New York, Feb 23 (IANS): US wireless communications service provider Verizon and Swedish communication technology firm Ericsson are set to put 5G network on trial in multiple cities across the US.

The pre-commercial customer pilots are scheduled to begin in the first half this year.

"Verizon is driving the commercial deployment of 5G with the collaboration and innovation of the Verizon 5G Technology Forum, including partners like Ericsson," said Ed Chan, Senior Vice President (Technology Strategy and Planning) of Verizon.

Ericsson has been field testing various applications across the 5G network to evaluate the application behaviour.

According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, there will be 550 million 5G subscriptions globally in 2022 with North America leading the way with 25 per cent of all mobile subscriptions forecast to be 5G.

"Ericsson 5G radios have been providing multi-gigabit speeds into subscriber locations by using advanced radio techniques. For example, beamforming can be used to find the best path for the 28GHz radio signal to reach the user," said Arun Bansal, Head of Business Unit Network Products at Ericsson.