BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU countries and lawmakers have struck a deal to free up radio frequencies for next-generation 5G services that will be valid for 20 years, as the bloc tries to catch up with the United States and China in rolling out internet-connected products.

Telecoms lobbying group ETNO, whose members include Orange, Telefonica and Telecom Italia, criticized the deal, however, saying it lacked ambition and that a timeframe of at least 25 years was needed.

The provisional agreement late on Thursday came after months of squabbling between EU governments seeking to guard a lucrative source of revenue and cash-strapped telecoms providers looking for new ways to boost profits.

Next-generation 5G services promise to deliver not just faster phones and video, but also connected cars and internet-connected industrial sensors over the next decade.

Under the agreement, 5G will be available throughout the bloc by 2020, with spectrum guaranteed for a minimum of 20 years.

The deal will facilitate the roll-out of connected vehicles, health-related services, smart cities and incentivize telecoms operators to speed up 5G networks, Pilar del Castillo, the European Parliament’s lead negotiator on the issue, said.

The issue is part of the European Commission’s reforms of telecoms rules known as the European Electronic Communications Code. The EU executive wants to get formal agreement on this topic during Bulgaria’s presidency of the bloc which ends in June.

Commission digital chief Andrius Ansip said the deal should spur all involved parties to agree on other reforms.

ETNO chairman Phillip Malloch said the reforms should have been bolder.

“5G will not be accelerated by a piecemeal reform, as Europe requires strong peer review and predictable licenses of at least 25 years. It appears negotiations still lack the ambitious direction everyone was looking for,” he said.

China is the world’s biggest 5G market by far.</s>5G was the buzzword at the Mobile World Congress, the biggest annual conference and exhibition for the mobile industry, held this week in Barcelona, Spain.

Companies plastered the venue halls with prominent slogans, from “5G is now”, “Leading 5G innovation” and “Network towards 5G” to “5G is happening faster than we expected”.

Those catchphrases about the next generation of ultra-fast wireless technology may mean little to most people outside the mobile industry.

Yet 5G is what will enable a lot of the science fiction-like technologies being talked about today, such as autonomous cars and smart cities.

On a 5G network, a connected car travelling at 100 kilometres per hour (62 miles per hour) will have moved just 2.8 centimetres, or little more than inch, from the time it detects an obstacle to when it activates the brakes, according to estimates by Huawei Technologies.

That could be the difference between life and death.

Today’s 4G networks are unsuitable for the quick response times needed in autonomous driving.

Smartphone users will be able to send ultra-high 4k resolution video within a few seconds. Bandwidth-hungry video games, augmented and virtual reality technologies will be seamless, offering a more immersive experience.

A 5G network will be able to support the increasing number of connected devices around the world, from fitness-tracking watches to internet-linked television and computer systems that run a city’s traffic lights.

How soon will 5G be rolled out?

The first commercial 5G networks should start coming online from 2020, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

Many mobile network operators are conducting 5G trials in cities from Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Yinchuan in northwestern China to San Francisco in the United States and Frankfurt in Germany.

Will the roads be filled with self-driving cars once 5G is rolled out?

Autonomous cars and other mobility services require more support infrastructure than your smartphone.

Self-driving cars require sensors, artificial intelligence and roadside base stations for connectivity to allow vehicles to “talk” to each other and avoid collisions or hit pedestrians.

These equipment may need to be deployed at the street level on lamp posts or traffic lights.

One of the first 5G smartphones is expected to be launched in the second half of this year by Huawei, China’s biggest smartphone brand.

The release of a range of 5G smartphones that can also work on existing 4G networks is widely expected later next year, after the standards are set and spectrum is allocated.

About 1 billion people globally are likely to use 5G mobile services within five years, leading to US$12.3 trillion in worldwide economic output by the mid-2030s, according to estimates from Ericsson and IHS Markit.</s>Ryan Ding, Huawei Executive Director and President of Carrier Business Group, shared his views and vision for 5G with the industry at the "5G is Now" Summit during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018.

During his remarks, Ding noted: "Looking back, we can see how technology has driven social change: 2G kicked off an era of global communications; 3G and 4G brought us mobile internet; and 5G marks the start of a new, intelligent world, with all things sensing, all things connected, and all things intelligent."

