LOS ANGELES � AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom, Vodafone, Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies, British Telecom, Telstra, Korea Telecom, Intel, LG Uplus, KDDI, LG Electronics, Telia Company, Swisscom, TIM, Etisalat Group, Huawei, Sprint, Vivo, ZTE and Deutsche Telekom all agreed to a proposal to support a corresponding work plan for the first phase of the 5G NR specification at the next 3GPP RAN plenary meeting coming up from March 6�9�in Dubrovnik, Croatia, according tofiercewireless.com.
�Non-Standalone 5G NR� will use the existing LTE radio and evolved packet core network as basis for mobility management and coverage while adding a new 5G radio access carrier to enable certain 5G use cases starting in 2019. �The new proposal and the intermediate milestone also reaffirm and solidify the schedule for the complete standard, including Standalone 5G NR in Release 15,� according to the same article.
Qualcomm announced on February 21st its first successful 5G connection based upon the NR work in 3GPP. The connection, which was completed using Qualcomm Technologies� sub-6 GHz 5G NR prototype system capable of operating in the 3.3 GHz to 5.0 GHz range, showed that advanced 5G NR technologies can be used to efficiently achieve multi-gigabit-per-second data rates at significantly lower latency than today�s 4G LTE networks.
China�s Huawei recently completed a large MIMO verification test using 40 MHz spectrum on the 3.5 GHz band in Tokyo. Download speeds achieved using MIMO and multi-carrier technologies reached a peak of 1.4 Gbps.
�The 3.5 GHz band, with its abundant bandwidth resources, has already gained a reputation as one of the most popular bands throughout the world. This offers a great opportunity for the global development of LTE TDD, and has grown increasingly important as a 5G catalyst to assume the spotlight position of the global mobile industry. Massive MIMO, featuring the incorporation of massive antennas and 3D beamforming, enhances spectrum multiplexing among multiple UEs to significantly improve spectral efficiency without additionally increasing site density or bandwidth. The 3.5 GHz Massive MIMO test further explores the latent potential of 3.5 GHz spectrum, and is expected to open up a new commercial era of LTE-Advanced,� according to Huawei�spress release.� �
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