At the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona yesterday, the European Commission and the 5G Infrastructure Association launched the 5G Public-Private Partnership White Paper entitled “5G Empowering Vertical Industries”. The Paper outlines how 5G network infrastructures will enable the digitalisation of society and the economy, leading to the fourth industrial revolution, especially in the automotive, transportation, healthcare, energy, manufacturing as well as media and entertainment sectors.
“Making 5G a reality in Europe by 2020 will be essential for the success of key vertical sectors like automotive, health and digital manufacturing”, stated Digital Agenda Commissioner Günther H. Oettinger (full speech).
“The automotive industry welcomes and supports the vision of 5G to provide a horizontal solution for vertical sectors. 5G delivers important opportunities for future automotive applications. The industry sees cellular, WiFi, satellite communication and digital broadcasting as complementary technologies for the provision of ICT related services”, ERTICO’s CEO Hermann Meyer commented whilst participating in the press conference together with Commissioner Oettinger and senior executives from Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Orange Labs, SES and Telenor Research.
When asked about specific challenges in the context of automotive, Mr Meyer highlighted the challenge of complying with the needs for safety-critical applications especially in the context of automated driving. “There will be a need to define quality of service level agreements which address related specific requirements like latency, reliability, throughput”, he concluded.
The White Paper depicts innovative use cases from the most important vertical sectors and how the resulting requirements shape the 5G system design. As an Associated Member of the 5G-PPP, the ERTICO Partnership participated in the development of the White Paper representing the automotive sector. In particular,
- 5G will transform networks into intelligent orchestration platforms and pave the way for new business models and value propositions by cementing strong relationships between vendors, operators and verticals.
- 5G will also integrate seamlessly different enabling technologies (e.g. mobile, fixed, satellite and optical).
- Deploying 5G for vertical markets in Europe by 2020 should be a key objective.
- Latency (below 5ms), reliability (5 nines and beyond), density (up to 100 devices/m2), and peak terminal data rates are among the most important performance targets 5G needs to achieve, along with tight constraints on territorial and population coverage.
- Requirements derived from use-cases for vertical markets should be considered with high priority and covered in the early phases of the 5G standardisation process.
- Vertical use cases should be duly considered when identifying spectrum priorities.
5G-PPP is a collaborative research programme belonging to the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme. With a lifetime from 2014 to 2020, it aims to foster industry-driven research, which is controlled by business-related, performance and societal KPIs and is open for international cooperation and participation.
