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Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts

Friday, October 28, 2016

A realistic 5G view: Timelines, Standards & Politics

Things are moving incredibly fast for 5G!

...or are they? A couple of recent headlines make it a little hard to tell:

Verizon Eyes "Wireless Fibre" Launch in 2017 

Verizon Rejects AT&T-led Effort to Speed Up Release of 5G Standard

So, does Verizon want early 5G, or not? Are we looking at a 2017 launch, or still 2019-20? Why the apparent contradiction? And what about other operators in Asia and Europe?

I've been to recent 5G events including NGMN's conference (link), and a smaller one this week organised by Cambridge Wireless and the UK's National Infrastructure Commission (link). I've also been debating with assorted fellow-travellers online and at this week's WiFi Now event (link).

In my view, Verizon (and SKT in South Korea) are gunning hard for early "pre-5G" well in advance of the full standards, but are also subtly trying to push back the development of "proper" 5G so that they're able to influence it to their advantage. That's especially true for Verizon, which seems to be trying to out-game AT&T its with 5G strategy.

It's helpful to note a few things going on in the background:
  • 28GHz is definitely "a thing". The FCC released huge chunks of spectrum for 5G this summer (link). Even though 28GHz wasn't even identified as a candidate 5G band by ITU originally, and mmWave wasn't expected to be standardised until 2020, it is starting to look like an early "done deal", as it's also available for use in S Korea and Japan.
  • The Winter Olympics in Korea in 2018 has prompted local operators KT and SKT, as well as Samsung, to look for pre-5G solutions. They've already spent quite a lot of effort on 28GHz trials (as has DoCoMo in Japan which has the 2020 Summer Olympics) and they've gone well. They have been mostly interested in mobile broadband.
  • Verizon (and to an extent AT&T) have a different driver - gigabit-speed fixed broadband. They have been stung by the rapid growth of cable, which has far outpaced DSL in speed and market share. They also want to shut down the old PSTN and go to all-IP architectures. The problem is that much of the US is too sparsely-populated to run FTTH everywhere - putting new fibre in a trench down rural roads and driveways in Idaho, to serve a handful of homes is not appealing. But running fibre to a pole or cabinet distribution point & then using 5G as a "drop" to say 10-100 homes nearby is much cheaper. T-Mobile US and USCellular have also been trialling fixed-wireless 5G, although any deployment would be harder without their own fibre backhaul and transport infrastructure. Ericsson and Nokia are also involved in the trials.
  • Fixed-access 5G won't need complex network-slicing & NFV cores to be useful, as it can be functionally similar to other forms of broadband access. It also won't need mobility, or fallback to 4G, and will be able to run in big wall-mounted terminals connected to a power supply - and sold/branded by the carrier rather than Apple et al. In other words, it's a lot simpler, and a lot faster-to-market.
  • Meanwhile, the other "headline" use-case groups for 5G have some issues. "Massive IoT" is probably going to have to wait until after the 4G variant NB-IoT has been deployed and matured. A 5G version of low-power IoT networking seems unlikely before 2020-22. And the ultra-low latency IoT use-cases (drones and self-driving cars et al) introduce some unpleasant compromises in IP frame structure, and given probable low volumes are something of a "tail wagging the 5G dog". In other words, the IoT business models for 5G don't really exist yet.
  • Linked to the IoT argument, it seems that the much-vaunted NFV "network slicing" approach to combine all these myriad use-cases is going to be late, expensive, complex and in need of better integration with BSS/OSS and legacy domains. I wrote about my doubts over slicing last month - link
So in other words, the original 3-Bubble Venn diagram for 5G use-cases (Enhanced Mobile Broadband, Massive IoT & Low-Latency IoT) was wrong. There's a 4th bubble - fixed wireless, which is going to come first.



