5G & Neutral-Host Thought Experiment #1

Reposted & extended from original LinkedIn post (link) - main comment thread on that page

Here's a thought experiment, to test your ideas about 5G, indoor wireless, neutral-host networks, URLLC and network-slicing.

It's a plausible scenario which seems simple, but actually has lots of complexities. It's the sort of thing that marketing departments might suggest as a use-case for 5G, but in reality, "it's not that simple".

Imagine it's the year 2025. 

There's a large office building on a business park... with a faulty elevator. The elevator company sends out one of its local maintenance engineers, who works as a contractor. 

He arrives with an AR headset, running an application to deliver repair instructions and record the fix, linked to the manufacturer's cloud-based diagnostics, image-analysis and compliance/recording platform. Given the safety issues such as fall-risks, it needs a low-latency connection to avoid the risk of nausea and distraction. 

But.... what's the network coverage like in the lift-shaft? Is there outside-in signal with <1GHz 5G? Or is there a DAS or multi-operator small-cell system? Is there a private cellular network with local spectrum? Does it support integration with all outdoor / public networks equally well? Can it support URLLC with a guaranteed SLA? What network is the engineer's headset SIM registered on, anyway? Is there a voice/video connection for looping in a remote expert? And how would that work?

Whose responsibility is all of this? Is it down to the building owner? A smart-building specialist? A neutral-host provider? Should the elevator manufacturer integrate local connectivity with Wi-Fi or 5G NR-U? How do they deal with sub-contractors? Is it possible for "slices" or performance guarantees to work on the indoor (possibly private) network? Is there a separate core network for the indoor system? Who designs, tests or pays for it? Who's liable if the network fails? Is there any need for edge-compute and storage as part of the application design - and if so, where is it and how is it accessed?
  
There are no easy answers here. The real world for many "5G" applications is going to have to deal with these heterogeneous situations, with workarounds and fallbacks. 

In this case, it seems pretty clear that the AR headset will have to have an offline mode, with blueprints & manuals stored on itself, or the engineer's phone or PC. Or the engineer will use the headset to record video, and then go back outside the building to upload it & call in for advice. Inefficient, but safer. When good-quality coverage is available inside the elevator shaft, the work can be concluded faster & more reliably - but it won't always be possible.


This is the first of a series of "5G Thought Experiments" that will help people think more about realistic scenarios and use-cases. I'll be focusing on ones that touch on opportunities for 5G, Wi-Fi6, neutral-host, cloud-native and private cellular. I'll be doing some as podcasts, so sign up here. I'll also be touching on these in my upcoming Neutral Host workshop on November 21st 2019. Details here.

2nd Workshop on Enterprise/Private Cellular, December 1st, London

NEW: Disruptive Analysis & Rethink Research joint workshop on Enterprise Cellular Networks, London, December 1st, 2017

At the end of May, I co-ran a day-long workshop with Caroline Gabriel covering enterprise and private LTE, for industry verticals, neutral-hosts, indoors, government and other environments.

We had c20 people involved, with a mix of presentations, group discussions and exercises, and ample time for networking. The event was held under Chatham House rules, so people could talk confidentially without direct attribution of comments.

Six months later, we're repeating the workshop, on December 1st in Central London. A limited number of places are available.

New mobile devices/applications and the emergence of the Industrial IoT means that high-quality – often mission-critical – networks are required for new systems and applications. These can span both on-premise coverage (eg at a port, factory, office, wind-farm or hospital) and the wide-area (eg for smart cities or future rail networks). 

A lot has progressed in 2017, and I'm expecting 2018 to bring further developments:

• Regulators in some markets have actively looked to provide frequency ranges for public safety, large businesses and other uses.
• Every spectrum conference I've been to has had a session or two on shared bands, and is also taking unlicensed technologies more seriously.
• Rules on CBRS have solidified in the US, albeit with possible changes proposed to the FCC. Many industries and major companies (eg the oil sector) are seriously engaged.
• MulteFire is looking "real", with deployments (and devices) expected next year.
• Vendors including Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei have all indicated growing interest in private cellular, as well as host of smaller players, or WiFi specialists looking to add cellular radios.
• The 5G community is recognising that "verticals" may not always be best-addressed by traditional MNOs, and may require new models. Even most operators concede that they can't do everything - especially for industrial IoT connectivity or uses with heavy legal liability or certification requirements.
• Various large industrial and utility/rail players have shown a lot of interest in private LTE, alongside WiFi meshes, LPWAN and other vertical-oriented network technologies.
• Community, rural and emerging-market players have started to look at cellular in unlicensed/shared bands to reduce costs and improve coverage. 

Workshop structure & Coverage

The day will have a maximum of 30 attendees to ensure a high level of discussion and interaction. We expect a diverse mix of service providers, vendors, regulators and other interested parties such as enterprises, investors and developers. 

It will be suitable for C-level executives, strategists, product management, marketing functions, CTO office, market analysts and regulatory affairs specialists.  

It will be led by myself and Rethink Research’s Caroline Gabriel (link). We are both well-known industry figures, with many years of broad communications industry analysis – and outspoken views – between us.

