Overlapping private networks - an emerging challenge for spectrum management

This post originally appeared in September 2023 on my LinkedIn feed, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please follow / connect to me on LinkedIn, to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

File this one under “high quality problems”!
 
We’re starting to see a trend towards multiple enterprise private 5G networks on the same site, or very close to each other. That has a lot of implications.

Various large campus-style environments such as ports, airports and maybe business parks, industrial zones and others in future, will need to deal with the coexistence of several company-specific #5G networks.

For instance, an airport might have different networks deployed at the gates for aircraft turnaround, in the baggage-handling area for machinery, across the ramp area for vehicles, in the terminals for neutral host access, and in maintenance hangars for IoT and AR/VR.

Importantly, these may be deployed, owned and run by *different* companies - the airport authority, airlines, baggage handlers and a contracted indoor service provider, perhaps. In addition there could be other nearby private networks outside the airport fence, for hotels, warehouses and car parks.

This is something I speculated about a few years ago (I dug out the slide below from early 2020), but it is now starting to become a reality.

This is likely to need some clever coordination in terms of #spectrum management, as well as other issues such as roaming/interconnect and perhaps numbering resources such as MNC codes as well. It may need new forms of #neutralhost or multi-tenant setups.
 
Yesterday I attended a workshop run by the UK’s UK Spectrum Policy Forum. While the main focus was on the 3.8-4.2GHz band and was under Chatham House rule (so I can't cover the specifics), one speaker has allowed me to discuss his comments directly.

Koen Mioulet from European private network association EUWENA gave an example of the Port of Rotterdam, which has 5 different terminals, 3000 businesses including large facilities run by 28 different chemical companies. It already has two #PrivateLTE networks, and 5G used on a "container exchange route" for vehickes, plus more possible networks on ships themselves. It is quite possible to imagine 10+ overlapping networks in future.
 
While the UK has 400MHz potentially available in 3.8-4.2GHz, some countries only have 50-100MHz for P5G. That would pose significant coordination challenges and may necessitate an "umbrella" network run by (in this case) the Port Authority or similar organisation. An added complexity is synchronisation, especially if each network is set up for different uplink/downlink splits for specific applications.

MNOs could be involved too, in roles from wholesale provision, down to just spectrum leasing. Whatever happens, regulators and others need to start thinking about this.

In the past I’ve half-jokingly suggested that a new 6G target metric should be to have “1000 networks per sq km” rather than the usual “million devices per sq km” or similar.

Maybe we should start with 10 or 100 nearby networks, but that joke is now looking like a real problem, albeit a healthy one for the private cellular industry.

 

 

Indoor wireless & the need for unlicensed 6GHz

This post originally appeared on October 2 on my LinkedIn newsletter, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please subscribe / connect to me on LinkedIn, to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

 

Note: This article has been commissioned by the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, based on my existing well-known analysis and positions, which I have been discussing for many years both publicly and privately. I believe that in-building wireless - irrespective of technology - receives far too little attention from policymakers and regulators. 6GHz should be indoor-primary spectrum.

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Abstract & summary: The vast bulk of wireless data traffic today is for indoor applications. In future, in-building wireless will become even more important. It is ideally-suited to 6GHz spectrum, made available on an unlicensed basis. A licensed model for 5G mobile in 6GHz would be unable to deliver coverage consistently for more than a small number of sites.

Indoor wireless is already critical & often overlooked

Industry estimates suggest that 60-80% of cellular data is delivered to indoor users, predominantly on smartphones. Additional statistics shows that smartphones also typically consume another 2-5x the cellular data volume on Wi-Fi, almost all of which is indoors or in vehicles. In other words, 90%+ of total smartphone data is consumed inside buildings.

In addition, residential fixed broadband traffic volumes are roughly 10-20x that of mobile broadband, with final delivery mostly over Wi-Fi, often to non-smartphone devices such as smart TVs, laptops, game consoles and voice assistants.

Outside the consumer market, a great deal of non-residential wireless connectivity is also indoors – healthcare, education, manufacturing, conventions, hospitality and office environments are all increasingly dependent on wireless, especially with the rise of industrial automation systems, IoT, robots, connected cameras and displays. These map to the rise in cloud- and video-based business processes.

Most wireless uses & devices are indoor-centric

This does not imply that outdoor wireless use is either trivial or unimportant. Most obviously, everyone uses their phones for calling, messaging, mapping and various transport and other apps while on-the-move. Vehicle connectivity is becoming essential, as well as wireless use for safety, utilities and smart-city infrastructure. Some sectors such as agriculture, logistics and construction are predominantly outdoor-oriented, albeit often at specific locations and sites.

But to a rough approximation, if 80%+ of wireless use is indoors, then 80%+ of economic and social benefit of wireless will accrue indoors as well. This applies irrespective of the technology involved – Wi-Fi, 4G/5G cellular, or even Bluetooth.

Future growth of indoor wireless

The demands for indoor connectivity are likely to grow in both scale and scope in coming years. There will be huge demand for high-throughput, low-latency access for both consumer and enterprise use-cases.

• Gigabit broadband, especially delivered with fibre, is becoming the default for both residential and business premises. In the medium term, we can expect 10Gig services to become more common as well. In many cases, the bottleneck is now inside the building, and local wireless systems need to keep pace with the access network.
• There is a growing array of demanding devices and applications connected inside homes and enterprises premises. 4K and 8K screens, automation systems, healthcare products, AR/VR systems, cameras for security and industrial purposes, robots and much more.
• Wireless devices will increasingly be located in any room or space inside a building, including bedrooms, garages, basements, meeting rooms, factory-floors and hospital operating theatres.
• The density of devices per-building or per-room will increase exponentially. While some will be low-traffic products such as sensors, ever more appliances and systems will feature screens, cameras and cloud/AI capabilities demanding greater network performance.
• There will be growing emphasis on the efficiency of networks, in terms of both energy and spectrum usage. “Blasting through walls” with wireless signals will be viewed negatively on both counts.

