DRESDEN, Germany; May 11, 2017 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and the 5G Lab Germany at Technische Universität Dresden are collaborating to create sustainable use cases that will help accelerate the adoption of 5G mobile networks – which is expected to generate economic and societal benefits for communities globally – and to maximise business opportunities for 5G.

Like earlier generations of mobile networks, 5G – the proposed next telecommunications standard – focuses on improving speed and latency to enable communications service providers to deliver a better user experience to their customers. Commercial availability of 5G is expected to roll out by 2020.

5G will be a heterogeneous end-to-end network environment that supports a wide range of devices. Its architecture will be based on a hybrid hardware and software infrastructure and incorporate network function virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) to incorporate intelligence and automation. It will also encompass mobile and fixed network infrastructure; devices ranging from smartphones and wearables to machines; and network and management functions.

The 5G Lab Germany at Technische Universität Dresden is an interdisciplinary team with more than 600 researchers from 22 different research areas of the university that aims to deliver key technologies for enabling 5G. The lab carries out research in four tracks: hardware and silicon; wireless; network and cloud; and tactile internet applications. This holistic 5G view is the core theme of the lab, which will help to define the capability of 5G mobile networks in meeting the massive connectivity demands of the future across Industry 4.0; transportation systems; smart grids; health care; and others ranging from agriculture to construction. Accenture’s involvement focuses on the tactile internet application track.

“5G will have a larger impact on our lives than previous generations of mobile communication systems and it will create significant opportunities in the B2B market. But it will bring with it many challenges and require changes to provide the necessary diverse technology components and services,” said Gianluca Noya, managing director in Accenture’s Networks practice. “For example, the ecosystem and monetization paradigm will need to be reinvented, as services will be provided from many different industries – not just telecoms and media, but automotive, health care and others. The aim of our investment is to accelerate the move from innovative thinking to operationalized profitable services in a multi-industry ecosystem.”

Dr. Gerhard Fettweis, a professor and coordinator of the 5G Lab Germany at Technische Univerität Dresden, said,

“Understanding how to run and operate 5G networks is clearly a challenge to be addressed and discussed early. We are eager to learn about real-world examples from Accenture’s experience of 4G that can help us prepare for 5G.”