Dave Wright
Director, Regulatory Affairs & Network Standards
Ruckus Wireless

By David Wright

While there is still a great amount of discussion, and even confusion, about what exactly “5G” is, there is general consensus across the broad wireless industry that meeting the ITU goals for 5G will require an ‘umbrella’ of technologies, deployers, and operators. This represents a significant departure from the previous 2G, 3G, and 4G iterations, in that those prior generations were specifically associated with only cellular technologies, mobile operators, and their use cases.

Similarly, the previous “Gs” relied almost entirely on exclusively licensed spectrum (notwithstanding the recent Unlicensed LTE programs), while fulfilling the vision for 5G will involve licensed, unlicensed (i.e. license exempt), and shared spectrum. The image below (1) represents the types of spectrum that will be required just to support the 3GPP radio access technologies for 5G (there will also be non-3GPP technologies in 5G, such as IEEE 802.11ax).

At the PTC Spectrum Futures 2017 conference, I’m looking forward to exploring the benefits of coordinated spectrum sharing and how these types of frameworks provide important new capabilities for policymakers and regulators – alongside the traditional licensed and unlicensed regimes. I will also be leading a more detailed workshop on the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) in the United States. This will be a deeper dive into the overall CBRS architecture, the functional components, and the industry activity to date.

I hope you will be able to join us in Bangkok for this great conference.

(1) Qualcomm: “3GPP starts study on 5G NR spectrum sharing”
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2017/04/26/3gpp-starts- study-5g-nr-spectrum-sharing