Japanese mobile operator Rakuten Mobile and compatriot firm JTower have entered a capital alliance with the aim of sharing infrastructure in indoors and outdoors environments, the latter said in a release.

Under the terms of the deal, the two companies will share equipment and towers to boost the development of 4G and 5G networks across Japan.

“Rakuten Mobile has been using our indoor Infra-Sharing solutions since January 2020, and the number of installations is gradually increasing. In addition, we built smart poles in Nishi-Shinjuku area in Tokyo as one of our outdoor Infra-Sharing solutions and Rakuten Mobile has been using these smart poles since April 2021,” JTower said in the release.

JTower also noted that the use of shared infrastructure enables network development in a short period of time and at a low cost compared to when each mobile network operator installs their own networks separately. “In order to contribute to the development of a broader network, in 2020, we realized the first 5G indoor Infra-Sharing in Japan at the Tokyo metropolitan government headquarters building and in outdoor, we are strengthening our structure by launching new businesses such as tower sharing covering rural areas and smart poles mainly in urban areas,” the company said.

“JTower and Rakuten Mobile will use this capital alliance as an opportunity to deepen our collaboration, and we will promote Infra-Sharing in indoors and outdoors using sharing equipment and sharing towers in the development of 4G and 5G networks, and work to build a more comfortable communication environment at an early stage,” the release said.

As part of the deal, Rakuten Mobile will acquire a stake from JTower’s president and CEO Atsushi Tanaka for an undisclosed amount.

In September 2020, Rakuten Mobile launched 5G services in parts of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Hokkaido, Osaka and Hyogo. The service was initially offered via Non-Stand Alone (NSA) 5G architecture.

Last year, Rakuten Mobile and NEC announced that the two companies had reached an agreement to jointly develop the containerized standalone (SA) 5G core network (5GC) to be used in Rakuten Mobile’s fully virtualized cloud native 5G network.

Under the terms of the deal, Rakuten Mobile and NEC said they will develop the containerized SA 5G mobile core to be made available on the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP).

Rakuten’s platform contains all the elements of the Rakuten Mobile network, including telco applications and software from multiple vendors, OSS and BSS systems handling customer billing and activation systems, in addition to edge computing and virtual network management functions.

RCP is aimed at offering solutions and services for the deployment of virtualized networks at speed and low cost by telecom companies, enterprises and governments around the world, the telco said.

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In his remarks, Simington relayed a number of the points that he says have been raised to him in opposition of setting higher standards for receiver performance: It’s expensive, stifles innovation or that the FCC doesn’t have legal footing for regulating receivers, just transmission.

While building better receivers is an expense, Simington acknowledged, so are guard bands and interference.

“Operating our wireless future on the back of cheap edge devices that are sensitive to interference in an increasingly spectrally dense mid-band environment will be a potentially very large expense when those devices fail,” Simington continued. “I don’t know quite how big, but I am willing to bet it is smaller than the expense of the implementation of receiver standards.”

Simington said that he’s also been told that building better receivers “stifles innovation,” and he’s skeptical that the mere existence of standards for receivers would do that. Instead, he argued, receiver standards might actually fuel domestic innovation. “It’s, at present, easier to build a cheap wireless device, with poor receiver performance, in China than it is here,” Simington said. “What happens when the industry implements better receiver standards? Do consumers pay a bit more? Possibly. But do we also apply pressure to Chinese manufacturers, potentially making it feasible for non-Chinese manufacturers to compete to make higher quality devices with better components? Perhaps some domestically? That sounds, to me, like it’d have a protective effect on innovation, actually. And, at a minimum, it would mitigate some of the dominance of Chinese manufacturers in the domestic market.”

He also shrugged off the argument that the FCC couldn’t regulate receivers if it chose to. “We don’t merely regulate transmissions. We regulate reception too—logically, we have to, because interference as experienced by an end user or device takes place in a single transmission-reception process. Traditionally we haven’t focused on
receivers, but that doesn’t mean that we face an absolute bar,” Simington said.

As he closed out the speech, though, Simington noted that he was speaking to the Free State Foundation, which supports limited government — and he hopes the Commission “doesn’t, ultimately, regulate receivers.” But in bringing it up, he hopes that the telecom industry will be nudged to improve receivers ton its own.

“I suspect that the standards bodies and trade associations are in a better position than the Commission to project likely problems and anticipate them without fear of a heckler’s veto from the most marginal actors. … Our best bet is to serve as a clearinghouse to encourage industry coordination and autoregulation,” he said. “But I do think that the specter of regulation, from time to time, must loom in order to help industry act; eventually, either this issue will be solved, or the Commission’s hand will be forced by public opinion, which is not the best way to get nuanced, thoughtful, capacious regulation. And so, for the good of the American people and to deliver on the promise of our wireless future, we must raise the question with industry.”

