NGMN Alliance Focuses on 5G Trial & Testing and Vehicle-to-X Task-Force

The Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance have announced new activities in 5G Trial & Testing, End-to-end Architecture and Vehicle-to-X. The Alliance highlighted their commitment to ensure successful 5G development, testing and standardization in the coming years.

Throughout the year, the NGMN Alliance has provided industry-wide 5G guidance based on their requirements around 5G radio access, architecture, vertical services, security and spectrum. The NGMN Board – CTOs from leading international operators – has now agreed on significant new additional work-items for the coming years and discussed those with the NGMN Partners at the Forum meeting last week:

• 5G Trial & Testing Initiative: Definitionof proof points and testing methodologies, establishment of a globally aligned trial and testing platform for all NGMN Partners, comparison and benchmarking of technologies, identification of gaps and support of standardisation
• End-to-end Architecture: Development of a 5G end-to-end architectural framework and ‘big picture’, derivation of architecture design guidelines and requirements, enablement of synergies between SDOs and regional alignment
• Vehicle-to-X: Evaluation and driving of V2X technologies and business opportunities, co-operation with automotive industry stakeholder

In addition to these new work-items, the Board highlighted the importance of the on-going NGMN 5G projects on spectrum, IPR, operations and security with fundamental recommendations expected to be ready in due time.

Their overall work-programme is structured around key focus areas (ecosystem building and interaction, guidance to SDOs and the wider industry, evaluation of test and proof of concept results) aiming to address the major industry challenges ahead. The individual project activities will be implemented as part of one of those focus areas and the outcome of the work will be shared with all relevant organisations, SDOs and research groups.

Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance and CTO Deutsche Telekom said - “In the last 12 months we provided essential 5G input and substantial contributions to standardisation and the broader ecosystem. With our 5G Trial & Testing initiative and the other new work-items, we will ensure global alignment of 5G development and will jointly work towards availability of commercial, standards-based solutions by 2020.”