The International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) formally approved the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5G technology (with the Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) included) as International Mobile Telecommunications-2020 (IMT-2020) 5G standard at the ITU-R Working Party 5D (WP5D) #35 meeting, which was convened online on July 9th 2020 due to concerns of the ongoing global pandemic.

A game-changer to the development of the mobile telecom industry, this announcement was collectively witnessed by more than 200 representatives and experts from regulatory agencies, telecom manufacturing and operating businesses, and research institutions from all over the world.

This great milestone was realized after the ITU affirmed through much scrutiny that 3GPP 5G fulfills the entire set of the technological requirements of IMT-2020 5G standard. Through close collaboration of industrial partners from all the relevant countries, ITU has reached the IMT-2020 5G milestone o milestone on schedule, leading the entire globe closer to a fully connected, intelligent world.

The standard, IMT-2020 5G, is an umbrella developed by the ITU towards 5G, or the fifth generation technology standard for mobile networks 2020 and beyond. To ensure technological leadership and superiority over previous cellular technologies, the ITU has posed challenging requirements and developed stringent assessment standards.

Since 2016, the ITU has been undergoing a profound and thorough assessment of all received candidate proposals based on 5G's three major use cases: enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), and Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC). Finally, 3GPP 5G was approved as the technology meets the technological standards of IMT-2020 for supporting diverse 5G applications in terms of service support, spectrum, and performance indicators. The technology boasts a peak rate of over 20 Gbps, a latency of less than 1 ms, and enablement of one million connections per square kilometer.  

The host of the meeting, ITU-R WP 5D, is a working group under the ITU that is responsible for the terrestrial radio access of International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) systems. Over the past 20 years, the ITU-R WP 5D standardized 3G (known as IMT-2000), 4G (known as IMT-Advanced), as well as the current 5G standard (or termed as IMT 2020 and beyond). 3G and 4G have enabled the mobile telecom industry to achieve significant accomplishments worldwide. Led by the ITU-R WP 5D, countries and regional organizations around the world will continue to work together on mobile communications.