal waveforms that it calls 5G. (See UK Kicks Off 5G R&D.)

Meanwhile, Broadcom is already using 5G as a term to describe its 802.11ac Gigabit Wireless offering. (See 5 Trends in Carrier Wi-Fi.)

Wonder how many 5G definitions we'll end up with?

It would be great to have one clear definition but that seems a bit too much to ask of this industry that has had no qualms about pinning a 4G badge onto 3G technology.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading

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