South Korean Government is going to set up ‘Proceeding Strategy 2.0 for 5G Mobile Communication (tentative name)’ that will foresee 2020.
Its goal is to respond to visions of 5G that were defined by International Telecommunication Union 16 (ITU) and bring out practical results in Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018. When an actual road map is out, process of preparing for 5G, which will be done by industries, universities, research institutes, and South Korean Government, will actually take place.
According to communication industry, Ministry of Science, ICP and Future Planning (MSIP) has started a process of upgrading ‘Strategies for Developing Future Mobile Telecommunication Industry’ that was announced in early 2014. Its goal is to modify and supplement strategies according to requirements that were decided by ITU 16’s ITU-Radio’s Working Party 5D (WP5D) last year. Strategic move to respond to roadmap of 5G standardization that is set up by international standardization group called 3GPP66 also lies under MSIP’s strategy.
“When strategies were being prepared in 2014, concept of 5G was still unclear.” said Park Hyun-chul who is the CP of Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion (IITP)’s Mobile Telecommunication. “Our goal is to supplement and reinforce strategies according to international visions that are newly decided.”
MSIP and related organizations have defined 5G as a technology and service that is 1,000 times faster than 4G as they were announcing 5G strategies in 2014. They had introduced it as a technology that provides personal 1Gbps transmission speed and fast connection speed so that people, things and information can be connected whenever and wherever. They had also prepared follow-up plans such as early vitalization of 5G market, global mutual assistance of standardization and others.
As 2 years have passed by, there are some things that need to be supplemented. First of all, name of 5G is decided as ‘IMT-2020’. Speed is set as 20Gbps. Total of 8 other requirements such as high-speed mobility, frequency efficiency, transmission speed that is actually felt by an user, data processing capacity per area and others were also decided. MSIP believes that it needs new proceeding strategies that correspond to speed and other requirements.
It also needs responses towards standardization schedules that are decided. Starting from Release 14, which is the first step of development of technology standards, 3GPP66 will research early 5G technology standards and finish up Release 15. Release 14 will be finished by first half of next year, and Release 15 will be finished by second half of 2018. A problem is that Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in which South Korea is going to introduce demonstration of 5G for the first time in the world is going to take place in February of 2018.
Because standardization takes place after that, there is a possibility that 5G service that will be introduced by South Korea will fall as a meaningless result. To solve this problem, it needs to develop services that are related to 5G as non-standards and set up a plan so that technologies that will be introduced by South Korea become international standards. This is a reason why new 5G strategies are required.
“Because recent standards have fast development speed, we need to introduce services first and make them international standards afterwards.” said Section Chief Kim Jung-ki of MSIP’s Information Communication Broadcasting Technology Policy. “Because preparation is needed to respond to this task, we are currently in a step where actual hands-on workers have just started discussions.”
It seems that a new roadmap will include strategies that can induce practical results from Pyeongchang Winter Olympics with choices and focus. MSIP is planning to prepare new 5G proceeding strategies in first half of this year by working with IITP, 5G Forum, and GiGA-Korea29 Business Group.
Staff Reporter An, Hochun | hcan@etnews.com