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Latency 30 ms at Verizon 5G

5G latency as deployed today at Verizon is 33-45% lower than typical American LTE, 30 ms as opposed to 45-55 ms for today's LTE. Verizon is building the most advanced 5G network in the Western world, although those early to Edge Clouds may pull a little ahead.

1 ms and even 10 ms 5G will be a fantasy for years in most of the world. It can work in the lab, but is hundreds of billions of investment and years from reaching the field. China this year is deciding whether to spend the money and probably will. No one else is thinking of doing similar until the middle of next decade.

Verizon's 30 ms is about the state of the art. It will probably drive latency down to 15-25 ms over the next few years. VZ is moving aggressively to improve the backhaul/transport network and install servers inside the network a few hops from the towers.

Korea: 70,000 cells ready, $48-70, clear world leader (First look)

KT 5G prizes230 KT is giving out free chicken and Starbucks coffee at the party launching 5G on April 5. This one is for real.* Seoul is covered and many other cities. By the end of 2019, 80% of the country will be ready. Korea's networks have more base stations upgraded than the entire rest of the world, excluding China.**

It will primarily be 3.5 GHz, with customer speeds mostly 100-400 meg. Lab/peak speeds will be a little over 1 gig, about the same as good LTE. They have demonstrated a combined LTE/5G system that could double that, but I don't know when it will ship. They are offering the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G for well over US$1,000.

The price will be US$48-70. The lower price has an 8-gigabyte cap. They wanted to charge US$62 but the government held up their permission to operate until they had a cheaper offering.

Chairman Xi Jinping on VR: Go Gamers!

Miao Wei VR 230

Minister Miao Wei, left, perhaps the most powerful man on the Internet, brought greetings from the President to a VR conference. "Virtual reality technology is gradually maturing, expanding human perception and changing product forms and service models. China is committed to achieving high-quality development and promoting the wide application of new technologies, new products, new formats and new models in various fields."

The First Secretary's support for VR could be a factor in China's decision about how to build 5G networks. China is going to install over a million 5G radios, mostly between 2020 and 2023. They may or may not put servers at the cell. The decision will be made in the next few months.

AR/VR is the only consumer application that really needs low latency and might drive volume in the next few years. If the Party Secretary and the Minister want VR, that could tip the decision to the faster (<15 ms) technology. No one in the West is going that low for years.

Cellular IoT: Plenty of room to grow (Data brief)

Cellular IoT Connections GSMA Early 2019 Early 2019 GSMA Intelligence data show 737 million IoT connections at the Chinese carriers, more than half the world total. The U.S. has 109 million. Italy, Japan, and Russia have just over 20 million. The data is from GSMA, the primary source for world wireless data.

China Mobile had 551 million at the beginning of the year and expects to add 300 million in 2019. None is 5G, of course, showing 4G can accept many more connections. Massive video surveillance is the only application in sight that might require 5G capacity. Of course, the low cost per bit of 5G is always an advantage.

5G, AR, VR: Reality of what's coming

Takeaway: Some but not many locations will support AR/VR servers in 2020-2022. The good news: It works. 5G + Edge Cloud networks are starting to deploy with 15-25 ms latency. Where fast enough, you will be able to move all your calculations to high-capacity servers which will do all the calculations and just send the picture to a lightweight headset or phone. Major companies including Tencent, Niantic Pokemon, and Verizon are already testing. Experts think quality VR will require 10-20 ms latency, right on the edge of what's coming.

The rest of the story. 1-5 ms is often promised. (URLLC) It works in the lab but is years away from meaningful deployment. Sorry. The best available in the next few years will be Level 2 Edge clouds, relatively close to the user, delivering 15-25 milliseconds. Deutsche Telekom has begun deploying a Level 3 Edge cloud, further back in the network, 20-30 ms. Without an Edge cloud, 5G latency should be 30-45 ms. Today, a decent LTE network is 45-55 ms average.

800,000,000 4G IoT connections at China Mobile

Autonomous boat Ericsson 230 China Mobile ended 2018 with 551,000,000 4G NB-IoT connections and expects to add 300,000,000 in 2019. It has covered 99% of the country with NB-IoT and is far ahead of anyone else in the world. 4G will totally dominate telco IoT for many years. IoT in 5G really is a form of the 4G tools. The marketing people are trying to hide that fact.

CM is building an ecosystem that is expanding outside of China. It recently signed a deal with Singtel. The software is from Huawei, which is rapidly building a worldwide cloud.

Devastating data on Verizon mmWave - First Look

Verizon 150 meters 230 Jessica and Craig Moffett, top Wall Street analysts, tested 40,000 locations in Verizon's Sacramento mmWave footprint against the Verizon availability. Unless there is a major improvement in reach, the cost would be much too high, (Update: Let me emphasize. The data implies a problem now, It can and will get better. Please don't conclude there will never be a solution.)

Verizon's current deployment in Sacramento is being built to an assumption of 100-150 meters, not the 600 meters Verizon has discussed often.

"Based on an exhaustive census of serviceability of 107 of the 273 small cells in Sacramento, each served an area of 27 eligible addresses." That will improve but there is a huge gap between these results and what Verizon needs to reach the target cost of US$200-350.

Verizon never released comprehensive data but they convinced many of the best on Wall Street (and me) the reach is much better.

Unicom: Contracting out Yunnan, 50M people and larger than U.K.

China Unicom Yunnan outsource 230 China's third largest carrier, Unicom, has brought in other private companies to manage a network with about the same population as Spain. The company reports outstanding results. (Below) While many companies, especially in India, will contract out building and even running the networks, this appears to be going even further.

Unicom itself is now an experiment in how to connect State-owned companies with private ones. The government persuaded Internet giants Alibaba & Tencent to each buy about 10% of the company and work actively with CU management. Rumors that CU would be merged into China Telecom have not proven true. The company has been struggling.

Initial Contract-out Reform of Yunnan Branch Showed Brilliant Results

⚫ Delegated management of the access network assets, network deployment & maintenance, overall business dealing to privately-owned operating companies, in compliance with the applicable laws & regulations

⚫ Contracted out operation with profit target set

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