In Europe, Telecom Italia Mobile, (TIM), Fastweb, and Huawei, will start testing 5G  in the Italian cities of Bari and Matera. These companies are scheduled to submit a joint migration plan with 52 international, national, and local bodies, such as university centers of excellence and leading IT companies. The first testing scenarios are tentatively set for June 2018, with both Italian cities set for full coverage by the end of 2019.

Telia, along with Ericsson and Intl, are of the companies at the forefront of deploying 5G technology in Europe. They have successfully created the first 5G public use network in the region, which is noteworthy for its ability to provide connectivity to a commercial passenger cruise ship. This achievement marks a significant milestone for companies throughout Europe, as it sets the stage for the digitization of cities and the widespread adoption of 5G services.

Why you need to implement a migration strategy

The 5th generation presents unique technical challenges in regard to your Wi-Fi integration and the long-term evolution of increased volumes of traffic and millions of devices. These challenges demand a solution capable of validating your security, performance, functionality, and quality of experience for both your consumers and your 5G-related products or services.

To guarantee the success of your applications and devices that will rely on 5G networks, your business as a service provider needs to prepare your networks to validate the quality of experience of your wireless services.

Business Preparation activity for 5G should cover:

Security

Security and privacy testing and appropriate integrations should consider issues of how to isolate, deploy, and manage virtual network slices securely.

Other security concerns that need to be addressed are:

1. Whether your 5G security solutions will encompass the service layer as well as the entry/ access layer.
2. Building an extension of protection from your previous generations.
3. Facilitating an extended protection of identity and location privacy against active attackers.

NFV Preparedness

Enabling your business to become more virtual (Network Function Virtualisation) requires a greater focus on cloud-based technologies and solutions that bypass your network’s traditional reliance on function-specific hardware, instead of a software-defined architecture.

In order for your organization to maximize the latest technology developments, you will need a network that you can scale adequately.

The most effective way that you can prepare for the transition to technology virtualization is to work with a service provider and deploy NFV and cloud-based technology as soon as possible.

Reliability & Ultra Low Latency

Reliability requirements are very tough in industrial communication applications and for societal functions like flight management booking systems and smart city management.

Ultra-low latency is needed and this requires different design choices than those made for today’s mobile broadband systems.

Your business will need to be proactive in testing to determine what tradeoffs are best.

 Other migration factors should include:

• How will you support 5G?
• How it will affect your customer’s experience using your service or product.
• How it will impact day-to-day activities and future processes.

How will 5G add value to your service?

According to Aria, businesses are expected to generate substantial recurring revenues from a mix of subscription and usage-based fees linked to significantly fast data speeds and data volumes.

Monetization opportunities include:

HD mobile video: Mobile customers will be able to download an entire HD movie in about five seconds (compared to 8 minutes with 4G) and with no lag time and no buffering.

New content services: Your business will benefit from a new ability to support location-based services that can deliver highly targeted multimedia content to your customers in their cars, in retail, airports, sporting events, concert settings, and more.

Immersive experiences: 5G will pave the way for the widespread adoption of 3D technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), which will transform the way we experience HD movies, TV, sports, video games, and business content.