Yet only some policymakers and regulators have explicit focus on indoor wireless in their broadband and spectrum policies. There has been some positive movement recently, with regulators in markets such as the UK, Germany, Canada and Saudi  Arabia addressing the requirements. But it is now time for all governments and regulators to specifically address indoor wireless needs – and acknowledge the need for more spectrum, especially if they eventually want to achieve “gigabit to each room” as a policy goal.

Wi-Fi can satisfy indoor requirements, but needs 6GHz

Almost all indoor devices discussed here have Wi-Fi capabilities. A subset have 5G cellular radios as well. Very few are 5G-only. This situation is unlikely to change much, especially with a 5-10 year view.

Yet Wi-Fi faces a significant limit to its performance, if it just has access to traditional 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Not only are these limited in frequency range, but they also have a wide variety of legacy devices, using multiple technologies, that must coexist with any new systems.

While mesh systems have helped extend the reach to all rooms in a home, and Wi-Fi 6 brings new techniques to improve performance and device density in consumer and enterprise settings, much more will be required in future.

Now, Wi-Fi 6E and 7 generations are able to use the 6GHz band. This adds up to 1.2GHz of extra spectrum, with almost no sources of interference indoors, and almost no risk of indoor use creating extra interference to incumbent outdoor users, especially at lower power levels.

6GHz Wi-Fi would be able to address all the future requirements discussed in the previous section, as well as reducing system latency, improving indoor mobility and providing greater guarantees of QoS / reliability.

6GHz 5G is unsuitable for indoor use, and of limited use outdoors

By contrast, 6GHz is a poor fit for indoor 5G. Most buildings will be unable to use outdoor-to-indoor propagation reliably, given huge propagation challenges through walls. This would be hugely wasteful of both energy and spectrum resource anyway. This situation will worsen in future as well, with greater use of insulated construction materials and glass.

That leaves dedicated indoor systems such as small cells or distributed antenna or radio systems. Current DAS systems cannot support 6GHz radios – most struggle even with 3.5GHz. It may be possible to upgrade some of the more advanced systems with new radio heads, but few building owners would be willing to pay, and almost no MNOs would. In any case, only a fraction of buildings have indoor cellular systems, especially beyond the top tier of shopping malls, airports and other large venues.

The industry lacks the human and financial resources to implement new 6GHz-capble indoor systems in more than a tiny proportion of the millions of buildings worldwide, especially residential homes and small businesses.

Enabling public 5G services to work reliably indoors with 6GHz is therefore a decade-long project, at least. It would likely be the mid-2030s before 5G (or 6G) devices could routinely use 6GHz inside buildings. Lobbyist estimations of the notional GDP uplift from IMT use of the band ignore both the timing and the practical challenges for indoor applications. A very heavy discount % should be applied to any such calculations, even if the baseline assumptions are seen as credible.

Private 5G systems in factories or warehouses could theoretically use 6GHz licensed cellular, but most developed countries now have alternative bands being made available on a localised basis, such as CBRS, 3.8-4.2GHz or 4.9GHz. Many countries also have (unused) mmWave options for indoor private 5G networks. In theory, 5G systems could also use an unlicensed 6GHz band for private networks, although previous unlicensed 4G variants in 5GHz never gained much market traction.

It is worth noting that there are also very few obvious use-cases for outdoor, exclusive-licensed 6GHz for 5G either, beyond a generic increment in capacity, which could also be provided by network densification or other alternative bands. Most markets still have significant headroom in midband 3-5GHz spectrum for 5G, especially if small cells are deployed. The most-dense environments in urban areas could also exploit the large amount of mmWave spectrum made available for cellular use, typically in the 24-28GHz range, which is already in some handsets and is still mostly unused.

Conclusions

Regulators and policymakers need to specifically analyse the use and supply/demand for indoor wireless, and consider the best spectrum and technology options for such applications and devices. Analysis will show that in-building wireless accounts for the vast bulk of economic and social benefits from connectivity.

This is best delivered by using Wi-Fi, which is already supported by almost all relevant device types. With the addition of 6GHz, it can address the future expected growth delivered by FTTX broadband, as well as video, cloud and AR/VR applications.

The ultra-demanding uses that specifically require cellular indoors can use existing bands with enhanced small cells and distributed radios, neutral-host networks, or private 5G networks in the 3-5GHz range. There is also the ample mmWave allocations for 5G.

A final fundamental element here is timing. 6 GHz Wi-Fi chipsets and user devices are already shipping in their 100s of millions. Access points are widely available today and becoming more sophisticated with Wi-Fi 7 and future 8+ versions. By contrast, 5G/6G use of the band for indoor use is unlikely until well into the next decade, if at all.

Indoor wireless is critically important, growing, and needs Wi-Fi.

And Wi-Fi needs 6GHz.

 

5G data traffic growth - the devil (FWA) is in the detail

This blog combines two separate, linked LinkedIn articles published in June 2023 on consecutive days. The original posts and comment threads are here and here.

Measuring #mobile data traffic is important for operators, vendors, and policymakers.

As I've said before, we should use *good* #metrics to measure the #telecoms industry, rather than just *easy* metrics. This post is an example of what I mean.

Yesterday, Ericsson released its latest Mobility Report. It's always an interesting trove of statistics on mobile subscribers, networks and usage, with extra topical articles, sometimes written by customers or guests.

While obviously it's very oriented to cellular technologies and has an optimistic pro-3GPP stance, it has a long pedigree and a lot of work goes into it. It's partly informed by private stats from Ericsson's real-world, in-service networks run by MNO customers.

This edition includes extra detail, such as breaking out fixed-wireless access & separating video traffic into VoD #streaming (eg Netflix) vs. social media like TikTok and YouTube.

