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Shamsunder of Verizon: "We must have MU MIMO"

Millimeter wave is exciting but the telcos are putting MIMO multi-antennas on the front burner. Verizon, NTT and other carriers presented MU MIMO as crucial to their plans at the remarkable Brooklyn 5G event. Sanyogita Shamsunder (quoted in title, pictured) leads their 5G program and made clear in her slide that Verizon 5G will be MU MIMO, not just the publicized millimeter wave.

Tom Keathley of AT&T had a similar comment. "The 5G Industry expects Massive MIMO." He noted the importance of "Sub 6 GHz for wide area coverage with improved spectral efficiency." The Bells seem to be reaching a similar conclusion as NTT. Seizo Onoe, NTT CTO, startled last year's Brooklyn 5G Conference by saying that NTT's 5G efforts mostly will be below 6 GHz for years. High frequencies will be important, Onoe told us, but mostly after 2022-2023.

This year, Verizon and other carriers confirmed that MU MIMO, with many antennas, is crucial to their plans.

From Rupert Wood, doubts on the financials of 5G replacing landlines

Verizon is proving to all of us that 5G millimeter wave can effectively replace landlines in many places. The technology works. However, CEO Lowell McAdam is clear the financial case is still to be proven. Rupert Wood of Analysys Mason is an always interesting analyst. He's speaking at the excellent TNO Ultrabroadband Conference June 27.

In particular, can the cost be brought down enough to make money with a 5G millimeter wave network for fixed wireless? The range today is short, which means you'll need many, many cells with a massive backhaul network. One estimate I've heard is that the U.K. would need a million or so. Building that is so expensive should you go all the way home with the fiber?

Rupert's tentative conclusion: the new 5G entrant would need to "buy/build something like the network you’re wanting to displace." He looks at the question of capital efficiency. (More of his comments below.)

A major overbuild is certainly possible; Verizon is spending $300M on fiber in Boston, where they want to turn off their copper.

Cohere's coding for 5G interests AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Telstra

Cohere 320 Some claims to be proven but respected telcos think they have something. Engineers at five major phone companies think Cohere's OTFS modulation may significantly improve performance in MIMO systems, including most of 5G. At 3GPP, AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Telstra co-authored 3GPPP proposals with Cohere and urged 3GPP to study it closely. R1-162929.zip R1-162930.zip R1-162931.zip These were expressions of interest, not full endorsements. Only Telstra discussed field testing.

EE Times, yet again, has by far the best reporting. Rick Merritt heard from China Mobile's expert, Chih-Lin I, “We co-signed with Cohere because we need to bring in new blood and have new flexible thinking. For me, the most interesting part is their high mobility for hitting the goal of service at 500 km/hour, which we want for our high speed railways

1000%! MU MIMO gain in gigabit tests by Universities, Facebook

Facebook array 320 The Facebook PR will get everyone noticing MU-MIMO. The top wireless engineers yawned. They have known for years that you could get extraordinary results from adding antennas and multiple streams. Bristol used 128 small antennas in about eight feet by four feet for a 12X efficiency gain. Facebook used 96 antennas (pictured) for what they considered a 10X gain. These are very early units. Better software and dedicated processors will take speeds higher; Facebook promises ~40% improvement. (Many details and excellent video below.)

20 MHz of spectrum could deliver a gigabit. Early LTE networks, like AT&T, get ~100 megabits. More recent LTE-A networks in Turkey, the Philippines, and many other countries use 60 MHZ and will get speeds well into the gigabits.

An important caveat: MIMO works because the signals from each antenna can be separated by how they bounce off walls, etc. That means that the MIMO gain is much less in some locations. Line of sight is best for today's systems but not ideal for MIMO. These are ideal figures; at the edge of a cell you get much less.

Arogyaswamo Paulraj invented MIMO in 1993. He predicted twenty years ago that you would one day be able to increase efficiency 100X.

Africa Fiber in 3 Maps: Coast thriving, Center a desert

Afterfibre 240 Many Possibilities Africa Cable 320 Fiber Desert from Hamilton Research 320 Africa in 2015 has ~400M people with mobiles despite no signal where almost a third of the population live. Ericsson counts 170M smartphones in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 and expects a remarkable 500M more in the next five years. 3G coverage in Q1 2016 is only 43% (GSMA) but increasing rapidly. The first map, from Afterfibre, very colorfully slows the emerging fiber networks. (Red are projected.) The third, from Paul Hamilton, has similar data but less color. It's easy to see the fibre desert in Central Africa. #2 is from the remarkable Steve Song, showing the undersea cables. Almost all have been built in the last five years. South Africa is served by five cables; Kenya and most of West Africa by three. Prices are a fraction of what satellite used to charge but in many places still very high. Larger versions below.

Hurricane's Expected Incredible Backhaul Prices to Joburg & Nairobi could kickstart Africa's Internet

Hurricane Africa 250 Not quite as low as the $0.27/megabit price in Riga. Hurricane Electric, a major Internet backbone, is coming to Africa. Although they aren't announcing prices, I predict they will offer much less expensive backhaul/transit. Most of the continent suffers from brutally high, cartel-like prices for wholesale connections. If HE prices as I expect they will, that could easily reduce consumer Internet prices by 15% to 35%. In turn, that will allow tens of millions more to connect.

In 2012 at the WCIT, a dozen Africans told me the high cost of transit/backhaul was by far the most important international obstacle to bringing the Internet to more Africans. A friend of mine was quoted $70/megabit for a Gig-E in Lagos last year. The cost in most European or American cities would be between $0.50 and perhaps $4.00. The current high price of backhaul raises the cost of a robust broadband connection probably $10-20 over what it could be. Even a second-rate service with a low cap is probably $5 more expensive than necessary.

There is a real cost involved carrying data 6,000 miles undersea but that explains only a small part of the 50-1 difference in the price between London and most of Africa. Most coastal countries are now served by more than one undersea cable.

50 Million Chinese Fiber Home Connections Added in 2015. 130M Total, Unbelievable But True.

Chna-Fiber 120M Chinese have fiber home connections, more than the entire rest of the world. That's actual connections (including businesses), not availability or homes passed. When I first saw that figure in Google translation from the Chinese, I thought it a program problem. But now the authoritative Point-Topic data confirms it. P-T counts 213M Chinese connected at the beginning of this year, a number confirmed by financial filings and government data.

The Chinese government decided a few years ago that a faster Internet was good for the country. They made it so, with the cooperation of government-controlled carriers.

Must-See TV for Anyone in Wireless: 5G BROOKLYN APRIL 21-22

brooklynsummit300c458 IEEE is webcasting for free the year's best event April 21-22. Starting Wednesday April 13, New York will be the center of the wireless world. First, we have the CableLabs INFORMED event on the 13th. http://5gwnews.com/index.php/90-r/423-u-s-cable-the-wireless-future-is-us Two of the world's most respected wireless researchers - Gerhard Fettweis at TU Dresden and Ted Rappaport of NYU - highlight the event, along with top people from the FCC, CableLabs and most of the companies in the industry. It's the coming out day for cable as a major player in wireless, including 5G and bottom up networks. No video available, unfortunately, so I'll do my best to cover the news.

Thursday April 21, we move to NYU for the Brooklyn 5G Summit. Fettweis is joining again, along with Andrea Goldsmith of Stanford and CTOs from Alcatel. NTT, and many more. Both Thursday and Friday will be streamed by IEEE.

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