While standards for 5G are yet to be finalised, South Africa's regulatory body has initiated an information-sharing and collaborative network to determine how effective and purposeful this technology can be applied.
The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) hosted the inaugural 5G forum meeting in Sandton last week, attracting participants representing consumers, mobile operators, institutions of higher learning, researchers and government bodies.
According to ICASA, the forum aims to support policy-makers and the authority to make meaningful contributions and participate in the International Telecommunication Union processes for the development of regulations and standards for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT), in line with the IMT-2020 vision.
One of the key strategies geared at achieving the digital agenda in SA is to ensure the regulatory regime for IMT-2020 is flexible, supports innovative technologies and serves the needs of end-users, the regulator says in a statement.
"5G generally refers to technologies that provide services with extremely low latency of less than 1ms, download data speeds of more than 10Gbps, vast connectivity, high mobility and extremely low-energy consumption," says ICASA councillor Peter Zimri.
"From the outset, ICASA wishes to inform the public that 5G is not officially standardised yet. The intention is to develop a collaborative and contribution arrangement by the 5G forum in the consensus, building process for IMT-2020 standardisation including minimum technical performance requirements and evaluation guidelines through the partnership with registered evaluation groups," adds the statement.
During the meeting, some of the topics and discussions centred around typical use cases that 5G could be applied to, the radio-frequency spectrum that would be required, as well as the role that standards could play in making 5G services effective and purposeful.
"ICASA's interest in 5G technologies stems from the belief that ultimately all the people of South Africa should have access to 5G, which is an all-embracing technology that would offer much more scope, in a manner that would enable automation of device and machine use, through the concept of the Internet of things."
ICASA councillors Paris Mashile and Palesa Kadi also expressed the authority's confidence in the forum, and believe it will go a long way in bringing all parties together and sharing information that would see proper and effective regulatory framework put in place.
5G race
5G has become the telecoms industry's latest obsession as talk about commercial availability in the next three years reaches fever pitch.
Standardisation bodies are said to be working with telcos and vendors, while major global operators are aiming to launch fifth-generation mobile networks before 2020.
5G wireless networks are expected to offer data speeds that are vastly faster than current 4G technology. The Pyeongchang Olympics will likely see the first 5G trial but South Korea is said to be aiming to complete the deployment of a commercial 5G mobile network in the latter half of 2019.
In September, Finnish electronics company Nokia and US-based chipmaker Qualcomm inked a 5G deal. The companies established that it is a clear and growing industry interest for 5G mobility applications to meet increasing mobile broadband needs and emerging use case requirements globally.
"Qualcomm and Nokia believe these technologies will be critical to meeting the increasing connectivity requirements for emerging consumer mobile broadband experiences..."
In SA, Vodacom has also indicated it wants to be the country's first mobile operator to roll out 5G, although this is probably still a few years away.
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