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Post Conference Report & Press Releases

If you would like to download a copy of the professional post-conference report, please click here, alternatively you can click to view it below. 

Please also see below for the press releases from the conference days.

Press Release Day 1: 13 October

WWRF Chair Nigel Jefferies announces signing of agreement with 5G Forum, as 5G Huddle lays out roadmap to 5G

Challenges and opportunities of a 5G ecosystem discussed today at the 5G Huddle in Copenhagen.

A memorandum of understanding was signed today at the 5G Huddle in Copenhagen between the WWRF and the 5G Forum of Korea for global co-operation for the development of 5G networks. Opening the 5G Huddle, Nigel Jefferies, Chairman of WWRF said,that “5G could be the mobile platform that delivers an era of ubiquitous communications. The major challenges for 5G will be its costs and return on investment, and it could cause major disruption in the mobile market. That’s why it’s important to have a global understanding and to work together to achieve a worldwide standard.” Dr Lee Hyeon Woo 5G Forum, Korea said the memorandum of understanding will be key to lay out  a roadmap, a phased approach for 5G standards and 5G network migration. It will facilitate exchange of information and identify issues of common interest between the two organisations, with the goal of supporting the push towards a global vision for 5G.

Alongside the signing of this significant new MOU, the first day of the 5GHuddle offered a highly interactive platform to discuss global standardisation, co-operation and interoperability, looking at how a user-centric approach can be key to identify and overcome the obstacles and challenges connected to a 5G future. 

Asia is likely to be the first commercial adopter of 5G, said Dr Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist of Wireless Technologies at China Mobile Research Institute. She spoke of networks of the future to be "Greener, softer and superfast, tactile, immersive" with key features being agility and efficiency. 

Mario Campolargo, Director of Net Futures, DG Connect, European Commission said that 5G is a "crucial" element in the "new industrial evolution" and Europe's single digital market. Network virtualization is an "unstoppable trend" that will change the dynamics and structure of the telecom market. The "verticals" are the "game-changers" in that ecosystem. The three "burning issues" around 5G are how to create standards that match the ambitious 5G visions by not excluding players outside the traditional telecom companies; agreeing on a timeline and resisting short-term commercial exploitation of next-generation technologies; and ensuring that spectrum is available.”

Jorgen Abild Andersen, Chairman of Committee for Digital Economic Policy (CDEP), OECD said that security and privacy concerns and lack of skills are the most serious threats to data-driven innovation. Andersen said that politicians focus on full geographic mobile coverage and internet speeds of 100 Mbps, which is too narrow a focus. Instead, they should concentrate on solving the problems of poor innovation, low growth and high unemployment by looking holistically at all parts of the economic ecosystem. “We need a whole-government approach toward building a digital economy. 5G should be considered an element of the entire digital economy”, he said. “Choosing the right digital strategy is key”, he said, adding that the IoT will require lower latency, an umbrella of mobile technologies and huge investments.

Discussing the challenge of building a globally agreed vision for 5G development and deployment, Prof. Rahim Tafazolli, Director of the Centre for Communications Systems Research, University of Surrey and Director of the 5GIC raised a question: “We've developed grand visions about what 5G will deliver, but will the reality be? Do we risk rushing into 5G and only achieving "higher speed and higher speed" or will all these efforts actually deliver new things that will help verticals and have societal benefits?” he asked. 

Bashir Gwandu, Commonwealth ITU Group Chairman, stressed the importance of not leaving anyone behind: “5G is key for developing and developed countries but different expectations must be met”, he said, adding that those countries with 5% or less 4G deployment will have different requirements for 5G than countries like Sweden or Japan. “But as a community we need to work together to see how the industry can grow. Countries where there is slow uptake must make sure their views and needs around 5G are taken into consideration in the discussion”, he said.

Discussing investment and infrastructure, Kumar Singarajah, Director, Regulatory Affairs & Business Development at Avanti Communications, speaking for the EMEA Satellite Operators Association, said that the satellite community wants to see a role in creating a 5G architecture. Avanti believes that 5G is not just mobile technology and is more than wireless. "Satellites are good at efficiently transmitting data over larger areas in a cost-efficient manner”, he said.

