Updates on UK Neutral Host and local spectrum developments

I've written & spoken extensively about the new Ofcom rules for localised spectrum in the UK, both in new "innovation bands" like 3.8-4.2GHz and in secondary licensing of existing MNO national frequencies, such as 2.6GHz. (See here and here). The secondary licensing model is pretty unique, as it allows people to request to use telcos' spectrum resources which are lying fallow, with no plans for build-out in that location by the license holder. It's a bit like the spectrum-leasing model seen in some countries' remote areas for mining or community wireless.

As well as pure private networks, I see value in these bands for neutral-host propositions, and various forms of infill/coverage-extension. NHNs involve third-party operators offering wholesale capacity to MNOs and sometimes other service providers, either in their own spectrum, or some sort of shared infrastructure.

The first* example of the secondary reuse scenario has been announced (link), by Digital Colony's unit StrattoOpencell and Vodafone. OpenCell now has access to VF's 2.6GHz band, for a private LTE network covering a holiday site for caravans, in Devon in SW England. Most of OpenCell's previous focus has been on in-building, although in the last few months it has acquired outdoor assets as well.

The site currently uses Wi-Fi to provide broadband to caravans, as running fibre to each doesn't really make sense. However, there is significant interference between the outdoor site Wi-Fi and any "indoor" hotspots used within each of the thin-walled mobile homes for connecting PCs and other devices. 

The idea is to provide fixed-access 4G from a central LTE base station, to a Wi-Fi unit in each caravan. The cost will be paid for as part of plot rental fees charged by the site owner to the residents/visitor, bundled in with power and water and so on.

For now, this is a Private LTE service for local FWA. But it could be extended to SIMs for onsite mobile devices (perhaps the site's own staff phones or IoT devices), or support Vodafone's smartphone MBB subscribers onsite. I guess it could also handle WiFi-Calling / SMS for other MNOs' users (if the signal is strong enough and the phones set up correctly) or perhaps even allow roaming. 

I'm not sure if the agreements with Vodafone and Ofcom to reuse spectrum locally would allow full neutral-host, broadcasting the IDs of the other UK MNOs, though. Maybe as the various network-sharing and national-roaming options under consideration by the UK Government evolve, that could be a possibility.

In theory, I also guess Vodafone could have offered this by itself, either to the site owners or the individual tenants, but most MNOs aren't really geared up to work on individualised local business-models such as this, especially if they involve new infrastructure, new pricing plans and so on. It is also unlikely to set up a "micro-MVNO" for the site owner, if it needs to install hardware in a new location.

This is something of a new variant of private and Neutral Host mobile - and one of the first I've seen to use local secondary spectrum, rather than national licenses acquired by a wholesale specialist (such as Dense Air, in Ireland or NZ). 

I could also imagine a future vertical-sector specialist (let's say a new firm called Camping Mobile) could try to do this for multiple sites, perhaps working with OpenCell or other NHN providers as technical enablers.

There definitely seems to be a bit of race between the new US CBRS deployments, and the UK's new local spectrum models, to see which gets the most innovative new concepts and mobile networks to market. The German industrial 5G band and a few others are worth watching too. 

I'm tracking and speaking to numerous NHN providers in the UK and elsewhere - and it's pretty fascinating how diverse their spectrum, backhaul and go-to-market strategies are. For 5G, rather than 4G, there's an interesting overlap with Open RAN as well, but that's a post for another time.

If you're interested in a deeper dive, I'm hosting my 2nd NHN public workshop on November 21st in London. See (here) for details, or (here) to discuss a private internal advisory engagement.


*This is the first example to be based on Ofcom's new licensing regime. Arguably a trial deployment from friend James Body's Ch4lke Mobile / Telet Research got there first in concept (see here and here). There's also early NHN trials at some of the UK's DCMS 5G testbed projects, such as AutoAir and 5GRuralFirst, and private cellular at several others.

Future Spectrum Policy: 10-year Disruptions

Yesterday, I presented & debated on disruptions & directions for spectrum-management, at UK regulator Ofcom's annual spectrum conference in London. The slide-deck (it was just a short 15-minute intro) & my Twitter thread are at the bottom of this post.

