One of the largest news of 2022 in the telecom industry, began with the freeze of 3GPP Rel-17 in the 96th plenary meeting of the International Communications Standards Organization 3GPP launched in Hungary. It labeled the official completion of the first stage of 5G, stepping into the new stage of 5G technology.
Source: 3GPP
The freeze of R15 and R16 paved the way for the following progress of the 5G technology. Combined with the new needs and stronger capabilities of 5G, R17 provides a new "information highway" without traffic jam for the 5G network deployment in all industries.
The increased focus on the third version of global 5G New Radio (NR) standard, R17, is rising as it expanding 5G performance, scalability, and business-model flexibility.
New concepts: Enhancements for better Extended Reality (XR), mmWave support up to 71 GHz, the introduction of 5G Reduced Capability (RedCap) New Radio, and Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN).
R17 further extend 5G capability compared with R16, including 5G based broadcasting capability, satellite communication, air-to-air base station, wireless side slice, and exploration of mutual enabling between artificial intelligence and 5G. It has low latency in powering end user service, improvements on customer experience, and rich functions in integration with core network to deliver dynamic bandwidth. Also, it supports integrated services for multiple operators supporting two SIM cards.
Many features of R17 standard "dynamic". The industry still needs to continue to improve the standard, or make a simplified design scheme in combination with the actual needs to promote the implementations of 5G. The freeze of the R17 standard also means that 3GPP's standard-setting work for 5G-Advanced will be in full swing.
As the first standard version of 5G-Advanced, R18 is on the way. Through R17's efforts in commercial performance improvement, introduction of new features and exploration of new directions, 5G will be introduced in more application scenarios and have a closer connection with our daily life and work.
