Guest Blog:
‘5G’ is the Donald Trump of telecom
5G is the hottest topic in wireless circles, so I spent some time researching it. I chased articles everywhere, reading the best available information and insights. And while I can never get those hours back, I can save you the trouble, because contrary to scores of explanations of what 5G is, here’s what I found.
5G is nothing.
At best, it’s a set of superlatives in want of a plan. “5G” is going to be: Great! Awesome! Amazing! And there’s a special school somewhere that’s passing out phrases like, “orders of magnitude” and “empowering the IoT”, “enabling technologies never before imagined”, blah, blah, blah, “millimeter wave”, and yeah, don’t forget “densification”. It’s all about densification. The phrases are so predictable that I’m launching a Mad Libsapp so you can plug and chug them with alacrity, and give speeches about 5G all day long.
While hours of reading and research netted me nothing, the reverse is true for telco CEOs, their lobbyists and pundits. Investors are paying them fortunes for assurances that their horse is best positioned in the 5G race. CEOs are stepping it up too, talking about “5G trials”, “field tests” and “preparing for the rollout”.
Meanwhile there seems to be universal consensus that 5G deployment will start in 2020. I don’t know how we have a date without a plan, but I’ll leave it at that and refer you to a great post by Frank Rayal, “Will 5G be the Last ‘G’?“, which includes a couple of timelines. For now, about the only thing we know about 5G, is that 5 comes after 4.
But here’s what’s really interesting.
While so many are saying so much about so little, there’s epic news going on right now in a different area of wireless tech (“fixed wireless broadband”). In fact, it’s being referred to as a “wireless renaissance“.
Wireless price/performance has recently reached the sweet spot where high-speed internet can be beamed into people’s homes, giving them faster, more economical internet, and that’s huge. Consumers will finally have a competitive choice to cable TV, and communities stranded by the side of the internet highway might finally get connected.
This isn’t something for 2020. The wave of deployment is already happening. It’s coming first by entrepreneurial wireless internet service providers (WISPs). One such business, Webpass, boasts 20,000 home subscribers and they’re so successful that Google bought them. Many others will follow. Do you doubt there’s a good business there?
Innovative wireless vendors, mainly out of Silicon Valley, are changing everything; doing things with wireless that seem to defy the laws of physics. Before 5G “rolls out” in 2020, Google and Facebook will likely be beaming internet to another two billion people. I’ll be writing a lot about this, so if this is a topic of interest for you, connect with me here and let’s talk.
Tell me what you think, and for more on telecom’s version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, read “5G Sucks” by Steven Heinsius, and check out my earlier post, “Today’s Wireless Renaissance is Bringing Faster, Cheaper Internet–Everywhere“.
At Wi-Fi NOW we’re delighted to introduce our new, illustrious guest blogger David Theodore. David is a veteran of the wireless industry – as well as an analyst who’s not afraid to speak his mind. And we like that.
Enjoy the blog and find out more about David at this link.
There is a significant amount of R&D being invested in 5G, so your comment re: 5G is nothing clearly shows that you don’t know this industry very well.
I find your slam against one of our Presidential candidates a disgrace and suggest that you remove all references to it, as it is completely inappropriate for a article on wireless technology.
Hi Jim. You are of course welcome to disagree. We’re a few folks – with a lot of mobile industry experience – who believe that the research is great, but that this does mean that 5G actually exists nor is in any way close to existing.
As to you second comment: We choose to use humor and satire to illustrate the point. That’s our prerogative.
Thank you for your comments, Jim,
I say “5G is nothing”, because it does not exist. It’s parents haven’t even met yet, let alone made it to first base.
RE my use of a presidential candidate to make a satirical point, it made me laugh when I thought of it, and we could use more humor in life. Meanwhile, I didn’t mention the candidate even once in the body of my piece. My general feeling about the election is that there are things I try not to see too closely, because they make me throw up in my mouth.
I appreciate that you read the piece though, Jim, and differences of opinion are quite welcome!
Agree with you on the tech. Not on the Trump comment.
You see, “one of our candidates for President” is not a position that merits ANY respect, in and of itself.
