China Unicom's Big Edge Claims First in World (Eng Newsbreak)

China Unicom is rapidly building an Edge Network covering 71 million people in the Greater Bay Area. It services Guangzhao, Shenzen, Dongguan, and apparently Hong Kong. Unicom is deploying thousands of Edge nodes across the country in 2020, supporting the 230,000 5G cells it will build with China Telecom before the end of the year. No other carrier in the world has revealed an actual network like this, covering more people than live in France or England.

Minister Miao Wei in 2017 set a goal to move the edge closer to over a billion Chinese. (I think I was the first to report that in English,) In 2019, Miao told the telcos to "accelerate 5G." 2020 was originally planned as a testing year, but Unicom also open MEC centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jilin. 

Huawei, Intel, ZTE, and giant Inspur are providing equipment. Tencent, Country Garden, and Gree are the announced partners and nearly 100 other projects are testing.

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Japan: Soon Millions of 5G Users

NTT DOCOMO has set a goal of 2.5 million 5G connections in the next year. It expects 20 million in 2022 or 2023.  It has 500 upgraded towers and rapidly will cover more than half the country. 40,000 signed up in the first few weeks. 

Capex guidance for the year is 570 billion yen, US$5.35 billion. That's far below the 2017 figure of 643 billion yen, $6 billion. That's consistent with Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, AT&T, and FT/Orange, all building 5G without a significant capex increase. 

Softbank and KDDI also have launched some 5G service. Softbank intends to reach 90% of the population in Q1 2022.  They are doing competitive builds in the cities but working together in rural areas.

Rakuten, the extremely innovative 4th carrier, intended to turn on 5G in June but is behind schedule.

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China's 50M 5G Contracts

China Mobile reports 31 million 5G "contracts" at the end of March. That's an increase of 16 million in one month. If that pace continues, by the end of 2020, over 170 million of China Mobile's 946 million wireless customers will have 5G contracts. It will reach 350 million in 2021.

China Telecom reports 17 million. China Unicom didn't offer a figure, but typically is about half the China Telecom figure. The total is over 50 million.

But probably only half are actually connected to 5G. A second source reports only 6 million 5G mobile phones were sold in China in March. Even adding some routers for fixed wireless, many of the 5G contract holders were still using 4G phones.  One estimate is that only 20 million are actually connected.

The gap will probably narrow. Phones are just becoming widely available at prices between US$285 & $450.

150 million actual connections by the end of 2020 are likely.

Ericsson: 5G Networks Definitely Hackable

3GPP calls the coming release of 5G standards "Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication" (URLLC). However, key members of 3GPP strongly disagree. Jason S. Boswell, Ericsson's head of network security for North  America, cautions, "[5G] will create new mobile security challenges. There will be broader attack surfaces, more devices, and greater traffic."  

Primary 5G safety is not adequate. Instead, those needing certainty will have to pay extra for "tailored security solutions such as 'network slicing.'" These enhancements will be necessary, although not a guarantee. 

Boswell sees a problem. "We must have networks that are trustworthy, resilient, and secure by design – all on day one." Given that 50 million people are already connected to 5G that will be difficult.

The standards are not yet ready.

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Chairman Wheeler: 5G Expands Risks

Some politicians think keeping Huawei out of U.S. networks ensures security. I believe that does very little. The Chinese government does not need to compromise Huawei because there are so many other ways to crack the systems. Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler and his security lead, Rear Admiral David Simpson note

"Never have the essential networks and services that define our lives, our economy, and our national security had so many participants, each reliant on the other—and none of which have the final responsibility for cybersecurity,"

5G networks will be vastly more complicated, with far more points of attack. Software-defined networks are harder to protect than traditional, known hardware. Control - and vulnerability - is more distributed. Running on commodity hardware and software offers more ways in. 

That 5G is not secure is well known. Congress was told that by Ericsson’s Lynn Starr, Barbara Baffer, and Jason Boswell, presumably informed by the engineers building about half of U.S. 5G networks.

"5G is ultra-reliable" is a lie.

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DT Proves Term "5G" is Now Meaningless by Claiming 4G Speeds are a Big 5G Advance

CEO Dirk Wössner's "5G" claims are now meaningless. DT is now using DSS and calling connections "5G." Since the actual speed is about the same as 4G, that proves the industry definition of "5G' is now meaningless.

It's so slow - and the latency so high - DT refuses to provide figures. Verizon President Ronan Dunne has a similar offering, but explains, "The lower down the spectrum tiers you go, the more that will approximate to a good 4G service." That's what DT is now selling, a good low-band 4G service.

Until now, DT had said it would bring 5G to 20% of Germany by the end of 2021. It didn't consider low-band "5G," even though it uses 5G NR software.

DT has changed its actual network and capex plans. It changed what it considered 5G to the 3GPP marketing dream or anything that runs "5G NR" software. The software has only a minimum effect on the performance of below 2.5 GHz - 19% or probably less. DT is providing no figures, but its new 5G is going to be slower than some available 4G.

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China 5G: 200,000 Cells, 50M ?Subs, 2020 Cut from 600K to 500K Cells

Minister Miao Wei demanded, "Accelerate" and the telcos are delivering. 198,000 cells had been upgraded at the end of March. The year-end goal, 600,000, has been reduced to 500,000. Ericsson and Huawei have confirmed the equipment is on the way and the buildout should hit the new target easily.

The 50 million "5G contracts" figure must be examined closely. Many reporters assume that means 50 million people are using 5G. I initially did. 

However, I discovered in March that the Chinese telcos were selling more 5G contracts than the phone makers seemed to ship.

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Bravo Pai! Doubling Wi-Fi One of the Most Important Moves of the Decade

Ajit Pai is better at getting things done than any FCC Chair in my 25 years experience. Suddenly, he's added 1200 MHz of spectrum to the 80 MHz at 2.4 GHz and the 480 MHz at 4.9 GHz. 4.9 GHz generally has plenty of capacity today and the new spectrum means the capacity needed will be there for years.

AT&T is opposed and I was sure the expanded spectrum proposals would be tied up for years. FCC staff analyzed effect on existing users of opening the 6 GHz spectrum and concluded it would be minimal. Pai, backed by the other four commissioners, believed the FCC technical staff.

Pai has a good explanation of why this matters.

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