AT&T has announced a 5G roadmap that will begin with lab tests with Ericsson and Intel in the second quarter, followed by field trials in Austin this summer and the provision of 5G fixed wireless in some of the city’s locations by the end of the year. The operator, which holds several dozen 5G-related patents (millimetre wave, NFV, SDN), said the trials will help guide its 5G standards contributions. The trials will also set the stage for widespread commercial and mobile availability once the technical standards are established. AT&T said it would conduct its 5G trials in a way that will allow it to pivot to compliant commercial deployments once the technology standards are set. 3GPP is likely to complete the first phase of that process in 2018.
AT&T also revealed that data traffic on its wireless network grew more than 150,000 percent from 2007 through 2015, driven largely by video. More than 60 percent of the data traffic on its total network was video in 2015. UHD 4K video, virtual reality and IoT will drive the next wave of traffic growth. 5G is ideal for those bandwidth-hungry applications because it will support multiple radio interfaces, enable more spectrum efficiency, and take advantage of SDN and NFV.
In the words of AT&T chief strategy officer John Donovan, “New experiences like virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, smart cities and more are about to test networks like never before. These technologies will be immersive, pervasive and responsive to customers. 5G will help make them a reality. 5G will reach its full potential because we will build it on a software-centric architecture that can adapt quickly to new demands and give customers more control of their network services. Our approach is simple, deliver a unified experience built with 5G, software-defined networking (SDN), Big Data, security and open source software.”
