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As part of my recent chairing of the broadband conference  at CommunicAsia for the Pacific Telecommunications Council, I made a couple of short presentations on why I believe internet of things and 5G are so important, and coming so fast. It was a simple argument, if not immediately obvious in a region where, in many […]

When observers say the “cost” of supplying telecom services is “too high,” and must be made more affordable, the obvious and direct implication is that somewhere in the supply ecosystem, some participants are going to see a reduction in value and revenue, allowing the final end product–internet access–to be provided to “everyone,” at prices they […]

If you take the long view, some “news” items are not surprising. If you observe that mobile data revenues are peaking, then it is not too surprising when a decline occurs. Analyst Chetan Sharma notes that U.S. mobile data services revenue had seen quarter-over-quarter growth for 17 straight years until the first quarter of 2017 […]

Service providers differ on the importance of moving fast to 5G, a difference that was true when some had reasons for going slower on 4G to maximize the value of 3G investments. There are, to be sure, reasons to develop the full set of standards, rather than portions of the standard that can be put […]

It is easy to argue that 5G is different from prior mobile network generations. It is the first network intentionally designed to serve non-human users; the first to support gigabit speeds to every connected device; yet also the first to simultaneously support low-bandwidth apps and devices consuming very little power; the first air interface built […]

John de Ridder at IT Wire asks a couple of important questions about a possible end to scarcity of mobile bandwidth; price points for mobile bandwidth that could make mobile data usage a substitute product for fixed internet access, and at least conceptually, the idea that mobile might, in the 5G era, become a functional […]

Spectrum prices are going to quite important in the 5G era, for fundamental reasons related to changing mobile business models. Higher network investment and limited revenue upside are among the key issues. The next generation of 5G networks will cost more than 3G and 4G networks did, in part because they will use small cells. […]

Even if it is possible to say that each generation of mobile networks has used a new and specific set of spectrum resources, that pattern will be broken by 5G, if only because so many different bands will be used. What will be new are millimeter wave resources. But refarming and some new low-band spectrum […]

Among the expected upsides of new virtualized core networks is support for virtual networks that can be optimized by customer. The virtualized feature known as network slicing allows virtual private networks to be created across the core, and through the 5G radio network, to support different mobile virtual network operator customers, for example. Network slicing […]