Ten years ago, when 4G was still just a pipe dream, it was hardly imaginable that we would be buying plane tickets, booking hotels, ordering taxis, and paying bills… all at the touch of a phone screen. Smartphones are our portals to the digital world. And in the coming 5G world, networks will connect things, as well as people. It will be a world where all things are sensing, all things are connected, and all things are intelligent. We are going to see the emergence of many things that we cannot imagine today. On the roads, self-driving cars will communicate through the 5G network, and traffic jams, accidents, and parking problems will become a thing of the past. Groceries and other purchases will be carried to us through the air by drone, arriving in our hands within minutes. The blind will perceive the world using assistive technologies. 5G will be the portal to the digital world for everything and every person.

Steam engines unleashed huge productive power, ushering in the industrial era. In the future, 5G will also be a game changer for many industries. Therefore, industries must invest in 5G as early as possible to get a head start on digital transformation. 5G is a major opportunity for carriers, and as digital transformation spreads, the opportunities for carriers will grow bigger. The connection of all things will create a new trillion-dollar market.

5G cannot be deployed overnight. It requires the transformation of the entire network, and we must act now.
• Antenna incorporation: The space at sites is too crowded to accommodate 5G antennas. To prepare antennas for 5G deployment, we must upgrade existing antennas so that they can support 5G spectrum.
• Air interface cloudification: Cloudified 5G air interfaces enable the dynamic sharing of 2G/3G/4G/5G spectrum, making it easier to migrate more spectrum to 5G.
• Indoor digitization: The existing distributed antenna system (DAS) is barely capable of supporting 5G. Therefore, we need a digital system to support the smooth migration to 5G in the future.
• Bearer network upgrades: The deployment of 5G bearer networks takes longer than access networks, so carriers must act now. For 5G networks to meet transmission needs, we need 10G for sites, 50G for metro networks, and end-to-end 200–400G for backbone networks.
• Operation automation: 5G will make network operations even more complex. The existing operating model will cause high OPEX that carriers will find difficult to sustain. Therefore, carriers must evolve towards automated and intelligent operations to effectively respond to their customers' needs in the 5G era.
• Architecture cloudification: Data center-centric, cloudified architecture is the foundation for automated and intelligent operations. This architecture offers strong computing power for networks and users. Cloudified architecture can create synergies between cloud and networks to better serve a digital industry and provide one-stop services to enterprises more quickly.

There will be myriad uncertainties in the 5G era, and carriers will need a reliable strategic partner to see them through. Working with Huawei, carriers will see a lot of benefits in the 5G era.
• Carriers will work with six 5G industry alliances and over 300 partners worldwide. Huawei has worked with partners from multiple vertical industries to develop extensive 5G use cases. With the support of Huawei, the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) was established in September 2016, and the 5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation (5GACIA) was established in October 2017. Huawei X Labs has worked with over 270 global industry partners to develop 5G applications and has released ten 5G use cases. We are now working with our partners on 47 projects involving innovative 5G applications.
• Carriers will gain access to a full range of 5G solutions. In 2018, Huawei will launch an end-to-end 5G commercial system based on 3GPP specifications. Huawei's wireless access network products are a portfolio of base stations with multiple bands (sub-3GHz, C-band, and millimeter wave) and multiple forms (macro stations and micro stations). These base stations can adapt to various scenarios, such as tube towers, and rooftop and other poles. Among these base stations, the most noteworthy include the world's smallest 3D-MIMO and a new BBU platform boasting the strongest processing capabilities to date.
• Carriers will benefit from US$10–20 billion of R&D investment. In 2017, Huawei invested over US$12 billion in R&D, ranking 6th globally, and plans to invest CNY5 billion in 5G R&D in 2018. Huawei will continue to invest US$10–20 billion in R&D every year. The company now has over 5,000 staff working on 5G R&D.
• Carriers will partner with over 300 top 5G scientists. Since Huawei deployed the world's first 4G LTE network in 2009, we have engaged in 5G R&D and recruited over 300 of the world's best wireless scientists to work on 5G development. To date, Huawei has established more than ten 5G research centers in countries including France, the US, and Germany.

