With shifted focus to joint innovation towards 5G, the GTI Summit 2017 was held on 28th Feb. at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 in Barcelona, as a significant milestone for the GTI 2.0 that strives for further promoting 4G evolution and 5G development, to build everything connected world through cross-industry collaboration.

The Summit attracted top leaders from operators like Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, Softbank, Vodafone and vendors as well as vertical partners, giving their insights and views on trending topics on 4G and its evolution, 5G strategy, and emerging opportunities enabled by 5G cross-industry innovation.

Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel said, “As 4G becomes more pervasive and ubiquitous, the real possibilities of 5G will come under sharper focus. Evolution from 4G to 5G will primarily be anchored on cross industry collaboration and continuous innovation across the mobile ecosystem. Its impact will be experienced across all walks of life in the shape of Smart Cities with connected utilities and highly efficient, safe and secure management of resources, Smart Homes, preventive and remote healthcare and remote ‘virtual’ class rooms. GTI 2.0 will continue to be the primary global platform to shape this massive technology evolution and Bharti Airtel is proud to be a part of this.” 

According to Mr. Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp,” We have made huge progress in developing 5G Technology. Last year (2016), a small group of us agreed in just one day that we will commit to developing HPUE (High Power UE). This year (2017), 2.5 GHz HPUE debuts on top Sprint devices, and is approved to be able to cover 99% of 1.9 GHz LTE coverage. This has created $100bn of value for us! In the next 2 years, HPUE will be available on all new handsets. In September 2016, SoftBank announced the first commercialization of Massive MIMO worldwide. This technology can achieve 10 times of data capacity than normal antenna. Furthermore, toward the era of IoT 1 Trillion, ARM (a SoftBank Group company), announced last week that it will provide NB-IoT solutions (Cordio-N) in 2018.”

Mr. Li Yue, CEO of China Mobile said: “China Mobile had deployed 1.5 million TD-LTE 4G base stations, and had more than 530 million 4G subscribers as the end of 2016. 4G has greatly changed the lifestyle, while 5G will reshape the society. China Mobile have announced the Big Connectivity Strategy and would like to collaborate with all industry partners to work for New Technologies, including 5G, Cellular-IoT (Internet of Things), and implementation of V2X; New Network rebuilt by ICT convergence with NFV/SDN; and New Ecosystem with capabilities open platforms”. Mr. Li also mentioned that:” China Mobile have established 5G Innovation Center, by which we would like to do joint innovation towards 5G with cross-industry partners to embrace the Everything Connected World”

Andy Macleod，Regional Technology Director for Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific , Vodafone Group said: “As 4G networks evolve towards 5G, it’s important that the industry works together to ensure that new features and services are developed using common standards. We look forward to collaborating with companies and organisations across the ecosystem to research, develop, trial and standardise new technologies.”

"GTI has contributed greatly to the development of the 4G industry. We look forward to GTI assuming an even more active role in the development of the 5G industry," said Huawei Deputy Chairman and Rotating CEO Eric Xu. "We must live up to our historic mission and continue our collaborative efforts to give 5G greater vitality and a longer life cycle. Only with greater vitality and a longer life cycle will 5G provide better returns on investment to investors."

“Thinking 10 years ahead and pushing the limits of technology, we imagine a Future X Network that is a 10-fold improvement across key technology domains,” said Mr. Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman of Nokia. “We are connecting everything, everyone and every system and process with a network that will enable us to explore and interact with information in new and useful ways.”

“Qualcomm Technologies is proud to help lead the world towards rapid development and deployment of 5G NR by working with others in the industry,” said Matt Grob, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We continue to utilize our expertise in 3G and 4G to bring 5G to fruition, in turn helping to elevate mobile into a technology that changes the world.”

As connected-car has become one of the most inspiring area enabled by cellular network, GTI and 5GAA (5G Automotive Association) signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) during GTI Summit, and jointly announced a statement for Cellular-V2X (C-V2X) industry development promoting a unified standard, innovative and converged ecosystem. By this statement, telecom and automotive sectors will work closely on C-V2X use cases and scenarios, solutions and trials, standardization and spectrum, business model and go-to-market strategies to achieve the success of thriving C-V2X market and create a new era of Internet of vehicles.

Besides, to promote 4G evolution towards 5G for laying solid foundation of cross-industry innovation, GTI released three major achievements including the white paper of Future Spectrum Initiative to guide efficient spectrum usage, whitepapers on Massive MIMO and Fixed Wireless Broadband to promote improvements in performance and system evolution, and facilitate operators with new business growth, and High Power UE products and solutions on Band 41, to improve cell edge performance and lower down carriers’ investment cost.

In order to acknowledge significant contribution to the industry and GTI achievements in 2016, GTI Awards were also presented at the summit. Samsung, Qualcomm and R&S won awards on “innovative technical product”, while Huawei, ZTE and Keysight won awards on “innovative solution and application”, for their outstanding accomplishment on HPUE, Massive MIMO, uplink enhancement solution and etc. Besides, Bharti Airtel, KDDI and RJIO were granted awards of “market development” for their significant achievement in promoting TD-LTE and LTE TDD/FDD global deployment. Honorary awards, newly set up this year, were granted Mr.Prakash Bhart from Vodafone, Dr. Herkole Save from Sprint, Mr. Eric Ekudden from Ericsson, and TDD teams of Nokia and Huawei, for their active contribution to the GTI and TDD industry as a whole.

About GTI
GTI, founded in 2011, has been dedicated to constructing a robust ecosystem of TD-LTE, speeding up the commercialization of TD-LTE and promoting the convergence of LTE TDD and FDD. As 4G evolves to 5G, GTI 2.0 was officially launched at the GTI Summit 2016 during the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, aiming not only to further promote the evolution of TD-LTE and its global deployment, but also fostering a cross-industry innovative and a synergistic 5G ecosystem.