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Microsoft Azure can help operators with 5G Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC). That’s the message from Victor Bahl, Microsoft technical fellow and chief technology officer, Azure for Operators. 

Microsoft wants operators to consider Azure to be a reliable backbone worldwide WAN service to complement their infrastructure, said Bahl.

“Operators spend a lot of money to manage and maintain their networks and peering relationships, but so does Microsoft. The question then is, why are two massive industries doing the same thing? Because both parties move packets around, doesn’t it make more sense for them to collaborate?

“Here, the well-managed, reliable and performant Azure network should be thought of as the backbone that operators trust. With this shift in thinking will come all the advantages of innovation that IT companies like Microsoft are rapidly bringing in,” said Bahl.

5G low latency challenges

Microsoft’s global Azure Wide Area Network (WAN) comprises almost 200 points of presence over 60 regions, across 140 countries, and is connected using over 175,000 miles (ca. 281,635 km) of fiber and undersea cable, said Bahl.

He also pointed to Azure’s massive reserve capacity as an important advantage: “This combination of redundant capacity to handle failures, dark capacity for significant growth, and research advancements being made in increasing transmission speeds means that we have a massive amount of spare capacity to serve 5G traffic to a broad array of new operators.”

Microsoft has optimized network traffic orchestration away from Internet protocols and towards 5G requirements, said Bahl. 

“Our orchestrator takes control away from classic Internet protocols and instead moves that control into software that we build and control for 5G traffic. We place the 5G flows that demand high performance on low-latency, high bandwidth paths to and from the Internet. Network flows that are cost-sensitive are instead routed through cheaper paths.

“In effect, we have developed a fast-forwarding mechanism to build a 5G overlay on our existing WAN, thereby supporting a variety of 5G network slices with different wired transport properties, while avoiding interference with the operation of the underlying enterprise cloud network.”

Extending the olive branch

Microsoft has repeatedly emphasized its desire to partner, not compete, with operators on 5G since announcing Azure for Operators in 2020. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella laid out the foundational principles for Azure for Operators at the time: partnerships, ecosystem development and infrastructure monetization.

“We want to partner with you to bring the power of the cloud and edge to your network,” using Azure’s real-time operating system to continue to support IoT device connectivity and management while extending automation out of the core to the nascent network edge,” Nadella said. “Second, we want to take an ecosystem-wide approach bringing the scale of our developer and partner ecosystem to you.”

Combining enhanced mobile broadband with ultra reliable, low latency communications and massive IoT “will unlock new use cases that increase in value as they’re incorporated into developer applications,” Nadella continued. “Third, we want to help you create additional value by helping you reduce cost and increase revenue.”

Given the approximately $1 trillion that will go into upgrading networks to 5G, “There is a critical need to reduce total cost of ownership and monetize these investments,” according to Nadella. “We will enable you to deliver these existing services…as well as value-added services with greater cost efficiency and lower capital investment than ever. These three principles guide our work together.” 

Hyperscalers like Microsoft, AWS, and Google represent a long-term existential threat to operators. Telcos view their relationship with hyperscalers as imbalanced, with hyperscalers ready to profit from infrastructure work the operators pay for. Seventy-four percent of the highest performing CSPs agreed in a recent poll that partnering with web-scale companies, including hyperscalers, for 5G-enabled edge computing would mostly benefit the strategic interests of hyperscalers. 

Nonetheless, operators forging ahead with partnerships with Microsoft Azure and other hyperscale services. Verizon, for example, partnered with Microsoft Azure for edge compute services for On Site 5G, its private 5G mmWave service for enterprise and public sector agencies. And Nokia has established partnerships with Microsoft, Google and Amazon alike to accelerate vertical 5G solutions for enterprise.

The post Azure’s ready for 5G low-latency, says Microsoft appeared first on RCR Wireless News.

Small cells can be deployed indoors or outdoors and in licensed, shared or unlicensed spectrum, making them a versatile coverage and capacity solution. However, for Rex Chen, director of business development LitePoint, densifying urban environments that have a high user population is the most obvious use case for small cells.

“In places like metropolitan urban areas […] small cells play a pretty unique role of getting a roll out in the metropolitan urban area [and]play a critical role in making sure that mmWave deployment can really happen to [for]the masses,” he shared with RCR Wireless News.

The second type of location ideal for such deployments, he continued, are communities “with just a few hundred users,” where a macro tower might be “overkill.”