Huawei helps its customers build 5G networks. More importantly, we are committed to working with global industry partners to help our customers succeed in their 5G business. We will help customers build better 5G capabilities in every area, from technology and ecosystem, to applications, AI, cloud, professional services, and consultancy. Together, let's move towards a fully connected, intelligent world.</s>For the past few years, all of us in the industry have been talking about 5G. Much of the discussion has been around the excitement of new spectrum and radios to enable that – it was all about ENABLING 5G. This year is different – the discussion now is about what we are all DOING with 5G.There are a lot of vendors talking about 5G architectures, new things like Mobile Edge Compute (MEC) – where we’re moving the cloud closer and closer to the edge of the network. But as I said, now it’s really all about what new services 5G enables – and that’s where Cisco plays a strong role.
• Services – how we enable 5G services so service providers (SPs) can make more money;
• Infrastructure – how we help build the 5G infrastructure;
• Automation – how we make this mass scale simpler to operate.

So, let me share a bit about each one of these areas.

With 5G, we help SPs move from being bandwidth providers to Network as a Services (NaaS) providers – including for enterprise customers who are asking for dedicated and secure network slices on-the-fly. We help with that through our 5G-enabled IP products, our 5G packet core, our cloud services, and with our service enablement. At MWC, we are demonstrating network slicing and how we are giving our customers the ability to control the network, using technologies like Segment Routing and IPv6.

Read the entire article here, It’s all about 5G Services, Automation and Infrastructure

Via the fine folks at Cisco Systems.</s>5G wireless connectivity is coming this year, and companies are running a full-court press to make sure you know about it.

BARCELONA — 5G wireless is coming faster than you might think. But as the advent of this next generation of over-the-air broadband draws near, the hype surrounding it is starting to ebb.

Last year, a typical quote about 5G might have sounded like the declaration that Meredith Attwell Baker, president of the wireless trade group CTIA, made at a conference in September: “5G will make every industry and every part of our lives better.”

And now? The rhetoric is a bit more subdued. “5G is going to be an incremental upgrade,” T-Mobile (TMUS) chief technical officer Neville Ray said at a press conference Tuesday night at Mobile World Congress 2018.

Yes, 5G will eventually bring much faster downloads and much lower latency — but it’s not going to replace 4G the way 4G wiped 3G off the map. And it won’t come to smartphones until after it reaches other, larger devices.

Signs of 5G’s progress from marketing visions and bulky testing gear to deployment schedules and early versions of consumer hardware were all over the floor here at MWC.

Qualcomm (QCOM), for instance, showed off prototypes of the X50 5G chipset it will make for 5G smartphones that will ship next year. A model running a network-bandwidth test showed download speeds hovering at around 4 gigabits per second, about 100 times faster than 4G LTE.

And all four national U.S. carriers are advertising 5G availability timetables.

Verizon (VZ) looks to be first. In November, the carrier announced it will launch “fixed wireless” residential 5G in Sacramento, Calif., in the second half of this year, with two to four other cities following. In an interview Tuesday, chief network engineering officer Nicola Palmer reiterated that schedule and said a mobile 5G service “will quickly follow.”

AT&T (T) released its own 5G timeline last week, touting plans to deliver “mobile 5G” to a dozen cities (with only Georgia, Dallas and Waco, Tex., named) by the end of 2018. What that press release didn’t spell out: This access will initially be confined to mobile hotspots, because no 5G smartphones will ship until 2019.

Sprint (S) said Tuesday that it will launch mobile 5G service “in the first half of 2019,” while customers in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington will get “5G-like” service this year as it upgrades its network to prepare for 5G.

Later Tuesday, T-Mobile announced that it will build 5G networks in 30 cities, with smartphone service due next year in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, and Las Vegas.

“5G is happening fast — even faster than we or anyone else expected,” Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri summed up at a press conference Sunday.

Beyond the residential, hotspot and smartphone 5G services we’ll see, it’s also important to remember that 5G will come over three main sets of frequencies with their own trade-offs.

The fastest 5G, like what that Qualcomm chipset showed off, will come via millimeter-wave frequencies at 24 GHz and above — far higher than today’s LTE bands. The tradeoff there: They won’t cover as much distance. It’s similar to how a 5-GHz Wi-Fi signal won’t reach as far as across your house as a 2.4-GHz network.</s>BARCELONA—Next year's Mobile World Congress will feature the first 5G phones, hotspots, and a wealth of other 5G devices to go with early 5G networks, top executives in the mobile industry told PCMag this week.

