Operators and Vendors Support the GSMA 5G mmWave Initiative

The GSMA announced the formation of a global accelerator initiative forged to drive awareness of 5G mmWave technology. The association has formed the initiative with support from major industry players, like China Unicom, NTT Docomo, Telstra, TIM, Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm.

“The initiative will see the companies involved share mmWave intelligence, best practices and use cases to educate and inspire stakeholdersglobally, with a major aim of the project seeking to underline the role mmWave plays in unlocking the full potential of 5G,“ the GSMA said in a statement. Underlining the importance of 5G, the association said it is estimated that by 2025, the technology will contribute $5 trillion to the global economy, with 1.8 billion 5G IoT connections.

5G mmWave will deliver increased bandwidth, fast speeds and low latency to users, with benefits coming particularly in densely populated areas such as entertainment and sports venues. On the flip side, mmWave cannot cover as wide an area as lower frequency spectrum. The GSMA continued to state that a combined mmWave and 3.5GHz network can contribute to savings of up to 35 percent of the total cost of ownership compared to the sole use of sub 6-GHz bands, while it can also help expansion into areas including fixed wireless access.

There are more than 140 pre-commercial and commercial devices supporting 5G mmWave, and all major network equipment vendors are now offering mmWave solutions. However, actual commercial network deployment has been limited so far. In the US, the use of mmWave spectrum in FWA networks was first adopted by Verizon in 2018 and now all of the country’s big three operators support the high spectrum band. This first stage of the project should be completed in time for MWC Barcelona in February 2022, added GSMA.