And this is massively important in the new technology reality. Increasingly often these days, fast-to-market beats perfect and then often defines future direction as well. We have seen various disruptions from adjacency, where expedient "narrow" solutions beat theoretical elegant-but-grandiose architectures to the punch. SD-WAN's rapid rise is disrupting the original NFV/NaaS plan for enterprise services, for example (link). Similarly, the rise of Internet VoIP and chat apps signalled the death-knell for IMS as a platform for anything except IP-PSTN.

In this case, I believe that fixed-wireless 5G - even if "pre-standard" and relatively small in volume - is going to set the agenda for later mobile broadband 5G, and then even-later IoT 5G. If it gets traction, there's a good chance the inertia will create de-facto standards and also skew official standards to ensure interoperability. This is already evident in steam-rollering 28GHz into the picture. (It's also worth remembering that Apple's surprise early decision to support 1.8GHz for LTE shifted the market a few years ago - while that had been an "official" band, it hadn't been expected to be popular so soon).

The critical element here is that AT&T is much more bullish and focused on mobile broadband (especially in urban hotspots) as a lead use-case for 5G, plus backhaul-type point to point connections. It expects that "the coverage layer will be 4G for many years to come”. At the NGMN conference the speaker noted that fixed uses were also of interest, but was wary of the business case - for instance whether it was possible to reach 10 homes or 30 from a single radio head. It also seems more interested in 70-80GHz links to apartment blocks, using existing in-building wiring, rather than Verizon's 28GHz rural-area drops. Coupled with its CEO's rather implausible assertion that mobile 5G will compete with cable broadband (link), this suggests it is somewhat distant from the Verizon/SKT/DoCoMo group. 

The kicker for me is the delay to the 3GPP standardisation of what is called the "non-standalone" NSA version 5G radio, which uses a 4G control plane and is suitable for mobile devices (link). Despite its bullishness on fixed-5G, Verizon has pushed the timeline for the more mobile-friendly version back 6 months, against AT&T's wishes. The NSA and SA versions will now both be targeted for the June 2018 meeting of the standards body, rather than December 2017.

The official reason given is fairly turgid "in order to effectively define a non-standalone option which can then migrate to a standalone, a complete study standalone would be required to derisk the migration". But I suspect the truth is rather more political: it gives Verizon and its partners (notably Samsung) another 6 months to get their 28GHz fixed-access solution into the market. Qualcomm has just announced a pre-5G chip that can accommodate just that, too. This means that standardised eMBB devices probably won't arrive until mid-2019, although there may be a few pre-standard ones for the 2018 Winter Olympics and elsewhere.

This will cement not just the 28GHz band in place, but also the fixed-5G uses and the idea that 5G doesn't need the full, fancy network-slicing NFV back-end. Given AT&T's huge emphasis on its eCOMP virtualisation project, that reduces the possible future advantage that might accrue if 5G was "always virtualised". It may also mean that lessons from real-world deployment get fed into the 2018 standards in some fashion, further advantaging the early movers. This is especially the case if it turns out that 28GHz can support some form of mobility - and early comments from Samsung suggest they've already experimented with beam-steering successfully.

Meanwhile.... what about Europe? Well to be honest, I'm a bit despondent. The European operators seem to be using 5G as a political football, playing with the European Commission and aiming at the goal marked "less net-neutrality and more consolidation". In July, a ridiculously-political "manifesto" was announced by a group of major telcos (link), trying to promise some not-very-demanding 5G rollouts if the EU agrees to a massive watering-down of regulation. The European 5G community also seems to be seduced by academia and the promise of lots of complex network-slicery and equally-dubious edge-computing visions. It's much more interested in the (late, uncertain-revenue) IoT use-cases rather than fixed-access and mobile broadband. And it has earmarked 26GHz (not 28) as a possible band for 2019 ITU Radio Congress to consider. 

In other words, it's missing the boat. By the time the EU, the European operators and European research institutions get their 5G act together, we'll have had a repeat of 4G, with the US, Korea and Japan leading the way. 