For device fans, MWC 2018 was a little frustrating. While there were a lot of new phones, there weren't a lot of dramatic new ideas. The Galaxy S9 and Sony XZ2 are rock-solid flagships, but essentially incremental. We liked phones from Cat and Doro, but they weren't Earth-shattering either. Smaller vendors were largely busy copying Apple's screen notches. The radical 5G visions we started to see last year—with AR, VR, remote education and surgery, and smart cities—were largely on repeat.

The mobile industry, which attracted 100,000 people to a rainy convention center in Barcelona—isn't in crisis, it's just in transition. 5G is where a lot of the innovative energy is, but it's taking a few years to develop.

Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm acknowledged this transitional pause; "we forecast a falling [radio access network] market this year...and then a slight decline before you see growth because of 5G."

Behind the scenes, though, we've gone from 5G vision to implementation, chipmaker Qualcomm's president Cristiano Amon said. "Last year at MWC, we ran an aggressive campaign to accelerate 5G," he said. "This year at MWC, it's some of the same things but much more mature, at much more scale. What I felt is, this stuff is now real."

5G consumer devices are already being built behind the scenes, and in some cases in front of them. Samsung showed off an actually working version of its first 5G home modem, which it's launching later this year in Sacramento with Verizon.

"Think about us. Since last year, we started talking about 5G and announced the X50 [5G modem], there's [now] 20 designs on X50. It's not like an idea of 5G. There are 20 products being built with X50," Amon said.

I heard from several sources that AT&T's first 5G device, potentially launching around Christmas this year, will be a Netgear hotspot similar to the Nighthawk M1, with Qualcomm X24 4G and X50 5G modems running in parallel. That will get the ball rolling on 5G gadgets, which will really take off at MWC 2019.

Chris Pearson, president of trade group 5G Americas, agreed that next year's show will have a lot more in terms of innovative consumer gadgets and retail applications. "I think [next year's show] is going to be the 5G ecosystem that's being built," Pearson said. "It will be less about the infrasrtucture of the vendors, and more about what's going to be out there utilizing 5G."

After Smartphones, It Gets Weirder

On the floor at the show, T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray and Sprint CTO John Saw said they'd expect to see new smartphones that work on their respective 5G networks at the show next year.

"I think we'll start to see devices come onto the landscape, and I think there will be a lot more discussion around 5G devices [next year]," Ray said.

That's just the beginning of the 5G devices you'll see at future shows, Ray said. Smart sensors and the Internet of Things will really flourish during the "latter part of '19 and into '20 for sure," and 2020 may be the year all of those AR and VR headsets finally become usable.

"I think it's going to take into 2020 before we start to see really compelling use cases that really leverage the latency of 5G networks for the consumer," Ray said.

In a back-room demo in Qualcomm's booth, I saw something called "5G split rendering VR," which combines cloud- and device-based rendering to create a much more realistic walkaround VR scene than I'd seen on other non-tethered, non-PC-based headsets. In a scene set in a spaceship, the metal had a range of sheen and reflections from multiple light sources, and a cloud of smoke rendered gorgeously.

"I think we'll see this all evolve," said Andrea Caldini, VP of field network, east at Verizon. "When I think of 5G and what we can do with 5G, we're just at the tip of the iceberg. I think of immersive learning for my children, instead of sitting in a classroom, to be able to go, travel there, to touch it."

There will still be hiccups. Like on the 3G/4G transition, we may see 5G devices that work on one network or in one country, but not others, as they're all using different 5G spectrum.

"Everyone believes in spectrum harmonization, but let's be honest with ourselves, we're still battling with LTE roaming domestically as well as internationally," Ray said. "It's going to be impossible in many of the early 5G products to manage an international roaming set for 5G roaming."

Much as we try to guess what's coming with 5G, execs at the show pointed out that the network will create its own, unexpected uses. We'll see smartphones next year because that's what everybody knows how to build, and what everybody knows how to make work. But just as nobody predicted that SMS texting would take off with 2G cellular, or that 4G would enable Snapchat and Uber, MWC 2020 will probably focus on a trend we haven't even heard of yet.

"We'll be back here in a year, two years, with me saying, 'Wow, who would have thought of THAT?'" Caldini said.</s>Next-generation mobile devices might be the key to ushering in the era of 5G networks.

