Mobile standards may fragment again, driven by geopolitics

I think we might see a return to the old days of multiple competing mobile standards.

But rather than the US/Europe technical war of 2G/3G over the nuances of GSM & CDMA, this time I see a scenario driven more by US/China geopolitics and ideology, enabled by various technology catalysts.

[This is an extended and more nuanced version of a post of mine on LinkedIn - link, which I edited to fit the 1300chrs limit. It's worth looking at the discussion in the comments there]

The past: how LTE and 5G became global standards

To understand how we got here, and why we might diverge in future, we need to look at the past. Historically, there were two main competing camps for 2G and 3G networks:

• GSM/UMTS, championed by 3GPP and Europe-centric players such as Ericsson, Nokia and major European operator groups such as Vodafone & Telefonica.
• CDMA, driven by US companies, especially Qualcomm and Verizon, plus also Sprint, Lucent, Nortel and others, organised via 3GPP2

Back around 2006-7, when 4G was being designed and specified, a number of options were proposed:

• LTE was the 3GPP's option
• UMB was the CDMA/3GPP2 approach, leaning heavily on Qualcomm's acquisition of Flarion, which was developing an IEEE 802.20 wireless system.
• WiMAX, which came from vendors with a Wi-Fi background, notably Intel. That was an IEEE technology too - 802.16.

For various reasons, LTE won, and the others disappeared. (I wrote plenty about this at the time, if you want to go through my archived posts, such as here and here). 

IEEE still technologies dominate in local networks such as Wi-Fi and "personal area networks" such as Bluetooth, but for wide-area mobile, the 3GPP dynasty rules supreme.

But there's a back-story to LTE's success, and its rise as the single global standard for 4G.

In the 3G era, it wasn't just UMTS vs. CDMA2000, but also the Chinese TD-SCDMA standard. (& minor proprietary techs, such as Nextel's & Motorola's iDEN)

TD-SCDMA never gained traction outside China's domestic market, but it helped build the local industry to scale and then evolved into TD-LTE for 4G, which was folded in as part of the global LTE story.

The world's mobile-dedicated spectrum comes in two varieties - FDD (frequency-division duplexing) which uses separate 'paired' bands for uplink and downlink, and TDD (time-division duplexing) which uses a single 'unpaired' band, alternating between up/down slices of time. 2G and 3G were dominated by FDD radios. The inclusion of TD-LTE enabled 4G to access both categories. (WiMAX was TDD-only, a major failing).

The Europe+China combination made 3GPP / LTE unstoppable, especially given the extra scale in terms of both market size and spectrum it enabled. It also cemented Huawei's role as a powerhouse, and partly led to Alcatel's acquisition by Nokia and Nortel's cellular business by Ericsson. Qualcomm's conversion to the LTE cause helped too.  

In parallel to the radio, the 4G cellular core network (EPC) also rose in perceived importance compared to 2G/3G eras, as it allowed MNOs much greater control over data flows. It also allowed vendors easier lock-in.

For the last 11 years, the mobile industry has exploded, partly because of LTE's ubiquity and scale economies, and partly because of the simultaneous rise of the iPhone and Android. It's worth noting that 3GPP's original vision for 3G and 4G didn't see access to the "public Internet" as a core part of the service, although it now dominates usage and value.

In recent years, we have seen the 3GPP "global standard" continue to evolve to 5G, with Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm dominating the landscape again, plus Samsung and a few others following behind them. At the moment, most 5G is "non-standalone", using the existing 4G cores - and thus again locking-in the established vendors, and the existing powerful core and exclusive national-licence philosophy favouring traditional large MNOs.

However, the 5G vision of many of the industry "old guard" is still centres on the them vs. us approach to network control and "native" (ie telco-delivered) services. There's still the almost-bigoted rhetoric and lobbying about so-called "OTTs" (an obsolete and self-damaging term, in my view), and the attempt to dilute - or at least monitor - the user's desire & ability to access open Internet applications and even connect independently via Wi-Fi.