 

Topics to be discussed include:

• Key market drivers: IoT, automation, mobile workers, vertical-specific operational and regulatory issues, indoor coverage, democratisation of wireless expertise
• Spectrum-sharing, including unlicensed, light/local-licensing and CBRS-type models. What bands are different countries' regulators looking at? 2.6GHz, 3.5GHz, 4GHz, 28GHz, others?
• Evolution of key enabling technologies such as MulteFire, 5G, NB-IoT, network-slicing, SDN, small cells, edge computing, and enterprise-grade IMS cores
• Regulatory/policy issues: spectrum allocation, competition, roaming, repeaters, national infrastructure strategies and broader “Industry 4.0” economic goals
• The shifting roles of MVNOs, MVNEs, neutral hosts and future “slice operators”
• Numbering and identity: eSIM, multi-IMSI, MNC codes
• How will voice & UC & push-to-talk work on private cellular networks?
• Commercial impacts, new business model opportunities & threats to incumbents
• Vendor dynamics: Existing network equipment vendors, enterprise solution providers, vertical wireless players, managed services companies, new industrial & Internet players (eg GE, Google), implications for BSS/OSS, impact of open-source

(I've covered various of these themes in previous posts and presentations. If you want more detail about some of my thinking, see links here and here and here. We will be going into a lot more depth in the workshop itself. And for a quick 20-minute “taster”, see the video of my presentation from the recent TADSummit event in Lisbon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7rQm1_Kv0c&t=8s )

The workshops will take place at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair, central London [link]. It will run from 9am-5pm, with plenty of time for networking and interactive discussion. Come prepared to think and talk, as well as listen – these are “lean-forward” days. Coffee and lunch are included.

The attendance fee is £699+VAT, with a discount for a second attendee. Payment can be made via credit card (see Paypal Buy Now button below), or purchase-order & invoice on request.  

Note: sometimes Paypal can be a bit awkward, especially with corporate cards or accounts. Drop me an email if you experience any problems or for further details: 
information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

Normal Price

1 Attendee (inc 20% VAT) £838.80 GBP 2 Attendees (inc 20% VAT) £1,500.00 GBP

Thoughts on in-building wireless - and an upcoming client webinar

I've been pondering some of the side-effects and necessary enablers of the accelerating wireless evolution path we're seeing. As well as spectrum issues I've covered a lot recently, deploying indoor infrastructure is going to be another one of them. 

It is not a new assertion that indoor networks are important for enterprise. The frustrations of poor indoor cellular coverage are universal, while businesses of all types need to provide employees and guests with high-quality Wi-Fi.

(I'll cover trends in home Wi-Fi in a later post, while I've already written about industrial facilities in a number of previous ones, such as here, as the issues are as much about spectrum as about infrastructure and planning.)

Various solutions abound for providing good signal indoors – distributed antenna systems (DAS), small cells, or even just deployment of lower-frequency bands in outdoor networks, with better penetration through walls. Yet costs remain considerable, especially as usage increases near-exponentially. Upgrading or retro-fitting existing installations often requires hard economic decisions, given that most such investments are not directly “monetised”. Suitable expertise, foresight, planning tools and ongoing monitoring/reporting are important.

The future, however, will accelerate the role of in-building/on-site wireless connectivity – in both predictable and unpredictable fashion. If we consider what a building might look like in the year 2030, say – and how it may be used and occupied – we can start to see the challenges and opportunities.

As well as today’s well-known and well-described uses of wireless (smartphones and laptops on Wi-Fi and cellular networks), we can expect to see a huge number of new uses emerge. This means that today’s implementations will require future-proofing, to support the unknowns of tomorrow. For example, consider the implications of: 

• IoT deployments for smart buildings, such as a proliferation of sensors for heating, security, or the operation of elevators. These may require better coverage in unusual places – in ceiling voids, lift-shafts, basements and so on. Bandwidth and latency requirements will vary hugely, from life-critical but low-data fire/carbon monoxide sensors, to networked video cameras, or once-an-hour reporting from water tanks.
• Moving devices such as robots or automated trolleys, delivering products around the building. While some will be fully-autonomous, others will need constant wireless connectivity and control.
• 5G networks will be deployed from around 2020, with further evolutions in following years. These may be extremely demanding on in-building coverage solutions, especially as some networks are likely to use frequencies above 6GHz – perhaps even as high as 80GHz. Extensive use of MIMO and beam-forming may also add complexity to indoor implementations. (A new variant of WiFi known as WiGig also uses 60GHz frequencies)
• Likely huge growth in narrowband wireless, connecting low-powered (but maybe very dense) networks of sensors or other endpoints. These may use 3GPP technologies such as NB-IoT, or other options such as LoRa and SigFox.

All of these trends imply very different traffic patterns. It is not realistic just to extrapolate from current usage – robots may go to places in buildings where humans do not, for example. Mobility requirements may evolve – and so will regulations.

It is not just new classes of device and application which will need to be supported by well-designed coverage infrastructure, but also new classes of service provider that need to access them.

• The advent of new unlicensed or shared-spectrum models of frequency allocation (eg CBRS in the US, or MuLTEfire) may mean the arrival of new operator types – dedicated IoT solutions providers that “bring their own wireless”; enterprises acting as their own local on-site MNOs; various models of “neutral host” and so on.
• Private enterprise cellular networks are starting to become more widespread. Some governments are allocating spectrum for industries like utilities or smart-cities, while equipment vendors are offering optimised enterprise-grade cellular infrastructure.
• Potential future regulations for emergency-services wireless connections. Police and fire authorities are increasingly using broadband mobile, both for humans and remote-sensing devices.
• Distributed-mesh service providers, that operate as decentralised networks with micropayments, or as community initiatives. Some may use blockchain-type arrangements for shared-ownership or membership fees.

