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All based on what you tell me are your key interests. IoT in 5G? Edge in the Data Center? Germany competition? Spectrum sharing? Price of phones? Is Open-RAN ready? or … I spend untold hours researching every week, with help from Google translate. Guaranteed to find useful information easily missed.
A monthly customized news presentation, probably via Zoom, with plenty of time for your questions.
Up to six calls looking for specific information, such as the history of a new customer or a country’s regulatory policy. Including a reasonable amount of research.
Brainstorms on your new ideas, combined with reality checks. Any reasonable amount of time.
Regular emails when I discover news important to you. E.g. The customer of a client has a new initiative that would be natural for sales follow-up.
Targeted package, $300/month, paid quarterly. Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded.
I’ve been covering the industry since 1999, always trying to get closer to the truth. I’ve learned from hundreds of the best. If you’re trying to understand telecom, I’m always happy to exchange ideas. If you’re in the industry and need answers, ask me. Our consulting rates are fair and if I can’t help you I’ll say so. Dave Burstein daveb@dslprime.com
5G: The Facts and the Future is probably the best current review publicly available. It’s free. 60 pages, loaded with data and projections. No hype. Worldwide coverage, updated weekly. tl;dr unless you’re really interested in wireless.
5G is not going to change the world, no matter what you hear from Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, or Angela Merkel. None of them have any idea what they are talking about. The hype level is far beyond anything else I’ve seen in 22 years of reporting.
~63 million people had 5G phones at the end of June 2020. By August, 100 million. Demand is exploding in Asia, mostly China, where decent 5G phones sell for US$199-260. Yearend 5G will be between 200 million and 240 million.
Update September 1. Realme has just released a phone so cheap I probably should raise my estimates. See Realme 5G down to $145 Bloomberg has the rumor that all the new iPhones in 2020 will be 5G. end update
Advanced wireless delivers useful improvements for us in the industry. Hans Vestberg at Verizon estimates his costs are down 90%. But performance generally is disappointing. Latency is typically 25-40 millisecond, not close to the promised 1 ms. With few exceptions, speeds are from 50 Mbps (some low-band) to 400 Mbps. Most of Europe is 100-200 Mbps; Korea claims much higher speeds.
There are no exciting new apps that don’t work fine in 4G. After 18 months, none. I hope some thrilling new apps will appear over time. Some “use cases” are false narratives. Better and cheaper wireless is good for all of us, but not life-changing.
Open-RAN is exciting and working in 4G. Rakuten has 5,000 radios in service. CTO Tareq Amin has had to spend hundreds of millions on custom chips because Open-RAN is not quite ready. It remains the logical choice for new networks and new areas, but Vodafone CTO Scott Petty doesn’t expect primary deployments of Open-RAN until 2023-2025.
This will soon be part of my book, 5G. I have drafts of sections on applications (few,) strategies (take advantage of 5G capacity and low costs,) companies (watch Jio, Rakuten, and the new software vendors, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless, Radisys/Jio, & Altiostar,) and informed regulation, Ask me for 0.7 versions if these are important topics for you.
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Future updates @analysisbranch
Saudi Arabia average 5G download 414 Mbps, 34% coverage leads the world. US, Europe mostly dismal. Open Signal (I didn’t believe it at first either. STC has upgraded 3,000 of 7,000 towers. See Zain Saudi Arabia: 5G 248 Mbps, ping 17 ms
5G phone prices in China are down to US$199 (Coolpad.) Half a dozen phones are available from $214-$260. That includes the Xiaomi K30, two from Huawei/Honor, Oppo, and Realme. The Coolpad, distributed by China Telecom, uses the new Tiger T7510 chip, designed in China by Ziguang Zhanrui. Qualcomm has announced the 690 chip, also designed for 5G phones under $200. I believe the low price of phones will drive demand over 200 million units in 2020, the highest estimate in the West. See 5G Phones $199-260,
Verizon is making a big push for 4G fixed wireless. Turkcell added 91,000 4G fixed customers in Q2. Inseego has a slew of orders for FWA routers. The 5G version has an improved antenna that Verizon is very hopeful about.
