It looks like Verizon's steady march toward truly high speed wireless internet has take a few steps forward. They just announced their 5G field tests have completed successfully and they were able to achieve multi-gigabit speeds. The technology also allows for sub-millisecond latency because it uses a combination of advanced MIMO, beamforming and tracking technology.
Several different major companies participated in the testing including: Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, LG, Nokia, Samsung and Qualcomm. Verizon plans to move on this quickly and broad scale network testing will begin soon.
The next phase of testing the LTE-U network will commence in Raleigh, N.C. and Oklahoma City first. Adam Koeppe, the Verizon vice president who’s in charge of the testing efforts, said, “[W]e want to quickly make some key technical decisions and move rapidly to pre-commercial form factors and testing later this year." AT&T is working on field testing for their version of 5G very soon as well, while T-Mobile and Sprint are also working on their own solutions.
There is one negative for Verizon to move quickly on this new tech. The standards organization that codifies carrier wireless technology, (3GPP), has yet to solidify a standard for 5G speeds. This means that as the various U.S. carriers begin to rollout their competing 5G technologies, we could end up with a varied assortment of divergent technologies that will all be labeled "5G," yet do not conform to any standard. This is basically the same thing that happened with WiMAX and LTE technology during the ramp up to 4G from 3G.
Source: NetworkWorld