One of the unknowns is about the convergence (or divergence) of different network types. On one hand, cellular networks are embracing Wi-Fi for offload, or for multi-network aggregation, especially as they worry that returning flat-rate data plans may stress their networks. On the other, some networks are looking at running 4G/5G in unlicensed spectrum instead of (or in addition to) Wi-Fi. Yet more service providers are adopting a “Wi-Fi first” approach, reverting to MVNO models for cellular where needed. Future permutations will likely be more complex still. All will (ideally) need to be well-suppported by indoor wireless infrastructure.

For property developers and owners, the quality of indoor networks is increasingly key in determining valuations and rental occupancy. Already seen in hotels, and office new builds, it will be important for today’s new constructions and refurbishments to support adequate flexibility and headroom for the next decade or more.

This takes on further emphasis if you consider the trend towards “buildings-as-a-service”, exemplified by organisations such as WeWork. These new classes of facility often incorporate wireless connectivity both as a billable service element, but also to enable their owners to manage the properties effectively, in terms of energy-efficiency and security. Other forms of monetisation and data-analytics around wireless location-sensing/tracking are also becoming more important.

Lastly, in-building challenges will be driven by the specific location and industry, which themselves may change in nature over the next decade. New building materials, construction practices and regulations will impact wireless in unpredictable ways – more metallic insulation perhaps, but also perhaps robot or pre-fabricated construction allowing wireless systems to be installed more easily. Individual industry verticals will have their own shifts – what will retail stores look like, and how will customers behave, in the era of home deliveries by drone, but more on-premise “experiences”, perhaps with AR/VR systems? What workplaces of the future look like, in an era of self-driving vehicles? Industrial facilities will become increasingly automated, with the largest uses of wireless connections being machines rather than humans. Hotels and airports will see shifts in data connectivity needs from employees and visitors, as application usage shifts.

Small cells look certain to play a more important role in future, and Wi-Fi is going to remain the most important indoor technology for many users and businesses (ignore the fantasists who think it's at risk from 4G / 5G - see my earlier post here).

There are no easy answers here – even if you construct good scenarios for the future, undoubtedly we will be surprised by events. But some form of upfront discipline in designing and building indoor wireless solutions is ever more critical, given the unknowns. The more future-proofing is possible, the lower the potential risk of being caught out.

  

On October 5^th, at 3pm BST / 4pm CET / 10am EDT, I will be presenting on some of these topics on a webinar for client iBwave. A link to the event is here

Huawei Connect: IT services, Enterprise Cellular, video analytics, AI and more

I spent most of last week in Shanghai, attending Huawei's Connect conference and trade show. It was a good chance to get a deep-dive into the company's enterprise activities, as well as get my head around China's broader trends and influences around the technology sector.

I normally engage with Huawei through its analyst relations function, but this trip was organised by a different team. The company apparently considers me a "KOL" ("key opinion leader"), which is a rather diffuse bucket used for a mix of outspoken independent analysts, public-facing academics, video/social bloggers and assorted others. I'm not sure I set out to lead opinions, but I'm certainly happy to voice my own.

(Unlike the analyst events I usually attend, the KOL group isn't really made up of direct competitors, so there's a more collegiate atmosphere - and a very lively WeChat group, partly with logistics about meeting times/locations but also sharing photos or thoughts about the event).

Connect is mostly driven by Huawei's enterprise business unit, which is growing fast (about $6bn revenues in 2016, up 47% [link]), and focuses on cloud and big "infrastructure-led" IT and networking projects. So sectors like smart cities, advanced manufacturing, oil and gas IoT, systems for transport sectors like rail and ports and so on. There's a heavy emphasis on IoT platforms and networks, cloud and storage, video/image surveillance analysis and a lot of AI. 

It clearly intends to be a very significant player in its chosen sectors, using its existing high IT profile in China, plus its global telecom footprint, as a springboard for other international ICT theatres. Unlike Europe, North America and India, China has few global-scale IT companies, especially in systems integration or outsourcing. The closest to a "Chinese version of IBM" is probably ChinaSoft, which has a deep partnership with Huawei anyway, and in which Huawei owns a significant shareholding.

Thinking more about technology-sector comparables, very few have a similar blend of infrastructure/network/telecom expertise, systems integration/services scale and cloud capabilities. Given Ericsson's recent announcements of pulling back on direct enterprise-related initiatives to focus on CSPs and its Cisco partnership as channels (a strategic error, I feel), it's only really Nokia and maybe NEC that have the scope to push the same big-infrastructure enterprise "ICT" vision, although even it doesn't have the full-scale IT services business that Huawei does. Perhaps there's yet more scope for consolidation between traditional IT companies and networks. (Ericsson+IBM? Nokia+HP? NEC+Tata? Who knows....)

One other thing stood out about the event: there was very little spoken about telco networks, Huawei's main business, or the synergies between that business unit and its faster-growing enterprise sibling. 

There was much more about robots and face-recognition than network-slicing and NFV. The main mention of IMS that I saw was in the context of critical communications for public safety, eg push-to-talk. The X-Labs group assessing possible future 5G use-cases was talking about connected drones, or cloud-integrated video-enabled helmets for the blind. There was a "carrier" section in the vertical-industries show hall, but that seemed mostly focused on cloud solutions for telcos.

