Industry standards body the 3GPP has successfully completed the ‘first implementable 5G New Radio (NR) specification’, at a plenary meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. A joint media statement issued by a number of mobile operators and vendors (see below) noted: ‘The completion of the first 5G NR standard has set the stage for the global mobile industry to start full-scale development of 5G NR for large-scale trials and commercial deployments as early as in 2019.’
The participating companies have been listed as AT&T, BT, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, KT Corporation, LG Electronics, LG Uplus, MediaTek, NEC Corporation, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Qualcomm Technologies, Samsung Electronics, SK Telecom, Sony Mobile Communications, Sprint, TIM, Telefonica, Telia Company, T-Mobile US, Verizon, Vodafone and ZTE.