Vodafone has announced a partnership with the Dresden University of Technology to research and develop 5G technology.
The operator is already working with the University of Surrey, Kings College London and Carnegie Mellon University as part of its global programme to research the next generation of wireless technologies.
The mobile operator and university are looking to bring together academics, developers and technology companies to explore the capabilities of 5G and establish technical guidelines for its development.
The university has thrown the doors open on a new 5G lab, which sports facilities such as network hardware and software, chipsets, spectrum and cloud computing infrastructure.
The firm said researchers would look for ways that 5G would help boost speeds while decreasing latency as well as substantially increasing the number of devices that can simultaneously connect to a network, allowing greater spectral efficiency and expanding the reach of ultra-fast mobile networks.
"Today, mobile communications is all about moving content from one place to another. Tomorrow it will be about being able to control a vast array of objects in real-time with little human intervention. To get there we need to rethink wireless communications, particularly with regard to data rates, latency and IP services," said Professor Gerhard Fettweis, the Vodafone chair of mobile communications systems at the Dresden University of Technology.
He added that, in working with Vodafone and other partners, the university "is well positioned to lead a cross-industry effort to find answers to some of these challenging questions".
Luke Ibbetson, Vodafone's head of research and development, said 5G is in the very early stages of development but is important to invest the time and effort to really understand the technology.
"There are several years of research ahead of us and Vodafone looks forward to working closely with Dresden and its other partners around the world to build a technical foundation for the next generation of mobile communications," he said.
