Zain Saudi Arabia: 5G 248 Mbps, ping 17 ms

A. sent this speedtest from his 5G home router in Riyadh. 248 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up, and a remarkable ping of 17 ms. Opensignal average 5G speeds in Saudi Arabia test at 414 Mbps, highest in the world. See 5G Worldwide: Saudi first, USA last. His note:

"I have been a subscriber of 5G for my home internet with Zain KSA since last January. At the beginning, the internet was extremely slow (actually lower than 4G). However, the internet has been gradually improving lately I suspect that is related to the higher deployment of 5G small cells around my areas."

The low ping is surprising, lower than Verizon and almost all 5G worldwide tests. It implies that Zain has a new, state-of-the-art system for backhaul and core transport. While the headlines go to the latency of the 5G radio, the backhaul often has a larger effect. Verizon One Fiber has more impact on latency than anything related to 5G. 

The Gulf and Korea have gone faster to 5G than any others. 

5G Worldwide: Saudi first, USA last

Opensignal released the first international comparison of 5G speeds. I was startled to discover that Saudi Arabia is far ahead in both coverage and speed. I did a little research and discovered that SA, along with the Gulf countries, is further along than anyone in Europe.

The average 5G speed in SA was 414 Mbps, In the USA, it was 51 Mbps, slower than 4G in Canada and most major US cities. Most U.S. connections were low-band, which by its nature tends to be slower than 4G.

Saudi Telecom has upgraded 3,000 of its 7,000 towers. Zain claims it has even wider 5G coverage than STC. Opensignal found that Saudis connected to 5G 34% of the time, leading the world. Kuwait was second, at 29%. It doesn't have data yet for the UAS or Qatar, but I know both also have relatively good coverage.

Korea was second, at 312 Mbps. That's less than half the figure of the Korean government, but much closer to results in other countries using similar spectrum to the Koreans. See Korea's very high speed claims. The Koreans have over 7 million 5G subscribers, 2nd or 3rd in the world.

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Sao Paulo 10T busiest Internet exchange; Traffic falling despite COVID

Frankfurt DE-CIX has long been the busiest Internet exchange, but Sao Paulo is the first to reach 10 terabits of traffic. I shouldn't have been surprised. 2/3rds of the Internet is in the global South. Brazil is building fiber faster than the U.S. (So are France and Spain. The U.S. fiber record is dismal, perhaps because gigabit cable reaches ~90% of the country.) 

In Frankfurt, traffic is down from the April-May COVID peak. (Chart below.) Traffic in March peaked around 8 terabits, then went up to 9 in May. August peaks were down to about 8.5 terabits, about where they would be with normal traffic growth since 2019.

Scare stories and cheap headlines spread panic, but actually nearly all networks in the developed world handled the traffic without major problems. Cable upstream occasionally hit minor congestion. The cable companies have been holding back on upstream improvements for 5 years, expecting Full Duplex to cheaply raise upstream bandwidth around now. The technology is barely out of the labs, however, and the costs are higher than expected.

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Saankhya 5G SDR-based 5G RU for 2021

Parag Naik is seeking government support for a 5G radio unit base on its software-defined radio chipset. He tells  ETTelecom's Muntazir Abbas

"The government needs to think strategically with a 5-year plan of building telecom gear giants in India with monetary and market support. It has to incentivize more R&D investments in this sector. ...  Our 5G Remote Units will be available from Q1 of 2021.

We have around 65 patents on [cognitive radio and 5G broadcast]. ... DoT can play a major role in carrying out the actual implementation of Atmanirbhar Bharat. ... Building RAN chipsets and solutions is a capital-intensive business, we need monetary support and market access to mature some of our solutions. Telecom network equipment requires a lot of field testing, trials, and hard for any new player that comes along. This is the only way to make Indian companies globally competitive."

Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India) is India's answer to Made in China & Made in the U.S.A. Indian protectionism is succeeding in moving some phone manufacturing to the country. 

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GM V2X & 5G in China in 2022

70+% of phones purchased in China in 2021 will be 5G, so it's no surprise GM will start upgrading telematics to 5G. By 2022, about 80% of China will have 5G coverage. Parts for 5G have been coming down rapidly in price. The 5G upgrade will probably add about five dollars to the cost.

GM will also start incorporating V2X & V2V intelligent technologies. Those will probably work fine in 4G, although 5G has the theoretical ability to handle a million connections per square mile. So far, I've never found a system that requires more connections than 4G can handle.

The U.S. blockade on advanced chipmaking gear to China may cause a problem for GM. GM is strongly committed to "almost all parts coming from local suppliers." UNICOM, a Chinese company, is now making a 5G chip that could be manufactured at 12 nm in China. But the most advanced 5G chips require EUV lithography, only available from ASML in the Netherlands. The U.S. is currently blocking ASML from shipping the machines to China.

China is working hard on a Chinese EUV tool, but until that becomes available, GM will have to choose between sacrificing 5G performance or importing 5G chips.

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Korea's very high speed claims

Open Signal users reached average speeds of ~230 Mbps on Korea's 5G, consistent with similar networks in other countries. I was surprised when Korean government testing showed much higher speeds, often over 600 Mbps. I normally wouldn't pass on anomalous results like that unless I had an explanation. However, it's an official source and none of the other testing is conclusive, 

Perhaps more interesting is the lower chart below, showing the three telcos felt they had to match each other's deployments. They provide an important lesson to regulators: never subsidize all 5G carriers. Find a way to get one to build and the others will probably follow, if they all have mid-band spectrum.

ZDNet reports, "The government made measurements in 11,000 crowded areas such as department stores, libraries, universities, amusement parks, hospitals, exhibition centres, subways, and terminals."

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5G Phones $199-260

Coolpad and China Telecom have brought the price of a decent 5G phone down to US$199. It's 6.5", has three rear cameras and a 4600 mAh battery. It's the first to ship with the Chinese-designed Ziguang Zhanrui Tiger T7510; soon, SMIC in China will be able to manufacture it as well. 

Coolpad is trying to come back in a market where 12 or 13 phone makers are fighting for a market likely only profitable for a handful. Chipmakers are rushing to market with even less expensive 5G chips, like the Qualcomm 690 due by yearend. (Full details below.)

Huawei, Xiaomi, Realme, and Vivo have phones from $214-$260. Pictures below are from sale listings at jd.com

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Coolpad $199 5G phone with Unisoc Ziguang Zhanrui Chinese chip

The new 1388 yuan (US$199) Coolpad X10 5G is shipping with the Tiger T7510 processor from Ziguang Zhanrui, a division of Unigroup. It will be featured by China Telecom. Previous 5G phones have gone on holiday sale below $200 but the lowest regular price was 1498 yuan ($215.) 

Ziguang Zhanrui announced the chip last year. It's apparently made on TSMC's 12 nm process, significantly cheaper than the 7 nm used for most 5G chips. It presumably sacrifices some performance but should be fine for everyday use. 

SMIC in China is spending $billions for additional 12 nm capacity, so the chip could be produced in China in the near future. SMIC will be able to produce some 7 nm chips with DUV lithography, probably by the middle of 2021. As long as the U.S. prevents delivery of the Dutch ASML EUV machine, SMIC and other Chinese fabs will still be behind.

China has a crash project to make its own EUV gear. The common wisdom is it would take a miracle to catch up in less than 5-10 years. China has delivered many miracles in the last decade.

 

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