5G could be completed long before 2020
5G is coming faster than most people think, Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri says.
The next generation of mobile networks will start to get defined "in real terms" by the end of this year, Suri said at a press briefing in Barcelona on Sunday, the eve of Mobile World Congress (MWC).
Official estimates say the 5G standard won't be complete until 2020. Suri thinks there's too much demand to wait that long.
"2020 is probably when we'll see global volume deployments, but we'll probably start to see a lot of action, in an evolutionary way, ahead of 2020 -- 2017, 2018, 2019," he said.
Users and service providers know more about what they need 5G for, at this stage of the game, than they did when 3G and 4G were being developed, Suri said. Key needs include high speed for video and virtual reality, low latency for vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and the ability to connect thousands of devices to a cell.
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