Network architectures and communication protocols are not the primary concern of most people who work in and around the telecommunications industry, but architectures always reflect the dominant business models in each era. One way of stating the principle is that networks always have been [...]

It might seem like hyperbole to claim that, in the 5G and future eras, all device access will be untethered. Not most; all. So  here’s the logic: “access” increasingly means the way a device or person reaches the core network. Though there is a specific definition within telecommunications for [...]

Network architectures always directly reflect perceptions of what drives revenue. Many decades ago, the architecture of a telecom network, in a single domain, was simple.   Traffic passed between active switch nodes, within and across across domain boundaries. The business model was simple: [...]

Mobility “broke” some rules about telecom architecture, namely the rule that the public network terminated on the side of a house or in the basement of a building or inside a wiring closet. In the traditional world of business phone and data systems, the indoor network was private and owned by [...]

Forecasts of near-term 5G revenue are nearly meaningless, since most of the revenue will come from mobile customers shifting from 4G to 5G networks. So most of the 5G revenue is a simple substitution of 5G for 4G, with the exception of any price increases suppliers are able to command for 5G [...]

Will MulteFire replace Wi-Fi in many enterprise settings? In some cases. More likely is coexistence of Wi-Fi and MulteFire, as mobile device connectivity inside the building becomes a new imperative, and as new internet of things sensor networks are deployed. It seems most likely that either [...]

Some 23 mobile operators have commercially launched 41 mobile internet of things networks worldwide, including  both NB-IoT and LTE-M platforms NB-IoT networks are available from 3 Hong Kong (Hong Kong); China Mobile (China, Hong Kong); China Telecom (China); China Unicom (China); Chunghwa [...]

Analogies sometimes are helpful when trying to understand the underlying dynamics of the “telecom” industry. In past centuries, telecom might reasonably have been likened to roads, pipelines, electrical or water utilities. They were considered “natural monopolies” not amenable to competition, [...]

Here are two examples of innovation in the telecom industry that come from “outside” the industry. First, Amazon’s Alexa and the line of Amazon voice appliances has created a new platform for consumer voice. Basically, Alexa is becoming a voice-activated “home phone.” The other example is [...]

Consumers are rational. That is why they use Wi-Fi. But they might be equally rational in the 5G era when there is no financial advantage to offloading mobile device access. The data seems unclear, at the moment, but if users pay no penalty for remaining on the mobile network all the time, that [...]

With the caveat that many continue to doubt the likelihood, an argument can be made that, as mobile substitution has become a reality for voice services, messaging and now stands to happen for video entertainment, mobile substitution for internet access can become a widespread reality as well, [...]

Coming 5G networks might change use cases in many ways. Growth of new use cases might well be driven by enterprise, not consumer apps, by sensors requiring communications, more than people needed communications. But consumer behavior, on their smartphones especially, could change as well, as a [...]