Consumer Devices by 5G Connectivity

The 5G industry has seen phenomenal growth over the past few years, but it is only just at the beginning of its journey. With the evolution toward 5G Advanced, there is still much to be done to fully unlock the value of the 5G ecosystem and realize its full potential. To help reach this promise, a roadmap of 3GPP specifications will roll out in the coming years, expanding 5G NR into new industries and delivering system solutions for use cases beyond traditional Mobile Broadband (MBB) services.

As a first stage in this new era, 3GPP has already completed 5G NR Release 16 (Rel-16), which has unlocked many new 5G opportunities and brought enhancements to foundational aspects of the 5G system. This has included better coverage and system performance, lower latency, further reductions in device power consumption, reliability, and efficiency, while also delivering other key transformative technologies, such as positioning with below 3-meter accuracy, and sidelink for supporting autonomous vehicles. These 5G enhancements will all be built upon by the imminent move to Release 17 (Rel-17) and 5G Advanced, specified under Release 18 (Rel-18), both of which will represent major 5G evolutions and support the continuous drive to new use cases, verticals, and deployments. For both new releases, it is expected that several features will be incrementally improved and enhanced, while others will nominally address and widen new use cases, verticals, and deployment options that are specific to the launch of each subsequent release.

The new 3GPP releases and their timings outline enhancements to certain attributes, such as positioning with support of centimeter-level accuracy and latency below 100 Milliseconds (ms).