Theme “The Road Ahead to Ubiquitous 5G”

It is well established that 5G will provide fast access to information and data. The full promise is availability of “fast, uniform, reliable and cost effective” connectivity anywhere, anytime for users on the move. Scenarios showing need and requirement in several industry verticals are demonstrated. To realize the promise there are, however challenges related generally to security, privacy and to sustainable business models for implementation with SME’s. With the deployment of 5G started in 2020, these challenges must be addressed.

It was organized by Center for Communication, Media and Information technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University-Copenhagen. Due to the Corona-virus situation, it was an online meeting giving a new experience to WWRF. The usual social interaction during breaks, reception and dinner was missing, but the online form facilitated the highest number of participants in several years (119 registered) – especially students/ PhD students – from all continents.

The meeting had a very packed programme with 7 plenaries and 11 working group beak-out sessions see below. The plenary programme covered a broad area related to 5G: emerging use cases; Smart Cities; security, IMT-2020 development; beyond 5G; Business models; and Industry 4.0. The working group sessions presented material and discussions related to all of the active working groups within WWRF.

There were some organizational/ technical challenges with the online form bur they were overcome and the meeting was concluded successfully, both with respect to content and form (it even included a – limited – conference dinner for local participants) which inspired WWRF to include online seminars/ meetings in the future.

We thank the sponsors Huawei; Interdigital; Smart City Cluster Denmark; DIGINNO/ Interreg; and Infinit for contributions made.