Conspicuously, there was almost no reference to delivery models for network or IoT capabilities for enterprises. There was no assumption that everything would be provided "as a service", or in particular, delivered by a CSP. There was tacit recognition that some organisations want to own their own infrastructure / private clouds, some may go to a specialist integrator (eg an automation/IoT specialist like Honeywell or GE), and some might use an arm of a telco. For example, T-Systems, Deutsche Telekom's IT unit, was there talking about a Huawei-based storage cloud, deployed for CERN, the leading nuclear and particular research institution on the Swiss/French border.

Huawei also offers its own cloud services, but is quite self-effacing about it, only wishing to become "one of the top 5 clouds" (presumably along with Amazon, Google, IBM and maybe Microsoft - which it also partners) and saying that "1% is enough for us". I don't think Jeff Bezos is going to have too many sleepless nights, although Alibaba, Cisco and Oracle may have different opinions on the top tier's members, the former especially in China itself.

In terms of specific takeouts on my normal coverage areas, a few things stood out:

• Enterprise Cellular: This was everywhere at the event, under the brand eLTE. This is a sort of pre-cursor to a MuLTEfire / CBRS model of non-carrier cellular networks. There's a quite large eLTE ecosystem, especially around public-safety networks but also manufacturing, transport and other verticals. There was a demo of a robot connected with private cellular. There are 3 variants:
• An unlicensed LTE-U version that doesn't need a licensed "anchor" like LAA, so can be deployed by any organisation
• A licensed-band version, where organisations (such as law-enforcement or utilities) can manage to get dedicated spectrum by one means or another
• A narrowband version, which is essentiially NB-IoT in unlicensed bands such as ISM spectrum (which in China, is in the 500MHz range, or 900MHz in the US)
• All of these were targeted at industry verticals. There wasn't any mention of other use-cases like neutral-host providers, hybrid MNO/MVNOs, mesh networks, or consumer-oriented plays. 
• There wasn't any explicit mention of shared-spectrum models like CBRS, but it seems to fit under the second category.
• This all fits nicely with the recent work I've done on private/enterprise cellular. It will be an ongoing theme as it is clearly "happening", including presentations at a few upcoming regulatory conferences, and another workshop with Caroline Gabriel in London on Dec 1 (link)

 

•  IoT networks: There was a huge emphasis on NB-IoT around the event, as well as broadband 4.5G/5G options for drones, connected vehicles and more demanding applications. I didn't see an mention of LoRA, SigFox, or even LTE-M or Cat1 though, but WiFi and ZigBee cropped up on various slides. Some interesting examples of NB-IoT deployments, notably for cities, or specific OEM-led integrations such as China's booming shared-bicycle sector.
• Video and facial networks/analytics: This was a huge theme, as it bridges Huawei's key domains of mobile broadband, cloud services and AI. A major focus is "safe cities", especially using networked video cameras to manage traffic, enforce public safety - and track/spot individual people, whether that is missing children, criminals, or attendees at a trade show. (I joked on Twitter that Huawei had probably been tracking people around the event itself - only for the next slide to reveal that it had been doing exactly that). Missing from most of the material was much mention of privacy - which appears to be less of a concern in China than it would be in much of Europe. That said, we may be fighting a losing battle on that front, as this week's Economist cover & feature articles on face-recognition point out (link).

 
 
 

• AI: Beyond video-analysis, a central thrust of the event was around machine-learning, graph analysis, image-recognition and other forms of AI.  I didn't get a chance to go into too much depth on this, but it's pretty clear this is central to Huawei's cloud ambitions, and probably will link into carrier-domain services like smart-home / personal voice assistants as well as "big data" corporate applications
• We also had a briefing with the handset unit, which discussed the new Kirin AI-oriented chip which includes a neural processing element, as well as CPU, GPU and DSP. This should enable better and more power-efficient local classification of images, without the need to send all data to the cloud. This fits into my ongoing debate on whether 5G's low-latency business case might be undermined by more edge-processing. (link)
• WiFi: Although not as big an emphasis as 4G/5G, Huawei nevertheless had a fair bit of WiFi on display, particularly for large-scale deployments in cities or large public venues like sports stadia. It also had an interesting hybrid WiFi / IoT networking unit, which for now focuses on Bluetooth, RFID and ZigBee but I guess could incorporate NB-IoT (or its eLTE variant), or even LoRa if a client wanted.
• UC/UCaaS: Although not a major focus of the event (itself quite telling) there was a fair bit of unified communications, conferencing and even cPaaS around the show. There was a Broadsoft-style UC platform for operators, and various tools for multi-party meetings. It's not obvious that Huawei is aiming to be a Twilio / Tokbox-style platform provider though, although it does have APIs (including WebRTC) for embedding communications in apps and websites. I didn't see any signs of a Slack/Spark/HipChat rival. Notably, Huawei is partnering Microsoft on Office365, so may not launch its own full UcaaS direct-to-enterprise product. 
• I liked one partner booth in particular "Call Cloud", which uses a crowd-style / sharing economy approach to sourcing customer-service reps, with in-app video. It apparently has 7 million (!) people signed up as potential providers of informal information or support.

Overall, an interesting few days for me, exploring a side to Huawei I hadn't seen before. It's always hard to get a full perspective from a single-vendor event, but it struck me as one of the only real, fully-encompassing examples I've seen of an acronym I normally dislike - ICT. That said, some more candour about positioning vs. competitors would have been welcome. We all know who they are - so descriptions of differentiation would have been useful, even if rose-tinted.

