5G tested peaks: 707/79 Mid-band, 3294/210 mmWave

Your speed will almost always differ. But testing by Milan Milanovich of Ookla, in an ideal location on lightly loaded networks, did get remarkable speeds: 3.294 Gbps down, 210 Mbps up on Verizon mmWave and 707 Mbps/79 Mbps on t-Mobile Mid-band. That's two or three times the likely typical speeds on those networks.

5 years ago, Huawei showed me 5G delivering 20 Gbps; there never was a doubt these high speeds were not impossible. No one expects common speeds to be this high, however.

The latest testing from Ookla on mid-band download speeds was in the low hundreds. Based on that, the speeds reported by British and other European carriers, and precise comments from T-Mobile, I've been saying typical mid-band is 100-400 down, and occasionally higher. 

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5G China Price: $201-$262, sometimes $154

On January 7, 2021, six major brands were selling decent 5G phones on jd.com for $201-$262. During special sales, including 11/11, some models fell in price to 999 yuan, now $154. 

All six are ~6.5" and have 3 or 4 rear cameras. They are from Oppo, Xiaomi/Redmi, Hisense, Vivo, Honor, and Realme. Three of them have 48 megapixel main cameras. The Vivo has a 120 Hz refresh rate.  

These prices are moving West, virtually guaranteeing explosive growth in sales of 5G phones. The new TCL 20 5G device will be launched in Italy for € 30020 5G device will be launched in Italy for € 300.

For what's coming here in the States, see $300 5G OnePlus Nord N10 T-Mobile. The 5G explosion moves west.

G.Network raises £1bn to fibre London

1.4 million premises - about half the city - are set for fibre over the next five years.  100 Mbps goes for  £22 ($30) and900 Mbps symmetric £48 ($65.) 10 gig will also be available. 1,250 workers will tear up around 4,500 km of streets.

G.network - also the company's web address - received a permit from OFCOM in 2017. Mark Jackson reported in 2018 it had raised £60 million to run fibre to London businesses. For the consumer build, G.network is getting £295m from a big pension fund and the rest from banks. 

BT is rapidly becoming the sick man of European telecom, with half a dozen well-funded companies running fibre and soon taking millions of customers. Unlike the French and Spaniards, the Brits didn't run fibre home, relying on DSL (including G.fast) and the absence of cable across half the country.  It is paying a very high price and doesn't have a good turnaround strategy.

Marc Allera of BT thinks he can raise prices 3% above inflation.

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$300 5G OnePlus Nord N10 T-Mobile. The 5G explosion moves west.

The OnePlus 6.5" 1080 screen with a 90 Hz refresh rate. It has a 64 megpixel main camera and three other cameras. A 30 watt charger is included. (Take that, Apple) The Qualcomm Snapdragon 690 is fast enough for almost all practical purposes. 

T-Mobile already covers a third of the US (100M+ pops) with mid-band 5G. CTO Neville Ray says median speeds are 300 Mbps, although that may go down as the network gets loaded. Neither AT&T nor Verizon has mid-band spectrum yet, so T-Mobile has a customer pleasing speed advantage. (There is almost no advantage to 300 Mbps vs 50 Mbps, but customers love it.)

You can buy the phone on Jan 15 through T-Mobile, which will give you $13 off a $60-$80/month plans. If you don't need much data - most of us these days - you can use the phone on the $20/month prepaid 2 gig plan.

OnePlus will sell you the phone, unlocked, with a $30 discount if you sign up for its mailing list by Jan 15. Apparently, you also get a $50 pair of wireless earbuds, although the website wasn't clear.

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Farooq Khan and Jerry Pi's 2011! paper on 5G

Ted Rappaport's 2013 paper, "Millimeter Wave Mobile Communications for 5G Cellular: It Will Work!" brought industry focus to 5G but Ted has pointed me to the earlier work at Samsung. Farooq Khan and Jerry Pi wrote Millimeter Wave Mobile Broadband back in 2011. Until the Samsung and Rappaport work, almost everyone assumed mmWave was impractical for mobile.

Now, every iPhone 12 sold in the U.S. can connect to Verizon's mmWave network, often at a true gigabit, That's three or four times the performance of mid-band 5G from T-Mobile.

Verizon is also now confident most of the problems with mmWave fixed service have been solved with new chips. 70% of new customers self-install.

Khan's new startup, Exium, offers highly sophisticated cloud-based network security.

 

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Broadcom's Wi-Fi 6E at 6 GHz is here

Vijay Nagarian has every right to crow about Broadcom's new Wi-Fi 6, which just passed FCC inspection. It more than doubles effective Wi-Fi capacity, especially when using many antennas. Pai's decision to open the spectrum is one of the most important moves in the last decade. Other nations are now copying it. 

He writes

Wi-Fi 6E: Ready for the road less traveled

Broadcom’s BCM4389 is world’s first FCC-certified Wi-Fi 6E chip
On December 7, 2020, the Federal Communications Commission approved Broadcom's BCM4389 chip as the world’s first ever Wi-Fi device to operate in the 6 GHz band. It is a historic milestone for the Wi-Fi industry. It is also a gratifying moment for Broadcom. Let me explain.

The culmination of a historic FCC decision
Back in April, the FCC announced that 1200 MHz of pristine spectrum in the 6 GHz band was being earmarked for unlicensed access. This was a once-in-25-years type of technology milestone that instantly tripled the available spectrum for Wi-Fi. With this spectrum, you will get multi-gigabit Wi-Fi into your palms — on your mobile devices. With all the Wi-Fi social distancing, this spectrum also delivers ultra-low latency of two milliseconds or so — a performance metric that is supremely critical for future Wi-Fi experiences including AR and VR. ...

With this week's certification of Broadcom's BCM4389 smartphone chip, the FCC closed the loop on this incredible 6 GHz vision. The authorization to operate in this new band signals the advent of the Wi-Fi space age. It is a harbinger for things to come in Wi-Fi innovation over the next two decades.

Broadcom claims 2 millisecond latency, a tenth of the latency on 5G (as deployed) or cable modems.

 

Are 20% of Comcast Gigabit Homes Actually Not Gigabit?

Tyler Cooper of BroadbandNow checked claims of gigabit service from the FCC. He founded that the carriers did not actually sell "gigabit" to a quarter of the claimed homes. Only 56% of addresses listed as "gigabit" could be served at over 900 Mbps.  I reviewed the findings with him. For certainty, more than 75 addresses need to be tested but his methods were sensible. 

Joe Biden wants to spend $20B to bring broadband to unserved rural areas and others in DC are talking $50-80 billion. Given that the recent FCC auction promises to bring 100 Mbps to about 98% of the country, that's a mistake - unless all the data we have being used is mistaken.

95% of the kids without connections could have one if the money is there. Comcast and Chicago are connecting all the kids for ~$10/month.  Charter, T-Mobile, Cox, Verizon, and AT&T have similar programs. This is a "just do it."

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5.5G Comes After 5G. 6G is a decade away

Wang Tao of Huawei believes major improvements in 5G are needed as quickly as possible and far ahead of 6G fever dreams. He proposes

• UCBC, to focus on the construction of uplink capabilities, which will be important for industrial IoT. The uplink proposed in the 5G standard is not sufficient for many indoor uses.
• RTBC, focusing on the construction of broadband real-time interaction capabilities
• HCS scenarios, focusing on the construction of capabilities that integrate communication and perception. It would coordinate vehicle and road information

ITU 6G is fascinating to engineers and pr people. Sub-millisecond latency seems exciting until you think of the obstacles to wide deployment and unproven use cases.

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