AT&T is taking the 5G bull by the horns with Wednesday's announcement that it will work with other leading technology companies to clear up 5G standards issues.
In particular, AT&T's Tom Keathley, senior vice president of wireless network architecture and design, said "interim and fragmented pre-standard specifications can distract from the ultimate goal" of getting 5G standards ready for deployments once standards body 3GPP completes the first release of the official specifications.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) said preliminary discussions were underway with China Mobile Ltd. (NYSE: CHL), Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT), Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , KDDI Corp. , LG Electronics Inc. (London: LGLD; Korea: 6657.KS) , Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NYSE: DCM), Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM), Samsung Corp. , SK Telecom, Telstra Corp. Ltd. (ASX: TLS; NZK: TLS) and Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD).
"We're joining other tech leaders to find and resolve key standards issues early and bring 5G to market sooner," Keathley said in a prepared statement.
While standards body 3GPP probably won't complete the first phase of standards until 2018, AT&T and Verizon have been very vocal about their 5G trials and plans. (See Top Execs Talk 5G With Telco Transformation and Greendyk: Network Slicing Key Feature for AT&T's 5G Core.)
On Tuesday, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and SK Telecom (Nasdaq: SKM) announced they were deepening their partnership to work on turning 5G technical specifications into global standards. (See Verizon, SK Telecom Extend 5G Partnership.)
— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation