20 million fixed wireless in the U.S.

There now can be no doubt that fixed wireless, mostly 5G, will be a viable business in the right locations. Today's wireless has enormous capacity, enough to supply the broadband needs of a significant population. It's better than most DSL and a workable alternative to cable in many locations. Traffic demand is falling, with Cisco predicting the U.S. will fall to 31% growth in 2021. 

John Legere of T-Mobile committed to 9.5 million in-home broadband subs by 2024 in order to get FCC approval of the Sprint takeover. Brett Feldman of Goldman Sachs estimated Verizon will have 8 million by 2023. AT&T CEO says they expect a fixed market to grow in a few years. Wireless ISPs already have over a million.  Starry and others are growing, In five years, at least a fifth of the 120 million U.S. homes will be connected wirelessly.  

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Fastest 5G network in the world? Qatar!

"We intend to have the fastest 4G/5G network on the planet by next year," emails Sara Ibrahim Al Sayed, Senior Analyst, Investor Relations, Ooredoo. She added, "We currently have 100 MHz live at 3.5 GHz. The plan is to add another 100 MHz @ 3.5 GHz and 10 MHz @ 700 MHz next year but the exact timing is yet to be announced. In 2021 we will add a further 400-800MHz at 26 GHz. We already are one of the fastest 4G networks on the planet."

Using 200 MHz of mid-band spectrum would allow Ooredoo Qatar to offer higher speeds than almost all Europeans. No one in Europe is firmly committed to millimetre wave*, so Ooredoo will likely pull far ahead. The mmWave spectrum will bring Oreedoo speeds into the very top tier alongside Verizon.

The initial results are promising. Her colleague Rob Joyce tested 720 Mbps on a Mate 20 at Costa Coffee, one of the highest indoor results for 5G. (Pictured left.) I don't have much data on indoor mid-band speeds, but mmWave is clobbered by many walls and windows.

The competition around the Gulf is becoming fierce, with Zain, Etisalat, and Saudi Telecom also building 5G.

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Bejing 5G tests: Outdoors, 170-1100 Mbps

Wenzi Long and Qu Ruihao of Sina.com drove 30 kilometres through the heart of Beijing, often finding signals from the 5,000 5G base stations already installed. They only tested outdoors. On an empty network, 50 metres from the cell, downloads were 1112 Mbps. At 500 metres, the speed went down to 210 Mbps. 

They note, "In the densely populated buildings and thicker walls, the 5G signal is unstable and the speed is unstable."  With ~80% of connections indoors, that brings down the average speed. In Korea, the average download speed is less than 200 Mbps

The most interesting thing in the article is ping times to Speedtest.net as low as 13 ms. Milan Milankovich at Ookla told me it has seen other very low readings from China. Given the air latency of 5G today is 8-12 ms, that implies a remarkable backhaul and transit network.

I didn't know China has started building their remarkable Edge network, which will connect over a billion people.

5G price break. $700 from ZTE (First look)

As prices come down, I predict 5G is going to explode. ZTE has just brought a quality 5G phone down to US$700. The ZTE Axon 10 Pro 5G uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 top of the line chip. It has a 6.47-inch AMOLED display and a 4000mAh battery. The main camera is 48-megapixels, supported by an ultra-wide 20-megapixel lens and an 8-megapixel telephoto. 

One reason Korea has 1.5 million 5G users is that competing carriers offering rebates have brought effective prices down to US$600-700. Next year, China Mobile expects prices to fall to $300 and I expect demand to accelerate. (I'm watching for parts shortages but so none have appeared.)

Meanwhile, Americans and Koreans are buying 5G phones even where there is no 5G. Who wants a 4G phone likely to be obsolete in a year or two?

Massive MIMO: Energy efficient per bit, inefficient per cell

China Mobile identified energy efficiency as a major problem for 5G. Massive MIMO - 4G or 5G - is a major energy saver. The MMIMO advances are not quite enough to keep up with expanding usage but important. 

China Mobile estimates each upgraded cell requires 50% more power. When you are installing 2 million cells, that adds up. (China plans 600,000-800,000 5G cells in 2020.) I've seen higher estimates.

Of course, each cell carries three to ten times as much data so energy and cost per bit are much lower. The 5G standard aims for a 90% reduction of energy per bit, although I don't believe that has been achieved outside the laboratory.

With an infinite number of antennas and other requirements rarely met in the field, interference can be reduced to very little.

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Americans, Koreans buy 5G phones even if they can't get 5G

Soon, buying a 4G phone won't make sense except for the poor. Counterpoint Research is the first with data on where people are buying 5G phones, including in Korea. Many live in areas not yet serviced. Verizon 5G phone purchasers often live far from any 5G coverage, as you can see in the illustration from Counterpoint. Everyone in telecom is now rethinking 5G strategies. 

In hindsight, it makes sense. Who wants to buy a phone likely to be obsolete soon? If you are buying a US$1200 phone, US$100-200 more is a reasonable price to pay for assurance you'll still be happy in two years. 70% to 80% of sales of Samsung's top-of-the-line Galaxy S10 are the 5G model.  It has sold over a million units in 80 days, 12,500 per day.

My forecast is that sales of 5G phones will explode when prices come down. China Mobile predicts prices of US$150-300 in 2020, as does Huawei.

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First 5G use case: Massive video surveillance with face recognition (?New Year's in Times Square)

Video surveillance and analytics is the first item in Nokia's suggested uses of 5G. (Chart at left and below.) I've come to the same conclusion, although surveillance usually isn't talked about and sometimes is actually classified. 

Many are considering putting Edge servers with processing, AI, and data stores in telco networks not far from the towers. (MEC) That reduces latency from 25-50 ms to ~15 ms. That yields faster real-time processing and saves the cost of transmitting huge amounts of data to the cloud.

I've made a point of saying "Massive video surveillance," thinking Times Square on New Year's Eve as something beyond the state of the art that might need 5G. Researching this story, I discovered how much is and can be done without the 5G performance. Now, I wonder if 5G/Edge Networks will be needed.

For the millions of people living in Detroit and Chicago, face surveillance may be an imminent reality. Detroit's million-dollar system affords police the ability to scan live video from cameras located at businesses, health clinics, schools, and apartment buildings. Chicago police insist that they do not use face surveillance, but the city nonetheless has paid to acquire and maintain the capability for years. 

According to one source, China already has hundreds of millions of active cameras, many doing facial recognition and feeding terabytes to information to databases.

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5G latency: Mostly 22ms to 35 ms

Verizon shocked many by specifying 30 ms as the latency on its 5G network. Its top officials predicted much faster connections; many, especially politicians, talk of 1 ms. In multiple independent tests, Verizon usually was somewhat better than 30 ms, down to 24 ms In Telstra in Australia, Daniel van Boom and Ian Knighton of CNET found 22 ms in a test. A thoughtful article. A test in Korea returned 25 ms. Several in England were 30-35 ms.

The latency can be brought down by putting special servers inside the carrier system, an Edge Network. Expect 15-25 ms depending on where in the network the servers are deployed. Most will be one to three routers from the cell, perhaps at a C-RAN or exchange. Some will be further back in the network.Verizon is also improving the transport and backhaul on its system, which could be almost as effective as a regional edge network.

1 ms works in the lab, but less than 15-20 ms will be rare on public networks for years. 

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