by Jeremy Horwitz VentureBeat
Although a cellular industry organization called 3GPP is the primary source for international 5G standards, member companies often pursue their own individual and collaborative technology projects as well, laying the groundwork for future developments and standards. Today, six major carriers announced that they’ve formed the 5G Future Forum, a group that will collaborate on global 5G interoperability in hopes of accelerating adoption of the new technology.
The founding members are U.S. carrier Verizon, Canada’s Rogers, Europe’s Vodafone, Australia’s Telstra, Latin America’s América Móvil, and South Korea’s KT — each a heavy hitter, if not the heaviest, in its respective market. While the initial and second releases of the international 5G standard are more or less set in stone at this point, the 5G Future Forum appears to be focused on advancing 5G-enabling technologies, notably including mobile-edge computing to radically reduce network latency and improve data performance.