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In the 3G era, business models were  unclear at the onset. And though we forget, that was true for the 4G era as well. So we should not be surprised that uncertainty exists around 5G. In fact, [...]

It was easier to find skeptics about 5G capital investment costs a few years ago, when some predicted service providers could not afford 5G at all, because of the huge increase in cell sites an [...]

The amount of traffic offloaded from smartphones will be 59 percent by 2022, and the amount of traffic offloaded from tablets will be 72 percent. Some have speculated that Wi-Fi offload would be [...]

Over the past 20 years (some time after consumer Wi-Fi was launched about 1997)  there has been a recurring–if now relatively muted–theme in the wireless access business: is Wi-Fi a [...]

Everyone seems to agree that mobile 5G networks using millimeter wave spectrum will require denser backhaul networks, as the millimeter waves will not reach as far as lower-frequency spectrum. [...]

“Mobile substitution” for voice has been a global trend since the advent of 2G networks. In fact, mobile is the only sort of ubiquitous network in most parts of the world. But that [...]

As U.S. mobile operators get ready to launch–or have already launched–5G services, the sparring over “who is first with 5G” and “who is offering real 5G” has [...]

The global telecom industry began to move from monopoly to competition in the late 1980s and early 1990s. So in some cases we now are 40 years into that process, and most countries have telecom [...]

Telecom and internet regulators often create policies that have effects opposite of what they intended. They want more competition and then create policies that lead to less competition. They [...]

Privacy rules might well affect how much mobile service providers can monetize customer behavior. People tend to understand that mobile and other service providers have mined their data to [...]

Reliance Jio was the big winner, and Vodafone Idea the big loser for net account additions in India’s mobile services market in October 2018, according to TRAI. Though the industry gained a net [...]

The digital footprint any mobile user leaves can equal or exceed the information content of credit bureau scores, a team of researchers claims. In other words, it is possible to determine [...]

The satellite services industry faces challenges similar to those faced by other connectivity providers, namely a shift of demand. In 2017, 75 percent of service provider revenues were generated [...]

Reliance Jio was the big winner, and Vodafone Idea the big loser for net account additions in India’s mobile services market in October 2018, according to TRAI. Though the industry gained a net [...]

Among the bigger questions for 5G service providers is whether the business model is going to be better than 4G and 3G, or worse. Perhaps that should not be a key question, but global service [...]