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Ericsson has announced the launch of a collaborative research initiative designed to accelerate 5G development and foster a unified European infrastructure market.
Named the 5G Exchange (5GEx), the project is a Phase 1 effort within the 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G PPP). It brings together multiple operators and a range of technologies to develop the solutions, architectures, and standards needed for next‑generation communications. The 5G PPP was established by the European Commission to coordinate industry and research efforts toward delivering 5G capabilities.
Sara Mazur, Head of Ericsson Research, commented: “A unified European 5G infrastructure service market will be a strong enabler for feature‑rich services that can have a positive impact on people, business and society.” She added that Ericsson is proud to lead the 5GEx project as part of broader industry collaborations to unlock the full potential of 5G.
The 5GEx project is scheduled to run from October 2015 to March 2018 and aims to lay groundwork ahead of 5G’s commercial rollout later in the decade.
Key objectives of 5GEx include:
- Developing an open platform for cross‑domain orchestration that spans multiple administrative domains, accompanied by open source tools and extensions suitable for use beyond the project.
- Establishing a sandbox network to enable experimentation and validation of architectures, mechanisms and business models in realistic settings.
- Delivering a proof‑of‑innovation multi‑domain platform that supports diverse 5G use cases and demonstrates end‑to‑end Infrastructure‑as‑a‑Service orchestration across several operators.
- Contributing findings and concepts to standards bodies to help shape interoperable industry specifications.
- Encouraging ICT stakeholders to adopt 5GEx’s open solutions to promote a common European infrastructure market.
Ericsson already participates in other 5G research programs such as 5G for Europe and METIS II. Its involvement in 5GEx reflects a broader commitment to sharing research and promoting compatibility among network functions virtualization (NFV) and software‑defined networking (SDN) technologies.
The 5GEx consortium includes a broad mix of industry and academic partners: Atos; Athens University of Economics and Business; Berlin Institute for Software Defined Networks; Budapest University of Technology and Economics; Carlos III University of Madrid; Deutsche Telekom; European Center for Information and Communication Technologies; Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Huawei; Orange; RedZinc; KTH Royal Institute of Technology; Telecom Italia; Telefónica I+D; Telenor; and University College London.
Huawei stands out among the partners as a major global vendor that surpassed Ericsson in market position in 2012 and has been active in 5G research. Recently, Huawei conducted a field trial with Japan’s NTT DOCOMO that demonstrated a peak throughput of 3.6 Gbps in a large‑scale, non‑laboratory environment. That trial used sub‑6 GHz microwave frequencies, which offer high data rates but can be more susceptible to blockage than lower frequencies.
By pooling expertise and sharing research, Ericsson, Huawei and the other 5GEx partners aim to address practical challenges such as propagation limits, spectrum usage and multi‑domain orchestration. Their collaborative approach is intended to produce interoperable solutions and operational practices that benefit the wider industry across Europe and beyond.
Do you believe the 5GEx project will help advance 5G? Share your thoughts in the comments.