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But now, I see clouds gathering - or new rays of sunshine, depending on your perspective.

I think that geopolitics may undermine the "single global standard" for mobile, along with some conveniently-timed technical evolution paths. This is not a forecast, or even the most likely outcome - but I believe it is solidifying into a much more realistic scenario.

For the later stages of 5G (from Release 17 onwards), and then beyond that with the evolution of 6G, I think the US might be about to diverge from the last decade's consensus.

The Sino-US politics were already stark, even before the COVID19 pandemic added more fuel to the fire. We have already seen massive pressure with regard to Huawei, not just in North America but across Europe and other OECD countries such as Japan and Australia. The US has previously taken action against ZTE as well, and more recently has started even discouraging interconnection with Chinese telcos (link). 

Apparently, the US tech industry is now being pushed/advised to avoid working with China, even on standards development (see this Economist article, although it may be behind a paywall for some - link). That potentially weakens US influence at 3GPP, and could prompt it to seek alternative paths forward. We can expect the US Presidential campaign to focus on this theme as well, over the next 6 months - although both major US political parties have been fairly unified on the ongoing trade disputes with China.

There are also some signs of tougher views in Europe. Even though the UK and EU have allowed continued limited engagement with Huawei, the politics is still hardening, especially in the wake of the virus' trajectory (link).

But this is not just about geopolitics. It is also about technology "philosophy". I see something of a divide here, too. In a way, it's a modern-day version of the Bellheads vs. Netheads battle of the past (link):

• Control: On one side is a vision of mobile world with strong vendor / MNO / national control, evolved from today's 3GPP & GSMA vision. This has
• Strong policy control - and eventually network-slicing - delivered from a powerful core network. 
• Deep reach down into devices, from SIMs to connectivity management, and perhaps surveillance options. 
• A big focus on optimised & automated infrastructure, which probably favours single-vendor (or at least big-vendor) approaches. 
• An expectation of exclusive national spectrum licenses, with limited scope for local or enterprise networks which do not also lean on MNOs' services. 
• There's also a lot of work aimed at reinventing TCP/IP in ways that give telcos more control, as well. 
• Edge-computing is integrated into the telco domain as much as possible, and delivered as part of a "slice" or MNO service.
• Openness:The other world vision has a more open / Internet-centric approach. It's more "permissionless" with vendor or even operator lock-ins of any sort being anathema. There's:
• Less core-network control, favouring local breakout & device-led multiple connections, without the MNO (or government) having a panopticon view of traffic. 
• An emerging focus on disaggregated & open RAN models (O-RAN, TIP, OpenRAN etc), favouring multivendor- and IT/cloud -centric architectures. 
• An expectation of Wi-Fi indoors, often owned and controlled by a non-MNO. 
• Growing availability of more-open spectrum with dynamic / local licenses, as well as traditional exclusive bands as a foundation. 
• Edge computing is primarily an enabler of telecom networks, not delivered by them - and the expectation is that most will be neutral or independent, in local 3rd-party datacentres/modules or on enterprise premises.
  

In a way, this is almost a 3GPP vs. IEEE/IETF divide, but just as politics has shifted from a left/right axis to open/closed, perhaps something similar is happening here too.

It's not clear that the wireless world will cleave cleanly along this divide, especially in the near future as 5G is still being deployed. AT&T and Verizon will not be happy relinquishing control-points, either. So today, we have some fairly messy - and maybe unworkable - hybrids. There's lots of talk about opening APIs for enterprises to configure their own 5G slices. We have some grudging approaches to blending cellular and Wi-Fi, and various moves to enable "non-public networks" for enterprise in Release 16 & 17 of the 5G standards. But even that phrasing is awkward and somewhat derisive - as is the term "non-trusted" to describe other access networks.

