Satellite industry executives often quip that, given a chance, mobile operators would take all spectrum “from DC to light” if they could. Nothing in a new 4G Americas white paper on fifth generation mobile networks is going to allay those concerns.
To be sure, the paper is a straightforward discussion of spectrum needs driven by 5G, suggesting that spectrum both above and below 6 GHz is useful and needed.
The paper argues that more and more spectrum is being allocated for untethered, shared, license exempt and licensed spectrum for good reasons: given the strategic role mobile now plays in Internet access, messaging and voice communications, and given the growing number of users and consumption profiles, new spectrum is required, even if other tools--such as smaller cells--also are required.
The World Radiocommunication conference (WRC-15) will start a process of assigning new spectrum for 5G in historically unusual bands, well above 6 GHz in frequency, and extending as high as 86 GHz. That will require use of small cells, as the signals will not propagate very far.
The paper also reflects the general understanding of 5G, namely that it will be application optimized for a range of applications beyond use by humans, namely “Internet of Things (IoT),” or “Machine-to-Machine communications (M2M)” apps.
The 5G technical requirements now speak about needs for data rates greater than 10 Gbps, cell edge data rate of 100 Mbps and one millisecond end-to-end latency to support any number of applications, not all of which will need such stringent requirements.
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