The ITU has established a new focus group to identify the network standardization requirements for 5G ahead of its anticipated commercialization in 2020.
The network study will be hosted by the ITU's standardization sector. It will seek to identify the systems that will enable wireless communication to match the speed and reliability provided by fiber.
In addition to voice and video, IMT-2020 (International mobile telecommunications for 2020 and beyond) standardized systems will cover industries and applications ranging from healthcare to industrial automation, VR, self-driving cars and real-time robotic system control.
The ITU said that one-millisecond end-to-end latency will be necessary for technical systems to replicate natural human interaction with the environment.
“Following on from the successful development of IMT-2000 and IMT-Advanced, the standards for all of today's 3G and 4G mobile systems, the work to be carried out by ITU-T on the network aspects will be an important complement to the activities undertaken by ITU-R in developing the radio interface standards for IMT-2020,” ITU director of radiocommunicatios Francois Rancy said.
Huaweei's head of 5G R&D Wen Tong added that ““5G will power a wide range of new user experiences, but the bottleneck remains the speed of the network. Everyone in the ICT ecosystem needs to work together. This is the most important condition for us to realize 5G.”