But the technology forces are clear, even beyond the politics. In the last year or so we have seen:

• CBRS launching, with dynamic spectrum and a focus on new use-cases and business models, especially enterprise/local networks. It is catalysing a new vendor ecosystem of small cell suppliers, cloud EPCs and specialised SPs and integrators.
• Huge interest in local/private spectrum and networks in Germany, UK, Japan and elsewhere
• Rakuten, Dish and other operators validating the vRAN model and working with new US-centric vendors like Altiostar and Mavenir. (Rakuten is, like Softbank, an Internet company diversifying into cellular. Dish isn't "old school" mobile, either, but a satellite TV provider).
• Huge upswing of presence of IT/cloud players in cellular infrastructure, including acquisitions. IBM/RedHat, Dell/VMware, Microsoft/Affirmed, HPE, Oracle - plus AWS and Google taking various roles from RAN to core, as well as Facebook with TIP and its new stake in Reliance Jio
• A massive tranche of 6GHz spectrum being made available on an unlicensed basis in the US, primarily for Wi-Fi6E, but also maybe 5G variants in future as well. This has further killed off the (already implausible) idea that cellular-based LANs might edge out Wi-Fi
• Fragmentation of the EPC / 5G Core marketplace, with low-cost / cloud-based / programmable / "light" variants that look like a normal piece of the IT stack, rather than arcane telco wizardry. (I wonder if we'll see "core-optional" mobile networks - but that's for another post).
• More interest in mmWave in the US and South Korea, including for indoor use.
• FCC and the White House have taken a close interest in 5G and next-gen wireless, and seem keen to foster a local technology ecosystem for mobile (link)
• Innovation in satellite constellations such as SpaceX's Starlink
• Plenty of other big US-centric technology players watching closely, such as Cisco, Juniper and of course Apple.
• (I know there's also various moves around evolving TCP/IP, but I haven't had a chance to get my head around them yet).

We might still see 5.5G and 6G world emerge as an elegant hyper-converged version of these two philosophies. And we'll certainly see firms such as Ericsson and Huawei try to continue the 3GPP/control vision, while also exploring the opportunities and tools from the other side. Neither seems especially happy with the rise of local/private spectrum or pure-play enterprise and neutral-host providers. It's easier to sell direct to 100s of MNOs, than 10000s of enterprises via a myriad of new channels and integrators.
 
I'm also interested to see what happens with ownership of Nokia (which seems a bit more open to the new realities) given its financial woes - and also how the European governments and regulators act. Is Europe a bridge between the two worlds, or does it fall in the gap? 

In many ways, I see the EU model lean more towards MNO control, with governments happier to focus regulation on competition at commercial levels, rather than technical - it tends to push harmonisation heavily, as a consequence of its previous success with GSM which catalysed the whole sector. There is more wiggle-room around enterprise and local spectrum licensing, given the strong lobbies for manufacturing and other industrial sectors., plus more emphasis on privacy.

I can imagine Japan aligning more with the US vision, but South Korea in a similar position to Europe. A year ago, Samsung was the obvious beneficiary of Huawei's problems. Now, it's probably the OpenRAN ecosystem that's the effective #3 choice.

At the moment, I'd rate the chances of a more-serious and clearer split at 30% and rising. It won't happen overnight - I think that Release 17 is probably the trigger-point. By the time we get to 2030 and 6G though, I wouldn't be surprised to see a revival of something that looks like 3GPP2, or perhaps (whisper it, as many will cringe) WiMAX2. At the very least, it will be more Internet-flavoured.

If the "old guard" vendors and their institutional peers within 3GPP, GSMA, ETSI etc. want to avoid this bifurcation, they are going to have to make some difficult decisions, and soon. Otherwise the potential to be disrupted from adjacency will grow. They need to be genuinely open, and start loosening the vision of pure "end-to-end control", and embracing imperfect, inelegant pragmatism about network design, operation and ownership. Exactly how that fits with the worsening geopolitical landscape is a problem I'll leave for the diplomats and spin-doctors.

Note: If you are interested in understanding more about this scenario, or are looking for an analyst or advisor to help formulate strategy in the wireless technology space, please get in touch with me. I can be reached via LinkedIn, @disruptivedean on Twitter, or via information at disruptive-analysis dot com.

