To many, 5G is just supercharged LTE with faster access to the Internet while on the move. But the developers of 5G technology had a much wider vision for the future of wireless communications. Recent announcements have pointed to what that future could hold.
Nokia recently demonstrated a fixed wireless access (FWA) network operating in the mmWave band that provides download speeds of over 2 Gigabits per second at a distance of 10 kilometres. FWA provides broadband services to homes and businesses wirelessly as an alternative to, for example, connections over fibre.
Although operating at extremely high frequencies (EHF) provides the much wider bandwidths necessary for high data transfer rates, signals at these frequencies suffer high loss which in turn limits their maximum range.
So, achieving a 10 km range is significant as it opens the possibility of offering a high speed FWA service to rural communities where alternatives are either not available or offer a poor performance.

In another development Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson demonstrated a “real world” business application for 5G.  This example of network slicing allows an organisation’s employees to securely access private cloud-based applications over a public mobile network. Built-in automation simplifies the configuration and provisioning for users.
This proof of concept demonstrates how enterprises will be able to create and tailor network slices easily to fit their applications and user needs.

PTT offers a range of courses covering the technologies that provide 5G mobile, FWA and network slicing ranging from the introductory course “Wireless communications” to a course covering the detail of 5G mobile systems.