Gerry Flynn, director of network infrastructure planning at Verizon, explains how new industry players and increasing bandwidth demands are driving the development of 5G networks.

Kelsey Ziser, Senior Editor

May 24, 2016

3 Min Read
Verizon Upskills on 5G at BCE

AUSTIN, Texas -- Big Communications Event -- Service providers are ramping up 5G testing and development efforts as we quickly approach 2020 -- the year 5G is predicted to roll out commercially.

Earlier today at BCE, speakers Gabriel Brown, senior analyst at Heavy Reading, and Gerry Flynn, director of network infrastructure planning at Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), led a deep-dive on the progression toward 5G in the Upskill U session "5G: Are We There Yet?" During that lecture, Brown and Flynn explained that the industry remains in the early stages on some key aspects of deployment, like developing the standardization process and creating a 5G evaluation criteria, which is expected to emerge from 3GPP and possibly IEEE. (See LIVE AT BCE - 5G: Are We There Yet?)

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North America's growing demand for 4G has also played a large role in driving the development of 5G. New industry players, like Google, Apple and Facebook, and technological advances like the management of smart cities and booming growth of IoT, are all contributing to an increased demand for bandwidth.

Figure 1: (L to R) Gerry Flynn, Director of Network Infrastructure Planning, Verizon, presented on '5G: Are We There Yet?' at the Upskill U breakfast session; Managing Editor Liz Coyne, Light Reading, moderated the session. (L to R) Gerry Flynn, Director of Network Infrastructure Planning, Verizon, presented on "5G: Are We There Yet?" at the Upskill U breakfast session; Managing Editor Liz Coyne, Light Reading, moderated the session.

"Looking at the forecast from Cisco, we foresee an eight times increase in demand for bandwidth between 2015 and 2020," said Flynn.

In order for operators to keep pace with new industry players and revenue goals, Flynn stressed that there must be a shift in how services are developed.

"The traditional model of introducing new features in wireless networks has been pretty slow," said Flynn. "We need a faster innovation of services, more like the IT world is using what's called DevOps where we're incrementally and continually introducing services."

Flynn explained that although 5G is still being defined, the building blocks -- technologies like SDN and NFV -- are there and come largely from 4G.

The demand for streaming video and gaming has also surged as millennials put pressure on businesses to meet their entertainment and bandwidth expectations. Upskill U will tackle the challenge mobile operators face in balancing high-quality video delivery while making the cost of carrying video commensurate with the revenues from mobile TV services during tomorrow's session, "Mobile Video: Finding a Solution" presented by Alan Breznick of Light Reading, and Upinder Saini, VP of wireless product management at Rogers Communications Inc. (Toronto: RCI). (Register for LIVE AT BCE - Mobile Video: Finding a Solution.)

In-person attendees at BCE should plan on arriving for this session at 7:00 a.m. CT for a complimentary hot breakfast and a free Upskill U headlamp to illuminate nighttime tours of Austin. The course is also available via the live stream at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, editor, Upskill U

About the Author(s)

Kelsey Ziser

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Kelsey is a senior editor at Light Reading, co-host of the Light Reading podcast, and host of the "What's the story?" podcast.

Her interest in the telecom world started with a PR position at Connect2 Communications, which led to a communications role at the FREEDM Systems Center, a smart grid research lab at N.C. State University. There, she orchestrated their webinar program across college campuses and covered research projects such as the center's smart solid-state transformer.

Kelsey enjoys reading four (or 12) books at once, watching movies about space travel, crafting and (hoarding) houseplants.

Kelsey is based in Raleigh, N.C.

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