I was on a panel with representatives from Google (Simon Saunders, who looks after EMEA connectivity partnerships) & the FCC (Julius Knapp, Chief of Rules & Policy Division)

This was a really fun session, as my remit was to look into the medium-to-far future (10 years or so) and think about some totally new angles on spectrum for upcoming regulatory policy. Often, I throw rocks at things that don’t make sense… This time, it was more like tossing rocks into a pond, and watching the ripples propagate & stimulating ideas.

My previous presentations at Ofcom events have been on more immediate needs on spectrum: sharing models, local cellular, Private LTE, Neutral Host* networks [see comment on upcoming workshop, below] and the need for “network diversity” rather than just enabling a 3GPP 5G monoculture. This was about taking a much longer view.

Some of the topics I covered were:

• Designing spectrum management policy (& future 6G mobile systems) with a direct link to implied energy consumption / CO2 emissions from its usage
• Asking the question “will harmonisation be as important in future as it has been in the past?” given that we’re ever better at creating software abstraction layers, and creating multi-radio / multi-band chips and devices.
• The next stages of dynamic spectrum allocatin: towards fluid spectrum marketplaces, API-led spectrum platforms, and radio resource within broader “Mobile Network-aaS or Satellite Service-aaS” concepts
• Ensuring that spectrum allocations and processes ensure multiple delivery/business models are supported: services, private, amenity networks etc. This contrasts, for example, with existing national licenses for mobile spectrum, which are geared strongly to the MNO business model.
• My new disruptions/distractions framework for realistic assessment of predictions of tech deployment & market evolution (see this post)
• Spectrum releases aimed at more device-to-device & intra-device usage (for example between components on a circuit-board)
• Potential post-Brexit divergence for UK #pectrum policy (we didn’t get a chance to drill into this much)

Overall, it was a really enjoyable session (my Twitter thread is at the end of this post). It might odd to describe a regulatory event on radio spectrum as “fun”, but this panel was certainly lively and wide-ranging. My co-panellists talked about everything from DevOps and just-in-time spectrum availability, to taking the lessons from US CBRS and expanding to other bands or regions.

I'm looking forward to similar events in the UK and other regions, both on spectrum (eg mobile / WiFi / satellite needs) and other regulatory angles on future networks and communications. Please get in touch if you need a speaker or panellist.

*Neutral Host Networks — if this area is of interest, I am running a 2nd London public workshop on Nov 21st, with Peter Curnow-Ford MIoD Details here: https://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/p/2nd-neutral-host-networks-london-public.html And if you’re interested in a private internal session for your own team, please see here: https://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/p/private-workshops.html

Dean Bubley presentation at Ofcom Mapping The Future 2019 Spectrum Conference from Dean Bubley

My Twitter thread for the rest of the event is here.

Kicking off at @Ofcom #mappingthefuture #Spectrum event with outgoing CEO Sharon White

Venue is the beautiful @RGS_IBG building in Kensington pic.twitter.com/w4MSr7mE70

— Dean Bubley (@disruptivedean) September 10, 2019

 

Private cellular networks - why Ofcom's UK spectrum proposals are so innovative

On December 18th 2018, Ofcom announced two consultations about new 5G-oriented spectrum releases (link), and potential new models for spectrum-sharing, rural mobile coverage and related innovation (link). 

I've already commented briefly on Twitter (link) and LinkedIn (link), but it's worth going a bit deeper in a full post on this - particularly on the aspects relating to private networks and spectrum-sharing.

NOTE: this is a long post. Get a coffee now. Or listen to my audio commentary (Part 1 on the background to private mobile networks is here and Part 2 on the Ofcom proposals is here)

My view is that 2019 is a key breakout year for new mobile network ownership and business models - whether that's fully-private enterprise networks, various types of neutral-host, or a revitalised version of MVNO-type wholesale perhaps enriched by network-slicing. 

This trend touches everything from IoT to 5G verticals, to enterprise voice/comms & UCaaS. I'll be covering it in depth. I also discussed it when I presented to Ofcom's technology team in November (see slides halfway down this page), and it's good to see my thinking seems to align fairly closely with theirs.


This was the future, long ago

Localised or private cellular networks - sometimes called Micro-MNOs - are not a new concept.

Twelve years ago, in 2006, the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom made an unusual decision - to auction off a couple of small slices* of 2G mobile spectrum, for use on a low-power, localised basis for a number of innovative service providers or private companies' use. (Link). A few launches occurred, and the Dutch regulator later did something similar, but it didn't really herald a sudden flourishing of private mobile networks. 

