Many discussions of 5G spectrum seem to center on where all the capacity will come from. The confusion is understandable. If every area where 5G is made available has to support the sorts of speeds millimeter wave small cells will support, there are serious questions. But 5G capacity will not [...]

Whether 5G ever will have a “killer app” remains an open question, though one can argue that each successive new mobile generation has had use modes characteristic to itself that were not seen in the prior generation. Voice was the first generation killer app. Text messaging was added in 2G. [...]

One way of looking at the business value of 5G is to note simply that it enables cost per gigabyte low enough to support coming business models where much more mobile data must be provided, at roughly the same prices as present service plans.  Data delivered by a 4G LTE macrocell costs about [...]

For most of us, blockchain and artificial or augmented intelligence are specialized capabilities we do not buy or use as discrete purchases or apps, but are experienced as features of some product we do use or buy. That will likely be the way we experience AI and blockchain in our [...]

Frequency, channel width and bandwidth are directly related, as early tests of millimeter wave 5G show. Firms launching using mid-band and low-band spectrum will achieve better coverage, but at the cost of lower bandwidth. That is just the way the physics works.  source: Business Insider, CNet

By 2026, mobile machine-to-machine (internet of things) connections will represent about 62 percent of such connections, while non-cellular connections are about 38 percent of total connections, according to ABI Research.  source: ABI Research, IHS Markit

It often appears that all discussions about the value or role of 5G really about 5G. That seems most obvious when 5G is positioned as a race, especially to deploy the access networks.  To be sure, one can look at suppliers of 5G handsets, radio infrastructure, intellectual property, access and [...]

U.S. wireless providers increased their spectrum efficiency 42 times since 2010, according to a new white paper released by CTIA, the wireless industry association. That matters since U.S. mobile service customers consume more data than customers in most other countries. On the other hand, [...]

Singapore has very low prices for mobile data usage. Today, a gigabyte of usage costs about Singapore 90 cents. Just five years ago, a gigabyte of usage cost about S$13. Nor is the trend confined to Singapore. Mobile data prices have fallen all over Southeast Asia.  Granted, comparing prices is [...]

Supply and demand always affects the value of spectrum. So if supply and demand change radically, so should prices. And prices matter. Spectrum licenses make up a major portion of mobile operator assets: an average 35 percent of the assets of U.S. mobile operators, for example. In other parts [...]

LoRa has the lead, in terms of number of low-power wide area network connections, according to IHS Markit. But narrowband IoT will  be the leader by 2023, IHS Markit researchers predict.  source: IHS source: IHS

The existential threat to the mobility business is the seeming inability to monetize ever-increasing data consumption. In the United Kingdom, mobile revenues have dropped since 2012 by about eight percent, at a time that mobile data consumption increased by 9.5 times (almost an order of [...]