“mmMAGIC” and “FANTASTIC 5G” compete for 5G leadership

Journalists are forced to produce light-hearted human interest stories of little news value. This year, the clamour of industry consortia seeking to develop 5G technology is doing the journalists’ jobs for them.

Earlier this week, an EU-funded consortium launched a new project to develop a new multi-service air interface for 5G that operates below 6 GHz. The new air interface’s requirements are to be highly flexible, scalable, versatile, future proof and energy and resource-efficient.

From a spectrum point of view, this development is significant, as much 5G research so far has focused on spectrum above 6 GHz, which is considered to be easier to access. The existing LTE air interface has hitherto been discussed as a basis for 5G below 6 GHz.

This new research project will include the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, Orange and Telecom Italia as well as SMEs and universities. The new project will be called “Flexible Air Interface for Scalable Service Delivery Within Wireless Communication Networks of the 5th Generation,” or “FANTASTIC 5G” for short.

This may be baffling at first glance but if you study the words carefully then you can come up with that acronym by strategically capitalising individual letters as follows: Flexible Air iNTerfAce for Scalable service delivery wiThin wIreless Communication networks of the 5th Generation.

Not to be outdone, Ericsson the next day launched its mmMAGIC project. This acronym stands for “Millimetre-Wave Based Mobile Radio Access Network for Fifth-Generation Integrated Communications,” or presumably “millimetre-wave based Mobile radio Access network for fifth-Generation Integrated Communications”. This project will “develop and design new concepts for mobile radio access technology for deployment in the 6–100 GHz range”.

Doubtlessly, both of these grouPs wiLl dEvelop importAnt technologieS that will improvE our communication networkS, buT are these acrOnyms really approPriate?

In other words, PLEASE STOP!

Toby Youell, PolicyTracker

10/7/2015