ZTE Rises Above Political Woes With Core 5G Network Claim

China’s mobile operators are gearing up to launch commercial 5G services in 2020, and domestic vendors Huawei and ZTE have been busy ensuring that those 5G networks will pass muster when it comes to technological robustness and standards compliance.In China, at least, it would seem that the two vendors are making progress with 5G developments as they attempt to get themselves back on track following a torrid year in 2018. Although their woes are far from over, in China they continue to focus on carrying out tests under the aegis of the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group, which was established in 2013 as China’s platform to promote 5G research in China. The group has also formed a memoranda of understanding with the 3GPP in Europe and the Fifth Generation Mobile Communications Promotion Forum (5GMF) in Japan to “facilitate globally unified 5G standardization” under the IMT-2020 banner.China’s 5G R&D trial established three separate phases for verifying a 5G solution: key technologies, technical solutions, and system networking. The third phase was initiated in November 2017, and Huawei and ZTE have already made announcements of successful tests during this phase. Huawei, for example, said in September 2018 that it had passed China’s 5G standalone tests covering aspects such as service-based architecture of 5G core networks and key functions such as network slicing. ZTE also said in October that it had completed several standalone tests at 3.5 GHz as well as all non-standalone tests at 3.5 GHz and 4.9 GHz.