It had plenty of golden "information nuggets". For instance, traffic density can be 500-1000x higher in dense urban locations than sparse rural areas. I'll come back to that another time.

Global mobile data grew 36% from Q1'22 to Q1'23. The full model online predicts 31% growth in CY2023, falling to just 15% in 2028, despite adding in AR/VR applications towards the end of the decade. That's a fairly rapid s-curve flattening.

For Europe, MBB data growth is predicted at 29% in 2023, falling to only 12% in 2028. That's a *really* important one for all sorts of reasons, and is considerably lower than many other forecasts.

But what really caught my eye was this "#FWA data traffic represented 21% of global mobile data traffic at the end of 2022". Further, it is projected to grow much faster than mobile broadband (MBB) and account for *30%* of total traffic in 2028, mostly #5G. When the famous "5G triangle" of use-cases was developed by ITU, it didn't even mention FWA.

However, the report didn't break out this split by region. So I decided to estimate it myself based on the regional split of FWA subscribers, which was shown in a graphic. I also extended the forecasts out to 2030.

I then added an additional segmentation of my own - an indoor vs outdoor split of MBB data. I've pegged this at 75% indoors, aligning with previous comments from Ericsson and others. Some indoor MBB is served by dedicated in-building wireless systems, and some is outdoor-to-indoor from macro RAN or outdoor small cells.

The result is fascinating. By the 2030, it is possible that over 40% of European 5G data traffic will be from FWA. Just 14% of cellular data will be for outdoor mobile broadband. So what's generating the alleged 5G GDP uplift?

That has massive implications for spectrum policy (eg on #6GHz) and proposed #fairshare traffic fees. It also highlights the broad lack of attention paid to indoor cellular and FWA.

Note: This is a quick, rough estimate, but it's the type of data we need for better decisionmaking. I hope to catalyse others to do similar analysis.

 

A separate second post then looked at the policy aspects of this:

Yesterday's post on mobile data traffic - and contribution from 5G FWA and indoor use - seems to have struck a chord. Some online and offline comments have asked about the policy implications.

There are several conclusions for regulators and telecoms/infrastructure ministries:

- Collect more granular data, or make reasoned estimates, of breakdowns of data traffic in your country & trends over time. As well as #FWA vs #MBB & indoor vs outdoor, there should be a split between rural / urban / dense & ideally between macro #RAN vs outdoor #smallcell vs dedicated indoor system. Break out rail / road transport usage.
- Develop a specific policy (or at least gather data and policy drivers) for FWA & indoor #wireless. That feeds through to many areas including spectrum, competition, consumer protection, #wholesale, rights-of-way / access, #cybersecurity, inclusion, industrial policy, R&D, testbeds and trials etc. Don't treat #mobile as mostly about outdoor or in-vehicle connectivity.
- View demand forecasts of mobile #datatraffic and implied costs for MNO investment / capacity-upgrade through the lens of detailed stats, not headline aggregates. FWA is "discretionary"; operators know it creates 10-20x more traffic per user. In areas with poor fixed #broadband (typically rural) that's potentially good news - but those areas may have spare mobile capacity rather than needing upgrades. Remember 4G-to-5G upgrade CAPEX is needed irrespective of traffic levels. FWA in urban areas likely competes with fibre and is a commercial choice, so complaints about traffic growth are self-serving.
- Indoor & FWA wireless can be more "tech neutral" & "business model neutral" than outdoor mobile access. #WiFi, #satellite and other technologies play more important roles - and may be lower-energy too. Shared / #neutralhost infrastructure is very relevant.
- Think through the impact of detailed data on #spectrum requirements and bands. In particular, the FWA/MBB & indoor splits are yet more evidence that the need for #6GHz for #5G has been hugely overstated. In particular, because FWA is "deterministic" (ie it doesn't move around or cluster in crowds) it's much more tolerant of using different bands - or unlicensed spectrum. Meanwhile indoor MBB can be delivered with low-band macro 5G, dedicated in-building systems (perhaps mmWave), or offloaded to WiFi. Using midband 5G and MIMO to "blast through walls" is not ideal use of either spectrum or energy.
- View 5G traffic data/forecasts used in so-called #fairshare or #costrecovery debates with skepticism. Check if discretionary FWA is inflating the figures. Question any GDP impact claims. Consider how much RAN investment is actually serving indoor users, maybe inefficiently. And be aware that home FWA traffic skews towards TVs and VoD #streaming (Netflix, Prime etc) rather than smartphone- or upload-centric social #video like TikTok & FB/IG.

Telecoms regulation needs good input data, not convenient or dramatic headline stats.

 

Connectivity on trains is hard - but both Wi-Fi and cellular need to be provided for passengers

This post originally appeared on May 24 on my LinkedIn feed, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please follow / connect to me on LinkedIn, to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

 There have been recent headlines about the possible ending of on-train passenger #WiFi services in the UK. It is deeply controversial.

Apparently the Department for Transport (DfT), United Kingdom has insisted rail WiFi must be "justified financially". It's unclear if that means by extra ticket sales, higher customer satisfaction, or the use of WiFi for #train operational functions like cameras and wireless payment terminals.

I hope it's not referring to so-called "monetisation" by customers paying for WiFi, or being served adverts. On trains, WiFi is a basic amenity, like toilets or power sockets.

That said, train WiFi in the UK is often problematic. It uses clunky captive portals, and often old access points & slow/patchy 4G backhaul. It often fails to work well, or at all. It sometimes blocks video or VPNs. By contrast, in-station WiFi is run separately - and often much better.

Public cellular coverage on the rail network is also poor. Many rail lines run through cuttings and tunnels with limited room for trackside infrastructure & poor lines-of-sight to cell towers. The recent Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Wireless Infrastructure Strategy highlighted poor #railway #wireless coverage & pushed for regular monitoring and access to trackside fibre.
 
What should DfT, DSIT, Network Rail, Train Operating Companies and the future restructured Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT) do?
 
