You could get a spirited debate about whether 600-MHz or 28-GHz spectrum will be first to be commercially deployed to support 5G mobile networks. The issue is that even after 600-MHz former TV spectrum is cleared and re-auctioned, years are likely to pass before the spectrum actually is physically cleared for use.
Separately, though some might question the viability of 28-GHz spectrum to support 5G, some of that spectrum already is commercially available for use by Verizon, for example.
Some will recall that several competitive local exchange carriers attempted to use 28 GHZ for point to point trunking and business access services around the turn of the century.
That band was, and remains, challenging, as signal attenuation is high, even when other atmospheric conditions (rain and fog, for example) do not interfere. But 15 years of Moore’s Law, plus use of small cell architectures, and the development of local distribution methods such as Wi-Fi, mean the feasibility of commercial use is substantially different.
In some instances, signal attenuation is less an issue, since deployment might be only for short distances. In all cases, affordable complex signal processing means signals can be recovered where that would not have possible in the past.
But signal blockage is a challenge, since millimeter wave signals are mostly line of sight, and are blocked by walls, people and other objects such as furniture. That likely means dense in-building networks (one radio in each office, for example).
No comments:
Post a Comment