5G standardization work encounters obstacles, and the launch of standards may be delayed

The high-speed 3GPP 5G standard work may encounter obstacles. SRG's latest report shows that projects related to 5G non-standalone NR specification work have been postponed or stopped. SRG President Michael Thelander said at a recent 3GPP meeting that research projects related to the 15th and 16th versions of the 5G standard have been affected by delays.

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Thelander said that in order to complete the work in June as soon as possible and focus more on December, they realized that they could not spend extra time on other things, such as the 16th edition research project. He pointed out that the current "freeze" on new standards, or the discussion on the importance of standards work, will be in effect until at least September. He also pointed out: "We are not delaying the completion date of the research projects, but we have no resources allocated to these projects, so the project time must be adjusted. If we do not plan the time and resource allocation of the project in advance, the project will be delayed. In the case of insufficient time and resources, we can either choose to streamline the functions or delay the release of version 16."

Thelander cited the standardization work on Short TTI as an example. The technology aims to reduce latency from 15 to 20 milliseconds on LTE networks to about 8 milliseconds. This move is important for the deployment of 5G networks, as LTE will maintain wider coverage and provide network performance similar to 5G to support 5G use cases. Thelander said that preliminary work on this technology would be completed in September. However, it has been officially delayed to December. Although Short TTI is not mandatory for initial 5G deployments, operators hope that 5G and LTE networks can coexist. In addition, similar problems have arisen in the work on narrowband IoT technology. Thelander explained: "If there is ambiguity or correction in the specification, then commercial multi-vendor solutions cannot be used. This will lead to vendor misunderstandings and 5G interoperability issues." SRG said that the 15th version of the standard work will be completed in June 2018. The fast track of 5G

Earlier this year, 3GPP, under pressure from operators, agreed to move up the deadline for the 5G non-standalone NR specification from June 2018 to December 2017, while Release 15 of the standard is still scheduled for release in June 2018. "The 3GPP update schedule keeps the overall Release 15 schedule unchanged, with operators and vendors wanting the 5G NR standard to be released sooner rather than replaced by other standards," SRG said in a research report. Several operators and vendors said at the 2017 Mobile World Congress that they advocated for 3GPP to quickly launch the relevant standards. Among them, AT&T has long been a supporter of the 5G NR standard, and other operators include Sprint, Telstra, BT, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, Korea Telecom, LG Uplus, SK Telecom and Vodafone. Vendors supporting the proposal include Ericsson, Qualcomm, Huawei, Intel and ZTE. Adam Koeppe, vice president of operator technology planning at Verizon, said Verizon believes that the update schedule of 3GPP and the current framework can support the company's goals. "Verizon supports the adoption of 3GPP protocols that are in line with industry standards direction to enable early 5G product development, core network evolution, and accelerate the realization of 5G," Koeppe said in a statement. AT&T and Verizon will begin commercial deployment of 5G-based services next year.