Matt Kapko | EditorFebruary 21, 2021 3:00 PM

The introduction of millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum for 5G networks presents network operators with a unique, and in many cases, first of its kind assortment of challenges and opportunities.

The vast majority of 5G deployments to date ride on mid- or low-band spectrum, but the dramatic gains that mmWave spectrum can deliver in speed, capacity, and lower latency are without compare in the context of mobile architecture.

However, the costs operators will have to endure to deploy robust and reliable 5G mmWave networks are massive. And therein lies the rub. At least until equipment, and specialized use cases can help offset those costs.

Much of the early hype around 5G focused on mmWave because executives could point to gigabit-plus speeds, lower latency, and fantastical use cases, but the economics don’t bear out and are unlikely to until later this decade.

Read more at: https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/sizing-up-the-gains-pains-of-5g-mmwave/2021/02/

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By John Lorinc Atkinson Fellow Wed., Jan. 13, 2021

A languishing brownfield site. A developer’s visions of castles in the sky. Corporate partnerships to build cutting-edge smart city infrastructure. And the promise of luring tech giants prepared to invest billions.

The hype could have easily described Sidewalk Labs’ now aborted Toronto venture, but this story actually played out near Boston, on a decommissioned airbase in Weymouth, about half an hour southwest of a city known for its Ivy League colleges and the booming tech industry spawned by MIT.

When LStar, a North Carolina developer, began building Union Point in the mid-2010s on that base, it looked a lot like many generic master-planned edge city projects. But a partnership LStar established with General Electric in 2017 promised much more: not just a fully wired community, but intelligent lighting (LED street lamps that can be remotely monitored), autonomous vehicles, green energy “micro-grids” and streets equipped with sensors that would gauge traffic, locate parking spots and even alert police if gunshots were detected.

As the New York Times noted: “General Electric will use Union Point as a laboratory for testing new products and as a showroom for working systems.” It could have been describing Sidewalk.

LStar and Weymouth officials were so bullish they believed Union Point was a shoo-in to be chosen as Amazon’s second headquarters, a strange urban beauty contest that drew bids from cities across North America, including Toronto. As Kyle Corkum, LStar’s managing partner, told the Boston Business Journal, “I feel sorry for the rest of the competition in the United States, because, honest to God, I have a hard time imagining another site that can score the way we’re going to score.”

Amazon, of course, ended up choosing New York (which promptly changed its mind), and the rest of LStar’s Union Point vision soon collapsed in a cloud of recriminations, lawsuits and complaints from residents who couldn’t even buy a cup of coffee in their cutting edge techno-burb. “The Smart City That Wasn’t” is the cutting verdict handed down by the Journal of American Institute of Architects.

In a bid to contain the damage, Weymouth authorities took desperate measures to push out LStar, even blocking sewer hookups. In January of this year, Toronto developer Brookfield was chosen to take over the languishing project and develop it in a more conventional way.

A McGill University study published in 2019 in the journal Cities concluded, “Union Point represents an example of how smart city rhetoric seduced local officials who were dazzled by the possibility of having an instantly lucrative, tech-focused ‘smart’ city.” What they missed, the authors noted, was the fact that so many of these smart city megaprojects had turned into expensive disappointments.

Read more at https://www.thestar.com/news/atkinsonseries/2021/01/13/smart-city-megaprojects-get-a-lot-of-hype-so-why-do-so-many-turn-out-to-be-expensive-disappointments.html

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5G was supposed to be a revolution. So far in 2020, it’s not even been a great evolution.

December 15, 2020

By Vlad-Gabriel Anghel, DCPRO

We are reaching the end of 2020, a tumultuous year that saw us realign our priorities, re-imagine our surroundings and adapt to a new way of living – at least for the duration of the pandemic.

This was supposed to be the year in which 5G hit the big time, with wide rollout, breakneck speeds and huge bandwidth. And while it has appeared in certain instances, it seems that the real world results of 5G are, at best, underwhelming, and at worst offer no improvement over former generations of mobile communications.

Historically, rollout of different generations of mobile networks has always taken several years. And while 5G standards are adopted at a quicker rate thanks to some level of interoperability between this and prior network standards, the near snail’s pace of true stand-alone 5G rollout is starting to dent the idea that 5G will reshape industries and markets.

There are two variants of 5G: non-stand-alone (NSA) and stand-alone (SA) architecture. The majority of current deployments have been of the non-stand-alone variant, a variant which relies on LTE (“4G”) for its control channels.

Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/ydydemst

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By David Manners, 9th November 2020

“As many as 562,656 people have switched from 5G to LTE,” says a member of Korea’s National Assembly, Hong Jung-min, who sits on the country’s Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee.

That represents about 6.5% of total 5G subscribers at SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus – the three Korean networks.

“Changing a contract requires troublesome procedures, but nevertheless, consumers cancel 5G contracts because they are disgusted with poor quality, inadequate coverage and high fee structures,” says Hong, “telecom operators should make efforts to improve the quality and customer satisfaction of their 5G services.”