From pixabay.com

Industry 4.0 & IIoT needs shared spectrum to succeed, either for 5G or WiFi

[Warning, Long Post! 
TL;DR summary: Industrial automation increasingly needs good wireless connectivity for robots, sensors and other systems. Mobile operators and telcos are poorly-suited to providing it, especially in-building or site-wide. Regulators need to focus on more shared spectrum, to allow other stakeholders to build/own/operate IoT wireless networks, either for 5G, WiFi or other technologies]


A topic I've been hearing repeatedly about recently is Industry 4.0. This is the reinvention of many sectors with IoT, analytics/AI, sensors and assorted other technologies. Sometimes called the IIoT (Industrial IoT), the 4th Industrial Revolution, or Industrie 4.0 (for Francophones), it follows on from mechanisation, mass production and computing. 

You'll often hear the clunky term "cyber-physical systems", or perhaps derivatives like Smart Factories, Smart Agriculture, Smart Utilities and so on. You'll also often hear Industry 4.0 linked with a discussion of 5G, and perhaps governments' broadband or spectrum policies. (Obviously my esteemed readers wouldn't use the useless & obsolete word "digital").

But what you won't hear much about is Industry 4.0's dependency on what *type* of spectrum, and by association, what types of networks are deployed, and by whom.

Credit: Christoph Roser at AllAboutLean.com."

My view is that for Industry 4.0 to succeed, there need to be privately-owned and -run wireless networks for IIoT. Traditional mobile operators cannot provide all the connectivity requirements, and industry will not pay for all wireless connectivity "as a service", especially inside buildings or across their plant/campus facilities. (Just as fixed telecom operators do not provide most in-building ethernet or other wired systems today).

This needs to be reflected in spectrum policy - and, especially, various models of spectrum-sharing. Strategic over-reach by MNOs, or bodies like the GSMA, will otherwise risk delaying the adoption of Industry 4.0 altogether, or cause enterprises to seek sub-optimal approaches to implementing IIoT, with consequent damage to the broader economy. 

It doesn't matter whether specific IIoT implementations use 4G, 5G, WiFi, short-range or LPWAN technologies like SigFox or LoRa, there needs to be the option to have (locally) self-controlled spectrum for owned networks for critical or secure IoT.  

As I've written before, Telecoms is too Important to Leave Up to Telcos (link). 

It's also sometimes too important to leave to today's WiFi, LPWAN or ZigBee. Enterprises in the IIoT era cannot not just purely rely on unlicensed wireless for their future, mission-critical connected systems.

I want to drill into this more, as it's critical that the cellular industry - and policymakers - do not over-reach, or ignore secondary/tertiary issues, as has often been the case in the past. My recent experiences with the 5G / mobile industry discussing "verticals" suggests that it is doing so again. 

There is also a "spectrum land-grab" going on, with the mobile industry lobbying governments to suggest regimes that favour traditional MNOs, rather than domain specialists and innovators. This needs a bright light shined upon it, as it is often duplicitous and ignores inconvenient facts about particular sectors, different models, and competing constituencies.

Smart Industries & Factories: thinking realistically about the connectivity needs 

The 5G-PPP group, for example, has written a very good document on the rise of the “Factories of the Future” (link), detailing numerous ways technology will enhance manufacturing and related industries. It talks persuasively not just about realtime connectivity for automation (robots, production systems etc), but also the growth in data collection and analytics, improved logistics and energy-management and so forth.

The report also covers the way manufacturing companies are themselves becoming services companies, with various in-field business models related to their products (eg airline engines provided as “power by the hour”). It’s a fascinating summary of the changes that lie ahead for industry, and the on-site communications needs that extra use of new integrated IT systems will bring. It highlights the need for low-latency, high-speed, super-reliable wireless connectivity – in some cases with requirements as stringent as 1ms cycle times, jitter below 1µs and other parameters like timing sync in the nanosecond range.

