EU Commission Investing $65.4m In 5G, Targeting A 2020 Release Or Earlier

While 4G LTE is still rolling out across the US, Europe is already thinking about the next cellular technology. The European Commission has invested 50 million euros ($65.4 million) into 5G cellular technology research, and to accelerate the development process of the new technology. The European Commission wants to have 5G ready by 2020.

The money will be split amongst several different research projects that will address the architecture and functionality of the new wireless technology, and about 16 million euros ($20.9 million) of the money will be given to METIS, which is an alliance led by Ericsson that is hoping to develop wireless technology with an increase in speed and lower lag.

Overall, the European Commission notes that it has invested over 700 million euros ($915 million) from 2007 to 2013 for research on future networking technologies, half of which went to researching wireless networking technologies specifically. Almost one billion dollars in investments is quite a bit, but it shows that Europe is serious about mobile.

As far as 5G itself is concerned, the technology isn't official just yet, and it's not specified in any official documents, but somewhere down the line, the technology will closer to being a reality, and we should be hearing more about it in the next few years. In the meantime, carriers are still working on getting 4G LTE access to everyone in the US.

[via The Next Web]