Page 23 - Highlight_Issue_2_FLIP_BOOK

RELEASE 17 TIMELINE AGREED

December’s Plenary meetings of the 3GPP Technical Specification At last week’s Plenary, the TSG RAN, TSG SA and TSG CT Chairs have
Groups (TSG) have resulted in joint approval of a firm Release co-proposed a new schedule for the completion of Release 17 work.
17 timeline. In reaching this scheduling decision, TSGs#90-e
considered the effects that e-meetings in 2020 had on the work’s New Release 17 Schedule:
progress and the pressure that cancellation of all face-to-face • Rel-17 Stage 2 Functional Freeze, June 2021 (TSGs#92-e)
meetings has created.
• Rel-17 Stage 3 Protocol Freeze, March 2022 (TSGs#95)
With remote working now confirmed as the norm until June
2021, the delegates took guidance from the Chairs of the • Rel-17 Protocol coding Freeze (ASN.1, OpenAPI),
Working Groups and the three TSG Chairs, that delegates June 2022 (TSGs#96)
participating in both the actual e-meetings and discussions in- Only the timeline for the work has changed; the content of Release
between meetings need more time to be able to comfortably and 17 remains as approved during the December 2019 TSG#86
accurately consolidate the results of their work. This guidance meetings. With this revised timeline, the broader 5G industry can
takes into account the fact that in the busiest groups the stream of rely on an informed and well-considered schedule that takes into
contributions can peak at over 1000 emails a day. account the peculiar situation created by life during a pandemic.

2020 2021 2022 2023
Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1
TSG#90-e TSG#91-e TSG#92-e TSG#93 TSG#94 TSG#95 TSG#96 TSG#97 TSG#98 TSG#99

Rel-17 Rel-17 Rel-17
Stage 2 Stage 3 Protocol
Freeze Freeze Coding Freeze
(ASN.1 OPENAPI)

Rel-18
Package
Approval
Schedule assumes a return to
TM physical meetings after June 2021.

The new commitment will greatly help companies advance their At the March 2021 (TSG#91-e) meetings, the membership will
plans for network roll-out and new product development. The evaluate the possibility to resume physical meetings in the second
Release 17 schedule will now allow 3GPP the time it needs to half of the year – as soon as possible after the June 2021 TSG
complete the maintenance of Release 16 specifications as they e-meetings.
become very stable.
(First published December 14, 2020 - 3GPP Press Release)
At the same time, it allows the groups to switch priority to some
exciting Release 17 features.
Studies in several key areas are already in the pipeline. These
include: coverage and positioning enhancements, NR and slicing
QoE work, adding new frequency ranges, NR reduced capacity
devices, enhanced support of non-public networks, supporting
unmanned aerial systems, support for edge computing in 5GC,
proximity-based services in 5GS, network automation for 5G
(Phase 2) and for access traffic steering, switch and splitting
(ATSSS), among others.
Release 17 features to look out for include new work and
enhancements for: URLLC for industrial IoT over NR, NR support
over non-terrestrial networks, MIMO, integrated access and
backhaul (IAB), MBS positioning, NR multicast and broadcast
services, RAN slicing for NR, NR sidelink, multi-RAT dual-
connectivity, support for multi-SIM devices for LTE/NR, NR small Rel-17 discussions during TSG RAN#86 - December 2019
data transmissions in inactive state and multimedia priority
service, to name a few.
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