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Expect to hear a lot more about 5G-Advanced next year
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Wireless AI will be one of the key initial elements
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We don't exactly when it will be commercially available, though
One thing that became clear during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Las Vegas event last week is how the evolution of 5G-Advanced is going to become a topic of interest during the big MWC affair in Barcelona in 2024 and during subsequent trade shows.
5G-Advanced (5G-A), which is sometimes referred to as 5.5G, is due to be the next big step-up in the 5G New Radio (5G NR) standard. 5G-Advanced will be laid down in 3GPP Release 18, which is due to be frozen in March 2024, and should potentially start to become commercially available sometime in 2025.
Of course this means that companies have been working on the features and specifications that make up Release 18 and 5G-A for several years. Notably, Qualcomm and Huawei have already separately started talking about the forthcoming standard.
Huawei recently said in our sister publication, Fierce Wireless, that 5.5G “can strengthen application capabilities, including glasses-free 3D, Internet of Vehicles, intelligent IoT and high-end manufacturing.”
Silverlinings spoke to Danny Tseng, director of technical marketing for 5G and 6G at Qualcomm, during our time in Vegas last week. Initially, he said the move to 5G-A is going to put more pressure on operators to ensure their networks are truly standalone (SA) 5G, that is, running off a 5G core.
“If we want to talk about 5G-Advanced, 5G standalone is a must,” he said. “You can’t do RedCap without 5G standalone, you can’t do NR NTN without standalone.”
RedCap refers to the next version of 5G cellular Internet of Things technology, while NR NTN refers to New Radio non-terrestrial networks.
This is before 5G-Advanced even arrives!
Table stakes established, we can move to some of the new features that 5G-Advanced will usher in. Wireless artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the aspects Qualcomm’s R&D team is looking at, Tseng noted.
“5G-Advanced will expand the role of wireless AI across 5G networks introducing new, innovative AI applications that will enhance the design and operation of networks and devices over the next three to five years,” Counterpoint Research said in a recent note on the topic.
In the mid-term, as we move to Release 19, reducing carrier operating expenses (opex) by lessening power utilization will become key for operators, Tseng added.
“The motivation to reduce energy consumption...for operators is important, that may be one of the strongest motivations for them,” he said.
That, of course, leads onto 6G as the 2020s fade into memory, but that’s another story, for another day!
Want to discuss cloud-native 5G with us? Meet us in Sonoma, Calif., from Dec. 6-7 for our Cloud Executive Summit. You won't be sorry.