Thursday, June 30, 2022
5G Boosts Revenue in Asia Pacific Region
It appears mobile operator angst about 5G revenue growth are misplaced, at least in the Asia Pacific region.
The top 20 mobile operators in the Asia-Pacific region reported a year-on-year cumulative average revenue growth of 7.5 percent in 2021, primarily due to the substantial growth in 5G subscriptions and a surge in average revenue per user, says GlobalData.
China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and India’s Bharti Airtel saw more than 15 percent growth in 2021.
Where 5G Already Has Changed User Experience
5G does already change user experience in some cases, if not yet new applications and use cases.
With the caveat that results might be different in countries with faster in-home Wi-Fi or less reliance on public Wi-Fi hotspots, 5G seems to have a big impact on smartphone experience, according to Opensignal.
While smartphone users’ Wi-Fi download speeds were on average 10.4 Mbps (66 percent) faster than those seen on 4G, 5G speeds were 112.4 Mbps faster than the average speeds of 26.3 Mbps observed when connected to Wi-Fi,
5G mobile connections are typically faster than on Wi-Fi, while Wi-Fi has the advantage over 4G.
Mobile Data Costs Keep Dropping
One safe prediction is that mobile customer cost of consuming mobile data will keep dropping, on a cost per gigabyte basis, if not on other metrics.
If mobile operators introduce new pricing plans based on consumption or speed, featuring higher prices, then prices in non-inflation-adjusted terms might climb.
source: Strategy Analytics
Unit costs decrease with every successive mobile generation.
source: Analysys Mason
Sunday, June 26, 2022
If 35% of U.S. Workers Remain on Remote Work, Mobility Services Could be Affected
Not every job can be performed remotely, but McKinsey estimates that 35 percent of job holders can work from home full-time, and 23 percent can do so part-time. If anything close to that number are able to do so, there are all sorts of implications for security, home broadband, business data architectures and mobility services.
About 58 percent of employed respondents surveyed, which might imply 92 million workers, report having the option to work from home for all or part of the week
Lots of firms might have trouble getting office workers back in the office. A McKinsey survey found that 87 percent of employees offered the chance to work remotely did so.
source: McKinsey
5G Speed Will Double; Latency Will Halve
As always is the case, a next-generation mobile platform gets better as additional software releases are rolled out over the first decade or so of that platform’s useful life. For 5G, that will mean a doubling of potential speed between early standards and later standards, as well as a halving of latency.
source: ARC Advisory Group
Saturday, June 25, 2022
Will 5G Fixed Wireless Outshine Other New Revenue Sources?
It is conceivable that mobile operators globally will make more money providing home broadband using fixed wireless than they will earn from the flashier, trendy new revenue sources such as private networks, edge computing and internet of things. And that might be true even if those other new revenue sources represent vastly more connections, sites or contracts.
Wells Fargo telecom and media analysts Eric Luebchow and Steven Cahall predict fixed wireless access will grow from 7.1 million total subscribers at the end of 2021 to 17.6 million in 2027, growth that largely will come at the expense of cable operators.
source: Polaris Market Research
If 5G fixed wireless accounts and revenue grow as fast as some envision, $14 billion to $24 billion in fixed wireless home broadband revenue would be created in 2025.
Consider the U.S. market. By some estimates, U.S. home broadband generates $60 billion to more than $130 billion in annual revenues.
If the market is valued at $60 billion in 2021 and grows at four percent annually, then home broadband revenue could reach $73 billion by 2026. $24 billion would represent about 33 percent of total home broadband revenues.
If we use the higher revenue base and the lower growth rate, then 5G fixed wireless might represent about 10 percent of the installed base, which will seem more reasonable to many observers.
Assuming $50 per month in revenue, with no price increases at all to 2026, 5G fixed wireless still would amount to about $10.6 billion in annual revenue by 2026 or so. That would have 5G fixed wireless representing about 14 percent of home broadband revenue, assuming a total 2026 market of $73 billion.
If the home broadband market were $134 billion in 2026, then 5G fixed wireless would represent about eight percent of home broadband revenue.