- Recognise both cellular & WiFi are essential for passengers, especially on long-distance trains where laptops are common
- Understand that cellular - especially #5G - has problems with signals reaching inside train carriages
- Don't underestimate forecasts for future data use. Add in uplink as well as downlink, and think about latency. Trains may need 1-5 Gbps in the medium term, via a mix of cellular & WiFi.
- Ensure on-train WiFi is easy to use & easily-upgraded. No captive portals, no “monetisation” with ads/data capture & a clear roadmap for regular upgrades. No blocking of any apps, especially VPNs and video. Apply Net Neutrality rules.
- Federation or roaming between on-train & station WiFi systems, extending to smart cities & metro bus/train/tram WiFi over time
- Easier access for MNOs / #neutralhosts to build trackside or near-track infrastructure & use gantries & fibre assets
- Decouple passenger connectivity needs from future critical #FRMCS deployment. They have different timing/cadence & investment cases
- Look at trackside 5G neutral host networks delivered with “excess” spectrum from any future 4-3 merger of MNOs
- Insist on-train gateways are modular & can use a dynamic mix of public 5G, trackside wireless & eventually satellite in remote areas. Ensure they are easily upgradeable without trains being taken out of service
- Upgrade on-train signal repeaters & look at window-etching for better outdoor-to-indoor performance

Note: I wrote this on WiFi on a train back to London from this week’s Wi-Fi NOW conference.

 

Spectrum: The shifting tone of the satellite industry

This post originally appeared on June 7 on my LinkedIn feed, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please follow / connect to me on LinkedIn, to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

I'm in Brussels this week at the Forum Europe European Spectrum Management Conference.

There's a lot to discuss, especially around #6GHz and 3.8-4.2GHz and the role of unlicensed and local/shared bands, as well as the upcoming World Radio Conference WRC-23.

I'll have more to say, but here I just want to highlight one particular theme that has been evident over the last couple of days: the tone of the satellite sector, which is here in force, especially with GSOA and Intelsat.

In the past at these #spectrum events, the #satellite industry has turned up with a familiar script:

"Hi, we're from the satellite industry. Please don't take our spectrum. We help with defence, aviation & connecting the unconnected. Please don't take our spectrum. We work tightly with the mobile industry, doing backhaul & IoT and timing sync. They're our friends & vice versa. Oh, and did we mention our spectrum? Please don't take any more of it"

But this time, it's different. The message is now closer to:

"We're doing all ths cool new stuff, including for wireless broadband, direct to device and defence. So actually, we want to keep all our spectrum. And maybe give back the old #mmWave spectrum you took years ago, that the mobile industry hasn't even used. Seriously, you want *more* spectrum to be taken from us and pre-allocated to 6G now? Are you having a laugh?"

There was a whole panel on direct-to-device, and satellite has fought its corner on the upper 6GHz (it can coexist with low/medium power WiFi, but not high power 5G) and fixed satellite links in 4GHz band. The future-looking 6G panel started a fierce debate on 7-24GHz, which covers various of the satellite incumbent bands.

There's been a few references to South Korea's regulator reclaiming unused 28GHz licenses from MNOs that haven't used the band. And there's a broad opinion that mobile/IMT is not a friendly partner for spectrum-sharing, at least for national MNO macro networks at full power. (Local private networks are OK-ish, it seems).

"An IMT identification is an eviction notice - the incumbents must leave".

"It's disingenuous to discuss coexistence studies - we've been here before and know how it ends. It's not our first rodeo with the mobile industry"

Now clearly this year, in the last few months before WRC23, is when arguments get more vigorous. But some of the stuff at the #EUspectrum event has been seriously punchy - Intelsat asked whether Europe should be focused on primacy in an amorphous "race to 6G" or a more geopolitically-crucial "space race".

My view is that the #5G industry is seeing some chickens coming home to roost at the moment. It overpromised Release 18 features with Release 15 timelines, got mmWave spectrum years before it could be exploited, and have left politicians and regulators with egg on their faces.

Meanwhile, the satellite sector is positioning itself as super-cool and important. It has a swagger that is being noticed by policymakers, and for good reason.

 

Private 5G: Two different approaches at the Coronation

This post originally appeared on June 9 on my LinkedIn feed, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please follow / connect to me on LinkedIn, to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

 A month ago, the UK and much of the world watched King Charles' #Coronation in London.

They were able to watch it partly because of the immense efforts of the various #broadcasters involved. Since then, two separate stories have emerged about the role of dedicated #5G connectivity in the TV coverage:

1) A dedicated private 5G network supplied by Neutral Wireless and BBC R&D, used by several broadcasters
2) A slice of the Vodafone public 5G network, enabled for ITN, based on Ericsson gear

In the comments I've linked to various articles and a great interview on Ericsson's Voice of 5G podcast show. They have details of the other partners involved too. In the BBC blog post they also mention a 3rd network on a separate cell, working alongside Sony, for low-latency (I think) remote-controlled cameras.

The #Private 5G network used 8 radios along The Mall (the tree-lined road between Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Sq). It used 2x 40MHz channels in the UK's shared-licence band between 3.8-4.2GHz, with 1Gbps capacity (mostly for uplink). It was used by around 60 devices - I guess mostly cameras and test equipment via gateways, plus the BBC's onsite radio studio. They also used LiveU bonding systems to add capacity from public MNO networks. I'm not sure about the vendors of the radios or standalone core.

The 5G SA #networkslicing solution was apparently used for a single sector at a 3.5GHz temporary base station aimed at the Palace balcony. It also worked with LiveU. On the podcast, Andrea Donà (VF's head of network in the UK) talks about "dedicating bandwidth to one sector for the slice" and carving out some of the uplink capacity.

