Oct 26, 2018

In order to reach its ambitious goal of making 5G services available by 2020 to all member states, the European Commission – the EU’s most important legislative body –gathered policy makers and industry leaders from across the Union to discuss 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) standardization.

Ericsson is one of the key industry players who will be submitting 3GPP NR specifications as an ITU IMT-2020 candidate. During the 3GPP workshop hosted by the European Commission in Brussels, held October 24-25, Ericsson experts emphasized the importance of supporting global interoperability and availability of 5G.

Håkan Djuphammar, Head of Standardization at Ericsson, says: “If we want our industry to be at the forefront of the next generation of technology, we must make exceptional innovation the key benchmark. Of all the standards for cellular technologies that we’ve contributed to over the decades, the ones for 5G are the most essential to get right as they will lay the foundation for the age of automation.”

A limited number of experts were invited to present details of 5G NR standardization and Ericsson was well represented by key standardization leaders who have prominent roles in the 3GPP. Håkan Ohlsén, ITU-R WP5D Vice-Chairman, introduced the event, and Gino Masini, 3GPP RAN WG3 Chairman, introduced the NR Radio Access Network architecture. Havish Koorapaty, 3GPP RAN WG1 Vice-Chairman explained the physical layer structure, numerology and spectrum utilization and Asbjörn Grövlen, Technical Coordinator of the Ericsson 3GPP RAN WG1 team, presented the evolution path from LTE. Grövlen also presented the link budget template for the IMT-2020 submission to ITU.

In September 2018, Ericsson representatives also participated in the White House-sponsored, 5G Summit in Washington, D.C. The aim was to share insights and foster discussions centered around spectrum and standards. During the standards part of the discussion, Ericsson emphasized the importance of enforcing the World Trade Organization-backed principles of consensus, openness, balance and due process in both technical standards and governance development in standard development bodies.