Anders Bohlin, Senior Economist at the European Investment Bank said that the EIB sees the huge interest in 5G as it moves into the equipment R&D phase, but its problem is that the bank doesn't really know what 5G is. The 5G community must communicate to the financial community, banks and end-users what it is. "Banks always want the money back" so 5G providers must have a business case and a business model everyone believes in. At this point, the EIB is supporting R&D for the EU digital agenda, but can only finance 50% of the project costs of project. No special process is required for 5G; it's "business as usual."

On the role of the regulators, Jakob Henrik Juul, Head of Division of the Danish Energy Agency said that they are better at reacting than at being proactive. “For 5G, they need a clear timeline to know what the demand is, because it takes time to award spectrum licenses and deal with technological developments”. 

Panellists also discussed the question of 2020 rollout: Paul Crane, Head of Practice, Mobile Network Services and Sustainability, BT, said that there will likely be technological demonstrations at scale, but “4G hasn't even fully deployed yet”, and Bohlin warned that “If governments auction 5G spectrum to fill their treasury coffers and then operators don't invest because there's no market, that won't be good for 5G”.

Over 150 leading scientists, high-level industry and government representatives from Europe, North America and Asia met today and tomorrow (13-14 October 2015) in Copenhagen at the “5G Huddle – Delivering a Sustainable 5G Ecosystem”, hosted by the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF), in partnership with DI ITEK. 

Last year’s inaugural 5G Huddle, held in London, sought to establish a definition for the next generation of mobile communication standards to kick-start the development of 5G, powering a host of technologies set to change our world, with 1000 times the capacity and 100 times the speed of 4G. “We now know what 5G is. The timeline for 5G now is clear. This is the biggest difference from last year's Huddle”, said Adrian Scrase, CTO of ETSI.

Press Release Day 2: 14 October

5G Huddle maps the implications for industry of 5G technologies - security and privacy emerge as key concerns across sectors. Spectrum allocation, cybersecurity and the connected car at the centre of discussion at the 5G Huddle in Copenhagen.

The allocation of radio spectrum, new business models, cybersecurity and the connected car took centre stage at the 5GHuddle (organised by the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) and in partnership with DI ITEK) as delegates discussed the disruptive nature of 5G technologies, with security and privacy emerging as the key challenges in delivering a sustainable 5G ecosystem.   

Opening the second day of the 5G Huddle, Stuart Revell, former Chief Technology Officer of Tech UK, began the discussions on the main challenges for the 5G community by presenting the Wireless Test & Innovation Centre (WTIC) whitepaper to over 150 delegates including leading scientists, high-level industry and government representatives from Europe, North America and Asia. 

During the first session, Ming Lei, Huawei, presented the IMT-2020 promotion group and the FuTURE Forum initiative, discussing their international co-operation projects and how to rethink mobile communications of the future in their 2020+ White Paper. 

Spectrum Allocation

Spectrum allocation was identified as one of the main challenges to making the leap forward in 5G deployment. The debate over what spectrum should be made available for 5G will be, as Andrew Hudson, Policy Director of the Spectrum Group at Ofcom, said, “uncomfortable”. Leaving too many bands under consideration could make a positive outcome less likely, as "lots of people might have to give a little bit", adding that it's not regulators' job to "make everyone happy" but to "debate the important questions."  

Wladimir Bocquet, Head of Policy Planning at GSMA, elaborated on this, saying that operators understand that there are some existing services in those bands, and the parties by consensus should agree on what spectrum they want for 5G. “GSMA isn't saying it wants all spectrum between 6 GHz and 100 GHz for 5G. There's no black and white," he said.

Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist of Wireless Technologies at China Mobile, added to this, saying that in the short term, C-band would be the core spectrum of 5G: "we want it to become key piece of 5G architecture.” 

On the role of the regulators in the spectrum debate, Jakob Henrik Juul, Head of Division of the Danish Energy Agency said, “for 5G, they need a clear timeline to know what the demand is, because it takes time to award spectrum licenses and deal with technological developments”. 

Anders Bohlin, Senior Economist at the European Investment Bank, warned that “If governments auction 5G spectrum to fill their treasury coffers and then operators don't invest because there's no market, that won't be good for 5G”.