Pompeo announces the Great Firewall of Washington + 30 other countries is a huge policy story that will affect many things but not 5G standards from 3GPP. China is too strong. Ericsson and others have no choice but to follow because China is 70% of 5G. Result: on the technical level, 5G will have one world standard with China central.
17.5 million 5G phones shipped in China in June, about as many as the six month total in the entire rest of the world. However, July was down to 14 million. The 6 month total is 63.6 million. 10-14 million were sold in 2019, so the total 5G phones in China are ~75 million. That’s at least three times the total in the rest of the world. However, it is much less than the carrier figure of > 100 million “contracts,” which includes many still using 4G phones.
60% of phones sold in China in June were 5G. As prices come down elsewhere, I expect similar trends elsewhere. Almost all western telcos have such low counts they refuse to release figures.
MTN in South Africa has upgraded hundreds of base stations to 5G mid-band.
Performance is generally dismal compared to promises
Verizon claimed latency is 30 ms, although it sometimes measures lower. That’s 30% lower than 4G averages, although 4G latency is also falling. T-Mobile’s tested average 5G speed is 49 Mbps and AT&T’s 61 Mbps. The Open Signal chart at left for June summarizes over 10,000 tests. Compare it to the 4G results from Canada, 69 Mbps at Bell and 75 Mbps at Telus.
Mid-band spectrum allows 5G (and 4G) to reach 100’s of megabits, as confirmed by the British 5G companies and the Korean data from Open Signal below. Neville Ray says his lightly loaded new network at 2.5 GHz averages speeds over 300 Mbps. Korean government tests claim speeds average over 600 Mbps, much higher than reported by similar networks elsewhere. I need more data.
Do 5G speeds change what we do on the Internet?
Ask yourself, what can you do at 250 Mbps that you can’t do at 75 Mbps? 4K video typically is 15 Mbps; few of us watch more than three 4K videos at once. Huge downloads are faster, but how often do you download huge files? All claims of economic benefits depend on superior applications, which aren’t on the horizon. Nearly all the “studies” that find economic returns describe applications like IoT and connected cars that work well in 4G. The claims are unsupportable
I’ve interviewed over 100 senior people in the industry, including CTOs of world-class carriers and many of the inventors. Almost all are horrified by how the marketing people, the politicians, and some dreamers abuse the facts.
5G use is exploding. At the end of June, China had ~65 million 5G phones, Korea 7.35 million, the U.S. 4-5 million, and the rest of the world perhaps 4 million. 5
As Chinese phone prices (US$199-260) reach the West and Apple releases the 5G iPhone, monthly growth will reach more than 20 million per month. See 5G Phones $199-260
By August, 5G users have reached 100 million. 14 million phones shipped in China in July
“5G still doesn’t have any use cases,” writes top Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett.
Releases in draft: December 2020 estimate of 210 million. 2022 1.5B. Quoted Washington Post: Burstein estimates Chinese consumers will buy up to 200 million 5G phones next year … NY Times: It’s impossible to have a widespread network that quickly …
Canadian telcos claim 5G at 1.7 Gbps. Actually, in the spectrum they have, 300 Mbps would be extraordinary in a real test. In the lab, they can combine four 4G bands (1.2-1.4 Gbps) with a single 5G band to reach that figure. 4G is still faster than low-band 5G until many problems are solved.
The first substantial 5G testing results are unbelievably bad. (Open Signal.) The scam of “low-band 5G,” spreading in Germany, is slower than decent 4G. Indoor results, including mid-band, are dismal.:
Verizon mmWave 5G customers connected 0.4% of the time despite $billions spent on the network.
Korea has >90% outdoor coverage but only 15% 5G connection rate
My analysis, that 5G capacity would be great, may be totally unsound.
Latency at Verizon is 30 ms; no 5G deployment has very low latency. 1-10 ms is a fantasy outside the labs.
