China Mobile has announced its plan to conduct interoperability testing as well as over-the-air field trials based on 5G New Radio (NR) specs.

The Chinese mobile company has partnered with Qualcomm Technologies and ZTE to carry out the 5G trials. The three companies will start the interoperability and trials in the second half of 2017 in China. It aims to display the efficiency of 5G NR technologies in achieving multi-gigabit per second data rates under lower latency and better reliability of the current network.

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China Mobile's new collaboration is an indication of the company’s schedule for rapid 5G development in its hometown. It plans to keep up with various mobile carriers from Europe, U.S., South Korean, and Japan. The partnership between Qualcomm Technologies and ZTE is expected to support quick validation of their devices and other equipment that are based on the 5G NR specs, which is developed by telecommunications association 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). 

“5G is very important for future development, and we have put much resources on 5G research, standardization, and industrialization, and built a 5G joint innovation center to cultivate the cross-industry innovation,” said China Mobile’ Wang Xiaoyun, general manager of the company's technology department.

The trials will use the3GPP’s 5G NR technologies including Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna technology, adaptive self-contained TDD, beamforming techniques, and scalable OFDM-based waveforms. It will also utilize Qualcomm’s device prototype and ZTE’s base station solutions.

It will focus on 5G NR operation in sub-6 GHz mid-band spectrum at 3.5 GHz. Qualcomm believes that it is a critical band in China to achieve ubiquitous coverage and the capability to address the large number of envisioned 5G use cases.

China Mobile has 851.2 million subscribers as of Jan. 31 of this year. It aims to develop 20 5G sites in China’s four to five main cities by 2018, which will be part of it large-scale trials. By 2020, the Chinese state-owned telecommunication company plans to roll out 10,000 5G sites for commercial service.

Tagschina, China Mobile, ZTE, Qualcomm, 5G, 5G NR, 5G New Radio, 5G trials