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 [...]

Virtually all observers believe that there is a causal relationship between ubiquitous high-quality internet access and economic growth, even if nobody can prove the relationship is causal. So it is not surprising that some believe 5G will “cause” economic growth as well. Many have [...]

As 5G networks come online, more executives are going to evaluate 5G fixed wireless, both in from a mobile service provider and a fixed network service provider perspective. United States Cellular, for example, already offers a fixed wireless service using 4G. “We have a 4G fixed wireless [...]

In the 5G era, we might finally discover that we have enough bandwidth to do anything we want, and other issues will become more important. That is not to say aggregate data consumption will stop growing, or that new apps will develop to use the capabilities of the new networks. It is to say [...]

Fewer people in the U.S. market subscribe to linear video subscription services than in the past, that is clear. But there are some possible subtle qualifications worth noting. Traditionally, linear video subscriptions were purchased by “households,” much as traditional voice services were [...]

Juniper Research forecasts that mobile voice revenues will fall from $354 billion in 2018 to $197 billion by 2023, an annual decline of 10 percent. That will likely not surprise anybody familiar with the voice calling market. In a real sense, carrier voice services have become more a key [...]

Consumers do not buy components; they buy products with capabilities. Likewise, most people who work in the internet access, content or related service provider services do not sell or need to know much about the underlying details of how devices, platforms or technologies work. For that [...]

5G fixed wireless is more than clever; more than a way to use a mobile platform to compete with fixed network internet access providers for the first time. No, 5G fixed wireless represents a fundamental reworking of assumptions about mobile network cost and retail pricing of mobile data [...]

Ideas sometimes take decades to emerge as commercial realities, something we will likely see with artificial intelligence, internet of things, connected cars, and possible even edge computing. Decades, not years. Consider the ways Wi-Fi-based voice of the type cable TV operators offer. The [...]