Newsletter 18

Latest 5G commercial launches in Europe

Vodafone Ireland

Vodafone Ireland launched 5G services in August 2019 in selected areas of main Irish cities, including Dublin and Waterford.  Two 5G-ready smartphones will be available to users in August and September 2019 – the Huawei Mate 20X 5G and the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G.

Three UK (FWA)

3 UK switched on its 5G fixed wireless access network in August 2019, becoming the third of the country’s operators to offer services over the new technology. The company turned on its 5G infrastructure in a small number of locations in central London and it’s offering a 5G home hub at 35 GBP (38 EUR) per month. 3 UK’s strategy focused on building on the UK Broadband’s fixed assets acquired in 2017. The operator plans to launch 5G mobile services in several locations by the end of the year.

T-Mobile Germany

Deutsche Telekom switched on its 5G network on September 5th, in five German cities: Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, Darmstadt, and Munich. The company announced that the network is using 129 5G antennae across the country, 66 of them in Berlin, with bandwidth of 1 Gbps or more.

Customers can choose four 5G plans: the MagentaMobil S with 6 GB at 39.95 EUR/month, the MagentaMobil M with 12 GB at 49.95 EUR/month, the MagentaMobil L with 24 GB at 59.95 EUR/month, and the MagentaMobil XL with unlimited data at 84.95 EUR/month. The new plans are all 5G-enabled.

Telefonica UK (O2)

Telefonica (O2) became on October 17, the latest mobile operator to switch on its 5G network in the UK. Services are available in six cities and towns: Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh, Leeds, London, and Slough. The network will initially be available where it is needed most, including railway stations, shopping centers, and sports stadiums. The network will be live in a total of 20 towns and cities by the end of the year, and 50 by summer 2020.

5G commercial launches in Europe as at October 2019:

Latest 5G news in Asia Pacific

The Ministry of Science and ICT said operators are continuing to expand coverage across the country, targeting service in all major cities and the surrounding areas. They are also focused on improving indoor coverage. Just five months after simultaneously launching 5G service in early April, the domestic mobile operators have deployed than 90,000 5G base stations, nearly double the number installed at launch.

Players spent about 2.8 billion EUR on spectrum in the 3.5GHz and 28GHz bands. To encourage the development of 5G products, the government set up 23 5G testbeds focused on five sectors, such as devices, V2X and drones.

According to SKT, a 5G user spends an average of 33.7GB per month, 65% more than a 4G customer.

SKT says 5G services boosted total service revenues in Q2 2019 and led to a 0.4% sequential improvement in ARPU. The company said it has witnessed download speeds of 1.5 Gbit/s to 1.8 Gbit/s. KT’s ARPU rose by 0.8% sequentially.

South Korea 5G and 4G subscribers March-July 2019

5G commercial launches in South Korea

China’s three major mobile operators started signing up 5G customers in September 2019 and already registered more than 10 million subscriptions. All three are offering six-month promotional packages, with handsets from Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. China Mobile’s 5G packages start at 128 CNY (16 EUR) per month.

In June 2019, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially issued licenses for the launch of commercial 5G networks in the country. Chinese operators will launch commercial services by the end of 2019.

China Telecom and China Unicom have reached an agreement to jointly build a 5G network and share network infrastructure. China Unicom’s chairman said that sharing infrastructure could result in CapEx savings of between 25 to 34 billion EUR. China Mobile could be included in the initiative to deploy shared 5G infrastructure in low-density areas. The three Chinese operators co-own a tower company, China Tower Corp.

Earlier in YE2019 China Telecom said that it planned to invest 9 billion CNY (1.14 billion EUR) and build 40,000 5G base stations by the end of the year, in line with China Unicom’s plans. China Mobile said it would deploy 50,000 base stations and invest 24 billion CNY (3 billion EUR) this year.

5G commercial launches expected in H2 2019/Q1 2020

5G PPP Software Networks Working Group White Paper

As part of the 5G PPP Initiative, the Software Network Working Group prepared this white paper as a follow-up of 2018 Cloud-Native transformation white paper to analyze how 5G PPP projects (NGPaaS, 5G-MEDIA, 5G-Transformer, 5G-City, 5G-Picture, 5GTANGO, SAT5G, MATILDA, Slicenet, METROHAUL, NRG5, and Phase 3 project 5GENESIS). interpret Cloud-Native design patterns and identify adoption barriers. The Software Network Working Group conducted a survey to collect technical inputs from 5G PPP Phase 2 and Phase 3 projects on their:
– supported vertical use-cases,
– adopted virtualization technologies,
– followed architecture patterns.

