NYU WIRELESS and Sprint Join Forces to Advance 5G Mobile Technology

BROOKLYN, New York –  NYU WIRELESS and Sprint today announced they are working together to further the development of mobile 5G. Sprint joins the university research center at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering as an industry affiliate sponsor.

As an industry affiliate, Sprint will gain early access to NYU WIRELESS’s internationally recognized research, work with students and faculty on 5G-oriented projects, and have access to a ready pipeline of engineering talent. Sprint will also contribute technical expertise on network design, use cases, and architecture requirements for core and radio access 5G networks and the devices that will access them.

Sprint continues to make progress on its path to 5G. Together with Qualcomm Technologies and SoftBank, it recently agreed to develop technologies for mobile 5G, including the 3GPP New Radio (NR) standard in Band 41 (2.5 GHz) for accelerated wide-scale 5G deployments. The companies plan to provide commercial services and devices in late 2019. The announcement builds on Sprint’s demonstration last summer, when it was the first carrier in the world to showcase 5G at a large scale public event — the Copa America Centenario soccer tournament — using 15 GHz and 73 GHz spectrum.

“We’re focused on delivering mobile 5G in late 2019 using our 2.5 GHz spectrum to provide broad nationwide 5G coverage with millimeter wave bands serving as high-capacity, high-throughput hotspots,” said Dr. Ron Marquardt, Vice President of Technology, Sprint. “Our work with NYU WIRELESS will be instrumental for practical use of this spectrum and ensuring strong integration between these bands.”

NYU WIRELESS is a recognized international academic leader in 5G research for its seminal mmWave research, measuring, and modeling. The center, which conducted the world’s first radio channel measurements proving that the mmWave spectrum holds vast potential to improve wireless communications, was cited by the Federal Communications Commission when the commission explored the future of millimeter technology. NYU WIRELESS’s Founding Director Theodore “Ted” Rappaport’s expertise was a key element in the FCC’s 2016 passage of the Spectrum Frontiers Proposal (SFP), and NYU WIRELESS is one of only two academic institutions recently chosen by the FCC to help test, debug, and provide feedback on a new web-based portal that lets researchers apply for a program experimental license. Through its 18 affiliates and its co-sponsorship of the Brooklyn 5G Summit, NYU WIRELESS is playing a key role in driving commercialization of next-generation technology and services.

“We very much look forward to working closely with Sprint. Dating from their work in developing 4G, Sprint has had a well-known reputation of being technology pioneers, trialing advanced technologies in very early stages” said Sundeep Rangan, the director of NYU WIRELESS and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NYU Tandon. “Our research collaboration has the potential to take the 5G technologies from the lab to a real operator. This work can ultimately benefit wireless consumers with vastly increased speed and connectivity and to transform the communications landscape of the future.”

About Sprint
Sprint (NYSE: S) is a communications services company that creates more and better ways to connect its customers to the things they care about most. Sprint served 59.7 million connections as of March 31, 2017 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; leading no-contract brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. Sprint has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America for the past five years. You can learn more and visit Sprint at sprint.com or facebook.com/sprint and twitter.com/sprint.

About NYU WIRELESS
NYU WIRELESS is a multi-disciplinary academic research center that offers an unprecedented and unique set of skills. Centered at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and involving more than 200 faculty and students throughout the entire NYU community, NYU WIRELESS offers its faculty, students, and affiliated sponsors from industry a world-class research environment that is creating the fundamental theories and techniques for next-generation mass-deployable wireless devices across a wide range of applications and markets. This center combines NYU Tandon, NYU School of Medicine, and NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and offers a depth of expertise with unparalleled capabilities for the creation of new wireless circuits and systems as well as new health care solutions for the wireless industry. For more information, visit nyuwireless.com.

About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU, the country’s largest private research university, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.