Read more at https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/koreans-unhappy-5g-performance-2020-11/

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U.S. carriers don’t have the right airwaves or network architecture for widespread 5G use just yet.

By JOHN HENDEL

11/06/2020 09:00 AM EST

The buzz about super-fast 5G wireless service has been building in the U.S. for years. The next White House now stands poised to deliver — at a time when U.S. rivals are also scrambling to light up this next-gen cellular service.

Right now, most Americans have never experienced the eye-popping speeds that big wireless carriers have spent years hyping, promising service that is 100 times faster than 4G speeds. Apple just unveiled its first 5G-capable iPhones in time for holiday shopping. But while CEO Tim Cook played up the big speeds as he stood alongside Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg, the new iPhone’s reviews already state the obvious: 5G isn’t the real selling point.

U.S. carriers don’t have the right airwaves or network architecture to really allow for widespread, robust 5G use just yet, which will be a pressing challenge for whoever occupies the White House — especially as China bursts into the lead in the so-called race to 5G.

“China has cemented its position as a global leader in 5G,” wireless trade group GSMA recently declared, noting that China likely accounts for 70 percent of global 5G connections this year.

Joe Biden may be positioned to change that, should the Democrat win the White House, picking up where President Donald Trump left off. Even in divided government, 5G could prove a source of rare bipartisan unity.

Read more at: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/06/5g-wireless-challenges-white-house-434533

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By John Xie October 10, 2020

Mounted on rooftops, utility poles and streetlights throughout China since last year are hundreds of thousands of high-tech wireless towers for 5G, a powerful sign of the country’s ambition to lead in new technology. Yet many of them are operational for only half the day.

China Unicom, one of three telecommunication operators, announced in August that its Luoyang branch in Henan province would automatically switch its 5G transmitter stations to sleep mode from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. because there were few people using them. The other two carriers quickly followed suit and since then have rolled out the same policies in other cities across the country.

“Shutting down base stations is not a manual shutdown, but an automatic adjustment made at a certain time,” Wang Xiaochu, chairman of China Unicom, said at the company’s midyear earnings conference.

5G is one of the biggest technology investments in China’s recent history. Touted as the next big leap forward in digital communication, the 5th generation mobile network technology is supposed to change the world and spur a new digital revolution.

China officially launched its commercial 5G networks in September 2019 with the promise of delivering unprecedented digital speed to support new applications from autonomous driving to virtual surgery. More than a year later, the biggest 5G market is now facing widespread complaints about network speed and skyrocketing costs of deployments.

Read more at: https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/voa-news-china/chinese-5g-not-living-its-hype

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The body responsible for developing the standards governing 5G technology has signaled that its inability to meet in person is causing a slowdown in developing new technical standards.

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) announced on 21 September that it is expecting a delay in 5G standards of a minimum six months – and potentially longer. That in turn is likely to delay the deployment of many of the innovative use cases envisioned for the platform.

The 3GPP defines new standards for 5G radios, core network infrastructure, supporting systems and services, and 5G handsets and other end-user devices. The 3GPP’s three Technical Specification Groups are tasked with developing and agreeing on hundreds of work items required to enable new 5G capabilities.

Excerpt:

“even though the 5G era is now underway with Release 15 and now 16, Release 17 contains a lengthy list of technical work items that are crucial for the platform to come close to matching the hype that has been attributed to it over the past few years.”

Read more at: https://www.verdict.co.uk/3gpp-5g-covid-standards/

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BRUSSELS—Europe’s deployment of 5G cellular-communications networks is alarmingly slow, says a lobbying group of the Continent’s biggest companies, warning that Europe is far behind other regions despite being home to two of the world’s top telecommunications companies. https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-is-falling-behind-on-5g-rollout-top-companies-warn-11600408801?mod=e2tw

Slow 5G rollout a risk to Europe’s supply chains, warn industrialists https://www.ft.com/content/6ce2a89c-7b54-4929-8a2f-09ac8e967147

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https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/afriforum-submits-commentary-against-proposed-5g-policy-2020-09-01

1ST SEPTEMBER 2020

BY: NATASHA ODENDAAL
CREAMER MEDIA SENIOR DEPUTY EDITOR

The civil rights organisation AfriForum has raised its concerns that the Draft Policy and Policy Direction on Rapid Deployment of Electronic Communication Networks and Facilities, or fifth-generation (5G) policy, will violate property rights and pose specific safety risks to landowners.

In a written response to the draft, submitted to the Department of Communication and Digital Technologies on September 1, the organisation said it was not against technological advancement, however, it needs to progress in a responsible and constitutional manner without violating people’s fundamental rights.

Extract:

AfriForum therefore contends that the proposed policy, which allows entry and installation without proper compensation, is arbitrary and unconstitutional.

Read the full article at:

https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/afriforum-submits-commentary-against-proposed-5g-policy-2020-09-01

Added note by EMFSA:

In the link below readers can give their support to Afriforum

https://www.afriforum.co.za/5g-regulasies/.

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We appreciate you taking the time to read our newsletter.

The EMFSA Team

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