It's also brought home to me how important it is to have a captive market to drive scale, which can then improve adoption rates (and prices) elsewhere. Amazon does it with AWS - its own huge retail business is an "anchor tenant" which helps create traffic volumes that then became reinforced by third parties' cloud usage. Huawei appears to do something similar with domestic government and enterprise business - millions of CCTV cameras, or large-scale city networks, or local IoT uses are helping it exploit pre-existing scale and experience, and then apply elsewhere. There is also a sensible approach to partnering, for example around IoT, with the likes of GE collaborating on distinct parts of the market.

One final comment: the layout of the trade show was excellent. One hall was organised per-vertical, with sections on Manufacturing, Public Safety, Oil & Gas, Finance etc. The other hall was per-technology, with sections on Cloud, eLTE, WiFi, NB-IoT, Developers and so on. I wish other events were similarly well-structured.

Spectrum-Sharing: Europe & Asia need something like CBRS

The more I look at enterprise mobile, especially its focus on verticals and IoT, the I'm more convinced there needs to be a change in industry structure, regulation and network ownership/operation.  And that means new spectrum policy, as well.

In particular, private licensed-band wireless networks will be essential - that is, networks (using cellular, WiFi, LPWAN or other technology) that can be directly managed by organisations that are not traditional MNOs (mobile network operators), to provide high-QoS, reliable wireless connections. I'm thinking large companies running their own networks, industrial network specialists, local cooperatives, perhaps new government-sector initiatives, and various other aggregators, outsourcers and intermediaries. These will mostly be in-building / on-campus, but some may need to be genuinely wide-area, or even national, as well.

This is in addition to enterprise-centric initiatives in the MVNO/E space, vertical activities by fixed telcos and MNOs, unlicensed-band WiFi and LPWAN deployments and so on.

 There are three main models for licensing radio spectrum today:

• Exclusive licenses: Dedicated access to certain bands is very common today, for example for mobile networks, fixed microwave links, broadcasters, satellite access and many government-sector uses, such as military radios and radar. Particular organisations have rights to solo access to particular frequencies, in a given country/region, subject to complying with various rules on power and so forth.
• Unlicensed: (also license-exempt): Beyond some basic rules on power and antenna siting, some bands are essentially "open to all". The 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands used by technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth and many other technologies are prime examples, as well as bands used for consumer walkie-talkies and various medical and automotive applications.
• Shared spectrum: This covers various models for allowing multiple users for certain frequencies. It could involve temporary usage (eg for event broadcast), bands that haven't been "cleared" fully and still have incumbent users that newcomers need to "work around". It might be spectrum assigned in geographic chunks, or at low power levels and mandating "polite" protocols so that multiple users can co-exist. We've seen TV "white spaces" where under-used bands are opened up to others, and so forth.

The latter approach of sharing is becoming much more important - despite continued clamour for exclusive licenses, especially from the mobile industry. Given that the demand for spectrum is rising from all sides - mobile, WiFi, utilities, broadcast, satellite, Internet and many others - and each has a different demand profile (global / national / regional and subscription / private / amenity etc), a one-size-fits-all model cannot work, given limited spectrum resources. More spectrum-sharing will be essential.

More models are now emerging for sharing spectrum bands. Depending on the details, these open up opportunities for a greater number of stakeholders. The US' innovative CBRS model (see link) for 3.5GHz is worth examining, and perhaps replicating elsewhere, especially Europe. It is much more sophisticated - but more complex to implement - than the Licensed Shared Access (LSA) that Europe has leaned towards historically. In Disruptive Analysis' view this extra complexity is worthwhile, as it allows a much broader group of stakeholders to access spectrum, fostering greater innovation. 
 
The important differentiator for CBRS is that there are three tiers of users:

• Incumbents, primarily the military, which gets the top level of access rights for radar and other uses in the band
• Licensed access providers which can get dedicated slices in specific geographic areas. These are "protected" but subject to pre-emption by the top tier. They will also generate revenue for the government in terms of license fees - although awards will be for shorter periods than normal bands (3 years is being discussed).
• General access - basically this is like unlicensed access, but it has to work around the other tiers, if they are present.
  

To make all this work, the CBRS system needs databases of who is using what spectrum and where, and sensors to detect any changes in the top tier's usage. (The military, as incumbents, isn't keen on spending any money to actually tell the system what it's doing - it needs to be securely automated).

When all this is up and running, there will be many potential user groups for shared spectrum such as this, using either the priority licenses, or general access tiers:

• Incumbent mobile operators needing more capacity in specific areas
• MVNOs wanting to "offload" some traffic from their host MNO networks, onto their own infrastructure, without the expense of full national coverage. This could work either alongside, or as an alternative to, WiFi-based offload or WiFi-primary models.
• Enterprises wanting to deploy private cellular networks indoors or over large campuses (eg across an airport or oil-refinery for IoT usage)
• Potentially, large-scale WiFi deployments in new bands, with less subject to interference than mainstream unlicensed bands - although this would require devices/chipsets supporting new frequencies that are currently outside the proper WiFi standards.
• Various "neutral host" wholesale LTE models, for example run by city authorities for metropolitan users, or cloud-providers for enterprise - or as a way to provide better indoor coverage for existing incumbent "outdoor" operators, without their needing individual infrastructure in each building. This could allow the pooling of back-end / administrative functions and costs across multiple local LTE networks in shared bands. Imagine an Amazon AWS approach to buying cellular capacity, on-demand.
• Various approaches to roaming or "un-roaming" providers - for example, a theme-park operator or hotel owner could offer its foreign guests "free LTE" while on-site.
• Potential new classes of cellular operator, such as an Industrial Mobile Operator (imagine GE or ABB integrating cellular access into machinery & plant equipment), various IoT platform providers, and integration opportunities with Internet, healthcare, transport and other systems.

