FBC board member Leena Ollitervo blogs about the 5G era

The 5G era is upon us, with deployments happening in many parts of the world.

In my earlier blog this year I shared some thoughts on the fundaments of 5G, about the 4th Industrial revolution and the economic and social impact of 5G

– the improvements that 5G will bring in increasing the productivity and efficiency, its impact on health care, automatization, transport, agriculture, manufacturing etc.

Since then a lot has happened – and kept us very busy.

Here some proof of progress first from Nokia point of view and then from South Korea, the first country to launch 5G commercially nationwide.

Nokia has currently 48 commercial 5G agreements in all the key markets worldwide.

From Asia Pacific Japan Market we could mention the main operators in South Korea (KT, LGU+, SKT) as well as in Japan (Docomo, KDDI, Softbank) and Optus in Australia.

Additionally we have over 100 engagements ongoing e.g. with M1 and Starhub in Singapore, Smart in Philippines and Vodafone in Australia & New Zealand from this side of the world.

More info of Nokia’s 5G can be found here   https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/

South Korea is one of the most digitally connected countries in the world and therefore naturally it is no surprise that it is also the first country in the world to launch commercial 5G service in April 2019.

Spectrum in the 3.5 and 28 GHz band was awarded to three incumbent operators (KT, LGU+, SKT), which triggered the race for commercial launch and nationwide 5G coverage.

It only took two months after the launch to reach the first 1 million 5G subscribers, and the total number of subscribers is projected to exceed 5 million before the end of 2019.

This means that 10% of the users will be on using 5G by the end of the first year, which is a much faster take-up than in the 4G/LTE era, supported by new 5G-native phones available from LG and Samsung.

The most popular 5G services offered by all 3 operators include streaming high-definition 4K video, AR/VR, cloud gaming and other innovative services that 5G networks will help to popularize

  • you can even dance with your favourite K-Pop artist in AR 🙂

For the B2B customers, various use cases have been introduced such as Smart Factories, Smart Traffic, autonomous cars and many more industry 4.0 solutions.

Naturally, similar progress is happening e.g. in US with all the big operators and their commercial launches in big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Some videos of the US launches can be found here  https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/mobile/5g-in-action/

These are very exciting times as 5G will definitely be something extraordinary – for every industry, every business and every experience.

Looking forward!

Leena Ollitervo, Nokia