Results are two-fold:

1. Projects are clustered according to their architecture patterns:
   a. Most project prototypes evolved from ETSI MANO relying on an Openstack VIM exclusively to include Kubernetes – on bare metal and public cloud – as a new VIM in parallel to Openstack.
   b. Meanwhile, they kept orchestration intelligence centralized in a VNFM-like box.
   c. Therefore, only a few of them fully exploited Kubernetes as a complete autonomous platform with its own orchestration intelligence able to host both Containerized Network Functions and classical VM-based VNFs.
2. Analysis:
   a. We acknowledge a reluctance for using fully Cloud-Native design provided by e.g. Kubernetes. This reluctance has been analyzed to extract the underlying reasons motivating projects to select this intermediate step where Kubernetes is considered only as a VIM. These reasons are presented as the barriers to adopt the Cloud-Native patterns.
   b. These barriers are essentially the lack of standard and technological maturity, implying human adaptation resistance

5G PPP Automotive Working Group White Paper

This is an Initial Proposal for reaching out towards a broader range of potential stakeholders in the area of connected and automated mobility in Europe with the target to develop a blueprint document.

This document sets out the shared view of a wide group of industry stakeholders supporting the objectives of the 5G Strategic Deployment Agenda (SDA). The common aim is to support Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) in Europe, based on future-proof 5G infrastructure, technologies and vehicles.

5G PPP workshop @IEEE 5G World Forum

The workshop was held successful: many people attended the sessions and organizers received very positive feedback.

The new 5G PPP Infrastructure – Trials and Pilots Brochure  (detailed in the September 2019 Newsflash) was distributed to the participants. You can download it here.

5G-DRIVE opening speech, panel discussion and concluding remarks 

Uwe Herzog from Eurescom and project 5G-DRIVE gave the opening speech at the 5G-Trials workshop at IEEE 5G World Forum in Dresden on 1 October 2019. Besides introducing the audience to the workshop he also gave an overview of 5G trialling activities in Europe and showed some statistics.

In the afternoon, Uwe moderated a panel on results from 5G trials, verticals and business opportunities. The panellists included Dr. Michael Meyer from Ericsson, Dr. Mikko Uusitalo from Nokia, Prof. Panagiotis Demestichas from University of Piraeus, and Mr. Jean-Pierre Bienaime from IREST (see photo). The panellists discussed the main conclusions from recent 5G trials, which vertical sectors are the most challenging ones for introducing 5G technologies, and which verticals will be the first to adopt 5G services.

At the end of the workshop, Tao Chen from VTT / 5G-DRIVE summarised the workshop presentations and discussions and added some concluding remarks.

More information is on the 5G-DRIVE web.

5G-EVE results were presented

Giada Landi from Nextworks, presented the 5G-EVE paper on ‘The 5G EVE Multi-site Experimental Architecture and Experimentation Workflow’. In her presentation she explained 5G-EVE’s experimental approach for vertical service validation in customizable, end-to-end 5G infrastructures and variable operational conditions. Furthermore, she provided an overview on 5G-EVE’s pilots and use cases as well as details about the architecture of the 5G EVE platform, including its multi-site facility infrastructure and the related deployment roadmap.

Questions from the audience focused mostly on how to use the 5G-EVE platform for the execution of the experiments and which use cases are currently targeted.

The more technical questions explored how 5G-EVE addresses issues related to the multi-site nature of the facility, and which steps of the experiment provisioning, execution and monitoring 5G-EVE automates.

More information about 5G-EVE presentation can be found here.

5G-VINNI panel discussion

Anastasius Gavras from Eurescom and project 5G-VINNI moderated a panel discussion among Prof. Riku Jäntti (Aalto University), Prof. Sławomir Kukliński (Orange), Dr. Ville Niemelä (University of Oulu) and Dr. Maria Guta (ESA). The topic of the panel was “Challenges for further trialling and beyond 5G research”. The panel was attended by about 40 participants that actively contributed to the discussion.

Overall, it was agreed that testbeds and trialling are an essential part of the innovation cycle and that in the near future there cannot be progress without testbeds. Cost is an important element that will always provide the boundary of what testbeds are capable of.

