AT&T has applied for Special Temporary Authority (STA) to demonstrate 3GPP-based 5G New Radio (NR) systems at its SHAPE Conference at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, in June. The conference is June 22-23.
Similar to last year, the operator wants to use the 28 GHz spectrum band for the demo, which will use up to three fixed base stations and up to six user equipment (UE) units. The equipment will be placed indoors; the base stations will have connectivity to an internal server to provide content over the 5G air interface, with the UEs providing services to various devices through Wi-Fi.
In its application, AT&T noted that 3GPP completed the Release 15 NR specifications in June 2018, which together with 3GPP final NR specs in Release 16, will be submitted for consideration as an IMT 2020 Radio Interface Technology at the July 2019 ITU-R WP5D meeting.
The application does not name the vendors in this year's demo but lists “multiple” manufacturers.
RELATED: AT&T demos 5G at Warner Bros. studios
Last year’s 5G demo at the SHAPE Conference was created with Intel and Ericsson; they showed a three-way augmented reality experience allowing fans to virtually attend a live concert with a friend from three distinct locations as if they were in the room together. AT&T at the time said the experience was enabled by AT&T 5G and edge computing capabilities.
RELATED: Industry Voices—Entner: AT&T’s 5G service in Dallas delivers impressive speeds
Last week, AT&T announced that its mobile 5G service was live in parts of seven more cities, bringing the total to 19 cities. While it continues to get flak for muddying the waters with the 5G E icon on phones that are getting LTE-Advanced service, it’s getting high marks for speeds.
AT&T plans to offer at least three 5G mobile devices in 2019, with the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G smartphone due to hit stores this spring. Later in the year, it will bring another Samsung 5G smartphone online, one that will be able to access both millimeter wave and sub-6 GHz spectrum.