A very small minority of voters could, in theory, through the primary process, promote a total idiot as a candidate for President. I am not required to respect that process, or that person.
Now, if such a person were to be elected POTUS by a fair process, and something resembling a majority, then I would have to respect that POTUS, like it or not, because of the weight of the support from my fellow citizens. That person would be your President, and also mine, and the office conveys a position of honor, and demands respect.
But until that day, if David wants to denigrate Trump, then it is simply his free expression that he finds Trump the punchline of a bad joke, not a respectable figure.
Agreed. But we only need to look at how much wifi offload there is today and what might have been if Steve Jobs had not single-handedly resurrected equal access in the form of the iPhone in 2007. The reality is that the carriers were “pulled along” with 3G and 4G and only made it this far because of the pervasiveness of 802.11 access. Even then, their rollout of 4G (including VoLTE, DAS and smallcell) has been pathetic. So we’re going to leave it up to them to define and drive 5G? Good luck!
I agree, Michael. I think it can be argued the Wi-Fi has saved the mobile carriers from capacity shortage devastation.
Amen, Michael Elling. I couldn’t agree more!
David,
This was GREAT! Better than great. I love 5G. We need more 5G. Am I right? The only thing better than 5G is 6G, but we’re not ready for that, we’re not ready. And Theodore, My name is Theodore, that’s great. Keep on writing great things, really great things.
Many thanks, Theodore! I appreciate your feedback and encouragement. There’s definitely more coming. You should like my next post for later this week. 😉
David,
Your arguments are simply false…although I can’t tell if it’s because you’re ill-informed, of if it is because you want to promote Fixed Wireless Broadband at the expense of 5G. Still, it’s worth noting that 5G technologies will be useful for FWB as well as mobile.
I’m not claiming 5G is here or real. Yeah, it’s still really early. Yes, lots of exuberant superlatives are being offered by the PR teams. Well, duh. But that doesn’t prove the negative. Regardless of the PR spin, it remains true that the industry is moving swiftly, and in an organized way, towards 5G in 2020.
Now, on to the proof of your misperception. 5G is seen as nothing because it truly is a strange mixed bag of different solutions to address different usage scenarios. Sorry if it’s confusing. It is. But it’s still real.
You say there is no plan. Here’s RCR Wireless on the plan two major standards bodies, the ITU and the 3GPP, have for 5G through 2020:
http://www.rcrwireless.com/20160719/internet-of-things/5g-standards-process-tag31-tag99
You say there is no plan, but there is a group called the NGMN, whose members are the CTOs of major telecom providers and vendors. These leaders do work that precedes the standards bodies above to specify needs and use cases for each next generation of wireless. They have been hard at work for years now on 5G. I think if anyone clicked the link below, they would see that the claim of “there’s no plan” is false.
https://www.ngmn.org/home.html
Lastly, you yourself report that CEOs “are stepping it up too, talking about “5G trials”, “field tests”. Yeah. That’s what they do when they’re motivated. Carriers choose a piece of the future standard that they feel is important to them, and agree to trial early versions with an appropriate vendor. This displays a level of market demand (the carriers ARE the customers of “g” technologies), and progress. This is how the technology actually is ready for prime time by 2020.
Your knowledge of proprietary fixed wireless technology does not help you here. You should reconsider your analysis.
Derek – it’s not there is no activity. There’s just no result and the tech media talks as if 5G is a foregone conclusion. I don’t believe it is. It may never happen – at least not on the scale of 4G.
Second: Even the illustrious and now-sacked Ericsson chief Hans Vestberg admitted that he did not know what the use cases for 5G were. I would like to take that a step further: There is no study to my knowledge that can credibly demonstrate that there exists a positive business case for 5G. Because any such study would need to make up hundreds of assumptions on use cases, futuristic devices that don’t exist, etc. etc. In the end, economics will decide the fate of 5G. I think 5G will be one huge embarrassment. Until someone works out it’s reason for existing (even in 2020) and why consumers will want to pay for such a thing – whatever it is – it’s technology for the sake of technology. And that will simply not work.