Do you believe U.S. mobile operators will make more than $14 billion to $24 billion in revenues from edge computing, IoT or private networks?
In fact, do you believe 5G mobility services will drive much revenue increase? The issue is opaque. U.S. mobile operators increasingly are taking the marketing tack of moving customers to higher-priced accounts featuring unlimited usage and then enabling 5G access as a feature of that upgrade.
So is it 5G driving the increase in revenue per account, or is it the upselling of service plans? Some of us would argue it is the latter, not the former.
The GSMA has argued that fixed wireless would be a key driver of 5G value.
By way of comparison, low average revenue per device might well mean that even high numbers of sensor connections do not drive especially notable connection revenues for mobile operators.
Nor might private networks or edge computing revenues be especially important as components of total revenue. It is almost certain that global service provider revenues from multi-access edge computing, for example, will be in the single-digit billions ($ billion) range over the next few years.
The same is true of forecasts of service provider internet of things revenue. The service provider 4G or 5G private networks revenue stream is likely to be small as well.
All that implies that 5G fixed wireless might be the most-material--and largest--source of new service revenues for mobile operators.
Friday, June 24, 2022
How Much Shared Use Interference in 12-GHz Band?
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is hoping to release about 500 MHz of mid-band 12-GHz spectrum for shared use by mobile operators, with satellite operators having exclusive use of that spectrum now. The FCC expects shared access will enable such new uses, with adequate safeguards preventing interference with existing users.
As always, that is a contentious matter, as we have seen with aeronautical frequencies in the C-band that also are shared between different industries.
One irony of the proposed spectrum sharing is that two direct-to-home satellite video providers--DirecTV and Dish Network--are key 12-GHz licensed users, as is SpaceX. But Dish Network itself wants to use its spectrum to support its own 5G operations.
Dish touts several studies suggesting sharing is technically possible. SpaceX is more worried about potential interference.
The FCC obviously believes coexistence is possible, though the protection mechanisms will likely be different from shared use of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service spectrum. Though satellite signals are much weaker in comparison to mobile network signals, 12-GHz radio signals are highly directional, which suggests one way interference protection should be possible.
Much as terrestrial microwave signal paths avoid interference by path diversity, sharing supporters will argue that the different paths (satellite to ground station and cell tower to terrestrial user) will work by path diversity. Think of the satellite signals as happening in the vertical plane, while mobile signals happen in the horizontal plane.
Issues to be resolved include the effectiveness of beam steering radios that would allow 5G networks to better target their signals. Regulating power levels, limiting mobile use in some areas, dynamic spectrum sharing and reliance on 12-GHz assets now in present use are some of the ways interference can be avoided, proponents say.
Lower power levels for small cells will help.
SpaceX obviously worries more than a geostationary satellite operator would, as SpaceX satellites are in low-earth orbit, hence arguably less protected by path diversity. Perhaps the bigger issue is how to deal with exceptions to the non-interfering mobile operations.
As a long term matter, satellite and mobile entities have clashed over spectrum issues for many decades. Also, over the longer term, mobile interests have generally gotten additional spectrum when satellite interests have opposed it.
A betting person would tend to lean to approval of mobile shared use of 12 GHz spectrum, with some safeguard mechanisms in specific instances.
Thursday, June 23, 2022
One Way 5G Really is Different from 4G
5G is different from 4G for any number of reasons. For the first time, mobile network speeds are comparable to fixed network speeds for most end user applications. Granted, the cost per gigabyte of use remains as much as an order of magnitude higher than fixed networks.
But in some markets, high fixed network costs and the right mix of tariffs make mobile access for home broadband replacement feasible in a way that has not been the case in the past. Note that the speeds shown above are “per user.” Fixed network quotes are always “per location.” So X location speed also broadly means X/4 user speeds in households with four users.
A single location getting 400 Mbps per mobile user equates to 1.6 Gbps worth of aggregate bandwidth per location.
The point is that 5G really is different from 4G in being a much more reasonable substitute for fixed network home broadband.