“When operators put in a new network, they have to think about their return, which might take three, five, if not seven years see. [Small cells] lower the capital expenditure initially because [they]are going to be much more economically competitive than a macro cell,” he said.

Chen added that this type of deployment will likely be seen in emerging cellular markets like China and India, where even previous generations of cell coverage is still limited in some communities

Sport complexes, concert halls and other enclosed venues where thousands of people gather at one time are also promising use cases for small cells, which can provide the extra capacity needed during moments of data influx.

And while still in the early stages, there is growing interest in the use of small cells for private networks, according to Peadar Forbes, Director of Radio Platform Development, Analog Devices.

“There is a lot of interest in private networks — mining, ports, manufacturing — and 5G brings a lot of benefits to those use cases. A lot of these use cases will use small cells. In a factory or a small campus […] the natural thing you would do is deploy small cells,” he told RCR.

A recent Small Cell Forum report supported this emphasis on both urban densification and in-building for enterprises. The report concluded that when looked at by environment, “the highest CAGR will be in urban outdoor small cells, driven by major densification and smart city projects in large Asian markets, the USA and parts of Europe and Latin America,” but added that “enterprise small cells will remain the largest percentage of unit deployments, accounting for 62% of roll-outs in 2026 and 70% of the total across the period of the report.”

New deployments and upgrades of small cells by environment 2019-26 (by numbers of radio units deployed or upgraded)

Within the enterprise category, retail, government and finance will have the highest small cell demand and deployment numbers until 2021, at which point demand will shift to transport and manufacturing as technologies like 5G, edge computing and AI become more commonplace.

Additionally, it is believed that 5G small cells can be used for cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) connectivity to enable reliable and speedy communications between vehicles and between cars and infrastructure. Similarly, they can also be attached to traffic or light posts to provide the network coverage and capacity necessary for smart city initiatives, analytics and intelligence. 

Small cell deployments in the U.S. market

According to data from Altman Solon Research and Analysis, the U.S. market can be segmented by their current stage of deployment:

• Dense metropolitan cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago are typically the leaders in small cell growth in the U.S. They have had this type of infrastructure deployed for at least four to five years and have established franchise agreements with major carriers.
• Growth locations such as Boulder or Fort Worth, with mid-size population densities often have deployments in a “Central Business District” and have a small cell deployment history of about three to five years. These environments are continuing to evolve and mature.
• Early-stage areas of suburbia, where small cells and outdoor Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) are proliferating, such as Montgomery County, MD.

Small cell deployments globally

Regionally, Asia will remain the biggest driver of small cell deployments throughout the period, with Japan and South Korea leading the first phase of densification. However, progress made by the U.S. and China in the last few years was responsible for much of the scale achieved by 2021, according to the SCF.

New deployments and upgrades of small cells by region 2019-26 (by numbers of radio units deployed or upgraded)

As these countries become fully densified in the coming years, other players, such as India and Italy, are expected to emerge as the next pack of deployment leaders.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the SCF report included best- and worst-case scenarios for these deployments, depending on several acceleration/deceleration factors identified by operators; however, a key takeaway regardless of the scenario was that the rising pace of deployments and upgrades to support 5G will be the key driver of small cell acceleration after 2022.

To read more about small cells, check out Is powering small cells the greatest densification challenge?

^{[1] As a minimum, supporting an industry agreed open fronthaul and midhaul (where relevant) interface between RU, DU and CU. Some will also support other open interfaces and controllers. Open interfaces may include SCF nFAPI or O-RAN}

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Nokia announced that it will provide equipment from its latest AirScale radio portfolio Slovenia’s T-2 to upgrade the carrier’s existing Single RAN radio footprint and introduce 5G New Radio (NR) services. The five-year deal positions Nokia as the sole vendor for T-2 Slovenia.

 “We are proud to expand our partnership with T-2 into the 5G era as their sole vendor. Our latest AirScale portfolio will help support T-2’s ambitious 5G roll-out plans and deliver incredible connectivity experiences across the country,” commented Tommi Uitto, president of Mobile Networks at Nokia.

The AirScale radio equipment is powered by Nokia’s ReefShark System-on-Chip (SoC) technology and includes 5G RAN, AirScale base stations and Nokia AirScale radio access products for both indoor and outdoor coverage. According to the vendor, the solutions offer faster speeds and wider mobile coverage.

In addition to radio equipment, Nokia will also provide T-2 Slovenia with digital design and deployment, which the company said will speed up time to market and provide technical support services.

