Verizon is again working on improving the qualities and capabilities of our wireless world. Last year, it was a joint partnership with AT&T to bring HD voice calling to LTE handsets. Now, Verizon is joining forces with several other companies to bring "5G" to the United States - a radio standard that could be up to 50x faster than LTE.
Verizon isn"t the first company to explore "5G" technology. Nokia began its research and development last year just prior to the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent. In addition to Nokia, Verizon is now collaborating with Ericsson, Cisco, Qualcomm and Samsung to build the "5G" radio technology so it can begin its own field testing sometime in 2016.
The implementation of "5G" will allow things like people, cars, smartwatches, smartphones, buildings and more to connect with one another seamlessly as they move in and out of each other"s paths. The possibilities are endless as an even more connected world approaches us all.
“Each partner is a leader, but together we represent more than $50 billion in annual research, development and technology investments and thousands of patents. Collectively we are bringing to bear an incredible amount of resources and intellectual capital to introduce the next generation of wireless technology.”
-Roger Gurnani, Executive VP and Chief Information and Technology Architect for Verizon
The collaboration amongst each of these companies is incredible, given that several are competitors in one way or another, but it will take a lot of sharing of ideas and patents to bring forth the next economic model of digital services made possible by "5G".
Source: Verizon, via International Business Times