But while the 5G-PPP report – and assorted other documents like it – suggest that 5G might be able to deliver the various QoS characteristics, it doesn’t make a case for why that connectivity should be provided onsite as a service by an MNO, in that operator’s licensed spectrum, and paid for out of OPEX on an ongoing basis. 

Indeed, it points out that many other network technologies will coexist and need to integrate with each other – Industrial Ethernet, WiFi, ZigBee, LPWAN and various industry-specific standards such as WirelessHart and ISA100.11a [no, I hadn’t heard of them either]. Most mobile operators are ill-suited to perform that integration, as most of those networks are owned, not service-based.

A similar set of critical-wireless issues could apply in many different industrial sectors:

• “Closed loop” industrial systems in a factory or plant
• Equipment in hospitals, from care-robots to portable bedside sensors to surgical systems in operator theatres
• Trains and operational systems on railway networks
• Automated vehicles at an airport (eg baggage handling systems)
• Construction machinery and sensors on a building site
• IoT systems in remote regions not covered by normal cellular networks (eg mines, offshore energy facilities)
• High-voltage grid sensing and operations by utility companies
• Potentially, various use-cases for smart cities, and smart farms, such as automated transport systems or agricultural machinery

In a nutshell, there are going to be many instances where the IoT systems will demand extremely high wireless network performance, reliability and availability on a particular company’s site. That connectivity system will need to comply with that industry and location’s specific regulatory requirements (eg safety), and integrate with both the other network types and the IT/industrial systems in use.

In terms of business models, while some aspects of IT are outsourced (eg to cloud services), industrial companies do not want to obtain every capability "as a service", with ongoing payments. In many cases, they may want owned assets, for security, IT integration or control/regulatory reasons - or even because their cost of capital is even lower than telcos'. Where they do want to acquire IoT-related managed services, they are likely to want a central provider, rather than obtaining connectivity through a different contract.

It is naïve to imagine that AT&T or Vodafone is going to be providing “robot anti-collision-as-a-service”, via an edge-computing node built into a 5G small cell, running in the MNO’s 42GHz mmWave spectrum with the MNO’s SIMs/eSIMs in the robots. Neither are patients going to be too happy being operated on by a surgical robot, which is sending pictures to the doctor via an IMS core. (Does RCS messaging have a spleen emoji, I wonder?).

It is also naïve to imagine that safety-critical systems will be trusted to WiFi running in totally unlicensed and uncontrollable spectrum.

In other words, closed-loop industrial systems are unlikely to benefit from a telecom operator’s involvement given that it is, quite literally, out of the loop. Even if it is possible to give control of a “network slice” to the company, how far does that extend in reality? Is a manufacturer going to be happy just being a glorified MVNO, without “administrator” access all the way to the radio? If a mining company wants to completely shut down a RAN temporarily (eg while detonating explosives), how does it do that? 

In other words, there needs to be a good way for large industrial facilities to operate wireless networks, in some form of licensed spectrum, without the involvement of MNOs.

 

The regulatory answer: spectrum-sharing. For cellular or other technologies

There are three broad types of spectrum management:

• Dedicated licensed - the familar style of license that is used for mobile networks today, where specific operators (MNOs) gain rights, usually through auctions, to particular frequencies exclusively. (This also applies to broadcasters, satellite operators, government bodies etc). This allows full management and therefore guarantees of QoS.
• Unlicensed / license-exempt - used for WiFi and other "ISM" (industrial, scientific, medical) applications. No specific user license is needed, which lowers costs but also risks interference and congestion.
• Shared spectrum, or Dynamic spectrum access - multiple users get access to a given band, but it is not a "free for all". There are some mechanisms to ensure separation, fairness, pre-emption, manageability and so forth - but not nationwide exclusivity.

In my view, the last option needs to be utilised much more, if Industry 4.0 has a chance of success. We need to avoid strategic over-reach by the cellular sector, which is lobbying hard for more dedicated spectrum in an (understandable but doomed) approach to insert MNOs into many new IIoT value chains. It also hopes to disenfranchise other stakeholders in what is likely to be a "land grab" in coming years - there are various new bands like 600MHz, 3.5GHz and whole swathes above 6GHz that are being lined up for "harmonisation" in 2019 at the next World Radio Congress.

