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2018: More African, Indian Net Users Than Americans

Kai-Krauses-remarkable-true size of africa430 The center of the Internet has moved South. Carter Horney of Forward Concepts has just published a Global 4G analysis with a detailed geographical breakdown. His projection for 2018 is 315M smartphone Internet users in India and 317M Africans connected. The U.S. population is 315M, some of them under 4 years old and not connecting to the net. His estimate is close to the 300M in 2017 I projected with Cisco's help http://bit.ly/Africa300M last year.

These estimates are very rough but the trend is clear. Both India and Africa have over a billion people. $50 smartphones are affordable to hundreds of millions more than are connected today. Carlos Slim told me two years ago that $50 smartphones will connect two billion more people. He's proving right.

2-3 Gigabits Spectrum Unused at Dish, Verizon, Sprint & AT&T (AO)

Detail of Cedalion standing on the shoulders of Orion by Nicolas PoussinEngineers know this because they stand on the shoulders of giants. Policy people are too often blinded by the fog of interests. With just the spectrum already allocated, AT&T Blind mice from zhouxuan and Verizon could easily triple their network capacity without breaking the capital budget. The technology is obvious but the change in business models is unlikely. Sprint has remarkable holdings around 2.5GHz. Dish spectrum is totally unused.

There's enough available spectrum to build at least three Verizon-sized networks. The currently allocated but unused spectrum is allowing both AT&T and Verizon to double their wireless capabilities. I wrote this article because <yet another generally very knowledgeable> person just left that doubling out of his predictions. It's commonly overlooked.

My estimate is that spectrum, advanced technology and investment can easily provide a 25x gain many without blowing out capex budgets - if policy is smarter. The increased costs should be no more than 2% of sales and probably much less.

400M Indians, 50M French Going LoRa. Is LTE Obsolete for IOT

Hedy LaMarr Lamarr really was an inventor of spread spectrumPromised: 10 year battery life;, very low power; 15 km reach; 50-meter ground penetration; not stopped by seven walls; doesn't need a spectrum allocation. It's also darned cheap. The performance is a dismal 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps but it still sounds impossible.

Little chipmaker Semtech seemed to be tilting at windmills until Bouygues turned on Grenoble and Paris. Bouygues plans 20 cities in France by the end of this year. France Telecom responded they will cover "the entire nation" by the end of next year. Now Tata, a $100B conglomerate, announced they will serve 400M people in India's cities. Swisscom and KPN have announcements.

Verizon 2017?: 5-10x Faster 5G M-MIMO

Verizon and Nokia refuse to wait for 2020 for 5G. Massive MIMO promises major speed jumps in the same spectrum. Testing in 2016 for Massive MIMO, beamforming and interference cancellation. Hopes for huge speed boost starting in 2017. Think 64 antennas and 5-10x throughput. Good engineers tell me it's possible but didn't expect it so soon.

Verizon Ready to Try Massive MIMO and Beamforming

Beginning trials soon would suggest deployment in 2017 if they go well. That's not guaranteed. Lowell McAdam plans "Staying ~two years ahead of competitors in network performance." They are getting ambitious, including going to Alcatel's TWDM PON for 40 gig. "VZ will soon begin market trials of 5G capabilities including 'massive MIMO' (which is when a large number of antennas are packed into a single device) and beam forming (which is when a wireless signal is concentrated on a specific location)."(Paul de Sa) Much more http://bit.ly/5G256Ant

Nokia's Moliin: Massive MIMO/Interference Cancellation is Ready

CTO Hossein Moiin intends to test Antonio Forenza's pCell technology early next year. There have been stadium field trials that went well. Very big improvements are close in wireless. Four world-class engineers were comfortable with the forecast wireless capacity would soon increase 50 times or more.

Verizon 2017?: 5-10x Faster 5G M-MIMO

Verizon Ready to Try Massive MIMO and Beamforming
Nokia's Moiin Believes M-MIMO/IC from pCell is Ready
"Go Massive," Says the Texas MIMO Man - and Verizon
What the heck is Massive MIMO? What's Beamforming

"Go Massive," Says the Texas MIMO Man - and Verizon

Go West Suddenly 2017 rather than 2020 looks possible for Massive MIMO and beamforming. Verizon told Wall Street they were close to trials. Nokia next quarter will test Antonio Forenza's pCells, with similar features. Verizon's Lowell McAdam also briefed the street on a plan for "Staying ~two years ahead of competitors in network performance." (Paul de Sa.) They can't reach that goal without pulling up technologies that most thought were five years away.

"Go Massive" is the conclusion of Robert Heath, at The University of Texas at Austin.

Verizon Ready to Try Massive MIMO and Beamforming

massive mimo linkopings Hoping for 2017 although almost no one expected this before 2020 and "5G." CEO Lowell McAdams told analysts Verizon plans "Staying ~two years ahead of competitors in network performance." Massive MIMO and beamforming deliver "Huge gains in spectral efficiency." Delivered wireless can increase two to ten times over the next few years using arrays of thirty-five to hundreds of antennas. A 10x jump wouldn't surprise any of the researchers. Pulling that far ahead is probably an impossible dream. AT&T has almost caught up with Verizon.

Until this week, almost everyone thought substantial Massive MIMO deployment unlikely until 2020 and 5G. The excellent Bernstein analyst Paul de Sa was the first to report "VZ will soon begin market trials of 5G capabilities including 'massive MIMO' (which is when a large number of antennas are packed into a single device) and beam forming (which is when a wireless signal is concentrated on a specific location)." I confirmed with a second analyst what was said.

Beginning trials soon would suggest deployment in 2017 if they go well.

Massive MIMO Explained. What the heck is it? (Updated September 2016)

Marzetta Massive 10x or 100x more wireless throughput using many antennas. Masayoshi Son at Softbank has just deployed the first commercial Massive MIMO systems. 100 systems, each with 128 antennas, are being deployed in Japan. The early results show 6-10X capacity improvements. Some of the world's best engineers - Henry Samueli, Andrea Goldsmith, Arogyaswami Paulraj, Vint Cerf - expect ultimately MIMO will yield a 50X improvement. (That's not guaranteed, of course.)

Ericsson announced they'd be shipping 64 antenna systems in 2017. Huawei, ZTE, and Facebook have demonstrated 96-128 antenna systems. Each transmitting antenna sends a separate signal. The receivers mostly have two or four antennas. Each signal bounces off walls and other obstacles in a slightly different way, allowing the receivers to separate them.

Paulraj invented MIMO in 1993 and nearly twenty years ago predicted a 100X improvement in capacity at very little power increase. Many of us have seen a preview of what's possible from WiFi 802.11ac. That uses 4 antennas and triples performance under the right conditions. Add more antennas and enough processing power and almost anything may be achievable.

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