Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) of leading ICT companies in North America have reaffirmed that fixed-mobile convergence will be fundamental to the success of 5G systems.
CTOs have also highlighted the great promise of information-centric networking to assist dynamic, performance-oriented management of ICT service quality, in addition acknowledging that high-performance 5G signal processing will demand significant innovation in chip architectures. CTOs also agree that identification, and associated protections of security and privacy, will be essential to the success of 5G use cases of the Internet of Things.
Eight high-level industry executives and the strategic management of ITU’s standardization arm, ITU-T, met for the first North-American CTO consultation meeting in San Jose, CA, US, 30 March 2017. The meeting issued a communiqué outlining emerging trends in 5G innovation and associated demands on ITU-T standardization.
Achieving the full potential of 5G systems will demand true fixed-mobile convergence, ensuring that the wired and wireless elements of 5G networks operate in unison.
CTOs emphasized that seamless 5G service operation will call for ITU-T standardization to support the emergence of a unified, access-independent framework for network management.
CTOs encouraged ITU to accelerate its standardization work on information-centric networking (ICN), acknowledging the great potential of ICN to assist in optimizing content distribution. ITU-T was urged to address the scalability, mobility and security of ICN solutions as well as to monitor related open-source projects.
5G will have significant impacts on the semiconductor industry, pushing digital signal-processing platforms to their limits. CTOs highlighted that ITU-T standardization should provide for novel chip architectures able to meet the high-performance signal processing demands of the 5G era, while concurrently achieving greater flexibility, security and lower power consumption.
Identity Management (IdM), and associated protections of security and privacy, will be essential to the success of 5G use cases under the banner of the Internet of Things. CTOs underlined the importance of the efficient, sustainable use of ITU’s international numbering resources allocated in support of the Internet of Things, as well as the value of related ITU standardization work on security and IdM.
CTOs were briefed on the results of the ITU World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly 2016, in particular the agreement of the new WTSA Resolution 92 calling for ITU-T standardization to expand its study of the wireline networking innovations required to achieve the ambitious performance targets of 5G systems.
Learn more about the wireline technology enablers of future 5G systems in a wrap-up video of an ITU workshop and demo day held in December 2016.
