Mobile cellular networks have always been built on the principle of frequency reuse, the ability to increase capacity of a radio network by subdividing use of available frequencies within a [...]
Many mobile service provider executives have professed concern about the business model for 5G, which might be considered misplaced, given industry history. That makes sense for the net new use [...]
Somes a bug can be a feature. Consider atmospheric attenuation of radio frequency signals at 60 GHz, At that frequency, oxygen in the atmosphere attenuates about 98 percent of the emitted energy. [...]
Some storylines are irresistible, even if wrong. Slow U.S. 5G speeds provide an example. A classic storyline about U.S. telecommunications is “U.S. is behind,” and, so far, 5G fits that model. [...]
Since the 3G era, potential new use cases enabled by the latest mobile platform or generation have tended to lag by about a decade. If we know anything from our history with 3G and 4G, it is that [...]
At a recent session of the PTC Academy, APTelecom President Sean Bergin starkly contrasted the choices connectivity providers (telcos and others) now face. As demand for traditional connectivity [...]
What does your business look like if the key constraint is removed? It is a question so challenging–and often so seemingly impossible–that most of us never ask it. Most connectivity [...]
End user demand for various connectivity services changes over time, but typically when some new need arises. Or when major suppliers decide to push its use. 5G will not be different, as has been [...]
All of us are by now used to the idea that Wi-Fi access inside buildings is supplied by the building tenant or resident, not a communications service provider. In the 5G era, it is possible that [...]
In purely technical terms, every digital mobile generation (3G, 4G, 5G) has produced an order of magnitude increase in bandwidth and an order of magnitude decrease in latency. Each [...]
Despite lots of presently-hypothetical use cases, much of the early enterprise demand for 5G still relies on the traditional value of “more capacity,” even if the long-term value will tend to be [...]
With the caveat that industry professionals can be quite wrong about the future, there is a fairly substantial consensus on the value of 5G for end users. Industry professionals expect [...]
A recent study of 5G speeds by Opensignal found U.S. and U.K. speeds lagging those of several other countries that have deployed 5G. This actually is a fairly typical outcome, both early in [...]
Busy business executives rarely have time to waste. And, for many, discussions of advanced new technology, ranging from artificial intelligence to blockchain are simply not practical matters for [...]
Virtually every business achieves lower costs per unit with greater scale, at least in part because fixed costs can be amortized over a bigger base of customers or units sold. The converse also [...]