China Mobile announced plans to conduct interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials based on the 5G New Radio (NR) specifications.

US-based chipset major Qualcomm Technologies and telecom equipment and software company ZTE are the technology partners for the 5G trials.

“We have finished our phase I trial on 5G key technologies and started the phase II trial on 5G system. The collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies and ZTE will push the devices and base station to be matured and ensure their time to market,” said Wang Xiaoyun, general manager, technology department, China Mobile.

The 5G trials will operate in sub-6 GHz mid-band spectrum at 3.5 GHz, enabling commercial network launches based on 3GPP Rel-15 standard compliant 5G NR infrastructure and devices.

In the 5G trials, China Mobile will aim to showcase 5G NR technologies to achieve multi-gigabit per second data rates at significantly lower latency and better reliability than today’s network, amongst other capabilities.

The 5G trials will utilize device prototype from Qualcomm Technologies and ZTE’s base station solutions, to simulate scenarios across a set of 5G NR use cases and deployment scenarios, following the guidelines of China Mobile.

The 5G trials will focus on 5G NR operation in sub-6 GHz mid-band spectrum at 3.5 GHz, which is a critical band in China for achieving ubiquitous coverage and capacity to address the large number of 5G use cases.

Matt Grob, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Qualcomm Technologies; and Xu Huijun, CTO of ZTE are instrumental in announcing the 5G trials to be done in the second half of 2017.