*(The slices were known as the DECT Guard Bands, which separated GSM mobile bands from those used for older cordless phones, widely used in homes and businesses)

Numerous practical glitches were blamed, including the costs / complexities involved in deploying small-cells, the need for roaming or MVNO deals for wide-area coverage, and the fact that the spectrum was mostly suitable for voice calls, at a time when the world was moving to mobile data and smartphones. 

Unfortunately, there was also no real international momentum or consensus on the concept, despite Ofcom's hope to set a trend - although it did catalyse a good UK-based cottage industry of small-cell and niche core-network vendors.


Going mainstream: private / virtualised networks for enterprise & verticals

At the start of 2019, the world looks very different. There is a broad consensus that new models of mobile network are needed - whether that is fully-owned private cellular, more-sophisticated MVNOs with their own core networks, or future visions of 5G with privately-run "network slices". 

There's a focus on neutral-host networks for in-building coverage, proponents of wholesale national "open" networks, and a growing number of large non-telecoms enterprises wanting more control and ownership.

It is unrealistic to expect the main national MNOs to be able to pay for, deploy, customise, integrate and operate networks for every industry vertical, indoor location or remote area. They have constraints on capital, personnel, management resource, specialised knowledge and appetite for risk. Other types of network operator or service provider are needed as well.

In a nutshell, there is a wide recognition that "telecoms is too important to just leave up to the telcos".

I've been talking about this for several years now - the rise of unlicensed cellular technologies such as MulteFire or Huawei's eLTE, the growing focus on locally-licensed or shared spectrum for IoT or industry use, and the specific demands of rural, indoor or industrial network coverage and business models.

(As well as non-MNO deployed and owned 4G/5G networks, we will also see a broad range of other ways to deliver private capabilities, including various evolutions of MVNO, mobile SD-WAN and future network-slicing and private cores. But this particular consultation is more about the radio-centric innovations).


Where is the action?

But while there has been a lot of discussion in the UK (including my own presentations to Ofcom, the Spectrum Policy Forum and others), the main sources of action on private (licensed) cellular have been elsewhere. 

In particular, the US push on its CBRS 3-tier model of network sharing - expected to yield the first local service launches in 2019 - and German and Dutch approaches to local-licensed spectrum for industry, have been notable. Unlicensed cellular adoption is (fairly quietly) emerging in Japan and China as well.

Plenty of other trials and regulatory maneouvring has occurred elsewhere too, with encouragaing signs by bodies like ITU, BEREC and assorted national authorities that private/local sharing is becoming important. 

In the UK, various bodies including Ofcom, National Infrastructure Commission, DCMS (the ministry in charge), TechUK/Spectrum Policy Forum (link) and others have referenced the potential for shared/private spectrum - and even invited me to talk about it - but until now, not much concrete has happened.


What use-cases are important here?

From my perspective, the main focus in actual deployment of private LTE has been for industrial IoT and especially the ability for large enterprises to run their own networks for factories, robots, mining facilities, (air)ports or process plants. Some of these also want human communications as well, such as replacing TETRA mobile radio / walkie-talkie units with more sophisticated cellular smartphone-type devices, or links to UCaaS systems.

These are all seen as future 5G opportunities by vendors too. They are also often problematic for many MNOs to cover directly - few are really good at dealing the specialised demands of industrial equipment and installations, and the liability, systems-integration and customisation work required.

Together with big companies like GE and Bosch and BMW, there has been some lobbying action as well. CBRS has had a broader appeal, with numerous other categories showing interest too, from sports stadium owners, to cable operators looking for out-of-home coverage for quadplay, or fixed-wireless extensions.

But I'd say that rural coverage, and more generic in-building use-cases, have had less emphasis by regulators or proponents of Micro-MNO spectrum licensing. That's partly because rural uses are often hard to generate business cases and have fragmentary stakeholders by definition, while in-building represents an awkward mix of rights, responsibilities and willingness-to-pay.  

Yet it is these areas - especially rural - that Ofcom is heavily focused on, partly in response to some UK Government policy priorities, notably around rural broadband coverage.


What has been announced?

