5G challenges ahead — costs and regulation still to be determined
5G is hoped to deliver as much as a 100x increase in throughput to 10 Gbits/second per connection, some links at new low latencies and many new services, some over yet-to-be-defined spectrum. Industry experts hope 5G cellular bands will range from below 6 GHz to 100 GHz.
Standardization of the band below 6 GHz may occur in November at the ITU-R- sponsored World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC), but earlier comments from the ITU chair encouraged waiting until there was absolute consensus. At the same time, panelists at MWC agreed that the roll out and practical application of 5G technologies is more of a commercial proposition, begging the question of where the intersection of economics and long-term infrastructure lies for a 2020 deployment.
Countries such as Japan and Korea are already working toward early adoption of 5G, 3GPP Chair Balazs Betenyi said. The requirements of those countries will need to be met, and influence of these early adopters is part of a unique feedback loop unheard of in older communications standards, he said.
As host of the 2018 Winter Olympics, Korea has a tangible reason to invest in the new radio access networks and other infrastructure for 5G. Countries and operators with less pressing international issues may have less of a reason to invest early. Ericsson CTO Ulf Ewaldsson said there will need to be an 80% reduction in system costs for 5G to become ubiquitous.
Details of link quality, price and the availability of the network are often determined by the market, Etisalat Group CTO Hatem Bamatraf said, adding that this is usually a three-to-five-year process and often not technically driven. License requirements can become more important than the technology itself in cases where service providers can be penalized for violation of regulatory obligations, he said.
The European commission will invest €700 million in 5G research and development over the next five years with the expectation that industry will match this contribution five times over to total €4.2 billion. During a panel discussion on 5G requirements, Moderator Dan Warren, GSMA director of technology standards, questioned how networks and operators plan to gain real revenue to offset investments.
A continuous flow of software deployment and technical development, which Ewaldsson called an “evolutionary approach,” will be essential in convincing skeptical customers to upgrade and also provide revenue opportunities.
I think many operators and many of my customers are extremely concerned about making any investments for a completely new system, so I think the evolutionary approach is the only one that is viable at the moment. That means that there will be a continuous upgrade and flow, and eventually we will meet those requirements.
Mischa Dohler, professor of wireless communications at King’s College in London, said a significant decrease in capex can be achieved by “making someone else pay for the party.” Markets such as oil and gas that require machine-to-machine communications (a market expected to explode in 5G) are ready to roll out technology that helps connect equipment for better data analysis, he said.
“When you start rolling out [infrastructure] industry by industry, suddenly you kind of crowd-source the deployment,” Dohler said.
Huawei Chief Mobile Officer Yang Chaobin added 5G should be easier to deploy and operate than previous comms generations. Multi-standard radio networks, the backbone of 5G, can operate different technologies on the same frequency. This not only solves issue of compliance, but decreases the burden of paying for new hardware.
An audience member questioned how these multi-industry networks would comply with net neutrality, suggesting that managing traffic on new frequencies could be considered unequal treatment. Ewaldsson said emerging discussions about creating two Internets – one industrial and one “regular”—to differentiate services may solve compliance issues.
Papers and statements from the Federal Communications Commission are not taking into consideration such a development, so I think the industry needs to do better in explaining what are the advantages of what we can offer in 5G and not to be seen as blocking and throttling people’s access to Internet.
Networks are currently not smart enough to support the equivalent of two Internets, said Chaesub Lee, director of standardization bureau ITU. The industry must figure out how to classify traffic beyond broadband and broadcast before it can discuss how to deliver massive data.
“Our treatment of traffic is not a good system or smart enough to support all the business models…That’s a real world problem; these 5G networks should have enough capabilities to provide a smarter way to provide traffic management,” Lee said.
Dohler said the cellular network definitely needs a new generation of technology, not just improvement upon existing standards, because it is “always at the limit”.”
“We’re really after a paradigm shift in orders of magnitude…If you want to achieve this order of magnitude improvement you have to have certain breakthroughs and that will hopefully come through with 5G development,” he said.
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