5G was a hot topic at the 2018 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Verizon and Samsung once again spearheaded the conversation and likewise reignited the race to introducing 5G networks in the United States.

According to CNET, Verizon and Samsung shared the companies’ joint effort on making 5G a reality at the 2017 MWC last year. Roger Gurnani, who was the VP of Communications at Verizon at the time, talked about the field trials that the companies conducted in their quest to develop 5G service.

Gurnani surprised both the Samsung executive who shared the stage with him at the 2017 MWC and the world when he proclaimed that Samsung would have a 5G phone by 2018. Unfortunately, Gurnani’s prediction did not come true. There was no sight of a 5G phone at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

However, Gurnani’s bold statement at last year’s Mobile World Congress seems to have reignited the race for 5G networks in the United States. At the 2018 MWC, more mobile carriers shared their plans for 5G connection.

Once again, Verizon took the lead—this time with AT&T— and announced their plan to launch limited 5G service by the end of 2018. Verizon’s Chief Technology Officer, Hans Vestberg, gave little information about the company’s 5G launch but did promise that the mobile carrier would be the first to offer 5G service. Meanwhile, AT&T plans to have 5G service available for its consumers by the end of 2018. Sprint and T-Mobile announced their intention to release 5G service by 2019.

Based on a report by Reuters, introducing 5G will come at a steep price. Theoretically, 5G networks can open up the world to a whole new level of connectivity from self-driving cars to smart homes and more.

However, it seems the mobile industry will introduce consumers to 5G service. So far, smartphones with 5G capability are not on the market. According to Reuters, Qualcomm gave the world a sneak peek at 5G phone chipset at the 2018 MWC. It was a prototype at best, leading most analysts at the event in Barcelona to predict that 5G smartphones would not be widely available until 2019—the same time Sprint and T-Mobile plan to launch their 5G service nationwide in the U.S. An alleged 5G device was also exhibited by a small smartphone manufacturer in Barcelona, but when the unit was dropped, the internals were revealed to be empty.

Currently, the U.S. seems to be ahead of the 5G race based on the 2018 MWC. Asia is a close second with Japan and South Korea slated to launch 5G service by 2019. China, another significant leader in the tech industry, is predicted to join the 5G race in 2020. Reuters reported that 5G networks will be slowly introduced in Europe starting in 2020 and will not take drastic steps to launch the service nationwide until 2025.</s>MTN teams up with ZTE for 5G

The MTN group and ZTE have signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on 5G network architectures.

 According to the agreement signed yesterday at MWC 2018, both parties, on the basis of existing cooperation, will jointly conduct a series of technology verification tests and assessments in 5G, to strengthen MTN’s position and accelerate the commercialisation of 5G in MEA.

ZTE will provide MTN Group comprehensive technical support. Specifically, in phase one test in 2018, ZTE will collaborate with MTN to complete both lab and field tests in 5G NR, 5G virtualised network slicing, carrier-class DevOps and container-based vEPC, and 5G Flexhaul bearer network.

With these tests in end-to-end networks, applications and terminals, the two parties will complete the joint verification of 5G technology architecture, business model and user experience, expecting to lay a foundation for MTN to take the lead in 5G deployment in MEA.

“ZTE has always been a long-term strategic partner of MTN Group,” says Babak Fouladi, chief technology information officer of MTN Group. “After extensive partnerships on 2G, 3G and 4G, we are excited to be collaborating with ZTE on 5G.

“We believe 5G is an evolutionary step in getting connectivity, data and access to our customers. We are looking forward to continuing our journey in the 5G innovations and through that, we can strengthen existing cooperation and jointly explore the future direction of network construction and technology evolution, and bring services to our customers.

“MTN and ZTE always think about the customers at the first priority,” he adds. “Providing best services to customers is more important than technology and efficiency.”

Xu Huijun, chief technology officer of ZTE, says: “As the world’s leading provider of ICT solutions, ZTE pioneers in the field of 5G, our core strategy. We believe that the cooperation in 5G field this time will help MTN leverage its performance as the best carrier, and enable it to build a world-class network.”</s>BARCELONA: Blazing fast 5G wireless networks promise to unlock the potential of internet connected devices, or the Internet of Things—making driverless cars and talking fridges a reality.