There are two separate announcements / consultations:

• An immediate, specific proposal for 700MHz and 3.6-3.8GHz auctions to have additional coverage conditions added to "normal" national mobile licenses, especially for rural areas. This includes provisions for cheaper license fees for operators that agree to build new infrastructure in under-served rural areas, and cover extra homes in "not-spots" today.
• A more general consultation on innovation, which focuses on various interesting sharing models for three bands: the 1800MHz DECT guard bands (as discussed above), the 3.8-4.2GHz range and also 10MHz around 2.3GHz.

The first proposal is essentially just a variation of "normal 3.5GHz-band national 5G licenses", similar to the earlier 3.4-3.6GHz tranche which has already been released in the UK. Some were hoping that this would have some sort of sharing option, for instance for neutral-host networks in rural or industrial sectors, but that has been sidelined. 

Unlike Germany, which has just 3 MNOs and a powerful industrial lobby wanting private spectrum, the UK has to squeeze 4 MNOs' 5G needs into this band, with a big chunk already belonging to 3/UK Broadband. So, it has stuck with fairly normal national licenses. Instead, there's some tweaks to incentivise MNOs to build out better rural coverage. This helps address some of the UK government's and voters' loudly voiced complaints, but doesn't really affect this post's core theme of private/novel network types.

It is the second consultation that is the most radical - and the one which could potentially reshape the mobile industry in the UK. There are two central elements to its proposals:

• Local-licensed spectrum in three "shared" bands, with Ofcom managing authorisations itself, with a fixed pricing structure that is just based on cost of administration, rather than raising large sums for the Treasury. There are proposals for low-power and mid-power deployments, suitable respectively for individual buildings or sparsely-populated rural areas.
• Secondary re-use of existing national licensed bands. In essence, this means that any existing mobile band could be subject to 3rd-party localised, short-term licensing in areas where there is no existing coverage. This is likely to be hugely controversial, but makes inherent sense - essentially it's a form of "use it or lose it" rule for MNOs. 

Local licensing in shared bands
 
The local licensing idea has numerous potential applications, from industrial sites to neutral-hosts to fixed-wireless access in rural districts. It updates the 1.8GHz 2006 low-power wireless licenses to the new approach, and adds in the new bands in 2.3GHz and 3.8-4.2GHz. 

While I'm sure that some objections will be raised - for example, perhaps around the low-cost aspects of these new licenses - I struggle to find many grounds for substantive disagreement. It is, essentially, a decent pitch for a halfway-house between national licenses and complete WiFi-style unlicensed access. Like CBRS in the US (which is much more complex in many ways) it could drive a lot of innovative network deployments, but at smaller scale, as CBRS is aimed at county-sized areas rather than local areas as small as 50m diameter. 

There are numerous innovations here - and considerable pragmatism too, and plenty of homework that's been done already. The medium-power band, and the rural restrictions for outdoor use, are both definitely interesting angles - and well-designed to ensure that this doesn't allow full national/mobile competition "on the cheap" by aggressive new entrants. The "what if?" consultation sections on "possible unintended consequences" and ways to mitigate  them are especially smart - frankly all governmental policy documents should do something similar.

Ofcom also discusses options for database-driven dynamic spectrum approaches (similar to CBRS, white spaces and others) but thinks that would take too long to develop. It essentially wants a quasi-static authorisation mechanism, but with short enough terms - 3 years - that it can transition to some DSA-type option when it's robust and flexible enough. 

(As an aside, I wonder if the ultimate version is some sort of decentralised blockchain-ish decentralised-database platform for dynamic spectrum, which in theory sounds good, but has not been tried in practice yet. And no, it shouldn't be based on SpectrumCoin cryptocurrency tokens).


Secondary licensing of existing bands

This is the really controversial one.

It basically tells the MNOs that their existing - or future - national licenses don't allow them to "bank" spectrum in places where it's not going to be actively used. If there's no coverage now, or credible mid-term plans for build-out in the future, then (as long as it won't create interference) then other parties can apply to use it instead, as long as Ofcom agrees that there's no risk of interference. 

Unlike the shared-band approach (except for 1800MHz), this means that devices will be available immediately, as they would operate in the same bands that already exist. It would also potentially apply for the new 5G bands, especially 3.4-3.8GHz. 