One thing that is unclear to me is how many other users were sharing the VF standalone 5G network hosting the slice - SA hasn't been fully launched commercially in the UK, although in January VF said it had invited selected users to trial it. I also don't know whether the 5G NSA and SA networks were sharing the radio resource, or if they use separate channels.

The public 4G / 5G networks (and also Wi-Fi bands) in the area were pretty overloaded, despite additional mobile towers adding capacity. The Vodafone / Ericsson podcast notes that VF uses "all the bands" at major events (although there's no #mmWave 5G in the UK yet) - so including 4G at 2.1GHz and 2.6GHz, and some lower bands for 2G/3G.

My take from this is that #private5G is considerably more mature than #5Gslicing, but that both are interesting for broadcasters. Both need quite a lot of specialist engineering, but TV is a sector with lots of very clever specialists and great ability to set up temporary networks. Of course, both networks were *outdoors* which meant that the thick stonework of the palace and Westminster Abbey weren't relevant.

One last note - the huge bulk of broadcast audiovisual output at the coronation would have used dedicated #PMSE wireless for cameras and microphones. But the #UHF spectrum debate is for another post.

 

5G hype and exaggeration - be clear and realistic about your claims!

 This was originally posted on my LinkedIn (here) & the main comment thread is on LI

I'm getting really fed up with a lot of the hype and exaggeration around #5G at the moment, especially PR and marketing puff that creates unclear or misleading claims. It's damaging to the credibility of the industry overall & the specific organisations involved.

In recent weeks I've seen examples of:

• "Ultra-low #latency" claimed for a manufacturing network that uses non-standalone 5G (so, using a 4G core network & incapable of getting anywhere near 1 millisecond)
• Augmented reality demos claimed as 5G when actually they're using Wi-Fi or a wired tether
• Use of a 5G fixed-wireless access link to a building (distributed with #WiFi locally via a hotspot or router) leading to an application described as 5G-enabled
• A healthcare application with an internal diagnostic wireless camera within the patient's body, connecting to an external or gateway or handheld. The press release was vague on which bit of the solution was 5G, but a social media reply asserted it was a "virtual assistant" " (5G? really?) and refused to detail the system publicly, trying to get me to take the discussion offline
• A CBRS "hotspot" described as 5G, despite no 5G #CBRS standalone standards or devices yet being available yet
• 60GHz wireless (mostly using 802.11a or y) described as "5G" because it might be able to connect to a 5G core. There is no 60GHz 5G NR yet.
• Spurious claims that 5G will generate $Xbn in GDP, or save Y tons of CO2. What's the baseline for 4G/other wireless & what's the uplift attributable to 5G? What % of CO2 savings are from the wireless rather than 100 other system elements, or are you double-counting?
• Regular comments that compare performance of old versions of WiFi with future versions of 5G. Rather than, say, comparing WiFi 6E vs. 5G Rel 16, or WiFi7 vs. Rel 17.
• Cliched use of "billions of IoT devices" when we all know only a tiny % will ever connect with 5G
• Small 5G pilots being deliberately misused to imply large-scale or “production” use by a company.

The commentary is often along the lines of "Oh, well it might be proper 5G in the next version. This just the demo".

In which case, be honest and transparent and SAY SO CLEARLY.

Do not just release a press statement claiming yet another wondrous 5G use case. Be specific:

• Is it *actually* 5G? Or is this just using 5G as a buzzword?
• Which specific wireless connection in the solution uses 5G? Between which points / devices?
• What version/features of 5G is used? What frequency band & coverage is needed?
• What technology was used in past for similar solutions? What problems does 5G fix?
• Does the application work equally well over other wireless technologies such as 4G or Wi-Fi6?

It's not just marketing - this actually matters, as things like government funding or spectrum policy may be justified on the basis of spurious claims.

Let's have some more honesty here about what 5G can do today & what might be possible tomorrow. And let's all call out the chancers in public.

 

This was originally posted on my LinkedIn (here) & the main comment thread is on LI

 

Drawing flawed conclusions from public misconceptions about wireless

(Cross-posted from my LinkedIn Newsletter - see original + comment thread here)

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve come across several clear examples of general confusion about connectivity and wireless technologies – including among smart and otherwise tech-savvy people.

• A recent survey came up with the remarkable result that over a million people in the UK think they already have “satellite broadband”. The real number is likely under 100k. But many still associate the telecom brand Sky with its early involvement with satellite TV. (Expect Dish to face the same issue in the US).
• On a client workshop discussing future devices, a user-interface expert referred to “Wi-Fi towers”, rather than mobile/cellular towers. I've also heard someone talk about "satellite Wi-Fi" when referring to things like LEO constellations.
• A friend posted a photo of mobile antennas in London, in black enclosures to match the structure they were mounted on. One comment was that they were “definitely 5G” with no explanation why they distinguished them from 4G (or indeed, multi-radio RAN units as I suspect they were). Another confidently asserted they were definitely “boosters”, whatever that means.
• A fascinating Nokia-produced podcast, with a visionary from Disney, covered a huge amount about AR/VR, branding and new experiences. The only problem was the assertion that this would all depend on 5G – even indoors on the sofa, where we can expect essentially all headsets and most smartphones to be connected to Wi-Fi.
• Another podcast referenced Mavenir's acquisition of cPaaS provider Telestax, with the farcical suggestion that it tied in with B2B uses of 5G. Instead, it's more about platforms for enterprise messaging and calling. Getting an automated dentist-appointment reminder or automating a call-centre process doesn't depend on 5G (or any other G, or even wireless).
• I've lost count of the people who think 5G enables 1 millisecond latencies everywhere.

At one level, we can just shrug and say this is just normal. People often fail to grasp distinctions between categories of similar things that are obvious (and important) to experts involved in their production or classification. 

 

Source: https://pixabay.com/users/peterdargatz-5783/

 How many people confuse bulldozers and excavators, a flan vs. a quiche, or even a spider and insect? Yet we don’t pay much attention to the exasperated sighs and teeth-grinding of civil engineers, chefs or arachnologists. We in the industry don’t help much either – how many Wi-Fi SSID access names are called “5G” instead of “5GHz”?