With most European operators targeting 2020 for its rollout, 5G is the term on everyone’s lips at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Like the 4G networks currently widely available, 5G is based on radio frequencies, the same used for television broadcasts, walkie-talkies, wi-fi signals or a garage door remote control.

It will use a higher radio frequency that are not in use and can move data at a much faster speed.

But since higher radio frequencies don’t travel as far as lower frequencies, it will rely on denser arrays of small antennas and artificial intelligence to offer data speeds up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks.

What can it do?

5G will allow people to send texts, make calls, and browse the web as always—but will dramatically increase the speed at which data is transferred across the network.

This will make it easier to download and upload Ultra HD and 3D video and allow smartphones to run more complex mobile internet apps.

5G will also make room for the thousands of internet-connected devices entering our everyday world.

The combination of speed and quicker response times could unlock the full capabilities of other hot trends in technology, offering a boost to self-driving cars, drones, virtual reality and the wider Internet of Things.

Beyond speed, the biggest benefit of 5G is its low latency, or the short lag time between a device pinging the network and getting a response.

A 5G network virtually eliminates it, meaning a surgeon may not need to be in the same room as a patient in the future for example.

Why is 5G seen as essential?

The tech industry is counting on 5G to trigger a wave of growth in equipment sales and mobile services.

For years telecom operators and device makers have debated common standards, which will make it possible to have a similar network everywhere and develop products that could be targeted to it.

What are the obstacles to its adoption?

The industry is still fighting over the nitty-gritty details of the technology itself and a lack of common standards could slow its adoption.

5G compatible phones are still not on the market and in many countries 4G deployment is not yet complete. In a number of African countries it is only just starting.

Deutsche Telekom CEO Timotheus Hoettges has estimated the cost of providing 5G networks in Europe alone at EUR300 billion to EUR500 billion ($370 billion to $615 billion).

5G also faces competition from other technologies that may be better suited for the connected devices, such as French firm Sigfox’s non-cellular IoT network or LoRa, a rival non-standardized low power wide area (LPWA) offering backed by France-based Orange amongst others.</s>In separate deals coming just after this year’s Mobile World Congress, United States and European Union officials have reached agreements to hasten the allocation of radio spectrum for next-generation 5G wireless networks, Reuters reports. Both governments were spurred to action by the threat of becoming internationally non-competitive, as representatives moved faster than might have been imagined only a week earlier.

In the United States, senators and representatives from both the Republican and Democratic sides said that they have agreed on a bill that lets the FCC receive upfront payments from 5G spectrum bidders, resolving an issue FCC Chairman Ajit Pai identified earlier this week, and enabling auctions of 5G radio spectrum to go forward. The bill also includes provisions to identify additional 5G spectrum and reduce bureaucracy in the infrastructure building process. A vote in the House is expected on Tuesday, March 6.

If passed, the bill will enable the FCC to proceed with planned auctions of 28GHz and 24GHz millimeter wave spectrum, which were tentatively scheduled for November pending Congressional action. Pai suggested that the auctions would be delayed if Congress failed to act by May 13, but the rapid Congressional response suggests that the U.S. government is impressively ready to expedite 5G when asked. The FCC’s next move will likely be to open up 3.7-4.2MHz midband spectrum, another key 5G enabler.

In Europe, meanwhile, lawmakers representing European Union countries agreed late last night to free up 5G radio frequencies for a 20-year time period. While Reuters reports that a telecommunications industry lobbying group was seeking at least a 25-year timeframe, the deal enables 5G spectrum to become available throughout the EU by 2020.

Similar to the U.S., European countries are focusing on 3.6GHz midband and 26GHz millimeter wave spectrum bands for 5G. The 3.6GHz spectrum will likely prove better suited to handheld devices, as its radio signals are not as position-sensitive, while the 26GHz spectrum can more easily be used in so-called “fixed 5G” hardware designed to be installed and used in one place.

Both of the deals are expected to hasten the arrival of autonomous cars, smart cities, fully wireless virtual reality, and ultra high-speed mobile internet services. In the United States, AT&T and Verizon have both committed to 5G rollouts later this year, while European carriers have made only tentative steps towards rolling out 5G, citing regulatory and financial uncertainties — a situation likely to improve with the latest agreements.
European Union lawmakers strike a deal on opening up the 3.6 and 26 GHz bandwidths by 2020 to make room for the new 5G network.