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"The deterministic service capability is indispensable." Huang Yuhong, China Mobile

Huang Yuhong 230 Opposition to deterministic networking guaranteed performance may be tilting at windows. I was one of the few to oppose it at the ITU 6G Focus Group, where Verizon and the European carriers gave the Chinese proposal strong support. The US government blocked it at the ITU Study Group 13, but IRL it has perhaps unstoppable momentum.

"New IP" has been dropped from the proposal, which now is limited to performance guarantees. That means the US government and allies are spreading misinformation that this is still a "New IP" proposal. Changing TCP/IP would invite far more problems than it would solve, I believe. It will be very expensive to implement across networks the near total control needed, and I see little demand for that except security agencies.

Updated 2022: Wireless Abundance is here: What Gig LTE, Massive MIMO, mmWave, and more can mean (2)

Dave 20GBPS "Technology on the market can deliver 10X to 25X at reasonable cost" I wrote in 2017. In 2022, I can see another 8X to 15X improvement from technologies already on the market. Traffic growth is all the way down. It was only 15% across 38 OECD countries in 2021.

Verizon CTO Kyle Malady reported that capacity margin was doubling even before putting mid-band spectrum to use and 5G. Putting mid-band to use with Massive MIMO is typically raising the capacity per cell by 3-7X.

Massive over-capacity is why nearly all telcos are offering fixed wireless and seeking to move customers to unlimited plans. Investors focus on sales, particularly postpaid, knowing that more customers can be accommodated

Outside of China and Korea, few telcos have reached even 50% with mid-band spectrum and massive MIMO. 5G carrier aggregation is just coming out of the labs. Telcos will put to use fallow lower frequencies. Moore's Law is continuing to bring down the cost of switches and routers. Automation and cloudification are just starting to pay off.

Here is what I wrote in 2017. It was on target, although I should have emphasized mid-band spectrum as well.

The Right Funding: NYU Wireless $2.5M for terahertz testing

NYU Wireless, founded by Ted Rappaport, may be the World's most respected research site In wireless. Tom Marzetta, whose Massive MIMO may be the most important advance in wireless this century, joined from Bell Labs. There are a dozen senior researchers and a slew of grad students and postdocs.

Ted, the Prince of Millimeter Wave, was the first in the US to believe mmWave would work for 5G mobile. His teams took mmWave gear to really tough terrain, the buildings of Manhattan. Their results astounded the industry. A year later, everyone in wireless was investigating mmWave.

Marzetta and Rappaport now are doing leading research on "terahertz" for 6G. (Mostly actually a few hundred GHz,) We need that kind of work from academia, ten and twenty years ahead of what's being deployed.

Mobile traffic grows only 15% in 2021 (OECD)

Mobile traffic growth rates have been declining inexorably for more than a decade. By now, most people are watching as much TV as they want. Back in 2012, I wrote:

Confirmed: Wireless Data Growth Rapidly Slowing. The growth rate drop will continue as the once in a generation surge due to the introduction of smartphones is winding down. The growth rate drop will continue as the once in a generation surge due to the introduction of smartphones is winding down.

40% growth rates are long gone. Across 38 OECD countries, mobile data rose by 15%, far lower than ever before. (OECD represents almost all affluent nations. China is not included.) Some of the decline is probably pandemic related.

Fiber passes DSL & Cable

Cable passes DSL 230 Fiber (green line) passed DSL (blue line) in 2020 in OECD countries and cable (yellow line) in 2021. The OECD is primarily developed countries, ignoring India, China, and Africa,

The gap will increase rapidly, with the US passing well over 10 million homes/year. England, Italy, and Germany are accelerating fiber builds. People often take years to switch. Most homes passed with fiber the last few years have yet to convert.

Consumers choose fiber, even when cable is a perfectly good alternative.

Finally, 5G Carrier Aggregation is Starting to Work OK

carrier aggregation Wikipedia 230 4G has been approaching 2 Gbps for several years, combining signals from 5 spectrum bands, typically 20 Mbps each. Most networks stuck with 3 or 4 channels because since ~2014, most telcos have had more bandwidth than they could sell. Most phones couldn't handle 5 channels until recently. The technology worked but was rarely put into production.

4 or 5 channel 4G was faster than most 5G, which added little or nothing to throughput. The recent speeds of hundreds of megabits have nothing to do with 5G. The large volume of mid-band spectrum delivers high speeds in either 4G or 5G.

G.hn Over In-building Phone Wires: Great price, reported reliable. sales booming

TNO Ghn performance 230 "It's fantastic," Alex Moulle-Berteaux, COO of Starry, tells me. Starry uses an innovative wireless-to-the-rooftop signal to bring bandwidth to an apartment building and then uses Positron G.hn to serve the individual units. (TNO performance graph at left and below)

Chano Gómez astonished the 2017 G.Fast conference with the claim G.hn could deliver similar bandwidth at half the cost and complexity. G.hn's much simpler interference cancellation brought the cost down. The retail price for G.hn Access Multipliers is $120-175 per port.

US Landline Net Adds Fall by Half as Fixed Wireless Becomes a Contender

FWA test by Eli Blumenthal Consumers have spoken: there is no doubt fixed wireless is a reasonable alternative for many. 532,000 of the 1,065,000 of broadband net additions in the first quarter were wireless, according to Bruce Leichtman, whose work has proven reliable.

At my apartment, T-Mobile wireless is faster than cable on the upstream, fine on the downstream, and $20 cheaper. I'd happily switch. Reporter Eli Blumental was able to try both Verizon and T-Mobile and found them to be reasonable choices, although still shaking out the system. He tested one service at 465 Mbps down and 445 Mbps up. (Illustration)

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