For Wassim Chourbaji, Qualcomm, industry and policymakers must address investment; be "more bold" in harmonizing spectrum for 5G, set predictable policy and create non-proprietary standards. Regarding business models for 5G, he stated, "the ones who will make money are the ones who are controlling the data."

Business Models

As Mischa Dohler, Head of Centre for Telecommunication Research in the Department of Informatics at Kings’ College, London, commented, business models may be the main shift in a 5G era, as the change to B2B could be attractive for the cellular industry. 

Christian Kloch stated that 5G “is all about use cases”. Good use cases need a strong network, and the Internet of Things. Telecoms operators must collaborate with other industries to show them how they can benefit from 5G.

For Pasi Kemppainedm, NNE Pharmaplan, this is the telecom industry's "last chance" to stretch its services to compete with big players like Google and Facebook. The disruptive part of 5G isn't the radio access part, but the services infrastructures. Facebook, Google and others will "eat your lunch" in future services if telcos don't deal with services infrastructure. Also, telecom companies shouldn't let 5G limit the start of service enablement. Services should be agnostic, and when 5G becomes ready, operators can move to better capability to provide those services. 

Automotive Industry

Opening a session at the event that focussed specifically on the potential of 5G in the automotive industry, Preben Mogensen, Principal Engineer at Nokia Network said: “we would like to see 5G as a framework to be optimized for the automotive industry”. Research challenges Nokia is working on for connected mobility include being able to support higher mobility, a lot of devices in a small space, ultra-reliability of networks, radio latency less than 1ms, network slicing and optimized service delivery for heterogeneous use cases. “For the telecom operator, our challenge is enabling a new generation of latency critical services. We are working on research to improve resilience to network failures,” he said.

Dr. Ilaria Thibault, Vodafone, also presented, taking a look at what 5G's role in vehicular comminications will be.

Peter Vermaat, Principal ITS consultant at TRL, an independent research organisation, brought the road operator’s perspective to the 5G debate, agreeing that the connectivity requirements of vehicles are highly dependent on high network reliability and low latency, as well as co-operative services: “No single communication channel will be sufficient,” he said, “we don’t want the whole network to break down because a base station is running out of power.”

“Without connectivity, research shows that, with the connected vehicle, safety goes down compared to a manually operated one. “Self-driving cars”, he said, “are a long, long way off.” Even Google cars, he said, are “fully autonomous, but not in all circumstances.”

Within the transport industry as a whole, he said, “there is scepticism that you need to overcome. We have heard promises before with 3 and 4G. The critical issue remains coverage.” Road operators expect real long-term benefits from connected vehicles, as they are foreseeing to move people and goods over longer distances, and expect lower costs in running the road infrastructure. They are looking at increased safety, efficiency, data gathering, particularly at floating vehicles data. “The car industry tends to look at technology in their own little bubble.”

Cybersecurity

Aside from the challenges faced in implementing 5G, come the concerns – in particular the risk posed by cyber crime. Focusing on these potential vulnerabilities of the IoT and 5G era, Zolten Precsenyi, Government Affairs Manager at Symantec, said explained that cybersecurity challenges arise not just from 5G in particular, but also from the connected world at large.  Wearable devices, connected cars, e-health systems, smart grids are all vulnerable to attack. Current public policies for the telecoms, e-identification, network security and other areas “don't go far enough to protect against novel security issues. Self-regulation should be a credible alternative to government regulation,” he said.

Conclusions

 “Spectrum was much more at the core of discussion this year for the technical needs of 5G, especially the need seen from the user’s perspective” than at last year’s inaugural 5G Huddle, said Prof. Knud Erik Skouby, Director of the Centre for Communication, Media and Information Technologies at Aalborg University. “The business model this year has moved to the centre of the discussion and is not seen only from the telecom industry at large, but from the user’s point of view,” said Dr Nigel Jefferies, Huawei, Chair of WWRF, closing the 5G Huddle. 

13-14 October, DI ITEK, Copenhagen, Denmark - www.5ghuddle.ch @ForumEurope #5GHuddle

CONTACT: Roberta Bonometti, Press Officer, roberta@bonometti.org +44 7770 211955 skype: roberta.bonometti

Copy-right free images available on www.5ghuddle.ch

The 5GHuddle is organised by Forum Europe www.forum-europe.com