Yet for connectivity, these distinctions do matter in many real ways. They can lead to poor decision-making, flawed regulation, misled investors and wasted effort. In some cases there is real, physical harm too – think about all the crazy conspiracy theories about 5G (especially "60GHz mmWave 5G" - which doesn't even exist yet), or previously Wi-Fi.

Think too about the huge hyping by politicians about 5G – despite many of the use-cases either working perfectly well on older 4G, or in reality more likely to use fibre or Wi-Fi connections. That can feed through to poor policy on spectrum, competition – and as seen in many places recently, vendor diversification rules which ignore the vibrant ecosystem of indoor and private cellular suppliers.

Think too about the ludicrous assertions that LEO satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink could replace normal home broadband or terrestrial mobile, despite the real practicalities meaning endpoint numbers will be 100x fewer, even with optimistic projections.

This all puts a new angle on a common refrain in telecoms “users don’t care what network they’re connected to”. In reality, this could be more accurately rephrased as “users don’t understand what network they're connected to…. although they really should”.

This also applies to the myth of "seamless" interconnection between different technologies, such as Wi-Fi and 5G networks. The border (ie seam) is hugely important. It can change the speed, cost, ownership, security, privacy, predictability of the connection. Not just users, but also application & device developers need to understand this - and if possible, control it. Frictionless can be OK. Seamless is useless, or worse.

What should be our practical steps to deal with this? Realistically, we're not going to get the population to take "Wireless 101" courses, even if we could agree amongst ourselves what to tell them. We're certainly not going to give people a grasp of radio propagation through walls, nor ITU IMT-Advanced definitions and how that relates to "5G".

But on a more mundane level, there are some concrete recommendations we can follow:

• Use generic terms such as "advanced connectivity" without specifying 5G, Wi-Fi or whatever, wherever possible. At least that's relatively accurate.
• Ignore any surveys of the general public about wireless technology. Assume that 90% of people won't understand the questions, and the other 10% will lie. Actually, ignore most surveys of the industry as well - most have appallingly biased samples, usually over-represented by people trying to sell things.
• Don't repost, retweet or otherwise circulate hyped-up articles or comments. If someone claims that $X Trillion will be generated by 5G, ask if they've looked into what the baseline would be for 4G, and what the assumptions and sensitivities are.
• I'll be bad at this myself, but we should try to gently point out to people they're wrong, rather than either shrug-and-ignore, or ridicule-and-point. If a politician or marketer or broadcaster talks about 5G or Wi-Fi or satellite with clear factual errors, point it out online, or in person.
• Ask open-ended questions such as "why do you think satellite broadband can really do that?" or "have you considered how that would work indoors?" and see if people have actually given it any real thought.
• Don't let your boss or your clients get away with these misconceptions, even if you think correcting them could cause a negative reaction. Don't be a yes-person. (If you need to, let me know & I can debunk their claims for you. I'll probably enjoy it too much though....)
• Do NOT hire clueless "content marketing" people to write gibberish about "Why Tech X will Change the World"
• Watch out for logical fallacies like "appeal to authority". There's no shortage of very senior and well-known people spouting the type of nonsense I describe here.
• Run internal training sessions on "myth vs. reality" about wireless and telecoms. Make them fun.

I don't know whether this campaign to improve genuine understanding (and a bit of skepticism of hyperbole) will pay off. But I think it's important to try. Feel free to add other examples or suggestions in the comments! Also, please subscribe to this LinkedIn newsletter & follow @disruptivedean on Twitter.

(And yes, that's an excavator in the image above).

#5G #WiFi #mobile #wireless #satellite #broadband

Free-to-download report on Creating Enterprise-Friendly 5G Policies (for goverments & regulators)

Copied from my LinkedIn. Please click here for the download page & comments

I'm publishing a full report & recommendations on Enterprise & Private 5G, especially aimed at policymakers and regulators.

It explains the complex dynamics linking Enterprises, MNOs and Governments – explaining the motivations of each around connectivity, 5G deployment choices, IoT and the broader impacts and trade-offs around the economy and productivity.

This is not a simple calculus – MNOs want to exploit 5G opportunities for verticals, but businesses have their own priorities and preferences. Governments want to satisfy both groups – and also act as both major network users themselves and “suppliers” of spectrum.

A supporting cast of cloud players, network vendors, other classes of service providers and other stakeholders have important roles as well.

This report is a “Director’s Cut” extended version of a paper originally commissioned for internal use by Microsoft, now made available for general distribution.

(To download on LinkedIn, display in full screen & select download PDF)

#5G #policy #telecoms #private5G #cloud #IoT #spectrum #WiFi

The Worst Metrics in Telecoms

 (This post was initially published as an article on my LinkedIn Newsletter - here - please see that version for comments and discussion)

GDP isn't a particularly good measure of the true health of a country's economy. Most economists and politicians know this.

This isn't a plea for non-financial measures such as "national happiness". It's a numerical issue. GDP is hard to measure, with definitions that vary widely by country. Important aspects of the modern world such as "free" online services and family-provided eldercare aren't really counted properly.

However, people won't abandon GDP, because they like comparable data with a long history. They can plot trends, curves, averages... and don't need to revise spreadsheets and models from the ground up with something new. Other metrics are linked to GDP - R&D intensity, NATO military spending commitments and so on - which would needed to be re-based if a different measure was used. The accounting and political headaches would be huge.

A poor metric often has huge inertia and high switching costs.

Telecoms is no different, like many sub-sectors of the economy. There are many old-fashioned metrics that are really not fit for purpose any more - and even some new ones that are badly-conceived. They often lead to poor regulatory decisions, poor optimisation and investment approaches by service providers, flawed incentives and large tranches of self-congratulatory overhype.

