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, present views on 5G introduction seem similar to that of 3G, according to McKinsey consultants. “The [...]

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 backhaul requirements. But service providers have found many ways to contain costs, in part by [...]

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 less relevant after 4G networks are in place because of the faster speeds and more abundant [...]

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 substitute for mobile access? The 2006 launch of Fon showed the degree of commercial interest. In [...]

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. How much new fiber will be required depends on how much smaller the cell sites are, existing assets to [...]

“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 now might become an issue for internet access as well. “I will say over time three to five year time [...]

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 intensified, just as some of the mobile service providers argue about who has “the fastest [...]

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 markets that are competitive in most respects. But we might be on the cusp of something maybe we did [...]

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 want more investment in next-generation networks and produce less. Good intentions produce harmful [...]

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 improve operations. Perhaps the bigger question is where, and whether, they can leverage customer 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 725,000 accounts, virtually all the gains were made by Reliance Jio. BSNL got a small percentage of [...]

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 creditworthiness. The issue is the extent to which mobile service providers or their partners have in their [...]