Ulrich Dropmann, Head of Standardization at Nokia and this year's World 5G Summit chairman, talks about the changes in 5G from last year to now and what he expects from this year's summit.
We were lucky enough to get some additional interview questions with him as well:
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This Summer Nokia Had A Huge Milestone, By Launching The World’s First Commercially Deployed Cloud-based 5G Radio Access Network. Can You Expand On That More And Explain Its Significance?
At Nokia, last year, we launched a 5G cloud-based drive. The transformation of the networks will be one of the biggest issues in 5G. We had seen the transformation to cloud-optimised networks on the core network in earlier generations and we will now see this in radio. This will be a huge transformation and it will go along with the change in the network to completely zero-touch management and automated networks. This will be hugely important for our industry to be more agile, more cost-effective and in general – more competitive with the IT industries that have worked in those architectures before. Some of the speakers during the World 5G Summit will give insight on this topic.
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What Are Some Of The Biggest Challenges Facing 5G As It Continues To Grow And How Can They Be Addressed?
So, the transformation that goes along with 5G also poses some challenges. We see a lot of hype around 5G, that it can do almost everything. We see 5G for industries like public safety, railways, media distribution/creation and more. That is a huge opportunity for the industry but also a challenge. We need to be able to know that this technology, this one technology, can address all these different use cases and that we have a roadmap that satisfies those requirements without leaving anyone behind.
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What Are Users Really Lacking With 4g, And How Might 5g Fill Those Needs And Wants?
What can users expect from 5G that you cannot do with 4G LTE at the moment? Of course, higher data rates if you are the end-user. This goes into more gigabit per second speeds and we have seen the first commercial releases, for example in the US and Korea, where users are excited to take benefit of that, by watching high-speed videos and the likes. We will see more innovation on the end device side, which will benefit from that - just to mention virtual and augmented reality plus much more. These capabilities would be used for more business-to-business and business to consumer applications like telemedicine and industrial automation. These were things that you could only do so much with 4G before but with 5G, you can have higher data rates, lower latency and enable even more demanding use cases.
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What do you expect from the 2nd Annual World 5G Summit?
I expect at the 5G Summit in Barcelona, that we will discuss these issues with the leaders from the ICT industry and also those who will use 5G. This will allow a more complete picture of the updates we have seen since last year and what to expect in the next two or three years for deployments, use cases and the impact on society. I’m really looking forward to seeing you in Barcelona!
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