Some of the worst telecoms metrics I see regularly include:

• Voice traffic measured in minutes of use (or messages counted individually)
• Cost per bit (or increasingly energy use per bit) for broadband
• $ per MHz per POP (population) for radio spectrum auctions
• ARPU
• CO2 savings "enabled" by telecom services, especially 5G

That's not an exhaustive list by any means. But the point of this article is to make people think twice about commonplace numbers - and ideally think of meaningful metrics rather than easy or convenient ones.

The sections below gives some quick thoughts on why these metrics either won't work in the future - or are simply terrible even now and in the past.

(As an aside, if you ever see numbers - especially forecasts - with too many digits and "spurious accuracy", that an immediate red flag: "The Market for Widgets will be $27.123bn in 2027". It tells you that the source really doesn't understand numbers - and you really shouldn't trust, or base decisions, on someone that mathematically inept)

Minutes and messages

The reason we count phone calls in minutes (rather than, say, conversations or just a monthly access fee) is based on an historical accident. Original human switchboard operators were paid by the hour, so a time-based quantum made the most sense for billing users. And while many phone plans are now either flat-rate, or use per-second rates, many regulations are still framed in the language of "the minute". (Note: some long-distance calls were also based on length of cable used, so "per mile" as well as minute)

This is a ridiculous anachronism. We don't measure or price other audiovisual services this way. You don't pay per-minute for movies or TV, or value podcasts, music or audiobooks on a per-minute basis. Other non-telephony voice communications modes such as push-to-talk, social audio like ClubHouse, or requests to Alexa or Siri aren't time-based.

Ironically, shorter calls are often more valuable to people. There's a fundamental disconnect between price and value.

A one-size-fits-all metric for calls stops telcos and other providers from innovating around context, purpose and new models for voice services. It's hard to charge extra for "enhanced voice" in a dozen different dimensions. They should call on governments to scrap minute-based laws and reporting requirements, and rejig their own internal systems to a model that makes more sense.

Much.

the

same

argument...

.... applies to counting individual messages/SMS as well. It's a meaningless quantum that doesn't align with how people use IMs / DMs / group chats and other similar modalities. It's like counting or charging for documents by the pixel. Threads, sessions or conversations are often more natural units, albeit harder to measure.

Cost per bit

"5G costs less per bit than 4G". "Traffic levels increase faster than revenues!".

Cost-per-bit is an often-used but largely meaningless metric, which drives poor decision-making and incentives, especially in the 5G era of multiple use-cases - and essentially infinite ways to calculate the numbers.

Different bits have very different associated costs. A broad average is very unhelpful for investment decisions. The cost of a “mobile” bit (for an outdoor user in motion, handing off from cell to cell) is very different to an FWA bit delivered to a house’s external fixed antenna, or a wholesale bit used by an MVNO.

Costs can vary massively by spectrum band, to a far greater degree than technology generation - with the cost of the spectrum itself a major component. Convergence and virtualisation means that the same costs (eg core and transport networks) can apply to both fixed and mobile broadband, and 4G/5G/other wireless technologies. Uplink and downlink bits also have different costs - which perhaps should include the cost of the phone and power it uses, not just the network.

The arrival of network slicing (and URLLC) will mean “cost per bit” is an ever-worse metric, as different slices will inherently be more or less "expensive" to create and operate. Same thing with local break-out, delivery of content from a nearby edge-server or numerous other wrinkles.

But in many ways, the "cost" part of cost/bit is perhaps the most easy to analyse, despite the accounting variabilities. Given enough bean-counters and some smarts in the network core/OSS, it would be possible to create some decent numbers at least theoretically.

But the bigger problem is the volume of bits. This is not an independent variable, which flexes up and down just based on user demand and consumption. Faster networks with more instantaneous "headroom" actually create many more bits, as adaptive codecs and other application intelligence means that traffic expands to fill the space available. And pricing strategy can basically dial up or down the number of bits customers used, with minimal impact on costs.

A video application might automatically increase the frame rate, or upgrade from SD to HD, with no user intervention - and very little extra "value". There might be 10x more bits transferred for the same costs (especially if delivered from a local CDN). Application developers might use tools to predict available bandwidth, and change the behaviour of their apps dynamically.

So - if averaged costs are incalculable, and bit-volume is hugely elastic, then cost/bit is meaningless. Ironically, "cost per minute of use" might actually be more relevant here than it is for voice calls. At the very least, cost per bit needs separate calculations for MBB / FWA / URLLC, and by local/national network scale.

(By a similar argument, "energy consumed per bit" is pretty useless too).

Spectrum prices for mobile use

The mobile industry has evolved around several generations of technology, typically provided by MNOs to consumers. Spectrum has typically been auctioned for exclusive use on a national / regional basis, in fixed-sized slices in chunks perhaps 5/10/20MHz wide, with licenses often specifying rules on coverage of population.

For this reason, it's not surprising that a very common metric is "$ per MHz / Pop" - the cost per megahertz, per addressable population in a given area.

Up to a point, this has been pretty reasonable, given that the main use of 2G, 3G and even 4G has been for broad, wide-area coverage for consumers' phones and sometimes homes. It has been useful for investors, telcos, regulators and others to compare the outcomes of auctions.

But for 5G and beyond (actually the 5G era, rather than 5G specifically), this metric is becoming ever less-useful. There are three problems here:

• Growing focus on smaller areas of licenses: county-sized in CBRS in the US, and site-specific in Germany, UK and Japan for instance, especially for enterprise sites and property developments. This makes comparisons much harder, especially if areas are unclear.
• Focus of 5G and private 4G on non-consumer applications and uses. Unless the idea of "population" is expanded to include robots, cars, cows and IoT gadgets, the "pop" part of the metric clearly doesn't work. As the resident population of a port or offshore windfarm zone is zero, then a local spectrum license would effectively have an infinite $ / MHz / Pop.
• Spectrum licenses are increasingly being awarded with extra conditions such as coverage of roads, land-area - or mandates to offer leases or MVNO access. Again, these are not population-driven considerations.

