While going through the latest issue of CW Journal, I came across this article from Moray Rumney, Lead Technologist, Keysight. It highlights an interesting point that I missed out earlier that 5G also includes all LTE specifications from Release 15 onwards.
I reached out to our CW resident 3GPP standards expert Sylvia Lu to clarify and received more details.
In fact at Sylvia clarified, NB-IoT and Cat-M will also be part of the initial IMT-2020 submissions early next year. Thanks Sylvia.Indeed, NB-IoT and Cat-M will also be part of the initial IMT-2020 submissions early next year.. watch the space— Sylvia Lu (@SylviaLuUk) December 22, 2017
There is also this nice presentation by Huawei in ITU (here) that describes Requirements, Evaluation Criteria and Submission Templates for the development of IMT-2020. It is very helpful in understanding the process.
Coming back to the question I have often asked (see here for example),
1. What features are needed for operator to say they have deployed 5G, and
2. How many sites / coverage area needed to claim 5G rollout
With LTE Release-15 being part of 5G, I think it has just become easy for operators to claim they have 5G.
What do you think?