Verizon has announced the launch of the commercial 5G network in portions of Sacramento, Houston, Indianapolis, and Los Angeles. Installations of 5G Home began this week for “First on 5G” customers in those cities. 

Nokia and T-Mobile have inked a $3.5 billion agreement to accelerate the deployment of a nationwide 5G network. Nokia will provide T-Mobile with its complete end-to-end 5G technology, software, and services portfolio.

3GPP has announced the completion of the standalone (SA) Release 15, 5G specifications paving the way for 5G commercialization. Earlier in Dec. 2017, 3GPP has released the 5G NR specifications for non-standalone (NSA) operation. 

Qualcomm has demonstrated next phase of the global 5G New Radio (NR) standard at an event in San Diego on February 7th. Following the recent completion of the first 5G NR standard, 3GPP has approved various technology studies that are expected to define the next phase of 5G NR in Release 16 and beyond.

Continental, Ericsson, Nissan, NTT DOCOMO, OKI, and Qualcomm plan to carry out their first Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) trials in Japan. The objective is to validate and demonstrate the benefits of C-V2X using direct communication technology defined by the 3GPP Release 14 specifications. 

Verizon has selected Ericsson to provide networking equipment for their commercial 5G launch. Verizon will deploy the pre-standard 5G commercial radio network and the 5G Core network in select markets in second half of 2018.

ZTE has unveiled its 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), smart home, smart education, big video, and terminal services at China Mobile Global Partners Conference 2017. ZTE, in collaboration with China Mobile, focused on six major 5G services at this event

Huawei has announced a new generation of a 5G-oriented base station at the 2017 Global Mobile Broadband Forum in London for network deployment in multi-band, multi-RAT, and multi-service scenarios in the future.

Ericsson has introduced a new radio product, AIR 3246, for Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (Massive MIMO), which is a complement to Ericsson’s global 5G radio offering. AIR 3246 supports both 4G/LTE and 5G NR (New Radio) technologies and is Ericsson’s first 5G NR radio for frequency division duplex (FDD). 

SK Telecom has successfully demonstrated 5G communications using the 3.5GHz band through collaborations with Samsung Electronics and Nokia in Korea. Operator joined hands with Samsung Electronics to develop a 3.5GHz 5G end-to-end network

According to latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report, nearly 2.6 billion new subscribers will be added to mobile broadband networks in the next six years. Report shows the highest year-on-year mobile data growth globally since 2013, led by massive growth in India, and highlights the underlying need for mobile data.