Some 300 million 5G handsets will have been sold by 2025, Strategy Analytics predicts. That forecast assumes seven percent of global subscribers will be on 5G networks by 2025. “While the first commercial 5G handsets will appear in small numbers in 2020 in South Korea and Japan, from 2021 more [...]

There are times when the amount of communications capacity, as available to consumers across the globe, becomes more equal, and times when there is more inequality. We seem to be heading for a time when gaps grow again. Since 2006, gaps have tended to shrink, globally. In 2012, by one analysis, [...]

SK Telecom is spending 100 billion Korean won ($89 million) on a nationwide Internet of Things network, platform and apps development between now and the end of 2017.  SK Telecom sees both LTE and LoRaWAN as necessary platforms for Internet of Things and machine-to-machine services and [...]

We will have to see whether revenue expectations for the big spectrum auction in India this fall are as overstated as they appear to be in the United States. In India, the issue is that debt burdens incurred for expensive spectrum are dangerous at a time when growing price wars are virtually [...]

Over the top apps are a perennial issue for access providers, most immediately because some OTT apps are direct or indirect competitors to the carrier services that drive revenue and profit for the telecom service provider industry. By this point it is clear to all that OTT voice represents a [...]

The next generation of mobile networks will be quite different from the four that preceded it. For starters, 5G is the first mobile platform deliberately being built to support applications serving machines and sensors, not devices used directly by people. It also is clear that 5G is the first [...]

Google has hired a former Viasat executive to act as general manager of the commercial service, which might not only serve people across the Southern Hemisphere, but also across the United States. Google already has sought experimental authorization from the U.S. Federal Communications [...]

As part of the City Wi-Fi Roaming project, 23 tier-one mobile service providers have joined forces to work on providing free international public wifi roaming in cities around the world. Singapore is the first city in Asia to announce its participation in the project. The City Wi-Fi Roaming [...]

Money paid by one carrier to another now is a big issue in India. Simply, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) wants to change the fees mobile networks charge each other to terminate calls. Today, an interconnection charge for terminating a mobile call generates 14 paise [...]

“Bandwidth on demand” has been a goal of next-generation networks for quite some time. But most of those ideas have revolved around the ability of a single provider to supply its own customers bandwidth on a liquid basis. Perhaps more challenging are concepts that extend bandwidth [...]

Fully 85 percent of surveyed Asia-based mobile service providers believe partnerships with over-the-top (OTT) providers give, or will give their organizations, a competitive advantage in the region that will contribute to revenue and subscriber growth, Alepo says. While just over half of [...]

In the telecom business, some things do not change: not every customer segment or geography is equally profitable. If, in a country such as India, 75 percent of new mobile Internet customers come from rural areas, then it is possible to say that service providers will likely lose money on [...]