There's a proposed outline mechanism from Ofcom to verify that suggested parallel licenses should be able to go ahead, and again a fairly low-cost pricing mechanism.

Clearly, this is just a broad outline, and there are a lot of details to consider before this could become a reality. But the general principle is almost "use it or lose it", although more accurately it's "use it, or don't complain if someone else uses it until you're ready".

There are a few possible options that have been suggested in the past for this type of thing - leasing or sub-licencing of spectrum by MNOs, or some form of spectrum trading, for instance. In some countries / places this has worked OK, for example for mines in the Australian Outback running private cellular, that have been able to do a deal with one of the national MNOs. But it's complex to administer, and often the MNOs don't really have incentives or mechanisms to do this at scale. They're not interested in doing site-surveys, or drawing up unique contracts for £1000 a year for a couple of farmhouses or a wind-turbine on a hilltop. Plus, there are complexities about liability with leasing (it's still the original licensee's name on the license).

While there will be costs for Ofcom to manage this process, it thinks they should be reasonable - it's pricing the licenses at £950 for a 3 year period. 

All this is pretty radical. And I expect MNOs and industry bodies to raise blue-murder about this in the consultation. Firstly, they will complain about possible interference, which is valid enough, but can be ruled out in some locations. They'll talk about the internal costs of the acceptance process. And above all, they may talk about "cherry-picking" and perceived competitive distortions.

The most interesting aspect for me is how this changes the calculus for building networks indoors, in offices, factories or public buildings. This could limit the practice of MNOs sometimes insisting that enterprises pay for their own indoor systems, for delivery of the MNOs' network coverage and capacity. It could incentivise operators to focus on indoor coverage, if they want to offer managed services for IoT, for example.

There's a lot of other implications, opportunities and challenges I don't have time to address in this post, but will pick up on, over the next weeks and months. There are technical, regulatory, commercial, practical and political dimensions.

I'm really curious to read the responses to this consultation, and see what comes out of the next round of statements from Ofcom. I'm probably going to submit something myself, as I can see a bunch of questions and complexities. Let me know if you'd like me to brainstorm any of this with you.
 

Spectrum is not enough

One thing is definitely critical for both proposals. The availability of local-licensed spectrum is not enough for innovators and enterprises to build networks. There are many other "moving parts" as well - affordable radio infrastructure such as small-cells, inexpensive (likely cloud-based) core and transport networks, numbering resources, SIMs, billing/operations software, voice and messaging integration, and so on. The consultations cover numbering concerns and MNC (mobile network codes), at least up to a point.

In some cases, roaming deals with national networks will be needed - and may be hard to negotiate, unless regulatory pressure is applied. As I've been discussing recently (including in this report for STL - link) this ties in with a wider requirement for revisiting wholesale mobile business models and regulation.


Conclusions

This is all very exciting, and underscores a central forecast of mine, that mobile network business / ownership models will change a lot in the next few years. We'll see new network owners, wholesalers and tenants - even as normal MNOs consolidate and merge with fixed-lie players.

I'd like to think I've played a small part in this myself. I've advised clients, presented and run many workshops on the topic, including my own public events in May and November 2017 (link), and numerous speeches to regulators, industry groups and policymakers. Industry, rural and in-building users need both more coverage and sometimes more control / ownership of cellular networks in licensed bands. 

There will need to be customisation, systems integration and a wide variety of "special cases" for future cellular. The MNOs are not always willing or able to deliver that, so alternatives are needed. (Most will admit, privately at least, that they cannot cover all verticals and all use-cases for 4G/5G). WiFi works fine for many applications, but in some cases private cellular is more suitable.

We're seeing a variety of new network-sharing and private-spectrum models emerge around the world, and a general view that they are (in some fashion) needed. What's unclear is what is the best approach (or approaches). CBRS, German industrial networks, Dutch localised licenses, or something else. I'd say that Ofcom's various ideas are very powerful - and in the case of the secondary re-use proposal, highly disruptive.

Edit & footnote: rather than "secondary re-use", perhaps a better name for this proposal is "Cellular White-Space", given that it is, in essence, the mobile-spectrum equivalent of the TVWS model.

If you'd like to discuss this with me - or engage me for a presentation or input on strategy or regulatory submissions - please reach out and connect. I'm available via information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

Also, please subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn - and (new for 2019!) look out for new audio/podcast and YouTube content. 

