On June 7, 2018, Nokia and T-Mobile announced a major milestone in delivering true mobile 5G with the successful completion of the nation's first bidirectional 5G data transmission, over-the-air 5G data session on a 3GPP-compliant 5G New Radio (NR) system in T-Mobile's Bellevue lab. The test was successfully conducted with a user equipment simulator and Nokia's 3GPP-compliant high-capacity 5G solution in the 28 GHz band.
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is a collaboration between groups of telecommunications standards associations, known as the Organizational Partners. The initial scope of 3GPP was to make a globally applicable third-generation (3G) mobile phone system specification based on evolved Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) specifications within the scope of the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 project of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
"This test is a big step forward in building REAL 5G that will work on actual smartphones," said Neville Ray, Chief Technology Officer at T-Mobile. "We're excited to continue our work with Nokia to move the future of wireless forward and bring 5G to customers!"
The 5G data transmission was conducted with the Nokia AirScale baseband and radio, AirFrame server, and AirScale Cloud RAN running 5G NR 3GPP-compliant software. This same solution has been fully proven in T-Mobile's environment through ongoing lab and field trials, such as T-Mobile's deployment of its first inter-vendor 5G test platform.
"This successful 3GPP compliant over-the-air data transmission represents an important step for T-Mobile and the commercialization of 5G," said Marc Rouanne, President of Mobile Networks, Nokia. "By building on the tests Nokia has previously conducted with T-Mobile, T-Mobile is well on its way to 5G commercial deployment."
Bidirectional 5G data transmission, real 5G, promises to enable faster speeds, massive connectivity, decade-long battery life for sensors and responsive and reliable networks for customers. This will unleash VR and AR experiences on-demand, driverless vehicles, medical monitoring, advanced industrial automation services - all requiring ubiquitous low latency connectivity.