Tuesday, June 25, 2019

In Millimeter Wave Era, Outdoor Mobile Coverage Will Almost Never Reach Indoors

In the 3G and 4G eras, 2-GHz frequencies raised indoor signal reception issues that had not been such a problem during the 2G era. Those problems will increase as mid-band frequencies (2.5 GHz to 6 GHz) are used to support 5G. But millimeter wave frequencies will be something altogether different. 

It is possible to colocate 5G radios at existing 4G sites and preserve half to 80 percent of the 4G coverage area, when using millimeter wave spectrum at 28 GHz, Qualcomm  has estimated. 

Indoor coverage is quite another matter, though. “Millimeter outdoor-to-indoor coverage for mobile is not feasible,” Qualcomm has noted. In other words, millimeter wave spectrum used outdoors will not be available indoors at all. 


We might reasonably guess that large enterprise venues (sports stadiums, convention centers, airports, large retail malls) will have separate indoor coverage provided directly by mobile operators. 

What happens at smaller sites is the issue. Fallback to 4G and Wi-Fi for consumers at home is one obvious option. It also is possible that small businesses and organizations might ultimately use the Wi-Fi model to supply their own indoor 5G coverage. 

In many mid-range settings, it is possible that third parties will provide neutral host facilities. 

Much hinges on the business models and costs of each option. Fallback to 4G for mobile voice and texting, with Wi-Fi for data, is likely the most-affordable scenario for mobile operators. 

Indoor neutral host will be the best business model for would-be indoor infrastructure companies, supplying service either to mobile service providers or enterprises.

U.S. 5G Networks 10X to 45X Faster than 4G, in Early Launches

So far, 5G networks launched by Verizon, AT&T and Sprint have had limited footprints and relatively few users. As on any lightly-loaded network, available bandwidth per user is high, ranging from 484 Mbps to 1.8 Gbps in tests by Speedtest.net. 

5G Speed Tests by Speedtest

Peak download speed
Location
Phone
Verizon
1.3Gbps
Chicago
Galaxy S10 5G
AT&T
1.8Gbps
Los Angeles
Galaxy S10 5G
Sprint
484Mbps
Dallas
LG V50


Monday, June 24, 2019

5G Era Will See Huge Shifts in Computing and Storage

Some of us believe incremental new use cases and potential revenue in the 5G era will be driven mostly by enterprise use cases such as internet of things. The shift from consumer to enterprise for new revenue growth is mirrored by a huge shift of computing activity.

In the internet era, so far, data volumes have been lead by consumer apps such as streaming video, audio and web usage. By 2025, IDC predicts, volume will have shifted to enterprise. That, in turn, will 

While data storage is likely to remain “in the cloud,” processing is likely to move increasingly to the edge, driven by real-time apps and use cases, especially those related to internet of things apps. In most cases, those IoT apps will be deployed by enterprises. 


For that reason, global data processing volume will shift to the enterprise. 


This is a fairly good illustration of edge computing conducted by a device (personal health monitor, medical monitoring on the premises or at an edge data center. According to a study from the International Data Corporation (IDC), 45 percent of all data created by IoT devices will be stored, processed, analyzed and acted upon close to or at the edge of a network by 2020.



Can 5G Command a Price Premium?

Will 5G service providers be able to earn incrementally-more revenue for 5G subscriptions? The answer might hinge mostly on whether consumers perceive more value, but also partly on how service providers react to competition from their rivals.

Potential value is hard to measure, considering customer satisfaction as a possible proxy for value.

We might debate whether U.S. consumers are satisfied with their mobile or fixed network internet access services. Much hinges on which internet service provider a customer uses.

There is about a 10-point spread between the best and worst ISPs. That is about half the spread between the industries scoring highest and lowest in the ACSI ACSI rankings.

That noted, ISPs and linear video subscription services were at the very bottom of industry rankings in 2018.

Still, some surveys have found “overall satisfaction with today’s internet services is high, with 92 percent and 87 percent of users at least somewhat satisfied with their mobile and home internet services respectively.”

More consumers feel as though they currently pay too much for the internet in their home (51 percent agree) compared to the internet on their mobile device (36 percent agree), PwC has found.

That perception of value is inversely related to the cost per bit on mobile and fixed networks.
“The average cost of internet is $0.34/GB in the home versus $20.02/GB on mobile,” PwC estimates.


As always, much hinges on actual usage, compared to the retail price for a usage allowance. Still, customer satisfaction might matter as 5G services are launched. Will 5G be experienced as more satisfying, representing higher value? And, if so, will that lead to willingness to spend more?

Some observers believe there will not be a sustainable price premium for 5G service. Others might argue a temporary premium is possible. Such share of wallet increases always are difficult.

On the other hand, some might note that U.S. household spending on communications is quite low, especially for wealthier households. Mobile service spending is rather constant as well, year over year.

So there arguably is room for upside, provided customers perceive significant new value.

