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Samsung Electronics America has announced its decision to supply Verizon with commercial 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) network solutions. The two companies will begin by launching commercial 5G services in Sacramento, California, in the second half of 2018.
In early 2017, Samsung and Verizon began 5G customer trials across seven U.S. cities, and have successfully tested and verified 5G performance using millimeter-wave (mm-wave) techniques to provide FWA precommercial service. These trials were conducted in California, Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, and Washington, D.C.
Samsung will provide Verizon with commercial 5G home routers, 5G radio access units comprised of a compact radio base station and virtualized RAN elements, as well as 5G radio-frequency (RF) planning services. To provide these services, Samsung has leveraged in-house technology and assets to develop the first commercial 5G modems based on application-specific integrated circuits (ICs) and mm-wave RF ICs.
On 27 February 2017 in Barcelona, Spain, leaders of the global mobile industry announced their support for the acceleration of the 5G NR standardization schedule, which introduced an intermediate milestone to help complete the first implementable specification for non-standalone 5G NR operations.
As a result of this announcement, the schedule acceleration was agreed on at the 3GPP RAN Plenary Meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on 9 March 2017. This first specification was completed as part of the 3GPP release 15.
The completion of this standard is an essential milestone that enables the cost-effective, full-scale development of 5G NR, which will greatly enhance the capabilities of 3GPP systems as well as facilitate the creation of vertical market opportunities. The 3GPP plans to continue to develop release 15, including the addition of support for stand-alone 5G NR operations, also agreed on by the 3GPP in Dubrovnik.
The 5G NR lower layer specifications have been designed to support stand-alone and non-standalone 5G NR operations in a unified way to ensure that the 3GPP benefits the global industry with a large-scale single 5G NR ecosystem.
Full article: IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Volume 13, Number 2, June 2018 | 
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