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. 

Read more ...

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.

Read more ...

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."

Read more ...

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

Read more ...

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.

 

Read more ...

US cable and especially telcos fail miserably on adding new customers

Even conservative Republicans like David Redl believe the pandemic proves the 20 million or so American homes without broadband need to be connected. But in Q2, AT&T reports 114,000 fewer connections and Verizon 23,000 less. Charter came through with 850,000 new homes and Comcast 323,000. 1,243,000 connections is absolutely unacceptable when children have to learn at home. 

The three big phone companies have essentially abandoned consumers in large parts of their territory, leaving about half of America -- including me -- with only one choice for decent broadband. No wonder we have some of the highest prices in the world.

Read more ...

Rakuten virtualized 4G now covers quarter of Japan

5G software isn't ready yet, but Tareq Amin now manages 5,000 4G cells running on a fully virtualized network that is leading the world. 7,000 more are under contract and 70% of the country will be covered early next year.  

Rakuten is an existence proof of a fully virtual network. Almost everyone agrees the future wireless network looks like this, but Amin is the first to build one. Next, Rakuten wants to sell similar systems to telcos around the world and has hired a U.S. representative to make that happen.

This hasn't been easy. He had to pay "hundreds of millions" for custom chips because the off the shelf hardware wasn't fast enough. Vodafone CTO Scott Petty also has a few working Open-RAN systems, but doesn't expect to bring them into his main network until about 2025.

They said it couldn't be done but they were wrong. 

 Thanks to Sue Marek who pointed me to the data.

 

Germany confirms: 4G faster than 5G

In When LTE is faster than 5G, respected journalist Achim Sawall points out that DT's 5G DSS loses 15% of capacity to additional signaling bandwidth. The result, in theory, will be less capacity in the same spectrum than if used purely for LTE. He quotes a DT engineer

"A problem with dynamic frequency release is the waste of resources, because in addition to the 4G signaling channels, 5G signaling channels must also be sent. The signaling effort in a 10 MHz channel is currently around 15 percent, leaving 85 percent of the channel for the transmission of user data. 5G has approximately the same overhead, reducing the available bandwidth for user data to about 70 percent of the channel. "

Max Planken adds

"5G currently has virtually no advantages over DSS. It is all just marketing. If the network operators used pure LTE instead of DSS with LTE / 5G, the maximum achievable speed would be even higher."

Pia Habel of DT contends

"It is a fallacy to conclude that this is 'only marketing'. 5G is the target standard in the long term."

But she does not dispute that the 5G using DSS is slower than 4G LTE would be in the same spectrum. Nor does she suggest that the 5G has a significantly lower latency. 

5G in bands of 2100 MHz and below may ultimately be slightly faster than 4G, perhaps 20%. My source for that figure is Neville Ray, CTO of T-Mobile USA.

Today, 4G is likely to be faster. Half a dozen technical features, especially LAA, are not yet available in 5G. LTE can comfortably aggregate 4 carrier bands, which is not yet possible in 5G.