5G Fixed Wireless Dramatically Boosts Competition in U.S. Home Broadband
Here’s one way of looking at the impact of 5G fixed wireless platforms. In study looking at fixed network competition in the U.S. market, the ACA points out that the percentage of markets in which three internet service providers all operate is growing.
The numerical test ACA uses is “three providers offering service at a minimum of 100 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream. So consider 5G.
Looking only at mid-band spectrum--and ignoring areas where millimeter wave spectrum is available and activated, mobile services by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile would be added to the list of markets with at least three competitors. If we assume that AT&T or Verizon already are on the list of fixed network competitors, but only one operates in any area, then at least two new competitors get added to the ACA list.
In many areas, three new competitors get added, as neither AT&T nor Verizon are already in the market as fixed line providers. That is a huge change, and will happen faster than new fixed-network competitors enter the market.
Looked at that way, we would expect the percentage of markets with three to six competitors to shoot sharply upwards by December 2021. That ACA data might not reflect this, as ACA only tracks fixed network competitors.
But functional levels of competition, using the ACA criteria, will skyrocket. We can thank mid-band mobile spectrum for that change.
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
By the Time 6G Launches, 5G Adoption in Lead Markets will be 80% to 90%
By the time 6G launches, about half of global mobile customers will be on 5G, if history is any guide. More-developed country percentages will differ. By the time 6G launches, between 80 percent and 90 percent of all accounts will use 5G in North America and Western Europe, for example.
Since 3G, the time to displace half of the older generation’s subscriber base has been decreasing. A decade or so after 3G launched, 3G still had only been adopted by about a third of mobile customers. 4G was adopted faster and 5G looks to be adopted faster than 4G. We should expect that trend to continue with 6G as well.
source: Telegeography
Sunday, June 19, 2022
How Much Might 5G Matter for Some 4G Customers?
5G speeds in the U.S. market will climb as new mid-band spectrum resources are put into commercial use by Verizon and AT&T. At that point, the gap in performance between 4G and 5G will be quite significant, with typical 5G speeds more than doubling that of 4G networks.
How much that matters will remain debatable, in certain respects. Speed improvements will matter for mobile service providers, in terms of customer acquisition, retention and churn, plus average revenue per account.
How much the improvements matter for customers will be harder to pin down. Gamers might be the early clear beneficiaries. Beyond that, experience improvements for other applications will be more subtle.
Terms and conditions of use might be more important than the speed or latency improvements, in terms of user experience. Throttling, video definition limits, ability to use mobile hotspot features, recurring price levels, payment mechanisms, or congestion controls all might have more importance for particular users than absolute speed differences between 4G and 5G.
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Mobile Data Consumption Doubles About Every 2 Years
If mobile network data volume grows 40 percent per year, you can see why new network platforms and spectrum are required. At that rate, usage nearly doubles every two years.
to boost network capacity by 10 times or more every 10 years at the very least, even including greater use of small cells that allow more intensive reuse of existing spectrum, plus better radio and modulation techniques.
Nor does it appear that any significant slowing of the growth rate (such as a reduction by half) is likely. The curve for data consumption between 2020 and 2030 looks almost identical to the Ericsson illustration of data growth between 2014 and 2022.
Friday, June 10, 2022
Impact of C-Band for Mobile Data Speeds
5G networks rely on mid-band spectrum to provide the balanced mix of coverage and capacity. For some mobile operators, such as Verizon, C-band spectrum in the 6-GHz range adds between 140 MHz and 200 MHz of additional capacity in the mid-band region, doubling Verizon’s mid-band resources. About 60 MHz is early deployed.
The impact on Verizon 5G speed has been dramatic. Prior to activating its first tranch of C-band spectrum, Verizon 5G speeds were less than 60 Mbps. After the launch, speeds leapt to about 212 Mbps.
Better radios have much to do with propagation characteristics of C-band spectrum (6 GHz). In recent tests, upper-6-GHz signals propagate as far as 3.5-GHz spectrum, according to Licensed 6G Opportunity, a lobbying group of European telcos and suppliers.
Likewise, advances in spectrum sharing reduce interference characteristics between satellite and terrestrial mobile network use of that same spectrum.
source: Verizon
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