There are two audio segments that relate to this blog post:
Part 1 covers the general background to private cellular (here)
Part 2 covers the specific Ofcom proposals (here)
 

My presentation at Ofcom: What the year 2030 implies for wireless trends & spectrum policy

On the 8th of February, I gave a presentation at Ofcom (the UK telecom regulator). The event was a day-long discussion of the "Future Wireless World", looking at longer-term trends towards IoT and connectivity (5G, WiFi, mesh, satellite and more), with an implied impact on how spectrum policy needs to be reshaped to meet the changes. It was introduced and moderated by Philip Marnick (Group Director, Spectrum) and also attended by the Ofcom CEO Sharon White. On the same day, Ofcom released its latest thoughts on 5G spectrum (link)

There were about 150 attendees from a range of operators, broadcasters, government bodies, vendors, consultants, Internet and industrial players and internal Ofcom staff. There may be an audio/video recording of the sessions put up online at some point, but I'm not certain of this.

My presentation was a very broad one - I was tasked with imagining how the future economy, consumer and business environment might look like in the year 2030, what disruptions and innovations may occur between now and then, and how that flows back into the use of wireless networks and therefore spectrum. 

In other words, I was wearing my "telcofuturist" hat, where I take generic futurist themes and apply them to the specifics of telecoms and the broader wireless industry. After my presentation, I joined Philip Marnick for a Q&A session with the audience, which was a mix of regulatory, futurist and general analyst-type discussion.

The rest of the event was made up of a series of presentations and panel debates between a broad set of industry luminaries and innovators, including Dino Flore of 3GPP & Qualcomm, Simon Saunders of Google (& formerly the Femto Forum), plus others from O3B, Ericsson, Veniam, BT/EE, Vodafone, Silver Spring and others. There was a really interesting session on mesh networks later in the day, which I also think has a lot of potential. It was a really refreshing change from some of the usual sponsor-driven snorefests, although there was clearly a strong "lobbying" flavour to some of the questions, with people taking advantage of access to the regulator in an open forum.

One thing that struck me about both this event, and another event I attended recently at Tech-UK's Spectrum Policy Forum (link) is a growing frustration in the regularory community. Some people now view spectrum purely as a "mobile" thing, without simultaneously mentioning broadcast, government, WiFi, LPWAN, industrial, satellite, fixed-access and all the other users of the airwaves.

The mobile industry tends to be very good at pitching for more and more slices of spectrum, ideally provided on an exclusive basis with long licence terms (in exchange for quite a lot of cash in terms of fees, to be fair). It has a far bigger and more cohesive lobbying and publicity engine than the broad set of other spectrum stakeholders.

My own view - and, it seems, many regulators' - is that given the finite amount of spectrum, there is ever less rationale for exclusivity. Various forms of sharing and private networks are rising up the agenda. My recent piece on Industrial IoT and sharing [link] has garnered a lot of good feedback, while the National Infrastructure Commission's Dec'16 report [link] recommended that "Government and Ofcom should review how unlicensed, lightly licensed spectrum, spectrum sharing and similar approaches can be utilised for higher frequencies to maximise access to the radio spectrum".

In other words, spectrum-sharing - of various types - is moving up the regulatory agenda very fast in the UK. I think onsite industrial IoT coverage, via private cellular or licenced-band WiFi deployments, is the easiest to conceptualise and "sell", but there are plenty of other angles too.

But as well as the challenges of IIoT, I covered a lot of other topics in my presentation (slides are embedded below the list - apologies that the bullets aren't in the same sequence):

