17 Mar 2020

The next steps for 5G

MWC 2020 may have been cancelled, but vendors still unveiled plenty of new products and solutions. Here, Land Mobile picks out a few of the announcements made by some of the major cellular infrastructure vendors.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of new product and solution announcements made over the MWC period related to 5G. 2019 saw the first implementations of 5G in live networks by the early adopter mobile operators. 2020 is expected to see many more operators launching 5G services.

Naturally, cellular infrastructure vendors have been adding new products to their portfolios to help operators implement 5G NSA services and get ready for 5G SA New Radio services in the future. Here is a round-up of some of the new solutions being offered by a few of the major vendors.

Ericsson

Fredrik Jejdling, executive VP and head of business area networks at Ericsson, said 2019 was the year in which 5G was introduced, and the main effort in 2020 is how to scale it up. There are now 13 million 5G subscriptions, and Jejdling estimates there will be 100 million by the end of 2020, with 20 to 25 per cent of MNOs launching 5G this year. He said Ericsson currently has 24 live 5G networks and 81 commercial agreements signed.