Millimeter wave spectrum for communications, more than 5G itself, will accentuate the traditional differences between public network services and privately-owned premises infrastructure. Half a century ago, we would have called this the distinction between wide area communication networks and premises local area networks.
WANs covered outdoor and public spaces; LANs indoor and private spaces. WANs were the property of communications companies; LANs the property of tenants, building owners or homeowners. WANs terminated at some demarcation point on a building. LANs began at the demarc and provided communications and networking inside the building.
That will be even more the case as millimeter wave spectrum is used for communication networks, for the simple physical reason that millimeter wave signals do not propagate as well as lower-frequency signals. That often will mean that indoor networks and infrastructure will be created and owned by consumers and organizations, just as they own their Wi-Fi networks.
Many believe that fixed networks, with Wi-Fi tails, could supply as much as two thirds of consumer capacity demand in the near future, because that is already the case. There is another way to view such data, and that is the division between private and public networks, service versus appliance, revenue opportunity for service providers or privately-owned information technology, use of service provider networks versus ownership of devices.
But other developments will have an effect, increasing the scale and scope of private mobile networks. In the mid-band spectrum range, in the U.S. market, a new type of shared spectrum for access rights will be created by the Citizens Broadband Radio Service, allowing organizations to use spectrum on an unlicensed basis or licensed basis to create private networks similar to Wi-Fi.
The WAN provider might be a mobile services provider or a fixed network, bringing core network services to a demarcation point, at which a gateway bridges the WAN with the LAN. That will have business implications.
As today’s Wi-Fi and LAN business includes a huge amount of gear and services for privately-owned indoor networks (routers, gateways, repeaters, mesh networks) as well as managed Wi-Fi networks (for airports, stadiums and other large venues), so greater use of millimeter wave for 5G networks and mid-band unlicensed spectrum will reinforce the WAN-LAN distinction.
So 5G and 4G might be protocols used by both WANs and private networks, representing both markets for LAN gear and services as well as public network subscriptions. There will be some opportunities for managed venue services as well, creating neutral host facilities for buildings and venues, for example.
Just how far this goes remains to be seen. At least in the millimeter wave area, there may be clear coverage issues. Mobile operator networks will be largely “outdoor” networks. “Indoor” will be private networks (similar to Wi-Fi, but using 5G or 4G protocols).
That means there is new terrain opening up for interconnection between the private and public networks as well as new opportunities for revenue of various types to support private 4G and 5G networks indoors. Mobile service providers are going to want to avoid the private network investments to the extent they can.
Much will hinge on whether in-building coverage using 4G or Wi-Fi is good enough to alleviate the need for full 5G indoor networks. Neither mobile operators nor consumers and organizations will want to spend additional money to create indoor 5G networks if they can avoid it.
Still, it is clear that some non-zero new business opportunities will be created as use of millimeter wave spectrum grows, as it will from 5G onward, as “mobile networks” become outdoor coverage generalists and indoor coverage becomes as important as Wi-Fi, supplied most often as a private network.
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