• The impact of AI will be felt on both network "supply" side (eg more efficiently-optimised networks, churn management etc) and "demand" (smarter use of wireless connectivity, least-cost routing and so forth). I wrote a post on this a while back (link)
• Whether the emphasis on mobile uses of spectrum, and the 3GPP/GSMA "national MNO" view of the world could lead to a "monoculture" of cellular connectivity. As in agriculture, the superficial efficiency/yield needs to be considered in the context of risks. Might there be long-term benefits in "network diversity", and should regulators look to protect it, the same way environmental rules protect biodiversity?
• On a similar environmental theme, I considered habitats that are primarily "mono-platform" and fragile to external events (eg coral reefs) vs. "multi-platform" ecosystems which are more resilient (eg rainforests). Obviously this doesn't translate precisely to wireless networks, but the metaphor seems apt. I'm not a biologist, but a quick word with someone who does study ecosystems afterwards suggested my analogy is worth further exploration.
• "Arbitrage Everywhere": future networks - and by extension both spectrum and telecom competition rules - should anticipate devices and applications using multiple connections / service providers, and picking and choosing/bonding connectivity from several options. This is already seen in the fixed world for enterprise with SD-WAN, and should be expected in wireless too. This means that "partial competition" (eg from WiFi, LPWAN, satellite, private cellular) should be considered as well as like-for-like rival infrastructure from other national MNOs.
• Redefining the nature of a "service" - what do we actually mean, when we frame our regulation of "service providers"? Many more organisations are offering connectivity services, while many other models of delivering a "capability" are emerging. WiFi can be a service, owned by a venue, given away for free, provided as an amenity, self-provisioned by a user and so forth. ITU's definition of a service ("a set of functions offered to a user by an organisation") seems to be too narrow given the rise of developers, embedded connectivity in IoT, private networks and more.
• I discussed the relative timing of various industry trends - and the fact that various look like swinging "pendulums". For instance we see a back-and-forth between centralised vs. distributed control, standards vs. proprietary technologies, local vs. national vs. global and so on. I noted that the timing of the various pendulums' swings are not all in sync - and therefore the actual outcome for the wireless sector is really complex to predict. Various external trends (eg open source, Moore's Law, AI, geopolitics, specific companies) can act as weights on the pendulums.
• I noted that many different and new organisations may own/operate/embed wireless connectivity in future. Aircraft engine manufacturers use satellite telemetry and download sensor data via WiFi to optimise their analytics for selling "power by the hour". IoT platforms & MVNOs for specific sectors are springing up (eg Cubic Telecom for automotive). Theoretically, Elon Musk could use SpaceX to launch his own satellites - and provide vertically-integrated connectivity to Tesla cars. Google has numerous wireless initiatives, from Fi to WiFi to white spaces to its Loon balloon project. The Governor of California has suggested launching the state's own earth-sensing satellites, if the current administration cuts federal funding for environmental monitoring. Then there are public-safety LTE networks, WiFi everywhere, new mesh concepts, private LoRa deployments and so on.
• In the Q&A, I also discussed 5G bands, NFV, network-slicing and more. I noted that 5G is being driven initially by fixed-access and 28GHz in the US & S Korea, not the three "mainstream" uses of critical IoT, ultra-mobile broadband and massive IoT. This is outside the "official" bands being pushed by Ofcom as "pioneer" options, and slowly being explored internationally for the ITU WRC event in 3 years' time. This was explored in another post of mine (link). I also expressed doubts that NFV-led network-slicing will deliver all the agility required for creating vertical-specific networks - even if it allows "super-MVNOs", will the host network provide enough fine-grained control and liability-bearing SLAs?

Ofcom Future Wireless World + Spectrum - Dean Bubley from Dean Bubley

Overall, my session seemed to be very well-received. Hopefully I've prodded some parts of the industry. I'd like to see a wider recognition of the changes to some of our fundamental assumptions that will occur over the next decade and beyond. 

A key point is that 5G, delivered by traditional MNOs as a subscription service, is exciting and important - but it must not be allowed to totally dominate discussions around spectrum. Governments and regulators must push for "network diversity" of technologies, stakeholders and business/operational models - including private networks for businesses. Short-term focus on "efficiency" of a monoculture approach may mask wider ecosystem-level risks. 

A key theme is the need for flexibility and agility in wireless networks and related regulation - many of the more radical changes will occur at timespans of 1-5 years, which is much shorter than the investment and planning horizon for a lot of the industry. Whether we need more malleable licences, better secondary marketplaces for spectrum, new forms of sharing (eg using blockchain as a basis for a distributed database of allocations), or a rethink on how competition is measured, there are plenty of options.

Spectrum policy is several steps away from the actual world of consumer and business needs for wireless networks. But it's for that reason it's worth thinking deeply, about the long chain of implications of seemingly small decisions or baked-in business models that are created now.

If you'd like to have a similar presentation and discussion at your own event, or at a private workshop, please contact me via information AT disruptive-analysis dot com