LIVE FROM HUAWEI MOBILE BROADBAND FORUM 2016, TOKYO: The mobile industry must “learn from history” when it comes to the danger of being overcome by hype, Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) chairman Craig Ehrlich warned.

“The transition to 5G only makes sense if we are able to create new markets. We need to find a way for our industry, for operators, to have a bigger piece of the pie. If 5G does not focus on that, then we are just buying a lot of equipment, and talking a lot of hype,” he said.

Ehrlich pointed to the rollout of 3G networks as an example from history, where the technology was seen as a panacea for all, and enabler of mobile broadband.

“For those of us who built 3G networks, we realised soon after we built them that they did not have all the capacity, all the capabilities that we needed to actually implement true mobile broadband,” he said.

New focus
The GTI chairman also talked about the new focus of the organisation, having largely achieved its aim of integrating TDD (unpaired spectrum) and FDD (paired) variants of LTE technology.

“LTE’s success was really because it converged TDD and FDD. Without that, I would argue that fourth generation technology would be much slower around the world,” Ehrlich said.

While it will continue its work across areas such as spectrum and technology, “most important is how do we find industries, enterprises, that will work with us? And we do have some muscle.”

“We have to move fast at this stage, and yes collaborate, but we have to understand that there are so many people who want to take our [operators’] business model away from us,” he observed.