Just a couple weeks ago, I was at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and I was extremely encouraged to see the tremendous 5G momentum with the entire ecosystem working toward global commercial 5G NR launches starting in 2019. MWC was a great opportunity for Qualcomm to host key European governments and regulators and to reiterate our strong commitment to the European Digital Single Market and its 5G roadmap, as we lead the world to 5G.

At MWC, we were able to show the very rapid progress we’ve made since the completion of the 5G NR initial standard in December 2017; we demonstrated 5G NR standards-compliant interoperability testing with our infrastructure vendor partners, including Ericsson and Nokia, for in 3.6 GHz as well as in mmWave — two key 5G bands both for Europe and globally. Just before MWC, we also announced the first trials of standards-compliant mobile 5G NR networks later this year with more than 20 operators globally using the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem and first standards-compliant mobile 5G NR devices in first half of 2019 with more than 19 manufacturers.

So, with 5G NR networks and devices on target for commercial launches in 2019, we also need to ensure timely access to the 3.6 GHz and 26 GHz in Europe. Having access to those bands will not only be essential for the rapid growth of mobile broadband services that consumers want, bringing new immersive XR experiences of our future, but also fuel the expansion of 5G to new industries such as automotive and new industrial IoT opportunities.

5G is designed to support all spectrum bands; lower frequency bands under 1 GHz, such as 700 MHz in Europe, will provide the widest coverage, but we also need access to higher frequency bands (e.g., 3-5 GHz and millimeter wave — mmWave) as they will deliver the wider bandwidths and lower latencies needed for enhanced mobile broadband services to provide a differentiated user experience as 5G services launch.

5G is also being designed to support all spectrum types — licensed, unlicensed, and shared. In addition to supporting an evolutionary path with, for example LAA type of functionality, it is also enabling a revolutionary path to spectrum sharing that will bring even more spectrum flexibility for mobile operators and new spectrum opportunity to industrial IoT players.

European regulators are focusing and prioritizing the mid-band spectrum in 3.4 to 3.8 GHz for 5G. This higher mid-band would deliver enough bandwidths for each major 5G mobile operator to have up to 100 MHz of contiguous spectrum, adding significant capacity and multi-gigabit user data rates for enhanced mobile broadband services. And thanks to 5G NR massive MIMO in this higher mid-band, mobile operators can reuse existing sites used by traditional LTE spectrum bands in the 2 GHz range.

But to deliver even better mobile broadband experiences in dense urban areas and a clear differentiation to today’s Gigabit LTE, it is essential to mobilize 26 GHz mmWave technologies for the smartphones, with each operator accessing 400 MHz and up to 800 MHz, to enable extreme throughput, lower latency and significantly more network capacity. On the mmWave front, the European regulators are prioritizing and focusing on the 26 GHz band that spans the 24.25 to 27.5 GHz frequency range.

At MWC, we showcased the real-world performance of 5G NR networks and devices using Frankfurt (sub-6 GHz — 3.5 GHz) and San Francisco (mmWave — 28 GHz). The simulation results showed significant network capacity and user experience gains over Gigabit LTE. Note that 26 GHz in Europe is expected to deliver similar performance as 28 GHz in the U.S. Below is a quick summary of the simulation results.