The rush for 5G

Adrian Scrase was first introduced to the world of international standards in the mid-1980s, while he was working for the Radio Regulatory Department of the DTI in London. “It was something I really enjoy doing, working at the leading edge of technology, trying to build consensus among different players. I’d come from a hardcore radio background, radio interference background, so for me this was quite a new piece of work, but I liked the challenge of getting people to pull together and reach consensus.”

Since then, he has risen to become CTO of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which produces globally applicable standards for information and communications technologies (ICT). It is one of the seven organisational partners that make up 3GPP, the body responsible for the creation and maintenance of the standards that allow the cellular industry to realise economies of scale, allow handsets to roam from one network to another and bring new features to market without operators fearing vendor lock-in. With 3GPP Release 14 now frozen, much of the attention has turned to Release 15, which will provide the first wave of features branded as 5G (mainly aimed at enabling enhanced mobile broadband – eMBB), and Release 16, which will provide additional functionality to support the massive IoT and ultra-reliable use cases.