Over the next decade we will see much greater use of mobile spectrum-sharing, new models of pooled ("club") spectrum access, dynamic and database-driven access, indoor-only licenses, secondary-use licenses and leases, and much more.

Taken together, these issues are increasingly rendering $/MHz/Pop a legacy irrelevance in many cases.

ARPU

"Average Revenue Per User" is a longstanding metric used in various parts of telecoms, but especially by MNOs for measuring their success in selling consumers higher-end packages and subcriptions. It has long come under scrutiny for its failings, and various alternatives such as AMPU (M for margin) have emerged, as well as ways to carve out dilutive "user" groups such as low-cost M2M connections. There have also been attempts to distinguish "user" from "SIM" as some people have multiple SIMs, while other SIMs are shared.

At various points in the past it used to "hide" effective loan repayments for subsidised handsets provided "free" in the contract, although that has become less of an issue with newer accounting rules. It also faces complexity in dealing with allocating revenues in converged fixed/mobile plans, family plans, MVNO wholesale contracts and so on.

A similar issue to "cost per bit" is likely to happen to ARPU in the 5G era. Unless revenues and user numbers are broken out more finely, the overall figure is going to be a meaningless amalgam of ordinary post/prepaid smartphone contracts, fixed wireless access, premium "slice" customers and a wide variety of new wholesale deals.

The other issue is that ARPU further locks telcos into the mentality of the "monthly subscription" model. While fixed monthly subs, or "pay as you go top-up" models still dominate in wireless, others are important too, especially in the IoT world. Some devices are sold with connectivity included upfront.

Enterprises buying private cellular networks specifically want to avoid per-month or per-GB "plans" - it's one of the reasons they are looking to create their own dedicated infrastructure. MNOs may need to think in terms of annual fees, systems integration and outsourcing deals, "devices under management" and all sorts of other business models. The same is true if they want to sell "slices" or other blended capabilities - perhaps geared to SLAs or business outcomes.

Lastly - what is a "user" in future? An individual human with a subscription? A family? A home? A group? A device?

ARPU is another metric overdue for obsolescence.

CO2 "enablement" savings

I posted last week about the growing trend of companies and organisations to cite claims that a technology (often 5G or perhaps IoT in general) allows users to "save X tons of CO2 emissions".

You know the sort of thing - "Using augmented reality conferencing on your 5G phone for a meeting avoids the need for a flight & saves 2.3 tons of CO2" or whatever. Even leaving aside the thorny issues of Jevon's Paradox, which means that efficiency tends to expand usage rather than replace it - there's a big problem here:

Double-counting.

There's no attempt at allocating this notional CO2 "saving" between the device(s), the network(s), the app, the cloud platform, the OS & 100 other elements. There's no attempt such as "we estimate that 15% of this is attributable to 5G for x, y, z reasons".

Everyone takes 100% credit. And then tries to imply it offsets their own internal CO2 use.

"Yes, 5G needs more energy to run the network. But it's lower CO2 per bit, and for every ton we generate, we enable 2 tons in savings in the wider economy".

Using that logic, the greenest industry on the planet is industrial sand production, as it's the underlying basis of every silicon chip in every technological solution for climate change.

There's some benefit from CO2 enablement calculations, for sure - and there's more work going into reasonable ways to allocate savings (look in the comments for the post I link to above), but readers should be super-aware of the limitations of "tons of CO2" as a metric in this context.

So what's the answer?

It's fairly easy to poke holes in things. It's harder to find a better solution. Having maintained spreadsheets of company and market performance and trends myself, I know that analysis is often held hostage by what data is readily available. Telcos report minutes-of-use and ARPU, so that's what everyone else uses as a basis. Governments may demand that reporting, or frame rules in those terms (for instance, wholesale voice termination rates have "per minute" caps in some countries).

It's very hard to escape from the inertia of a long and familiar dataset. Nobody want to recreate their tables and try to work out historic comparables. There is huge path dependence at play - small decisions years ago, which have been entrenched in practices in perpetuity, even though the original rationale has long since gone. (You may have noticed me mention path dependence a few times recently. It's a bit of a focus of mine at the moment....)

But there's a circularity here. Certain metrics get entrenched and nobody ever questions them. They then get rehashed by governments and policymakers as the basis for new regulations or measures of market success. Investors and competition authorities use them. People ignore the footnotes and asterisks warning of limitations

The first thing people should do is question the definitions of familiar public or private metrics. What do they really mean? For a ratio, are the assumptions (and definitions) for both denominator and numerator still meaningful? Is there some form of allocation process involved? Are there averages which amalgamate lots of dissimilar categories?

I'd certainly recommend Tim Harford's book "How to Make the World Add Up" (link) as a good backgrounder to questioning how stats are generated and sometimes misused.

But the main thing I'd suggest is asking whether metrics can either hide important nuance - or can set up flawed incentives for management.

There's a long history of poor metrics having unintended consequences. For example, it would be awful (but not inconceivable) to raise ARPUs by cancelling the accounts of low-end users. Or perhaps an IoT-focused vertical service provider gets punished by the markets for "overpaying" for spectrum in an area populated by solar panels rather than people.

Stop and question the numbers. See who uses them / expects them and persuade them to change as well. Point out the fallacies and flawed incentives to policymakers.

If you have any more examples of bad numbers, feel free to add them in the comments. I forecast there will be 27.523 of them, by the end of the year.

The author is an industry analyst and strategy advisor for telecoms companies, governments, investors and enterprises. He often "stress-tests" qualitative and quantitative predictions and views of technology markets. Please get in touch if this type of viewpoint and analysis interests you - and also please follow @disruptivedean on Twitter.