Rakuten Japan: Advanced New Net Cuts Price in Half, Gives Away 3M Unlimited Accounts

Ashraf Dahod, CEO at Altiostar, is very proud. A year ago, CTO Tareq Amin dazzled the industry with bold promises: 

"Revolutionary technological innovation behind the launch of the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network. Construction of radio antenna network underway; On track for October 2019 Japan launch ... Soon to be the newest and most innovative mobile network operator in Japan, Rakuten Mobile Network, Inc. is currently building the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network. The launch of commercial services planned for October 2019 will leverage an innovative architecture that is set to disrupt not only the telecom industry landscape in Japan but also the rest of the world. Built to serve millions of subscribers and adopting 5G systems architecture from launch, this will be the world’s first cloud-native network that is fully virtualized from radio access network (RAN) to Core, with end-to-end automation for both network and services."

Amin had been a builder of Reliance Jio's remarkably cost-effective network, that connected 370 million Indians in less than 4 years. It runs so well that Jio declares a profit on prices often below $5/ month. It reflected the most advanced thinking, originating from Stanford (CORD, O-RAN, more) and now supported everywhere from China Mobile to the White House. (Where they have no idea what it means.)

It's March 2020 now, and the network is finally ready to go beyond trials. The first 3 million will get a free year and the regular price will be under US$30, much lower than the incumbents.

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Verizon/Ciena & China Mobile/Huawei Demo 800G Optics

100 gigabit fiber optic wavelengths were state of the art not long ago, but 800G is ready in 2020. China Mobile tested Huawei's 800G optical transport unit between two data centers 80 kilometers apart. Verizon used Ciena and Juniper 800G equipment in its test. Huawei, Ciena, and Infinera are confident they will ship 800G production units in 2020. 

18 months ago, I was one of the first to report in English that Huawei was producing its own high-quality optical units. At that time, they were still purchasing lasers for the most advanced units. Huawei has now caught up in optics. The company matches the best in 5G, AI, and network processing chip design and is very close in the very important radio frequency parts for 5G. 

Donald Trump wants to destroy "Made in China 2025" but is failing miserably. It was based on a false belief that Chinese companies needed U.S. parts to make advanced equipment. That may have been true 15 years ago, but today China has the capability to match the U.S. in almost any field. There is no reason someone born in San Francisco will be smarter than someone born in Shanghai. America has brilliant engineers, a large market, and a system that drove innovation. Today, so does China.

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As T-Mobile Goes, So Goes American 5G: When Will it Use the 2.5 GHz Golden Spectrum? (Draft)

If T-Mobile moves quickly, it could cover 80% of the U.S. with 5G at hundreds of megabits by the end of 2021. It will probably require several months to re-organize after the merger and the major impact may be in 2021. T-Mobile may pause but won't stop.

The money is budgeted; to get approval to buy Sprint, T-Mobile agreed to maintain capex at the level of the two companies combined, about $10 billion/year. That's enough to upgrade 20,000 sites a year and cover more than half the country extremely quickly. Verizon and AT&T would almost have to respond. (This is over-simplified but I believe correct.)

Sprint's 2.5 GHz spectrum is golden because it has excellent reach. Most of the country can be covered without adding new towers. The 64 small antennas of Massive MIMO mean that 2.5 GHz has reach comparable to 1800 MHz and possibly better.

The towers are available. Adding Sprint gives T-Mobile more towers than it can put to use. Originally, T-Mobile intended to keep 10,000 and retire 35,000. Many of the latter are on 5-year contracts. 

The contractors have the capacity to meet that target. They were startled when T-Mo stopped building in December after the companies had staffed up. They'd love the work. Ericsson & probably Nokia are ready to ship the equipment. Sprint brings Samsung to the table. The equipment is available.

Alan Hadden's 5G Announced Deployments List

The announcements of 5G just keep coming. Analyst Alan Hadden does us all a favor by keeping track of them. (Full table below) So does Ookla, https://www.speedtest.net/ookla-5g-map. Click through to Ookla to see what cities have been announced by which carriers. 

My list of active 5G networks only had 34 in Feb 2020 because I only include telcos actively selling services. Too many companies made announcements before they were ready. I also exclude the very small, like Monaco. 

From Alan Hadden, 

Australia Optus 3.6 GHz

Australia Telstra 3.6 GHz

Austria Drei 3.5 GHz

Austria Magenta Telekom 3.5 GHz

Bahrain Batelco 3.5 GHz

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5G: It's Almost all Mid-band

Entering 2020, very little 5G is mmWave or low-band. The tall line in Alan Hadden's chart is 3.3-4.2 GHz. To its left is 2.5 GHz. To its right is 4.8 GHz, used by China Mobile. 

