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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Dave's comments to U.S. Commerce

When I say anything of substance to D.C. officials, I try to make my comments public in the spirit of the FCC ex parte rules. (What they tell me is off the record unless they say otherwise.) Earl Comstock, back in government after many years, said something particularly cogent; China market of 1.4 billion people provides economies of scale that often result in leadership. So I sent him this note. There's nothing profound here but I thought he'd be amused.

Once the Chinese companies bring in the capability that’s organic to their nation, they have 1.4 billion consumers who will buy their products and then expand their revenues, increase their research and development, and then expand into international markets. 

(The context was whether the world would ultimately choose 25G & 50G Ethernet for 5G backhaul, as China is, or ​the NG-PON2 Verizon is using. Technically they are about even, but he thought the Chinese economies of scale would prevail.) 

     ​We haven't spoken in more than a decade and I didn't know you were back in government.

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UK mobile data growth up 25%, Germany 37%

OFCOM, the British regulator, reports mobile data use per subscriber increasing 25% in 2018. Telefonica Deutschland expects the growth rate from 2017 to 2020 to be 37%, presumably higher in the earlier years. Cisco's VNI predicts North American wireless growth of 31% in 2022.  The traffic growth rate is crucial to get accurate; it determines when a company needs to invest to avoid a problem.

In the chart at left from Cisco VNI data, the blue is 2018 growth and the red the projection for 2022. Every region falls. That corresponds to the experience of almost every country. Growth is rapid when smartphones are being adopted then falls off when most people have smartphones. In Australia, traffic spiked when Netflix arrived. Netflix is now in most countries, so that will be rare going forward.

The important exception is China. Government and company figures are growth over 80% in 2018 despite wide smartphone ownership. My guess is that the increase is due to increased TV watching, as video on demand services like Tencent Video, Youku, and iQIYI have grown very rapidly. Cable TV subscriptions have fallen the last two years at one of the highest rates in the world.

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Nokia: All top 5G apps work in 4G. Wow!

According to a thoughtful 47-page analysis by the world's #3 manufacturer of 5G, Nokia. Looking at the top eight 5G use cases, Nokia confirms

"All are feasible with 4G."

 The inference: 5G is not essential for most of the progress in these areas*. As I looked further into each of these areas, it became clear none of them are likely to drive demand growth sufficient to raise carrier revenue significantly. **

5G will be good for the industry because it will lower costs and increase capacity, not because of new uses. In addition, most consumers believe the myth of 5G miracles and are likely to buy. One million Koreans signed on in the first two months.

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Deutsche Telekom: Hot air, not yet a deployment

"DT hasn’t hard launched anything yet, but has chosen to detail at considerable length how profound its plans to do so are." Scott Bicheno may be cruel but he's on target. "DT is generously offering its subscribers to pay for it anyway. You can shell out €900 for a Samsung Galaxy S10 5G as well as a 5G tariff and when DT gets its act together you can be among the first people to get access to its 5G."

Handelsblatt also refused to print DT pr. Instead, it wrote, "In a small area, the Bonn-based company has released a test network." Two other major newspapers apparently didn't even cover the "big" announcement.

DT announced that in six months they will have upgraded about 1% of their radios to mid-speed 5G. By yearend, Korea Telecom, SK Korea, and China Mobile will all be over 50,000 radios. DT's speed will probably be less than half the speed of what its T-Mobile subsidiary has deployed across most of Manhattan. 

Germany has excellent engineers but DT is far behind in deployment.

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China outlaws current Qualcomm chips in six months

Qualcomm is rushing to deliver the X55 5G modem, designed to connect to the true 5G standalone core. The current combination, of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 application processor and X50 modem, will not be acceptable on Chinese networks after 2019. China has decided that 5G phones must be able to connect to the standalone 5G core, which the X50 does not do.

All current 5G systems use 5G for the phone connection but run on the 4G core. They are called "non-standalone" 5G, requiring a 4G network in place. The true 5G core, named "standalone," is not yet ready, but China wants to switch over as soon as practical. China Mobile is hoping for the first quarter of 2020.

The SA core is required for "net slicing." It also has many features that aid software-defined networks and other advanced technologies. But SDN is moving forward without the 5G SA core and it's not clear anyone will want to pay for network slicing QOS for years. Nearly everyone in the West is going slow on 5G SA.

Huawei's Mate-20 5G does support SA. 

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