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Sunday, March 19, 2017

Latest on 5G Spectrum - March 2017

In an earlier post I mentioned that there will be three different types of spectrum that would be needed for 5G; coverage layer, capacity layer and high throughput layer. There is now a consensus within the industry for this approach.


In a 5G seminar, back in Jan, there were a few speakers who felt that there is an informal agreement about the frequencies that will be used. One such slide from Ofcom could be seen in the picture above. Ofcom has also recently released a report expanding on this further.


Analysys Mason has nicely summarized the bands suggested by Ofcom and possibly available in the UK for 5G in the picture above.

Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has also nicely summarised the bands under investigations and trials as follows:

Coverage Layer: 600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1.5 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3 GHz and 2.6 GHz

Capacity Layer:

Europe                     3400 – 3800 MHz (awarding trial licenses)

 China                       3300 – 3600 MHz (ongoing trial), 4400 – 4500 MHz, 4800 – 4990 MHz

 Japan                       3600 – 4200 MHz and 4400-4900 MHz

 Korea                       3400 – 3700 MHz

 USA                          3100 – 3550 MHz (and 3700 – 4200 MHz)

High Throughput Layer:

USA:      27.5 – 28.35 GHz and 37 – 40 GHz pre-commercial deployments in 2018

 Korea:   26.5 – 29.5 GHz trials in 2018 and commercial deployments in 2019

 Japan:   27.5 – 28.28 GHz trials planned from 2017 and potentially commercial deployments in 2020

 China:    Focusing on 24.25 – 27.5 GHz and 37 – 43.5 GHz studies

 Sweden: 26.5 – 27.5 GHz awarding trial licenses for use in 2018 and onwards

 EU:        24.25 – 27.5 GHz for commercial deployments from 2020

Finally, as a reminder, list of bands originally approved for IMT-2020 (5G) as follows:


Another potential band, not being mentioned above is the 66-76GHz spectrum. This band is adjacent to the 60 GHz Wi-Fi (57 GHz - 66 GHz). Lessons learned from that band can be applied to the 5G band too.

Related links:



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1 comment:

  1. ksecMarch 20, 2017 at 3:08 AM

    I cant imagine the difficulties that Baseband, Radio Front End and Back End chip designer will have considering they have to support ALL these different band.

    Or are we going back to the days where your phone will only work in these countries with certain bands and not more.

    ReplyDelete