10-20 ms latency will be possible in the few places outside China building Edge networks.
17.6 million 5G phones in June in China is on track for 150 million year-end. Fine phones from US$230-260 and $13 service plans driving demand, although few practical uses have developed.
Craig Moffett warns about “the fallacy of marginal cost advantage. … It’s not true with telecom.” Remarkable technical advances have resulted in more capacity almost everywhere than the telcos can sell. Result: the low costs of Verizon’s mmWave or Rakuten’s new network are useless unless buyers can be found. Verizon’s Hans Vestberg is learning that the hard way.
A huge question for Edge inside telco networks is whether the web giants will take over. It’s now clear most Edge is a hybrid cloud and hybrid clouds need huge teams of engineers to manage. Many telcos are deciding to hand over to the web giants and take a (modest) percentage. Even the telcos building their own, like Verizon and DT, will find profits hard to come by, Pal Zarandy notes. “Buyers like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook with massive bargaining power would bargain away MNOs’ margins. Near zero marginal cost network economics => near zero margin to be made on wholesale access.” He’s talking about other services than Edge but the point holds. Will the telcos be able to cash in on their terminating monopoly? To be seen.
Keith Bradsher in the NY Times dramatically makes clear the effectiveness of industrial policy support in his article on the growth of Chinese medical supply manufacturers. Indian telecom production is booming under protectionism. Ericsson & Nokia benefit from over a $billion in EU R&D in 5G. The US chip industry has come together to demand $30 billion. Senator Mark Warner wants $billion for 5G in the U.S. From cruises to autos to pharma, business leaders decry government support except for their own companies. US policy for 40 years has been to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, although only a small fraction of the money goes to expanding investment. The money would be far more effectively used for investment in strategic industries. That works whether the government is capitalist or communist – so long as it’s not captured by industry or totally corrupt.
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on.” If you’d like America’s top China trade rep to speak for you instead, Jeffrey Gerrish has abandoned Trump and returned to Skadden Arps. Million dollar retainers expected.
“What jumped out to me was how users’ current thoughts are mostly around smartphones, IoT/sensor data collection, display boards, CCTV and so on. Whereas MNOs are focused on automation, robots, AR/VR and the ‘sexier’ applications.” Dean Bubley writes, adding that all the likely apps work fine on 4G. Telefonica CTO Enrique Blanco also wonders whether 5G is actually needed for IoT. (Hint: not.)
Some people still think 5G is expensive to build. AT&T & Orange are cutting capex while building 5G. Deutsche Telecom is keeping it flat. 5G does not cost more than 4G.
Tim Hottges, CEO of DT, is the Great Welsher. TMO wants out of merger agreements to serve 93% of Californians with carefully tested 300 Mbps by 2024 and to cut 1,000 jobs.
Telcos’ greatest problem: demand growth is slowing while technology is increasing at a ferocious rate. Hans Vestberg of Verizon claims, and I can confirm, that cost per bit is going down at 40%/year. Traffic growth is now typically 25%-35%. Every investor implicitly acknowledges this: the number of subscribers is crucial to the stock price response after quarterly earnings. That’s the reason why millimeter wave, the real 5G, finds so little demand. When the enormous capacity of mid-band spectrum became clear, carriers realized they would have more capacity than they could sell without mmWave. The primary factor in telco profitability is how close the carriers come to cartel-like pricing. CEOs talk about “rational pricing,” a true description that should be a signal to antitrust enforcers. When carriers have unused capacity in most locations, the natural act is to break from the (unspoken) cartel.
For a good understanding of AI today, read Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it by Martin Ford. To understand China, the U.S. and what’s going on, Kai-Fu Lee’s AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order is deeply informed but easy to read. AI/Machine Learning has limits. It is great for translation, video surveillance, and speech recognition. It’s been disappointing, so far, in tasks like network optimization. (That could change)
Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud are crucial trends in data centers, Equinix is demonstrating, per Nick Del Deo of Moffett.
