Rakuten: Japan's new #4 is going all cloud

The core, the RAN, the home gateway and just about everything else will be in the cloud when e-commerce powerhouse Rakuten turns on Japan's fourth wireless carrier this fall. The system is working in tests today and the company is rapidly deploying radios.

CTO Tareq Amin played a crucial role at Reliance Jio, the greatest telecom disrupter of the century. He's bringing that spirit to Rakutan's new network, including a rare willingness to take chances on the newest technology.

Only a handful of people each decade have the opportunity to deploy a large greenfield network, Amin is now on his second one. 

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5G: €599 Xiaomi & Huawei $2,600 folding phone

The BOM for 5G is only ~$80 over 4G. Xiaomi's new flagship Mi Mix 4G is €499. 5G is €599 =  much less than others hoped to charge. Oppo/Vivo wanted US$200 more. Xiaomi has now forced the market to something more reasonable. Everyone except Apple has a 5G phone to announce at Barcelona MWC. Likely, no one will show a phone actually working, fearful to be the first exposing how low the real speeds are for now.

Samsung was first to announce a foldable tablet, seven inches for US$2,000. Then Huawei came in at eight inches for US$2,600. Huawei claimed a download speed of 20 gigabytes/minute. I don't believe they were able to demonstrate anything close but I'm in NY, skipping Barcelona. 

Almost all the announcements are very early. Don't expect many shipments until summer. 

Why (at least) a mid-performance Edge cloud will be right for almost all carriers.

Deutsche Telekom may be the first carrier in the world to install an Edge Cloud, which they are doing at a remarkably low cost. By going further back in DT's transport network, they reduced the number of boxes required from 10,000's of thousands to hundreds.

A cloud like this - highly reliable but not quite as fast - would be a very small percentage of a carrier’s capex budget. (A carrier has the fiber and other equipment in place.) It would cut the latency on your network by 40% to 70%. Perhaps more important, the latency would be much more predictable.

DT started with an initial dozen sites, which connected to almost all of the country. It is also installing at as many as 900 additional locations in the regions. This is a Level 3 Cloud - on the carrier's network but several hops from the towers.

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Turkcell drones: 4K 360 degree streaming VR

 If drones stop shutting down airports, the telcos see a major business. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg promised at CES 2019, "Verizon is committed to being the first to connect 1 million drone flights on its 5G network." Saudi Telecom, KT, Vodafone, and KDDI are doing active testing and hope to go into commercial operation in 2019. 

The number of drone flights will likely be limited until practical flight control is demonstrated. 5G (and most 4G) networks can easily handle the modest number of drones in the air if human control is needed.  Military and civilian research into truly autonomous control of drones is active worldwide.

Turkcell is using a Huawei system in 3.5 GHz. Verizon is working with Ericsson in mmWave. 

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US growth 42%, falling to 31%; Europe to 36%

Now that nearly everyone in the developed world has smartphones, data growth is falling dramatically. The trend has been down for several years. Cisco sees growth in Asia-Pacific falling to 37% and Latin America to 34% by 2022. Folks who make business decisions on the assumption of high growth will be disappointed.

Since the technology is improving at something like 40% per year, that means either excess capacity or capex cuts. Verizon is building the most advanced wireless network in the world and cut capital spending in 2018. Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO, and Orange/FT have all told investors that capex will be flat to down as they build 5G networks.

The developing world continues remarkable growth, especially in India. Cisco's estimate for Middle East and Africa is 48% for 2022. As smartphones approach saturation, growth will slow. 

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Ford: Self-driving cars "will be fully capable of operating without C-V2X"

"Autonomous cars do not need 5G," respected Professor Gerhard Fettweis told us in the spring. Karl-Heinz Laudan of Deutsche Telecom agrees. "Automotive does not need mmWaves. I can now add an informed source, Don Butler, executive director, Ford Connected Vehicle Platform and Product. "These vehicles will be fully capable of operating without C-V2X." That's of course true. Otherwise, the cars would shut down when out of range of a cell site.

Connected cars - as opposed to autonomous cars - will be a major business. Ford is putting 4G in every car in 2018. AT&T estimates it has 27 million cars on the network today, although few have a second connection. That's mostly for entertainment today, but literally dozens of Waze-like information applications are coming to market. Butler predicts, "Road signs could provide advance warning of recent accidents or provide more context regarding road construction."

Dan Warren, now at Samsung, was the first to explain to me why cars couldn't be completely dependent on phone networks. "Will they freeze when they hit a deadspot? Of course not." 

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Edge Clouds: Who will buy?

In 2020, Edge Clouds can reduce latency to about 15-25 ms in 5G, ~10 ms more in LTE.  Today's 4G LTE networks take 30 ms to 70 ms and more. Everything we do today works on  4G, of course. Some apps will benefit substantially from lower latencies, especially gaming. Some new apps will develop when lower latency is available. Multi-player Pokemon looks great.

To write Strategies for 5G, I needed to understand the impact of Edge Clouds. The first half dozen experts provided me with about seven opinions, often conflicting, They couldn't even agree on a definition. After a month of research and two dozen more conversations, I am less clueless. I divided the different Edge proposals into five levels. 

Level 1 will require 1 ms 5G air latency, which is still in the labs. The 5G deploying is about 10 ms.

Level 2 is close to the cell, which adds 5-10 ms to the air latency. The first unit of the type is now installed in Chicago by Vapor IO. They promise nationwide coverage by 2020.  

Level 3 is further back in the carrier network and a little slower. Deutsche Telekom's system, mostly constructed, expects 20-25 ms.  That's the supply side.

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Upgrading the backbone can do more for latency than 5G

Enrique Blanco of Telefonica is collapsing his transport network from 8 to 4 layers. Lee Hicks of Verizon is "Ripping out 200,000 pieces of equipment as part of Verizon One Fiber." He is replacing them with one-tenth as many boxes. Cost and simplicity are the main goals, but latency is being dramatically improved as well.

I've recently discovered that the latency of the radios for the last 200 metres (the 5G NR) often is less important than the performance on the backbone. From the radio to the Internet typically takes 15 ms to 50 ms and more. 5G to the radio is now typically 10 ms, compared to 20 ms on LTE. That saves about 10 ms. 

A better backbone (or an Edge Cloud) can reduce latency by 10-30 ms. Today's routers are much more powerful and much faster. Like most incumbent telcos, Verizon's network was loaded with out of date equipment, some 20 years old. Most carriers are slowly replacing older gear. Verizon One Fiber is replacing almost everything.   Lee Hicks of Verizon is rebuilding that network with a goal of 5-15 ms.

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