GUILDFORD, BRITAIN: On the outskirts of this sleepy commuter town just south of London, plans are underway to build the fastest cellphone network in the world.
The
work is being done at the University of Surrey, where a leafy campus is
dotted with rundown brutalist-style buildings. Here, researchers and
some of the world's biggest tech companies, including Samsung and
Fujitsu, are collaborating to offer mobile Internet speeds more than 100
times faster than anything now available.
Their
work on so-called fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless technology is set
to be completed in early 2018 and would, for example, let students
download entire movies to smartphones or tablets in less than five
seconds, compared with as much as eight minutes with current
fourth-generation, or 4G, technology.
Companies
also could connect millions of devices — including smartwatches and
tiny sensors on home appliances — to the new cellphone network, and
automakers could potentially test driverless cars around the suburban
campus.
"A
lot of the technology already works in a laboratory environment," said
Rahim Tafazolli, director of the university's research center that
oversees the 5G project, which includes almost 70 powerful radio
antennas around the 2-square-mile campus. "Now, we have to prove it
works in real life."
The
work by Tafazolli and his team puts them at the heart of a heated race.
Fueled by people's insatiable appetite for accessing videos, social
media and other entertainment on their mobile devices, many of the
world's largest carriers, like AT&T and NTT DoCoMo of Japan, are
rushing to be the first to offer customers this next-generation
ultrafast wireless technology.
The
competition has led to research worth billions of dollars from
telecommunications equipment-makers like Ericsson of Sweden and Huawei
of China, which are hoping to secure lucrative contracts to upgrade the
mobile Internet infrastructure of operators like AT&T from the
United States and China Mobile in Asia. Those plans have become even
faster paced as tech giants including Google consider their own
ambitions for the latest, and fastest, high-speed Internet.
"Everyone
is rushing to demonstrate they are a leading player for 5G," said Bengt
Nordstrom, co-founder of Northstream, a telecom consulting firm, in
Stockholm.
The
efforts around 5G will be on display at Mobile World Congress, a
four-day tech and telecom event in Barcelona, Spain that begins on
Monday. Most of the world's largest operators and device-makers like
Samsung are expected to announce their latest wireless technology,
including smartphones, wearable products and digital applications at the
trade show.
Not
to be outdone, telecom manufacturers also have announced glitzy
demonstrations — including driverless cars, remote-controlled drones and
autonomous robots balancing balls on tablets — to showcase their 5G
credibility. The need to persuade carriers to buy the latest wireless
technology has become ever more important as operators consider cutting
investment plans in the face of a global economic downturn.
"If
we miss the chance to make our networks relevant, it will be a
disaster," said Ulf Ewaldsson, Ericsson's chief technology officer. "The
billion-dollar question is, what will a 5G network look like?"
Despite companies' efforts to outspend each other, that question remains unanswered.
A
global standard for 5G wireless technology will not be finished before
2019, at the earliest. Companies worldwide must agree on how their
networks talk to each other, so users' mobile connections do not become
patchy when traveling overseas. That involves lengthy negotiations over
what type of radio waves the new technology should use, among other
complicated global agreements, which can take years.
As
a result, carriers, telecom equipment makers and tech companies are
lobbying global-standard bodies and national lawmakers to promote their
own technologies over rivals', according to industry executives and
telecom analysts. Because of this jockeying, a widespread rollout of 5G
networks is not expected until well into the next decade.
Some
analysts question why carriers are focusing on the next generation of
wireless technology when many parts of the world, particularly in
emerging markets, still suffer from achingly slow mobile Internet
access. And industry experts say mobile Internet speeds in much of the
developed world, especially in places like South Korea, where
connections are often comparable to traditional broadband, already meet
people's needs.
"A
lot of this is about carriers and equipment-makers looking for new ways
to make money," said Thomas Husson, an analyst at Forrester Research in
Paris. "Consumers shouldn't expect great things until after 2020."
These challenges have not stopped companies from staking a claim in hopes of being at the forefront of 5G.
That
is particularly true ahead of major global sporting events like the
Olympics and the World Cup, at which carriers and national governments
want to promote their technological know-how. At the 2018 World Cup,
which will be held in Russia, for instance, the local operators MegaFon
and MTS are expected to test 5G-style services, including ultrafast
mobile Internet, even without global standards in place.
The
Korean mobile operator KT also plans to offer its own version of 5G
technology at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and
NTT DoCoMo has said it will have similar trials ready for the 2020
Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
"The
only way of learning is by doing," said Mats Svardh, head of networks
at the Scandinavian carrier TeliaSonera, which will test its own 5G
technology in both Stockholm and Tallinn, Estonia, in 2018. "It's about
putting pressure on ourselves to move forward with specifics, not just
theories."
US
carriers have also jumped on the 5G bandwagon, partly to offer people
new services as current mobile speeds have become relatively
interchangeable between major operators nationwide.
Last
year, Verizon Wireless announced that it would start testing new
wireless technology in 2016 in order to offer new services, including
potentially ultrafast mobile Internet, sometime next year. Last month,
AT&T countered with its own tests — expected to start in Austin,
Texas, by the end of 2016 — that could offer mobile speeds roughly 100
times faster than its current offering.
"We
will be ready when it's ready," said John Donovan, AT&T's chief
strategy officer, who added that traditional rivals like Verizon and new
arrivals like Google could eventually compete to offer 5G services.
"Everywhere you don't solve a problem, someone else might step in."
For Tafazolli, of the University of Surrey, whose team started working on 5G in late 2011, these battles have led to an increasing number of companies offering support — including the use of high-speed computer servers, costly radio antennas and millions of dollars of financing to research and build the next-generation wireless network on his college campus, he said. Their primary goal: to test their latest technology in a real-world setting.
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