AT&T is unveiling its 5G "roadmap" to bring customers super-fast and flexible wireless connectivity.

The company is working on 5G-enabling technologies, including millimeter waves, network function virtualization (NFV), and software-defined networking (SDN). It expects to conduct field trials of 5G technologies to provide wireless connectivity to fixed locations in Austin, Texas before the end of 2016. 5G is expected to deliver speeds 10-100 times faster than today’s average 4G LTE connections.

“New experiences like virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, smart cities and more are about to test networks like never before,” says John Donovan, chief strategy officer and group president of AT&T Technology and Operations.

AT&T says it will conduct its 5G trials so as to be able to "pivot to compliant commercial deployments" once 5G technology standards are set. The international standards body, 3GPP, will likely complete the first phase of that process in 2018.

According to AT&T, data traffic on its wireless network grew by a factor of 1,500 from 2007 through 2015, driven largely by video. More than 60% of the data traffic on its network in 2015 was video. The company expects that 4K video, virtual reality and IoT will drive the next wave of traffic growth.

5G technology is expected to deliver speeds 10-100 times faster than today’s 4G LTE connections. Image credit: Pixabay. Meeting the growing demands of such bandwidth-hungry applications will require virtualizing its network, the company says. That means turning routers, firewalls and other network equipment into "virtual functions," running on servers that can be deployed and upgraded more easily than traditional hardware.

AT&T's strategy calls for virtualizing 75% of its network by 2020. By the end of 2015, it had virtualized 5.7% of its network and expects that figure to reach 30% by the end of 2016.