This approach may not work for enterprise wireless users requiring national (or very broad-area) coverage, such as utility companies or transport providers. There are separate arguments for utility and rail companies getting slices of dedicated spectrum, or some other model of national sharing.

Importantly, CBRS means that LTE-U variants like MuLTEfire can be used to create private cellular networks. Coupled with cheap, virtualised (& probably cloud-based) core networks, this means that mobile networks are much more accessible to new entrants. The scale economies of national licenses will no longer apply to lock out alternative providers.

In other words, we will see consolidation of national MNOs, but fragmentation of localised MNOs or (PNOs as some are calling private networks). 

While some MNOs and their industry bodies may be concerned at more competition, privately many of them acknowledge that a lot of the use-cases above cannot realistically be offered by today's industry. 

Even large MNOs can probably only pick 2 or 3 verticals to really get deep expertise in - maybe smart cities, or rail, or utilities, say. But they cannot get enough expertise to effectively build customised, small networks in all the possible contexts - car factories, ports, hospitals, mines, hotels, shopping malls, airports, public safety agencies, universities, oil refineries, power stations and so on. Each will have its own requirements, its own industry standards to observe, its own systems to integrate with, its own insurance/liability issues and so on. They need wireless for all sorts of reasons from robots to visitors - but today's MNOs will not be able to satisfy all those needs, especially indoors.

For many governments' visions of future factories, cities and public services, good quality wireless will be essential. But it will need to be provided by many new types of providers, with business models we can only guess at.

While CBRS is still at an early stage, and will be tricky to implement, we need something similar to it - with multiple tiers including a "permissionless" one - in Europe and the rest of the world. Enterprise and private cellular networks (and other licensed-band options for WiFi and LPWAN) are critical - and policymakers and regulators need to acknowledge and support this.



If you are interested in discussing this topic further, I will be running a workshop day on private cellular on May 30th in Central London, in a joint effort with Caroline Gabriel of Rethink Research. Details and booking are here: (link) or else email information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com.

No, 5G won't kill WiFi (or absorb it)

I've seen two things today that are trying to suggest that 5G (or even 4G) are going to cause problems for WiFi, or even "kill it".

Ignore them.

Firstly, this piece by Bloomberg (link) suggests that a combination of mobile operators' renewed flat-rate data plans, along with LTE-U, could render WiFi obsolete. It's one of the worst pieces of technology "journalism" I've read in ages.

Secondly a discussion on Twitter led to a 3GPP document about "New Services and Markets" from a year ago, which talks about "Mobile Broadband for Indoor Scenario" in section 5.5  (link). That seems to suggest that 4G/5G could replace office WiFi or even wired LANs.

Needless to say, both are total nonsense. There is a longstanding strain of thought among some "cellular fundamentalists" that WiFi is just a step away from being replaced by mobile operators' services. It is wishful thinking, verging on delusion. (It won't be subsumed as a mere secondary part of 5G, either - although that's a separate post).

While there are some corner-cases that might swing one way or the other, based on pricing and perhaps neutral-host cellular using LTE in unlicensed bands (perhaps in MuLTEfire guise rather than the anti-competitive LTE-U and LAA variants), those are rare exceptions.

In home, offices, and public spaces, there is essentially zero chance that owned WiFi or fixed ethernet are going to be replaced in large quantity, by 5G operators acting as LANaaS providers.

There are many reasons for this, but some of them are:

• Billions of WiFi-only devices, from PCs and tablets, to TVs, printers and a broad array of consumer and industrial products.
• Billions more WiFi-only devices in future (no, not everything will have a cellular module & eSIM - it's way more expensive and limiting - see my report link)
• The ability for WiFi to operate easily in "service", "subscription", "amenity", "owned", "free", "local", "sponsored", "venue-provided", "ad-supported" and many other business models. Cellular connectivity - reliant on SIM or eSIM - generally enshrines "subscription" and a service model as the only option.
• Ability of venue-owners to control and police WiFi network access (eg a cafe-owner or conference organiser can give the codes to their choice of user, under their conditions)
• Use of WiFi Direct for P2P connectivity
• Integration of WiFi in businesses with LAN and security systems
• Preferential use of WiFi in-built to smartphone OS's and connection-management tools
• Large % of people who are not using flat-rate mobile data plans, especially prepay users in most of the world
• A broad view that WiFi is not only "free" but also *different* as it isn't owned / metered / tracked by a service providers. (We all recognise that amended Maslow Hierarchy of Needs picture, with WiFi scrawled as a tier beneath food & shelter)
• Anonymity of most WiFi hotspots
• Huge push of WiFi by cable, fixed-broadband and some WiFi-first MVNO providers, including to outdoor / metropolitan zones and being built-into 500 million or more home gateways around the world
• Use of WiFi in public transport (buses, trains, planes) - even if backhauled by 4G and/or satellite, plus increasing use of WiFi hotspots in cars (again, linked via LTE to the network)
• Poor penetration of cellular for deep-inbuilding use without DAS or small cell coverage, which is often impractical
• Lower costs of infrastructure, especially given the heavy IPR load associated with 4G modems and base stations. 
• Enterprise desire to use multiple connections for cloud/WAN access, eg via SD-WAN

I think the most risible line in the Bloomberg piece is this "Wi-Fi also helps fill in gaps in some office buildings and homes that have spotty cellphone coverage" - in many ways, it's the complete opposite of the way many users view the two technologies.

