Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the entity in charge of establishing mobile telephony standards, announced the completion of 5G's second, but the first complete, standard on Friday after an online meeting among its global members.

The latest standard, or known as Release-16, features more than just ultra-high speed. It offers a wider wireless spectrum range, vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, improved positioning information and various industry applications.  

Its previous and the initial phase, Release-15, was completed in 2018, and is the 5G standard that the world is using now in building a 5G base station and making and using mobile devices with ultra-high speed and low latency communication. Its purpose is to make 5G begin functioning.  

Release-16 is the first complete standard and sets up 5G for various sectors and industries, while taking elements like low costs, high efficiencies and reliability into consideration.  

According to Xu Xiaodong, vice president of 3GPP Radio Access Network plenary, this will boost the development of 5G vertical industries, like car networking, millimeter waves, network slicing and industrial automation.  

It will be based on the current 5G construction and terminal use and will enhance the entire system through software upgrades. 

The 5G standard is the world's first unified telecommunication standard. Each version's completion is the consensus reached by the entire industry across the globe. This lays the very foundation for the real industrialization of 5G applications. 

In China, various 5G applications projects emerged into daily life last year, like autopilot, tele-surgery and intelligent warehousing, especially after the country issued commercial 5G licenses to major telecom operators in June.  

But most of them are still in the trial period and an industrial chain is yet to come due to the lack of 5G standards in the Internet of Things (IoT).  

In the past, Chinese companies and organizations contributed greatly to the standardization of Release-16, including the country's three major telecom operators, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.  

Efforts also came from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, as well as telecom giants and device makers like Huawei and ZTE.  

Among them, China Mobile led in making 15 technical standards. It submitted over 3,000 technical proposals to the Release-16 standardization, which is over 30 percent of the world's total.  

Sources said that in all 50 5G standardizations, China has 21, Europe has 14, the United States has nine, Japan has four and South Korea has two.  

Now, all China's three telecom operators plan to commercialize their 5G Stand-Alone (SA) network and Release-16 will give impetus to that, according to their experts.  

Across the globe, device makers, operators and other service and equipment providers will take big steps and measures to meet the trends. But a favorable environment should also be in position for such development.  

The completion of Release-16 was delayed for three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the hard work of experts from all around the world, a new chapter of 5G is ready to be unveiled. And now, 3GPP and its members are working on the next 5G phases.

(Cover image via VCG)