FCC To Vote On Spectrum Rules For 5G Network On July 14

The U.S. is likely to become the first country in the world to identify and open up a significant amount of spectrum suitable for the upcoming fifth-generation (5G) wireless network which will provide ultra-fast data transfer speed.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the U.S. telecom regulator, will vote on new rules to lay the groundwork for 5G network, proposed by the FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. The vote is scheduled to take place on Jul 14, 2016.

According to the research firm ABI Research, 5G network deployment is expected to ramp up after 2020 and its market size may reach $247 billion worldwide by 2025. North America, Asia-Pacific, and Western Europe will be the three regions that will pioneer 5G network deployment.

The FCC will try to free up high-band spectrum – technically known as the centimeter (cmWave) and millimeter wave (mmWave) bands – which are one of the building blocks of the 5G wireless standard.

Several industry researchers hold that 5G network will provide a download speed of 1 Gbps (gigabit per second) which is 200 times the throughput of the currently available standard 4G LTE network. Latency period of data delivery will be in single milliseconds. Further, 5G technology is designed to be more power efficient than any other standard wireless networks available these days. Naturally, 5G-enabled mobile devices are likely to last much longer than their 3G or 4G counterparts.

Additionally, superfast 5G mobile networks will be of utmost necessity in managing the exponential growth of Internet-connected devices, popularly known as Internet of Things (IoT) and autonomous vehicles (to be controlled in the cloud). According to a report by research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide spending on IoT is slated to grow at a 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to nearly $1.3 trillion in 2019 from $698.6 billion in 2015.

The U.S. telecom behemoth Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) will start field trials for its upcoming 5G wireless network with its partners in 2016. The company is preparing for initial deployment of the next-generation 5G wireless networks in the U.S. in 2017. In Feb 2016, another U.S. telecom giant AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) requested the FCC to grant a license to test 5G technologies on 3.5GHz, 4GHz, 15GHz and 28GHz frequency bands.

On Mar 2016, T-Mobile US Inc. (NYSE:T) sought the FCC’s approval for a millimeter wave radio test license using the company’s 28 GHz and 39 GHz frequency bands to conduct test run of 5G wireless standards. Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) , the largest manufacturer of wireless baseband chip set globally, is working hard to develop chipsets for the 5G mobile standard.

The U.S. telecom industry has lately emerged as an intensely contested space where success thrives largely on technical superiority, quality of services and scalability. Thus, in order to stay ahead of the competition, existing players need to be constantly on their toes to introduce innovative products.

A full-fledged 5G network deployment will not start until 2020. T-Mobile US and AT&T too are targeting the same time frame to get their 5G network ready for commercial deployment. However, Verizon is so far leading the race in this regard.