Swedish vendor Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) to launch joint research and development of 5G.
Ericsson aims to team up with CAICT to speed up the research and standardization of 5G technologies toward its commercialization around 2020. CAICT is a leading information communications technology think tank in China that has been a pioneer of 3G and 4G standards.
"CAICT is as committed as Ericsson to the international standardization of technologies through cooperation," said Cao Shumin, president of CAICT, in a press release. "We believe this is essential for achieving global economies of scale and fostering innovation. China, with a fledging ICT industry infrastructure and the world's largest number of mobile subscriptions, will continue to be a vigorous driver of ICT innovation and sustainable growth."
Ericsson and CAICT have a long history of successful cooperation, according to Ulf Ewaldsson, senior vice president and CTO of Ericsson. "We are very excited to be embarking on this new journey with CAICT towards the development of global 5G standards," he said in the release. "We share the belief that mobile broadband technology benefits society by lifting productivity and the quality of life, and thereby contributing to sustainable development for all."
Ericsson and CAICT have pledged mutual cooperation and support in promoting 5G standardization and agreed to cooperate in research covering key areas such as radio access technology, core network architecture and 5G application scenarios. The two also agreed to share information in the areas of convergence in vertical industries, industry transformation, applications and ecosystem development.
Chinese equipment vendor Huawei also has R&D efforts underway in 5G, including an investment in a 5G test bed at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England. While popular opinion calls for 5G to be commercialized in 2020, Huawei set the ambitious target of 2018 to have a 5G trial underway with MegaFon in Russia for the FIFA World Cup. Huawei has said those 5G trials will be the first in Russia, as well as the first with plans to serve large scale users and machine-to-machine (M2M) devices.
For more:
- see the press release
- see this Total Telecom article
Related articles
Huawei targets 2018 World Cup in Russia for 5G trial
Ericsson's Vestberg discusses software transformation, 5G aspirations and more
Huawei invests in 5G test bed at University of Surrey
5G requires new radio channel models, says Ericsson Research
Ericsson: 5G will require lots of new spectrum above 10 GHz
Ericsson demo fans the 5G flames as Huawei joins board of Europe's 5G group