Seven or eight years ago, as we began work on what became PTC’s Spectrum Futures conference series, some might have thought spectrum sharing was interesting, but a niche for TV white spaces and maybe some enterprise or content provider private network applications, but not something [...]

Though it has not be the case in the past, midband spectrum now seems to be emerging as a key underpinning for 5G services globally, and that might provide incentives for many parts of the U.S. ecosystem to agree on prioritizing new ways of using resources in the midband. U.S. 5G spectrum has [...]

Amazon plans to launch a constellation of low earth orbit satellites, which will instantly make Amazon a global internet service provider. Project Kuiper is the code name for a “big, audacious space project” involving satellites and space-based systems. Filings made with the International [...]

With all the breathless talk about how 5G or internet of things will “revolutionize” life and business, it is worth noting that big technology shifts often take decades to drive visible and measurable changes. Ecosystems drive economic revolutions, not underlying technology itself. That was [...]

South Korea has launched 5G.  The pricing plans are the important aspect. KT seems committed to unlimited usage. SK Telecom and LG Plus seem to prefer big buckets of usage.  At least in principle, KT could gain subscribers if consumers decide they really need unlimited usage. But the biggest [...]

Heather Bellini is a partner at Goldman Sachs and heads up the technology research business unit.

Since the era of 3G, industry watchers have had to guess at what new use cases, revenue models and applications would emerge with the better platforms. We have almost always been surprised by those developments, as well as by what did not develop as expected. So 5G might not be too different, [...]

Will use cases, business models, revenues and value of 5G networks be similar to, or different from, 5G? Different, some say. Whether quantitative changes can create qualitative changes is the issue. For consumers, 5G eventually will mean both lower latency and an order of magnitude (or more) [...]

5G might not be a full replacement for Wi-Fi in all settings, but it is likely to happen in at least some industrial settings where manufacturers want greater control over latency performance of their local area networks when using sensors, automated equipment and production processes. [...]

Spectrum aggregation now is among the major new methods mobile operators will use in the 5G and succeeding eras to dramatically boost capacity by orders of magnitude over 4G. Networks will aggregate spectrum within frequency bands, across frequency bands; interwork licensed spectrum with [...]

Since a next-generation mobile network is launched about every decade, and since 5G is being launched now, that means we are roughly 10 years away from 6G. So although it seems crazy, researchers and agencies already are making some moves to begin thinking about, and experimenting with, ideas [...]

Consumers say they want 5G. Sure they do, just like they tell researchers they want all sorts of things, when price is not an object. Of course, price and value do matter, quite a lot. After they weigh higher 5G device costs, they might not actually be so willing to switch, at least at first. [...]