5G will require full convergence between licensed, unlicensed tech: report

A new report published by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), in partnership with Maravedis-Rethink, makes no mistake about it: 5G will require unlicensed technologies working in conjunction with licensed networks to enable the kinds of services that are envisioned. “There is increasingly consensus around certain elements of the 5G framework, even if the precise standards are not yet specified, and many of these will be evolutions from current work on the licensed and unlicensed sides of the wireless fence,” the report states. “The licensed and unlicensed spectrum worlds will make significant contributions to the broad architecture that 5G must be, if it is to achieve its goals and not be merely a faster, more efficient version of what has gone before.”

The WBA—whose members read like a who’s who in the licensed and unlicensed industries, including AT&T, Boingo Wireless, Comcast, Sprint, T-Mobile, Google, Cisco and Microsoft, but no Verizon—conducts an industrywide survey each year and puts its findings into a report to update the industry. 2016’s report focuses on next-generation Wi-Fi, the need for convergence and coexistence between licensed and unlicensed technologies, as well as connected cities and city services.