At this point it is worth noting that there are various approaches to using shared spectrum emerging. We have had "TV white spaces" for a while, although it has had relatively little use. Some legacy wireless networks such as PMR (public mobile radio) have used shared frequencies. Fixed-wireless links for point-to-point connections, are commonplace in industry already. Scientific uses (eg radioastronomy) coexist with other applications. 

Looking forward, there are various technical approaches such as listen-before-talk, or geographic (or other) databases that allow geo-fencing of spectrum rights. There can also be forms of spectrum sub-leasing, with the approval of regulators - or occasionally just illegal or corrupt use of someone else's bands, in remote areas.

There are also differences between sharing existing "primary" users' bands, or dividing up new bands on a basis other than dedicated national licenses. For instance, the former could include exploiting military or coastguard frequencies in peacetime, or inland. The latter might use a registry or database, and employ a spectrum manager function to optimise fees for the government, or perhaps look to maximise benefit to the wider economy.

This post isn't the right place to discuss all the differences between models such as LSA (licensed shared access) mostly examined in Europe, or the more-ambitious SAS (spectrum access system) discussed in the US.

There are plenty of analyses and white papers around, such as from Intel (link), GSMA/Deloitte (link), Plum Consulting (link) and many more. They all vary in their in-built biases, and do not always think through the typical structures and business-models of verticals that might need connectivity in future. I'll delve more into the options another time.

What is critical is that whatever system is used makes it easier for new wireless stakeholders and innovators to emerge, especially around IIoT applications for in-building and on-campus networks. While there are some opportunities for today's MNOs, there are many other plausible use-cases for 5G especially, that can only be viable if others are involved.

Network equipment vendors need to play a careful and nuanced game here - they obviously don't want to alienate their traditional MNO customers, but they also need to build their direct-to-enterprise solutions and sales, to rescue flattening revenue lines.

What companies would deploy networks in shared spectrum?

So if traditional telcos & MNOs aren't always the right organisations to provide onsite IIoT / Industry 4.0 connectivity, then who is?

This is a complex and sector-specific question, and will likely vary over time, and by country.  

Some industrial companies will be big enough and skilled enough to build and run their own internal wireless networks, just as they run their internal fixed networks. They can hire 5G or advanced WiFi engineers as easily as telcos. A car manufacturing plant might deem it strategically important to run its own network. So might a major airport. They would ideally have a geographically-specific shared spectrum license.

It could also be the manufacturers or integrators of IIoT systems - perhaps GE, IBM, ABB, Siemens, Schlumberger, Honeywell, Philips or similar firms. As they operate in multiple locations, they may have to deal with multiple spectrum regimes and approaches, depending on local rules. A power station in Japan might have a different network ownership model to a chemical factory in Canada, or a hospital complex in Souh Africa. There may also be different roles for private (or MNO/MVNO) use of 4G/5G, WiFi running in reliable spectrum, or LPWAN technologies.

Then it is likely that we will see the emergence of vertical-specialist services companies. They could be airport-management firms, oilfield-services providers, or simply dedicated IoT and industrial connectivity players. Some will evolve from today's niche MVNOs and platform providers. Perhaps Cisco Jasper could be one, network vendors' managed-services arms, or startups and spin-offs from existing industrial suppliers. Further, many of the previous set of IoT manufacturers are moving to become forms of service providers themselves, as the 5G-PPP paper discusses, for which wireless connectivity could be an embedded enabler, in the same fashion as electricity from embedded generators.

Lastly, we will probably see WISPs, fixed-broadband and fixed/cable operators move into this space - especially where they have existing big enterprise customer base and integration/management skillsets and resources.

