5G white paper sets stage for revolution

At the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, the European Commission and the 5G Infrastructure Association launched a 5G Public-Private Partnership white paper, 5G Empowering Vertical Industries, which outlines how 5G network infrastructures will enable the digitalisation of society and economy, leading to the fourth industrial revolution, especially in the automotive, transportation, healthcare, energy, manufacturing as well as media and entertainment sectors.

The white paper depicts use cases from the most important vertical sectors and details how the resulting requirements will shape the 5G system design. Among its main conclusions are:

• 5G will transform networks into intelligent orchestration platforms and pave the way for new business models and value propositions by cementing strong relationships between vendors, operators and verticals.
• 5G will also integrate seamlessly different enabling technologies (eg, mobile, fixed, satellite and optical).
• Latency (below 5ms), reliability (5 nines and beyond), density (up to 100 devices/m²) and peak terminal data rates are among the most important performance targets 5G needs to achieve, along with tight constraints on territorial and population coverage.
• Requirements derived from use cases for vertical markets should be considered with high priority and covered in the early phases of the 5G standardisation process.
• Vertical use cases should be duly considered when identifying spectrum priorities.