Asia Prepares for 5G Introduction

The introduction of 4G system in Indonesia last 2014 has sparked the development of the archipelago in technology and development. Somehow though, it has become too slow to adapt to the latest.

Three months after the almost simultaneous launch by the three major telecommunications companies, Telkomsel, Indosat and XL Axiata (which recently bought Axis Capital Group), developed countries in Asia are already moving on with the latest, 5G network. While Seoul, South Korea, Beijing, China and Tokyo, Japan are already signing contracts on the development of 5G, Jakarta is still in the process of adapting to 4G.

As a whole, the step towards the 5th generation network is one of the successes of Asia. The continent even beat South America on its integration to the newest technological advancement.

China Mobile, KT from South Korea and NTT DoCoMo from Japan signed the agreement in Barcelona during the 2015 Mobile World Congress. These three companies acknowledge that 5G is the newest big idea for 2015 and they are absolutely up for the challenge.

Included in their agreement is the sharing of information on how to customize 5G technology to specifically fit Asian market. They are to share their knowledge, research, reviews and studies to other Asian countries as well.

An advanced wireless technology is also expected to be integrated in the newest network. They are to establish connecting smartphones to TV, car and washing machine.

Although there is still no technical standard for 5G, it is expected to be much faster than the current 4G or long-term evolution (LTE).

5G services must be hyper energy efficient, have hyper accurate positioning, as well as extreme cost effectiveness and reliability. To achieve this, industry must develop multi-radio access technology.

If 5G appears, and reflects these prognoses, the major difference from a user point of view between 4G and 5G techniques must be something else than increased peak bit rate; for example higher number of simultaneously connected devices, higher system spectral efficiency (data volume per area unit), lower battery consumption, lower outage probability (better coverage), high bit rates in larger portions of the coverage area, lower latencies, higher number of supported devices, lower infrastructure deployment costs, higher versatility and scalability or higher reliability of communications. Those are the objectives in several of the research papers and projects below.

With the fastest internet networking in the world, Korea is to head with 5G development. China is to assist on the research itself. Korea is currently working with other nations for its process and they are looking forward to test in the next 3 years. 5G is expected to be introduced to the market on 2020.