Nokia’s AirScale products were also selected earlier this month by Japanese mobile operators SoftBank and KDDI to support the deployment of Japan’s shared Radio Access Network. As part of this project, Nokia will install a Multi-Operator Radio Access Network (MORAN), which will allow both companies to share the RAN while keeping core networks separate.

Back in Slovenia, T-2 bid 18.2 million EUR for 2100 MHz and 2.3 GHz licenses at the country’s spectrum auction, which concluded over the summer.

“This important project will enhance the delivery of compelling new 5G services and use cases to our subscribers across the country,” said Jozef Zrimsek, CTO at T-2. “We are excited to expand our partnership with Nokia.”

The post T-2 Slovenia selects Nokia AirScale solutions for 5G services appeared first on RCR Wireless News.

Wang said by the year 2030, both the digital and physical worlds will be integrated. They will create near-real-life experiences for users. By that point it is thought that the digital economy will become very important to the real economy. The wireless industry will shift its focus from device to decision making efficiency.

Huawei Roads to Mobile 2030: 10 Wireless Industry Trends

This future depends on advances in network security, energy efficiency and more. In fact, Huawei says the wireless industry must help protect the environment with green growth. This is part of what the AI revolution is all about.

Wang says wireless networks are an important piece of the Huawei Intelligent World 2030 puzzle.

These are the 10 trends Huawei says we will see in the mobile industry over the next decade.

1.     10 Gbps for physical-digital integration

Digital communications will be used to expand and deepen exchanges of information between people, delivering multi-sensory experiences. This will include hearing, sight, touch and smell.

To enable these features, wireless networks will need to support 10 Gbps at millisecond latency everywhere and transmit information in ways that are semantically organized.

2.     One network for 100 billion all-scenario IoT connections

The coming digital society will be reshaped by the 100 billion Thing-to-Thing connections that the cellular networks will support by the year 2030.

Driven by all-scenario IoT connections, networks will begin offering different connections. They will be differentiated by speed and priority.

Lower latency and higher reliability will be delivered and a new form of wireless IoT, which features ultra-low power consumption with passive connections must be created.

3.     Satellite-ground collaboration for 3D coverage

Satellite-ground collaboration will fill the gaps in wireless, ground coverage. The goal will be to achieve three-dimensional wireless coverage. This will enable communications and controls for future drones and aircraft.

Mobile networks with advanced communications technology and in a market worth multi-trillion dollars, will also be used to nurture new satellite communications technologies that don’t even exist yet.

4.     Integrated sensing and communications for true digital replicas

Sensing and communications will continue to be integrated, which will enable in real-time, digital replication of the physical world. This will facilitate high-level, autonomous driving and drone management.

This means both radio interfaces and network architecture will need to be integrated. This will be important for sensing resolution technology and will need to advance to the centimeter level using ultra-wideband with Massive MIMO to achieve these functions.

5.     Intelligence in every industry and every connection

Over the next decade, wireless networks will become integrated with AI technology. This will enable level-5 autonomous driving networks, which will further support automated O&M, deliver premium experiences and also minimize the carbon footprint.

Also, radios tomorrow will be designed with native intelligence and smart radio algorithms. This will further optimize the management of channel coding and radio resources.

6.     Full-link and full-lifecycle green networks

Network traffic will grow 100 times over the next few years and there will also be a similar spike in demand for solutions that reduce network energy consumption.

Per-bit energy efficiency will also need to improve at a similar rate. This must be considered in every aspect of network design. This means radio interfaces, devices, sites and more.

This will enable the construction of full-link and full-lifecycle green and sustainable networks.

7.     Flexible full-band Sub-100 GHz

By 2030, many nations will need an average of 2 gigahertz mid-band bandwidth and over 20 gigahertz of bandwidth on millimeter wave to accommodate rapidly growing wireless traffic.

Huawei says this means the industry will need to facilitate the evolution of sub-100 GHz spectrum to NR and redefine spectrum utilization using multi-band integration and other new technologies in order to achieve massive spectral efficiency improvement.

8.     Generalized multi-antenna for reduced per-bit cost

Per-bit data transmission costs will be reduced as multi-antenna technologies begin to be applied to every spectrum band and every scenario.

Ultra-wideband modular antennas will support flexible combinations of multiple bands and intelligent reflecting surfaces will apply multi-antenna technologies in more scenarios to enable cloud-based, higher-performance deployment.

9.     Security as the cornerstone of a digital future

Device security and intelligent and simplified security at the network layer will become increasingly important as network security and resilience come more into the global spotlight.

Operators will need to provide these kinds of simplified security services via cloud-network synergy for their industry customers to promote digital transformation.

