New Approach to 5G from Ericsson

As of today, 4G LTE networks are being widely used on a global scale. You could say that 4G is still pretty much in its early stages of development. As more operators develop the ability to deploy the 4G LTE network, it will grow and become a part of everyday life in most of the world.

Even though 4G networks have not reached 100 percent saturation, it is already poised to be a thing of the past. A few companies such as Samsung have been working on fifth generation or 5G networks for a while.

Ericsson is exploring a new way to approach the world of 5G. According to Ulf Ewaldsson, who is CTO of Ericsson AB, the company sees many more uses for a 5G network. It envisions going beyond just the fact that it is a faster network.

Ericsson sees other areas that could benefit from the use of the 5G network. Some of the other uses include cloud networks, applications, devices, machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and the Internet of Things (IoT). Ericsson is looking into how all of this can work together to deliver high quality services.

In a recent interview, Ewaldsson said, “We’re taking a new approach to 5G. It would not be meaningful to just go out and develop a new radio.” By saying things like "very ultra-high band, operating above 30 GHz, very high downlink speeds and so forth." it shows that Ericsson does have some ideas about what these “new radios” will be.

Ewaldsson followed up his comments by adding "The requirements on 5G will come from the applications, the users and the devices, whereas the requirements on the previous systems have been from think-tanks of standardization people." This means that 5G should emerge being different from previous mobile technologies like 2G, 3G and 4G.

Back in February, I reported that the European Union (EU) has set aside 50 million Euros ($65.4 million) devoted to delivering 5G mobile technology by the year 2020. You can see from this that the industry is already thinking about ways to use a 5G network.

One of the companies that the European Union is talking to about 5G technologies is BMW. This could be a tie-in to what Ewaldsson mentioned earlier about other uses such as M2M.