How will communications demand change in the 5G era, if at all? Much depends on how edge computing develops, as that will drive another oscillation in computing architecture, and such changes always have changed demand for data communications.  Changes in computing nearly always have [...]

Some have argued that 5G fixed wireless is an existential threat to cable TV and some telco fixed network service providers. That will probably prove mistaken, though almost certainly a driver of lost market share in the near term.  By definition, an existential problem is one that threatens [...]

Up to this point, the overriding issue for next generation networks–fixed or mobile–has been bandwidth: delivering more, and delivering more flexibly. But it is hard not to guess that the industry is reaching a point of diminishing returns, as did chipmakers building ever-faster [...]

Telekom Malaysia Berhad financial results for the first half of the year ended 30 June 2018 show a decline in voice, data and other telecom revenue. That is an issue most telcos globally wil have to deal with as well.  Telekom Malaysia posted revenue of RM5.78 billion year-to-date, 2.7 percent [...]

Most things in life are complex. So it should come as no surprise that for every legitimate social or public policy issue, there are corresponding financial interests. That simply cannot be escaped.  Efforts to place obstacles in the path of firms such as Google, Facebook or Amazon are the [...]

It is not easy to estimate use cases for the early 5G mobile network deployments (2018 and 2019) On one hand, since handsets will not be available until mid-2019 or so, it seems logical that the first wave of deployments could be lead by fixed wireless deployments. On the other hand, it does [...]

AT&T says it will launch mobile 5G in Indianapolis this year. AT&T previously had said Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Raleigh and Waco would be early to get 5G as well. Keep in mind that AT&T already launched 5G Evolution in Indianapolis in 2017. That means a peak [...]

In the early going, an order of magnitude (10 times) to two orders of magnitude (100 times) change in the cost of supplying internet bandwidth might be the key early value of 5G networks. In other words, vastly-lower cost per bit is going to drive early revenue model changes. That might be true [...]

Observers hoping for a big change in consumer spending on 5G are likely to be disappointed. With one key caveat–that internet of things revenues generated by services sold to enterprises are quite another matter–trends in the U.K. telecom business between 2012 and 2017 suggest how [...]

One basic rule I use when evaluating service provider business models is to assume that tier-one service providers lose about half their current revenue about every 10 years, and therefore have to replace more than that amount of revenue to sustain growth. The rule likely works even for small [...]

“Korea Telecom estimated that on average 5G networks would need four times the amount of transmitters per given area compared to 4G networks,” the World Economic Forum has said.  That might seem like a lot of new cell sites. But what it generally means is that existing 4G sites will need to [...]

It should come as no surprise that spectrum costs to support 5G are dropping, on a MegaHertz per POP (person) basis, which is how we measure prices. MHz-POP prices are dropping for reasons of basic supply and demand. First of all, supply is growing by 10 to 100 times over the total amount of [...]