Why 5G Connectivity Revenue Forecasts Do Not Mean Very Much

Not everything we can quantify has significant meaning. Consider forecasts of 5G service revenue. We have seen, and will see, more forecasts of 5G connectivity revenue. In the consumer markets, there will be almost a one-for-one decrease in 4G revenue as the 5G service is adopted.

In other words, 5G mostly will be a substitute for 4G.

Since most adults now use mobile phones and therefore have mobile service, there are relatively few new accounts to be gained.

So 5G, as the immediate next-generation network, will displace existing connections and accounts, for the most part. Incremental new revenue is mostly going to come from new use cases, such as connected car or internet-of-things services.


So 5G adoption rates do matter, especially to the extent adoption is correlated with relatively-ubiquitous network presence, making the business case easier for new use cases built specifically on 5G capabilities.

Friday, June 21, 2019

Which U.S. Mobile Network is Fastest? Maybe AT&T, at the Moment

Leadership in the U.S. mobile industry is not easy. Verizon traditionally works to occupy the "premium network" space in the market, emphasizing that it has the "best network." That being the case, it is an existential threat when any other competitor can claim to have the fastest speeds or better coverage. 

T-Mobile US over the past couple of years has been able to point to some local markets where its service is at least as fast as Verizon's service. Now a new test suggests AT&T ccan claim to be the network with the fastest overall speeds. 

Thursday, June 20, 2019

U.S. Mobile Customer Data Consumption Grew 82% in 2018

U.S. mobile customer data consumption climbed 82 percent in 2018, according to the CTIA, and it does not look like the rate of increase is slowing.

Key Mobile Trends in the United States

2017
2018
% Change
Data Traffic
15.7T MB
28.28T MB
Up 82.2%
Data-Only Devices
126.4M
139.4M
Up 10.3%
Cell Sites
323K
349K
Up 8.0%
Smartphones
273.2M
284.7M
Up 4.2%
Connections
400.2M
421.7M
Up 5.4%
SMS + MMS
1.8T
2.0T
Up 15.8%
Wireless Penetration
120.7%
126.6%
Up 4.9%



Tuesday, June 18, 2019

More Educational Spectrum for 5G?

At its July 10 meeting, the Federal Communications Commission will consider “an order to open up the 2.5 GHz band for 5G,” says FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “ This is the single largest band of contiguous spectrum below 3 GHz.”

“But much of this public resource has been unused for decades,” said Pai. “On July 10, the Commission will vote on an order that will modernize an outdated regulatory regime for the 2.5 GHz band, a regime developed in the days when educational TV was the only use envisioned for this spectrum.”

One can argue that  very little of the educational spectrum has been deemed a “successful” use of spectrum resources. In fact, much of that spectrum has found its way to communications service provider uses. In some cases, education spectrum was released to support new microwave subscription TV services that never took off, either.


Then entrepreneurs tried using that same spectrum to support microwave services for business customers, with mixed success.

Much of that spectrum was, in turn, auctioned off to mobile service providers such as Sprint.


And now it appears much of that spectrum will be made available for 5G.

Millimeter Wave Capacity Dwarfs All Prior Mobile, Wi-Fi Spectrum

It is easy to miss the profound implications of millimeter wave spectrum, even as new ways are found to increase the amount of low-band and mid-band spectrum usable by mobile operators and Wi-Fi networks.

In this illustration, the narrow slivers to the left represent licensed U.S. and international mobile spectrum in the low-band and mid-band regions (600 MHz up to, and including 3.5 GHz).

The orange bands represent new spectrum the Federal Communications Commission plans to release.

The red and green bands show spectrum already used by other licensed users. The  blue regions starting at about 24 GHz represent potential mobile and Wi-Fi spectrum that is expected to be made available by the FCC.


It is fairly easy to visualize the impact millimeter wave could have on capacity: physical spectrum for Wi-Fi or mobile grows by more than an order of magnitude. Effective bandwidth will grow as much as two orders of magnitude, taking into account small cells, spectrum aggregation, spectrum sharing and other platform enhancements.

For the first time, wireless and mobile networks will have enough capacity, and cost per bit metrics, to function as a substitute for traditional fixed networks in a growing number of use cases.

Millimeter Wave is Not a "Mistake"

One hears quite a lot of chatter these days about how the United States “picked the wrong frequencies” to launch 5G networks. That typically refers to choices made by AT&T and Verizon.

Sprint and T-Mobile US have significant mid-band resources, while T-Mobile US touts its deployment using low-band resources. What such critics often overlook is that AT&T and Verizon have big customer bases and limited low-band or mid-band resources they can use today, to support 5G at scale.

Millimeter wave is a virtual necessity for AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile US and Sprint have different capacity resources, and also do not have so many customers they especially require immediate millimeter wave assets.

All service providers will use a mix of low-band, mid-band and millimeter wave assets to support 5G and all future networks.

In fact, the global roadmap for 5G and 6G makes clear that millimeter wave assets are the underpinning of both those next-generation networks. Use of millimeter is no “mistake;” it is the future.



5G Arriving Right on Schedule

Though there are legitimate concerns about deploying new 5G networks, mostly about the business model and financial return for some service providers facing issues with their 4G revenue models, 5G is about as inevitable as anything in the mobile service provider business.