Performance in mid-band is typically 100-400 Mbps down.  Sprint's 5G network averaged 183 Mbps. (Open Signal) More than 400 Mbps is an exception; 1 Gbps great for advertising.

Low-band (the two leftmost) speeds are similar to and often lower than 4G. AT&T averaged 60 Mbps and T-Mobile 48 Mbps.

Millimeter-wave at Verizon is often over a gigabit. Open Signal found an average for 772 Mbps, probably in an area where Verizon is using only half of its 28 GHz spectrum. AT&T is using 39 GHz.

Japan and Korea are testing mmWave but few others. 

 

 

 

 

Ireland Eir Euro #1 25% Covered (Outdoor)

Ireland now has better 5G coverage than Deutsche Telekom plans for the end of 2021. Putting 5G on existing towers can be done quickly, especially where 4G upgrades are needed. Mid-band 5G has decent reach, similar to 1800 MHz.

At least 60% and often 80% coverage can be reached from existing towers. The Europeans do not expect to deploy many small cells for years. The Chinese don't need new cells for coverage, but have ambitious plans for indoor coverage, perhaps as many as 10 million small cells. That would be enough to put multiple cells inside every office building.

Xavier Niel became a billionaire by giving customers more for their money. The industry thought he would go broke when he offered the 30 Euro triple play but he had carefully calculated marginal costs. Most made a similar mistake when he introduced mobile for 20 euros several years ago. He made that work.

Eir also announced gigabit fiber to 50,000 homes and plans to fiber 84% of Ireland. 38% of Irish live in rural areas, nearly twice as many as England. Rural costs are high but Eir's reaching many in rural areas without any subsidy.

I guess the engineers at BT should go to Dublin for an education.

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Xi Jinping: Accelerate 5G to Restore the Economy

Friday Feb 21, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, told the Politburo, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, told the Politburo, "to prop up support for the research and development of related reagents, drugs, and vaccines, and prompt the development of biomedicine, medical equipment, 5G networks and industrial Internet." Emphasis added. 

The next day, China Unicom and China Telecom committed to deploying 250,000 sites by September. To put that in perspective, the two companies, working together, will deploy about as many sites as the combined total - 4G and 5G - Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. 

China Mobile is set for another 300,000. Q4 construction will raise the total. They have already put in emergency orders to the primary suppliers. Huawei is mostly back to work. Away from Wuhan, many people will return to the job this week.

Wuhan is China’s “Optics Valley." Yangtze Optical Fibre & Cable and Fiberhome are two of the world's largest optics manufacturers. Both are based in Wuhan, the center of the epidemic. Shortages of backhaul fiber are predictable.

The money is available. China Mobile has cut capex from RMB 187 billion (USD 27 billion) to RMB 166 in 2019. Simply restoring that cut would finance > 10,000 more radios. China Unicom spent RMB 61 in 2017 but projects RMB 58 in 2019. 

The equipment is or soon will be available. Huawei claims it can produce 1,500,000 radios a year. Ericsson and ZTE have spare capacity. The Chinese companies, like all tech companies, are suffering from supply chain problems already that will probably get worse.

Apple has postponed the $399 iPhone SE2 because of production problems.

5G deployments. 34 active, Japan & Canada soon to come

February 2020 My count is 34 telcos actively selling 5G to consumers. 2019 ended with ~19 million active subscriptions. ~14 million were in China and almost all the rest were in Korea. 93% of Korea is covered and ~10% of China. No other carriers have enough subscribers to be willing to reveal the count. Europe is going very slowly, except for Eir which is serving 25% of Ireland. Bravo Xavier Niel.

China intends 150 million by the end of 2020 and Korea 15 million. With decent phones down to $285, those goals are realistic The year started slowly and then came Corona. There's a large stimulus coming after Corona which may pull China back on track. Unless some carriers move strongly, growth in the West will be modest until the IPhone 5G arrives in the fall.

The U.S. has been going slowly, although last year Sprint reached 11% of the nation. Sprint has golden spectrum - 160 MHz at 2.5 GHz - that is the best range to build today. T-Mobile will soon take over, The plan at Sprint was to build very quickly, reaching well over half the country from existing towers. That's also the likely plan at T-Mobile, which has committed to bring 100 Mbps to 80% of the U.S. quickly. It also pledged to invest as much as the two companies did when independent, about $10B/year. 

T-Mobile would than have the best network in the U.S.; AT&T and Verizon, which are currently lowering capex, would have to invest more to catch up.

Will T-Mobile accelerate in a few months when the deal closes? Or will they hold back? If the former, the U.S. would quickly become #2 with China in the lead. 

Japan has world class engineers at NTT DOCOMO who could build as soon as the money becomes available. They have said nothing about how much or when.

Below, the 34 companies I've confirmed are actively selling to consumers. 30 more have made announcements but I haven't seen evidence they offer substantial commercial service. 

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