More information about 5G-VINNI presentation here.

5GENESIS Paper presentation

Dr. Valerio Frascolla (INT) presented the paper “Handover optimality in heterogeneous networks” at the 5G and IoT track.

FOKUS FUSECO 2019

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the series FOKUS FUSECO Forum. Tutorials, workshops, live demos, a conference, and discussions with leading operators, manufacturers, integrators as well as various industry verticals will make the most of 5G: state of technology development in terms of standards, products and first solutions derived from international technology and application trials; potential business models in different vertical domains, particularly private networking options and operator network slicing approaches; operator 5G rollout plans, including migration and interworking with 4G, Wi-Fi and satellite networks; relevant 5G testbeds and trials around the globe.

For further information, please visit: https://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/ngni/events/fuseco_forum_2019.

Additional details will be disclosed soon.

2nd 5G City Hackathon

Webinar: SONATA release 5.0

5G Techritory 2019 – One of the world’s leading 5G events

5G Techritory, the 2nd annual Baltic Sea Region 5G Ecosystem Forum is one of the world’s leading 5G technology events that will be held on November 27-29, 2019 in Riga, Latvia.

The Forum is an invitation-only event with up to 1000 industry senior-level participants, including more than 70 speakers from Europe, Asia, and the USA. It is organised by the Electronic Communication Office of Latvia and supported by a number of industry-leading organisations and companies, including 5G IA.

In 2018, the Forum initiated a new and globally unique 5G platform for cross-border, cross-level, and cross-sectoral cooperation for the development of a sustainable 5G ecosystem in the vibrant ICT and innovation-rich Baltic Sea Region, made of 9 countries that together have more than 150 million inhabitants. Now this region is ready to stake its claim for 5G leadership and to set up the 5G agenda for 2020 and beyond.

The main objective of the Forum is to team up for coordinated action to continue the development of the above-mentioned platform in order to establish the Baltic Sea Region as a role model for building the European Gigabit society.

The main Forum will take place from November 28-29 with more than 5 value-adding official side events (the first-ever 5G policymakers’ hackathon, a 5G key stakeholders’ roundtable, the “Meet the 5G Technology” expo, etc.) involving some of the main global and regional 5G stakeholders.

The Forum will include high-level business and political debates, and practical business case studies by top-level 5G policymakers, heads of major industry organisations, business leaders, and other high-value stakeholders on the latest progress in 5G global commercialization, its related innovative business models, and potential 5G cross-border projects. A focus will be placed on smart mobility, smart city, smart media and entertainment, and Industry 4.0 verticals. Watch the video here to get a flavour of what is in store for you at 5G Techritory.

Are you interested in participating?

If you are interested in participating in the event, please register via this unique link here at your earliest convenience for complimentary access. Due to a limited number of seats, registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

It is possible to extend this invitation to your cooperation partners – the leading stakeholders within the 5G ecosystem.

More details about the Forum, including the preliminary agenda, profiles of confirmed speakers, special prices on flights and accommodation are available on http://www.5gtechritory.com​.

5G-DRIVE workshop on V2X

The main objective of the workshop is to showcase 5G-DRIVE’s key outcomes, progresses and plans on the V2X topics halfway through the project, including joint trialling activities with the Chinese twin project led by China Mobile. The workshop builds synergy with 5G-MOBIX, another 5G-PPP project, sharing lessons learned, insights, challenges, and opportunities seen in the V2X sector in the 5G era.

The half-day workshop takes the opportunity of and co-locates with ITS Factory 2^nd Development Forum to meet and share ideas with key stakeholders that come from a nice mixture of industry and research background, with a focus on engaging small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The workshop itself is composed of two major parts of interaction with our audience:

•  Workshop/seminar: featuring keynote speakers and a panel discussion
• Outdoor demonstration

Register and get more information on the event page of the 5G-Drive website.

MWC Barcelona 2020

The next MWC Barcelona (formerly Mobile World Congress) is scheduled from February 24 to 27, 2020.

The event will bring major opportunities for  5G PPP projects.

Additional information on 5G PPP presence will come soon

EuCNC 2020

The EuCNC 2020, supported by the European Commission, is taking place in Dubrovnik, Croatia and is scheduled from June 15 to 18, 2020.

5G PPP projects will participate in the event, which will bring significant opportunities.

Additional details will be disclosed soon.