So overall, I see Verizon outmanouevring AT&T, once again. The Koreans and Japanese will benefit from VZ's extra scale and heft in moving vendors faster (notably Samsung, it seems, as Nokia and Ericsson seem more equivocal). The Europeans will be late to the party, once again. And the "boring" use-cases for 5G (fixed access and mobile broadband) will come out first, while the various IoT categories are still scratching their heads and waiting for the promised NFV slice-utopia to catch up.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

A few thoughts on the IIT RTC conference



Last week I attended the Illinois Institute of Technologyconference on Realtime Communications. I enjoyed it immensely – not a huge event (maybe 150-200 or so people, spread across various tracks), but a really good mix of attendees and topics. As well as WebRTC and cloud communications, it covered more general aspects of IP voice, IoT networks and applications, a touch of 5G, and quite a lot on public safety / NG911. Quite a bit of technology, but also a decent focus on use-cases and business. And well-curated to avoid obvious corporate pitches, even by sponsors.

There were many of the “usual suspects” for WebRTC, VoIP & APIs there – among them Chad Hart, Tim Panton, Emil Ivov, Alan Quayle, Dan Burnett, Ivelin Ivanov, Andy Abramson, Vladimir Beloborodov, Robin Raymond and James Body. But there was also a good representation of service providers (eg Comcast), and major IT/enterprise comms vendors with WebRTC leanings, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Avaya & Unify, plus assorted smaller developers (for a mini TadHack hackathon), academics and students from IIT, and a few industry veterans like Henning Schulzrinne (former FCC CTO) and Richard Shockey (SIP Forum). Google participated remotely (especially on the topic of ORTC), and GenBand was also there in force, with its Kandy bus outside for a day.

I did a general presentation on the WebRTC market status (there’s now more than 100m active users, various new use-cases, and 20+ service provider deployments – more details soon). I also moderated a panel on contextual communications (with Tim, Ivelin & Santhana from GenBand), and participated in one with Henning about the evolution of “identifiers” and especially the future role of the phone number. I picked up a lot of new insights into areas such as WebRTC+IoT (more soon), the state-of-the-art for mobile WebRTC implementation, and the technical/regulatory/financial challenges of future forms of public safety networks and emergency communications.

A couple of quick thoughts I’ll expand on in other posts or reports in coming weeks:
  • IBM made a great point about using IoT events to trigger a separate WebRTC communications session, eg a temperature sensor in a machine kick-starting a video/audio session, when it hits a threshold
  • The fragmented nature of US emergency communications tells me that while 911/NG911 will remain as “lowest common denominator”, we will see various other higher-level emergency apps on smartphones for particular uses. Ideally, there would be an emergency API that developers could use inside any mobile app, as well as having support for the native dialler
  • Interesting presentation & ideas by Thomas Howe about the use of automated interaction with businesses via SMS (see just justkisst.me
  • Great presentation from Chris Rezendes about IoT - using the fascinating example of water metering/monitoring, also also asserting the resurgence of SMEs
  • As we go towards 5G (& also SDN), we’re seeing another attempt at defining “quality classes” in networks – but what is the right “level of abstraction” to encourage app-developers to be interested in network performance? And do developers actually want to ask for certain QoS levels (or even pay for it)? There seems to be a good argument that developers want to have something like a “network status API” that allows them to manage variable network conditions, rather than necessarily ask for specific quality or assurances.
I also did an interview with NoJitter during the event, about contextual comms - there's a great write-up by Beth Schultz here.

I go to a lot of good events, but I have to say that overall this was one of my favourites when it comes to understanding “what’s next?” in communications, without an overdose of corporate spin. In some ways it reminded me of the old and much-missed eComm conferences. 