In the digital era, since 2G, new mobile networks have been launched about every 10 years. So you might argue that 5G is appearing at the expected time. You might argue the transition from analog to the second generation was driven by operating cost advantages, but wound up adding text messaging in the process.

The attraction of 3G arguably was bandwidth improvements and the ability to support new internet applications. Much the same logic drove 4G. Though 5G is driven in part by a desire to provide more bandwidth featuring a lower cost per bit, 5G also is optimized in ways that make new apps and use cases possible as well.


One reason networks change, though, is that phones--as consumer electronics and computing devices--develop new capabilities every couple of years, often making the network a key bottleneck.

To a greater or lesser extent, smartphones have replaced stand-alone GPS units, cameras, watches, fixed network telephones, Wi-Fi routers, fixed network internet access, TV screens, music players and personal computers, for example.

The point is that much of the “concern” about 5G strikes me as misplaced. Next-generation mobile networks come about every decade.

More Spectrum Sharing in 6-GHz Band?

Spectrum sharing might not be an immediate issue in some countries that have ample unallocated spectrum to support 5G, Wi-Fi and other networks based on unlicensed spectrum. That is not the case in the U.S. market, where nearly all low-band and mid-band spectrum already is allocated to licensed users.

As a practical matter, if more low-band and mid-band spectrum is to be made available for 5G, Wi-Fi and other networks,, it will have to involve some form of effective spectrum reassignment.

Traditionally, we have had only one blunt-force tool: moving existing licensees off the desired spectrum. That takes time and is expensive.

Spectrum sharing is an arguably superior way to minimize time and cost, while preserving existing licensee usage and simultaneously creating usable 5G or Wi-Fi spectrum, even when the capacity is available solely in unlicensed form. Spectrum aggregation mechanisms are the second key technology advance that would allow use of both licensed and unlicensed spectrum as though it were one physical channel.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, for example, now is exploring ways to use spectrum sharing to free up as much as 1200 MHz of spectrum in the mid-band (5.925-7.125 GHz band) for unlicensed uses.

It might not be unreasonable to suggest that, eventually, nearly all low-band and mid-band spectrum could use spectrum sharing, in principle.

Sunday, June 16, 2019

5G, CBRS and Indoor Coverage: Mobile Starts to Resemble Fixed



Mobile networks architecturally are different from fixed networks. A mobile network is supposed to provider coverage outdoors and indoors. A fixed network is supposed to provide connectivity to the side of a building, with indoor coverage being a private network (Wi-Fi for indoor distribution). 

But as radio frequencies are higher, their ability to provide good coverage indoors decreases. So, in many ways, the traditional "mobile" architecture starts to resemble the traditional fixed network model: private networks owned by customers or third parties for indoor connectivity; access and transport provided by the mobile service provider. 

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Virtually All Licensed Spectrum Eventually Can be Shared


Even if spectrum sharing is emerging first for Citizens Broadband Radio Service and 5G networks, it can, in principle, eventually be used for all licensed spectrum. 

Quick Tutorial on Spectrum Aggregation


Spectrum aggregation can take several forms, including the ability to combine licensed mobile spectrum with Wi-Fi. With spectrum sharing, use of small cells, beam-forming antennas and millimeter wave spectrum, spectrum aggregation allows less-costly supply of more capacity, faster than otherwise might be possible. 

Spectrum Sharing Has Broadened


Spectrum sharing emerged as a tool to enable TV White Spaces, Expanded with Citizens Broadband Radio Service and now is becoming an enabler for sharing 4G and 5G spectrum on the same cell towers and cell sites. As envisioned to enable data networks using former TV broadcast spectrum, the idea was that cognitive radios would sense what spectrum is available in any local area by interrogating a data base. 

In a CBRS application the same general principles allow sharing of resources not in use by the primary license holder. When the primary licensee is not using its resources in a local area, others may acquire secondary licenses. If any resources remain unused after primary and secondary licensees, spectrum can be used as would Wi-Fi, in a best-effort, contention-based mode. 

In a new use case, dynamic spectrum sharing allows a 5G mobile device to use 4G and 5G resources at a radio site. 

Friday, June 14, 2019

17% of U.S. Homes are Mobile-Only for Internet Access

About 37 percent of U.S. adults say they mostly use a smartphone when accessing the internet. More significantly, perhaps. A majority of adults say they subscribe to home broadband, but about one-in-four (27 percent) do not,” say researchers at Pew Research Center. “And growing shares of these non-adopters cite their mobile phone as a reason for not subscribing to these services.”

Even in advance of 5G, which will in many cases become a full substitute for fixed network internet access, 17 percent of survey respondents say they already are “mobile only” for internet access.

As has been true in the past, income and education play key roles in propensity to purchase fixed network internet access. Some  92 percent of adults from households earning $75,000 or more a year say they have broadband internet at home, but that share falls to 56 percent among those whose annual household income falls below $30,000, according to the Pew Research Center.



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