5G Wireless Technology Is Now Official, With a Logo

Rubber-stamping the much-speculated name to the next generation wireless communication technology, the 3GPP cellular standards group has officially adopted the term '5G' going forward. The 'Organizational Partners' have approved the new logo of 5G along with the name, which will become the forthcoming wireless standard. The new 5G logo is derived from the LTE Advanced Pro design, however forgoing the general recurrence of the 4G LTE branding.

The 3GPP cellular standards group said that the idea behind this derived logo "is to keep a familiar design aspect with the use of plain black text and textured waves, but to make the logo stronger and sharper - ready for use on the new radio and next generation core specifications for 5G." As we said, the 5G logo bears 'waves' over it, same as what we see over the LTE Advanced Pro version.

5G wireless technology specifications are still being finalised and it is expected to be ready by late 2018. This is also when the first of the imminent phases - Phase 1 - will roll out, while the Phase 2 is due for completion in the year 2020. As we said, the definition of 5G is yet to be given by the group - however it's said to aim more on bandwidth rather than high speeds like 4G. We have already been hearing a lot about 5G to be more IoT-specific, which we can expect to kickstart the 'Internet of Things' era. "The use of the 5G logo on 3GPP specification cover sheets is intended to help the industry to identify at which point in time 5G features will appear," said the 3GPP in a release.

The advancement of 5G will begin after the Phase 1 rolls out across the globe, which hopefully includes India in the roadmap. Several telecom companies, chipset manufacturers like Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia and Samsung have already unveiled their devices that will support the upcoming technology.