Every analysis I've seen has suggested that WiFi use is generally growing faster than cellular data consumption, and there is very little reason to expect it to change. In many ways, I'd expect WiFi - and also other unlicensed band technologies for LPWAN and IoT - to outstrip coming cellular use-cases, especially indoors but also for the wide area.

A less-virulent strain of the same bad idea is that 5G will absorb or subsume WiFi, as part of its amazing network-slicing / HetNet / integrated architecture. That's wrong too - although some cellular networks are fairly-well integrated with some WiFi, there is a very large universe that isn't, and for many of the same reasons won't be in the future either. The notion that 5G is some sort of magical wireless umbrella (or Borg) that will assimilate all others is just a "mobile industry establishment" fantasy and lobbying hook. 

One last thing I'd add - I'm seeing an increased amount of interest in the opposite to LTE-U and LAA - the idea of running WiFi in licensed bands, either with new forms of spectrum-sharing, or perhaps even with adventurous regulators looking at getting more usage out of existing spectrum. After all, if the technical work suggests that LTE-U doesn't compromise or interfere with WiFi, then the converse is true as well, especially at lower power in regions with no cellular coverage, or indoors.

Overall: Ignore any reports of WiFi's demise, or the ability of 4G/5G to replace it in the future. It's simply not going to happen, except in a couple of tiny overlaps on the big wireless Venn diagram. WiFi puts downward pricing pressure on cellular data - it's probably part of the reason for the return of flatrate data in the first place. It's also a prime example of "network diversity" which would be worthy of protection against creeping "network monoculture" even if it wasn't already guaranteed a healthy future.


If you're interested in the dynamics of 4G, 5G, WiFi, network diversity & spectrum policy, please get in touch with me. I advise operators, vendors, regulators & investors. I'll also be speaking at the WiFi Now conference in Washington DC in April 2017 (link).

Telecoms is too important to leave to the telcos

We are going to see rising presence of non-traditional providers, for both access networks and communications / applications services. Telecoms is far too important to confine to a mono-culture of just traditional "operators", fixed or mobile.

This week I've been in Nice for the TMForum conference & exhibition. As well as the classic OSS/BSS discussions, and more-modern focus on NFV, there was also a huge emphasis on other non-traditional areas for connectivity and potential services. In particular, there was a large presence for smart-city concepts and presentations, as well as health and advanced manufacturing. TMF also has numerous prototype projects called "catalysts" spanning everything from IoT to consumer virtual-CPE, typically headed by a telco and supported by vendors.

But there's a big problem here. Many of the new and most-promising areas for communications and networking don't really need - or often want - the involvement of classical telcos. While telco-steered prototypes are good, that doesn't necessarily translate to real-world deployment and monetisation. For example, telcos tend to focus on nation-wide deployments, scale and service initiatives, and so often aren't geared up to operate at (or customise for) a city-specific level.

In particular, the types of capability delivered by core networks and future NFV/SDN aren't really essential for most use-cases, while non-3GPP IoT-oriented LPWAN and WiFi networks sit alongside cellular and fibre for connectivity. There is a huge desire to use either generic Internet access for many new vertical applications, or perhaps private standalone connectivity from telcos (4G, 2G, ethernet, MPLS etc) but without additional "value-added" services on top.

It also seems increasingly likely that the move to NFV and SDN will also allow new classes of virtual operators to emerge as well. And while there may be revenue from customised "slices" of 4G/5G for specific industries, these will essentially be next-gen wholesale rather than retail propositions, with implied lower margins.

In addition, a growing number of industries are looking at deploying their own physical access networks too. In the past, this has mostly just meant that railways used GSM-R, while government and public-safety agencies implemented TETRA or various niche technologies. But increasingly, non-telco actors are becoming more aware, and more capable, of developing advanced infrastructures of their own. Private fibre deployments, enterprise LTE (perhaps in unlicenced bands), SigFox and LoRA networks, drones and balloons, and so on. 

(There is also a slowly-increasing discussion of decentralised mesh networks, perhaps using blockchain technology for authentication and security. That's a proper "telcofuturism" intersection between two otherwise orthogonal trends - to be considered in another post)

Some non-telco groups are even asking for dedicated spectrum bands, claiming that operators don't understand their needs well enough. I recently attended a European regulatory workshop on the impact of IoT, and representatives of manufacturing, automotives, electricity and other sectors all made a case for running their own infrastructure. 

A power company, for instance, pointed out that "Five 9's" isn't good enough - they need to have higher availability of communications to their transmission and transformer infrastructure. They cannot rely on cellular networks powered by (you guessed it) grid electricity for their own control systems. They also pointed out that unlike telcos, they maintain a fleet of helicopters, to rush engineers out to fix problems. That's a very different approach to managing QoS to that familiar to most in the telecoms industry.

One of the side-effects of the growing importance of wireless technology, and M2M/IoT is that major companies in other industries have hired their own wireless experts. They have also realised that they have very little representation or influence in telco standards bodies like 3GPP. And at the same time, the barriers to "rolling your own" networks have been falling, with open-source components, myriad new radio technologies, virtualised software elements and so on. When it's possible to run a cellular base-station on a $30 Raspberry Pi computer, or deploy a country-wide IoT network for single-digit $millions, the hegemony of telcos to own networks starts to crumble. (Obviously, many have run their own voice and PBX/UC infrastructures for decades, so they don't really need telcos for most communications applications either).