All of these groups could benefit from easier availability of "controllable" spectrum, beyond the current limited scope for fixed point-to-point links. In most cases, I'd expect geographically-limited rights to be the best approach. This would likely need some efficient mechanism for creating the issuance, registration and resale of such sharing rights. Perhaps a blockchain-based registry (and perhaps even smart spectrum contracts) may emerge as a suitable underlying platform, although the timelines might not be aligned perfectly here.

Companies that cover a very broad area for IIoT, and have both fixed assets and mobile users will have a very different set of requirements, and may turn out to need dedicated spectrum to themselves, or operate in partnership with MNOs somehow. Railways, utility companies and public safety agencies are examples. For instance, control systems for the high-voltage electricity grid cannot rely on MNO connectivity - as the MNOs' cell sites rely on the utility firm's power. If there's a power outage, you risk ending up with a chicken/egg dilemma, unless there's robust diesel backup at every cell site

Again, however, there will be a need to look at spectrum policy, in the light of the needs - technical, operational AND commercial - of different end-use sectors.

Conclusion & Recommendations for Regulators

Regulators need to continue with a push for shared spectrum models, especially around 5G. While MNOs definitely need a lot more exclusive spectrum for mobile broadbrand, it is becoming much less-clear that IoT and IIoT use-cases are optimal for the traditional services/subscription model preferred by the mobile industry. There are separate arguments for allocations of shared spectrum below 1GHz, between 1-6GHz and for 6GHz and above.

WiFi has demonstrated the huge value to economy and society of unlicensed wireless. It has unleashed immense consumer welfare and innovation in usage models, including in industry. Critically, it can be offered as a service, owned outright, provided as an amenity, sponsored, bundled, integrated and numerous other commercial forms. 

WiFi's "generativity" needs to be enhanced with "controllability" for mission-critical IoT, and also perhaps ultra low-cost IoT for wide areas.

This suggests that shared spectrum should be made available, with the expectation that it will be used for private 5G (or 4G) networks, to cover use-cases and business models that MNOs are poorly-equipped to address. Governments and regulators need to be wary of representations from the cellular industry that push a "monoculture" of national, subscription-based connectivity. If they go that route, they need to think about coverage rules applying to the inside of enterprise facilities, not just broad national statistics.

Supra-national bodies like the ITU and the various European regulatory bodies such as the EU Commission, CEPT and BEREC also need to grasp the limits of the incumbent cellular model in enabling Industry 4.0. It has its role, but so do other paths and options. However, the industry "noise" from trade associations, academia and elsewhere is overwhelming in its narrow view of the traditional MNO model. The coming of Industry 4.0 demands a reset - not a fallback to historical approaches to wireless.

It's also worth pondering if the concept of running LTE in unlicensed spectrum mostly used by WiFi (MuLTEFire, LAA, LTE-U etc) should be considered in reverse. Is it possible to use WiFi in mostly-empty, dedicated frequency bands notionally designated for 3G, 4G, 5G? Would that need change to ITU's regulatory definitions of IMT (International Mobile Telecommunications)? Future wireless won't always be international, moving about, or even "telecoms" in the traditional sense, anyway, so it is debatable whether all 5G should really be deemed IMT-2020 by ITU and national regulators. 

Such a move would be hugely controversial, but since lots of studies show that LTE and WiFi can coexist happily, it should be technically feasible in notional licensed bands as well as unlicensed. There are already pilot examples of WiFi running in licensed spectrum - bodies such as WiFi Alliance and IEEE 802 should consider it more fully.

The bottom line is this: if industry and society is to benefit from IIOT, automation, smart systems using AI, and a whole host of other innovations, it needs reliable wireless connectivity that can be owned outright, not just paid for on a service basis. The best way to deliver this is via shared-spectrum models that allow new entrants to build private, or system-integrated wireless networks for Industry 4.0.

Dean Bubley is an analyst and futurist for the telecoms industry. His company, Disruptive Analysis, advises vendors, operators, regulators and investors on technology trends, business models and policy. This spans network innovation, communications apps/services, and advanced technologies. Please get in touch if you are looking for consulting or public-speaking assistance - information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com.