All telecom service providers in the United States are competing hard for growth in the wireless sector in one way or another. AT&T has recently launched an application called DirectTV Now. But the company is not stopping there. Now the company claims to have become the first US carrier to conduct a 5G business customer trial in Austin, Texas.
AT&T’s Announcement on 5th December 2016:
AT&T announced its very first public 5G demonstration in collaboration with Ericson and Intel on 5th December 2016. Successful streaming of 4K HD videos, real time camera feeds and speeds of almost 14 gigabytes per second were the main highlights of this demonstration for AT&T’s Texas phone service subscribers. In addition to this, millimeter wave (mmWave) technology was also demonstrated at one of Intel’s Austin based offices in Texas. This technology is fully capable of powering a 5G network experience.
AT&T Says:
AT&T is very positive in regard to this 5G public demonstration. It takes technology completely out of the labs and into the field to determine the level of its capability to serve real world customers.
Multiple enterprise proof of concept use cases will be tested by utilizing the bandwidth speed of more than a gigabyte per second in this whole process. This is specifically going to include the following for Texas phone service subscribers.
- Access to internet
- VPN
- UCA (Unified Communications Applications)
- Streaming of 4K HD videos
Rick Hubbard, Senior Vice President of Networking Product Management at AT&T Says:
The company is expecting mmWave technology to become a vital and integral component of 5G. The trial will be key to significant acceleration of AT&T’s 5G work. The trial will definitely highlight the way technology acts in a real time commercial environment. He said this in a statement. Availability of 5G in full strength promises electric fast internet speed. This speed could easily be 10-100 times faster than LTE. It means Texas phone service users will be able to download any full length High Definition movie on their smartphones in just a few seconds instead of minutes.
QUALCOMM is Working Towards Ensuring Transition to 5G:
The chip giant is also working in this direction. The main objective of QUALCOMM is to aid in the transition to 5G. The company unveiled its plans in this regard during the month of October 2016. The company has clear plans of expanding its reach in the camera space. Successful development of hardware and software designed for various types of video and image devices beyond the cameras of mobile devices will play an important role in this process.
Introduction to the 5G modem chipset for connected cameras was also the part of this announcement.
Final Words:
Competitors like Verizon Wireless are yet to conduct their 5G trials in the year 2017. Now all the carriers are expecting 5G to spark an increase in the sales of smartphones and mobile services to a significant extent. It is not going to be that easy for any company and especially for AT&T. AT&T will first have to convince municipalities to allow for the installation of 5G equipment. Most importantly, millions of towers will be needed.