Many thanks to the organisers - I’ll definitely be back next year, especially as Chicago is such a great city to hang out in for an extra couple of days. (The picture below is one of mine taken from the lake with #nofilter, as Instagram would say)

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Mobile Data Monetisation Report Update: Still no upside from sponsored data or paid prioritisation models

Disruptive Analysis has recently published an update of its June 2014 report on "Non-Neutral Mobile Broadband: New Models for Monetisation"

It updates and extends the model for mobile data revenues worldwide, for both traditional and new forms of charging. It also analyses the impact of the Apple SIM, mobile data encryption (including SPDY), zero-rating, paid-peering, new vendors and other recent developments in regulation.

The baseline forecast for global mobile Internet access is $354bn by 2019. New business models such as "sponsored data" or "paid priority QoS" might add another $19bn incremental revenue - but may well cost more than that to enable, deploy and market. The report analyses more than 15 different policy use-cases, such as sponsored advertising, single-app dataplans, enhanced MVNOs, and IoT-related QoS.





Despite developing markets having more lax rules on neutrality, the bulk of the "enhanced monetisation" opportunity (2/3rd) is in North America and Europe.

In other words, for mobile, all the arguments about Net Neutrality (or Non-Neutrality) are largely a waste of time and effort in terms of new revenues, justification of 4G/5G investments and so on. The telco industry's voluminous research papers and theoretical models, from assorted academics, economists and consultants, fail to understand the practicalities involved - technical, commercial alike. It's a set of straw-man arguments.

The concept of two-sided markets applied to mobile data traffic - whether "sponsored" by content companies, or "prioritised" using QoS, simply doesn't fly in the real world. The academics ignore the realities of mobile application development, behaviour & perception of users, role of WiFi, encryption (see below), recalcitrance by smartphone platform providers, lack of willingness-to-pay and ability-to-bill, and about a dozen other issues.

In a nutshell: If mobile operators can't justify investing in 4G and 5G on their current trajectories, then changing the law (or preventing Internet regulation) isn't going to help. There is very limited money in "application-based" business models - except (ironically) zero-rating of certain apps' traffic, which seems to encourage new sign-ups or switching, albeit without any extra revenue from the Internet companies. Some very low-end users are adopting restricted plans for single applications or a curated selection, but as a general rule "anybody who can afford the whole Internet will not be satisfied with just half of it".



Mobile operators would be better off switching money away from lawyers and lobbyists, and towards genuine service innovation - or (as is actually happening) either consolidation, or just getting on with building networks and selling access with decent pricing and tiering, differentiating on coverage, speed, customer service, devices, bundled content and maybe time-of-day or location-specific plans.

The obsession with application-based charging models is mostly driven by DPI and policy vendors - there is very little (if any) demand from application and content players for prioritised QoS or sponsored data. This is critically important, as attempts to "non-consensually" filter or modify Internet traffic by application (blocking or "negative discrimination") are leading to a huge rise in encryption, also catalysed by surveillance fears. 

Some mobile networks now have >50% encrypted data traffic, and that is inexorably rising as websites switch to HTTPS or (in future) SPDY or similar variants in default-encrypted HTTP2. The industry's attempts to halt the spread of crypto are likely to fail - the "Open Web Alliance" seems to be too little, too late, and over-focused on proxies which are intended to optimise telco intervention opportunities, rather than fix specific problems. The new report update gives a full analysis of where the encryption debate is likely to end up. 

Report purchasers will get both the original full 150+ page 2014 report [details here] and also the new 35-page update document. Those buying the Corporate licence will also get a free one-hour conference call with Dean Bubley, the report's author, to discuss the findings in detail.

Payment is either with the links below (Paypal / Credit Card) or via bank transfer & invoice (contact information AT disruptive-analysis dot com)


For online purchasers, the PDF document will be sent by email, typically within 24hrs of receipt of payment, although sometimes travel schedules may mean a small delay. Please include company name for licence purposes, and VAT number for EU purchasers. 

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Mobile Broadband report (PDF) 1-3 users




2014 MBB report (PDF) Corporate Licence