September, CTIA – Chris Pearson, President of 5G Americas, told us in 1:1 interview during the CTIA conference that the focus on 5G is good because we need to be looking at the future and the things we need to do to stay connected. This includes providing more mobile broadband, more massive LTE, less latency and finally reliable communication. For the foundation of mobile broadband, 4G and 5G will be integrated together as well the incorporation, with a big role, of LTE Advance and LTE Advanced Pro. But there is some economic reality behind the adoption of the technology in that, if you are an operator, and you want to deploy 5G, you have to have a business case to spend hundreds of millions or billions to pay it back.
5G Americas advocate for more innovations and investments from the private sector to look at the best interests of the end customers. The customer can be consumer, enterprise or verticals inside IOT.
5G Americas is the voice of 5G and LTE for all the Americas. They work by supporting the ecosystem of mobile operators and vendors, working with government agencies, regulatory and standards bodies, as well as other global wireless organizations to promote the 5G & LTE technologies. They work in three (3) different areas:
First – Technical recommendations and facilitations. They don’t typically create standards but they are part of the process of education on the direction of the technology that they want. They also contribute their white papers with the associations around the world and governments around the world with focus on Americas region.
Second – They work on regulatory policy, that as Pearson admitted – become more and more important because of what 5G is going to be doing. 5G is getting to the other verticals and other areas such as: education, transportation and health care. He believes that 5G ecosystem should include and will include a regulatory aspect as it enters market already subject to regulatory control.
Third – Education. They provide outreach with all wireless headquarters including industry media, industry analysts and a lot of influencers and government processes.