Add in various city/metropolitan initiatives, or community collective approaches in rural areas, and the picture deepens. Then layer on the Google and Facebook drone/balloon approaches, plus satellite vendors, and the ability to create parallel infrastructures multiplies further. This doesn't mean that these networks will replace telecom operators' infrastructures, but they will act as partial competitors and substitutes, cherry-picking specific use-cases, and pressuring margins.

There is quite a lot of arrogance and complacency I see in the telecom industry about this trend as well, especially in the mobile community. I hear lots of sneering about "proprietary" solutions, or the assumed inevitability of 5G to be the "one network to rule them all". I've heard lots of comparisons to the ill-fated WiMAX. While this might have been mostly-true for 4G (conveniently ignoring WiFi), that doesn't necessarily mean that the future will avoid disruption. I see many factors pointing to heterogeneity in network ownership/operation:

• Rise of IoT meaning that conventional financial & business models for cellular (eg subscriptions) are inappropriate, while use-cases are fragmented
• Rising number of skilled wireless/network people being employed by non-telecom companies
• Experience of WiFi prompting greater use of private connectivity
• Growing pressure on regulators to release dedicated spectrum slices for specific new non-telco purposes (eg electricity grid control, or drone communications)
• Long run-up for 5G standardisation and spectrum releases, meaning that new stakeholders have time to understand and prepare their positions
• Cheaper infrastructure and technology components, for reasons discussed above
• Willingness of device and silicon providers to consider integrating alternative connection modes (look at Qualcomm's MuLTEfire for example)
• Increasing numbers of big, well-funded companies that may be looking this area - it's easy to imagine that as well as Google, others such as GE, Phillips, Boeing, Ford, Exxon could all decide to dip their toes into connectivity in future.
• The inability of telcos to cross-subsidise data connectivity with voice/video/messaging/content services, especially in enterprise
• Growing pressure on regulators to release either more licence-free spectrum, or methods of dynamic or shared access, that would open resources to new players
• The ability of technologies such as SD-WAN to bridge/load-balance/arbitrage between multiple access technologies. This makes it much easier for new networks to disrupt from adjacency. We can expect similar moves to allow "multi-access" for IoT and consumer devices.

The other angle here comes from suppliers. Some historically telco-focused network vendors are also recognising the inevitable, albeit quietly:

• GenBand's recent customer event spent as much time on enterprise opportunities and partnerships as on telcos. It highlighted its work with IBM and SAP - and while IBM referenced telcos as possible channels/partners, it was clear that the majority of focus was on CRM or other embedded-communications use-cases, sold directly. While this is mostly at the application layer rather than connectivity, it was notable as a proposed source of growth.
• Ericsson is increasingly focusing on direct opportunities with banks, smart-cities, automotive providers and other sectors. While its core technology base remains 3GPP-centric, its increasing focus on cloud and IT domains tends to be less telecoms-specific. Its partnership with Cisco also extends its implied direct-channel link to enterprise opportunities. It is a major believer in the "slice" concept for 5G - although it hasn't articulated the shifting wholesale/retail picture yet.
• Huawei is pitching "enterprise LTE" for various sectors such as smart-cities, oil industry, rail, power utilities and more (link)
• The MuLTEfire Alliance is pitching itself at various categories of network operator beyond conventional cellular providers: venue-owners, neutral hosts, enterprise campus owners and so forth. Ericsson, Intel and Nokia are all members.
• The growing profile of IT players in the network industry (aided by NFV/SDN) brings in a group of companies far less wedded to "operators" and with large industrial / government customers used to buying direct. IBM, HPE, Oracle, Intel, Cisco are all obvious candidates here.
• BSS/OSS vendors are also looking beyond the traditional SP space. Redknee acquired Orga Systems, for example - which specialises in sectors like utility billing. 

I suspect we'll see an increase in emphasis by network-infrastructure vendors on non-telco customers. Some will do so quietly to avoid alienating their existing mainstream clients, but overall I see a desire to tap into new pools of revenue and innovation. Where possible, I'd expect vendors like Ericsson to try to keep telcos having some "skin in the game", but a fallback position will likely be to at least repurpose 3GPP technologies where feasible.

Another strategy which may emerge is for telcos to start acting as "spectrum managers" or "super-MVNE providers", both at an access and core/NFV level. An early sign of this is the AT&T/Nokia announcement of a dedicated slice of spectrum targeted at utilities and IoT in the US (link) which will allow the creation of "private cellular" networks, but still keep AT&T in the loop at one level. A similar model could work for smart cities and other use-cases.

Overall,  a picture is starting to coalesce: Telecoms is far too important just to leave to the telcos. Although they obviously have incumbency, inertia and assets like spectrum and cell-towers, the proliferation of IoT is likely to reduce their leverage from things like numbering/voice. They will also face increasingly-capable, large and well-funded stakeholders, which will exploit technology enhancements to build more-customised networks. The growing virtualisation of technology will mean the number of "layers" at which 3rd-parties can enter the market will grow. 

This has important implications for existing operators, as well as regulators/governments and the broader vendor community. At the moment most seem to be treating the trend in a piecemeal fashion - but I think it needs to be considered more holistically, as it has a big implication for regulation, investment and innovation.