Blockchain spam protection for 600,000,000 Indians (First look)

India is well along with the first large public use of blockchain in the world. The three giant telcos - Bharti, Jio, and Vodafone -are cooperating to build a system designed to cover more than a billion phone users. 

Shared data will include "Soliciting entities, message aggregators, subscriber consent data and lifecycle event dates." Tanla, Tech Mahindra and IBM are providing the technology.

TRAI had ordered the companies to solve the spam problem.

This is based on reporting by Danish Khan at Economic Times. Worth a click for more information. 

 

 

 

5G UNISOC intends to be a player

UNISOC/Spreadtrum will ship a 5G modem and full system on chip by late this year or early 2020. It announced the "5G technology platform" MAKALU and the IVY510 modem in February. It now has chips in test. 

UNISOC has nearly unlimited backing from the government and Tsinghua Unigroup. 3,000+ engineers are led by Stephen Chu and other experienced managers. They intend to become a major international chip company. For several years, the then-named Spreadtrum cooperated closely with Intel on LTE and other chips. They now are on their own, hoping for an IPO in 2020.

China will have well over 130,000 5G base stations in 2019 and 1,000,000 bases amazingly quickly. Tens of millions will soon be buying 5G phones.

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€599 5G. Xiaomi busts the cartel

In Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and England, a quality 5G phone is for sale this week at about US$400 less than the others. The Xiaomi Mix 3 5G uses the same Qualcomm 855 and modem as most others do except Huawei. It features a 6.39 inch full screen with a camera that slides out. The screen is an OLED with 2340x1080 pixels. It benchmarks well against other top of the line phones. The main difference in the much more expensive phones is better cameras.

Huawei's Mate 20 5G should have a similar price when it goes on sale after the U.S. delay.

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5G deployment results: What works, what doesn't (First look)

It's early, with minuscule deployments except in Korea, China, and the U.S. (next month.) Nothing's proven, but these conclusions look likely.

Works well: Government orders (China,) Gov "guides" (Korea,) Competition moves (Korea, U.S.)

Probably doesn't: Moderate changes in external costs (Small cells made easier, duct access.) Reductions in spectrum fees. (Most to shareholders, not investment,) Minimally useful spectrum (24 GHz.) Details:

Orders. With the approval of the Politburo, Minister Miao Wei directed the three telcos to build 5G at a ferocious rate. 100,000-200,000 cells in 2019; millions soon after. 25 ms Edge Network to 90%. Political power like that has an obvious downside. 

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90,000-150,000 Chinese 5G sites go live October (First Look)

In a few months, China will have more 5G sites than the entire western world.  "Michael Gao Wenhao of ZTE told China Daily that by Oct 1, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom will each deploy 30,000 to 50,000 base stations in some 40 cities." Alex Cheng of China Mobile confirmed the story.

From other sources, I know that China will very rapidly go first to 1,000,000 bases and after that to 2,000,000. 90%+ of the country will soon be covered. The Politburo has decided that a great Internet will help the economy. Minister Miao Wei told the companies to do it.

No one should be surprised by the size of the rollout. In January, I reported the Nomura estimate that China will have 172,000 sites in 2019.

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Oppo, One Plus 5G phones on BT May 30; URLLC in 2023

BT told reporters they yanked the Huawei Mate 20 from the announcement because of the U.S. war. It forgot to take Huawei out of the press release. I discovered what you see at left when I pasted in for this article. (type made larger)I'm sure someone in the Chinese embassy is already talking to the government - if they can figure out who's running the British government as May considers how to resign.

The deployment is almost surely small. I draw that conclusion from the failure of BT to release availability maps or the number of homes passed/radios installed. The only interesting news is that the pr says BT will start URLLC in 2023.

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It does work! mmWave true gigabit at Verizon downloads a movie in 8 seconds

1.096 gigabits. 1.098 gigabits. 999 megabits. 941 megabits. ((Line of sight, < 200 meters) These are actual tests on Verizon 5G with a Samsung Galaxy 10 in Chicago. These are real people on real phones, three of them independent journalists.

10,000's have already ordered the Galaxy 10 5G, even knowing it will be rare to connect to 5G. Consumers want 5G; 400,000 Koreans have bought 5G phones in six weeks.

These results are about twice tests from a month ago and three or four times December tests. Almost everyone doubted high-frequency 5G would make sense. Neville Ray, CTO of T-Mobile, blogged the mmWave would only be a small niche. Craig Moffett, one of the best on Wall Street, wrote that the economics were extremely dubious. 

mmWave still faces major obstacles.

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Insider: 5G demand likely to be weak for years

Tom Bartlett is CFO of American Tower. The company's 170,000 towers mean it is intimately involved with every major carrier in the U.S., India, and Brazil. His comments reflect the consensus views of the companies:

• 5G "relatively flat for a few years"
• Yearly "30% to 40% demand on the network" 
• Massive MIMO and multiple antennas will be used on many/most sites to increase capacity.

Bartlett doesn't see much profit for American Tower in small cells and is directing investment to other products. Despite all the lobbying and self-congratulatory politicians, I haven't seen much of an increase in small cell building or more than modest interest outside the U.S.

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