10.  Mobile computing network for device-pipe-cloud collaboration

Future mobile networks will support more diverse services, such as the Metaverse, industrial field networks, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications.

This means that computing will need to be integrated with mobile networks to provide uninterrupted, high-quality services on demand as a single service model will be insufficient for building new digital platforms.

Wireless industry will focus on green growth during next decade

This is a well thought out presentation by David Wang. Huawei did a good job of highlighting what they see as the top 10 key industry trends for the next decade. And how the industry will increasingly focus on green growth.

It gives competitors in wireless networks, handset makers, AI, IoT and more, much to think about. Huawei is a top global wireless player, so we should take these projections over the next ten years seriously.

Wang closed the presentation by saying Huawei will continue to work with industry partners to define these networks of the future and make their vision of the Intelligent World 2030 into a reality.

The wireless industry looks very different today from what it looked like just 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So, it makes sense that it will continue to change as industry technology continues to advance going forward.

The post Kagan: Huawei discusses 10 wireless industry trends for next decade appeared first on RCR Wireless News.

The report finds an estimated Return on Investment (RoI) of 20-30% with payback periods less than 4 years when used in the right deployment scenarios for the right use cases. What is interesting is most of the revenues to realize this impressive RoI was coming from consumers moving to higher-tier data plans, enabled by 5G, not relying on fancy applications such as AR/VR, Mission Critical Services, etc. Most of the global 5G operators are already seeing the data plan uplift.

Those fancy applications indeed have huge future potential, and any revenue and profit lift they provide will be above and beyond what the traditional broadband services can provide in the near term. 

5G spurring another round of data consumption splurge 

5G has enabled operators to offer extremely high and consistent data speeds and truly unlimited data plans, without any limits or throttling. That has resulted in a sharp increase in data consumption. Recently, T-Mobile’s Neville Ray disclosed that their high-end 5G customers consume up to 35GB of data in a month, much higher than 4G users. Ericsson’s Mobility report forecasts the average user data consumption in the USA to increase from 11GB in 2020 to 50 GB in 2026.

Operators are capitalizing on this surge by offering much pricier data plans and encourage consumers to upgrade to them. This also has become a lucrative primary monetization tool for operators to recoup their 5G investments. To keep up with this consumption surge and to maintain 5G’s higher Quality of Experience (QoE), operators have to continuously increase the capacity in their networks. That means, adding more spectrum and sites. However, in extremely high traffic areas, the traditional Sub-6GHz band may not be enough to provide the needed capacity or to achieve the required site density. That’s exactly where the mmWave bands come to play.

Key to mmWave success – right locations and use cases

The straightforward answer to the mmWave skeptics who often point out its small coverage footprint is—it’s not coverage, but capacity! The report rightly points out the typical locations that they call “hot zones” and use cases that are a perfect fit for mmWave. These hot zones are extremely dense and high-traffic areas, whose capacity needs can’t be met by the Sub-6GHz spectrum.  During the study, Bell Labs Consulting identified numerous such zones in a UK operators coverage area, including, outdoor hotspots, indoor malls, stadiums, train stations, and more. 

Deploying mmWave networks at these hot zones creates 4200 Peta Bytes /year mobile data traffic capture potential, 300 million Euros of incremental revenue potential, and 8% incremental revenue potential, according to the study.

Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) is another exciting opportunity for 5G operators. Although there was a dire need for alternatives to DSL and cable fixed broadband services for a long time, 4G was not viable because of its limited spectrum and capacity. 5G mmWave because of its large available spectrum and capacity, makes it a perfect FWA solution. 

Why is just the sub-6GHz spectrum not enough?

One of the most asked questions, whenever I talk about mmWave is, why is not just the sub-6GHz spectrum sufficient? Well, the sub-6GHz spectrum is most essential for operators to have expansive coverage. However, it may not be sufficient to cost-effectively support this deluge of data traffic prompted by 5G, especially in the fore mentioned hot zones. The report makes this point succinctly through a cost/GB comparison between the two bands over four years. The mmWave deployments could be up to 75% cheaper in typical busy train station locations. This is because of the large amount of bandwidth available to carry the increased traffic. These estimates were based on a 400 MHz mmWave deployment. With many operators having access to as much as 800 MHz bandwidth, the difference could be even higher. 

In many cases, the sub-6 GHz band will not be able to support such dense deployments, because densely deployed sites will interfere with each other, and adding more will not yield any increased capacity. However, the small coverage footprint of mmWave allows dense deployment with minimal interference.

Many people also ask, why not Wi-Fi be used in these locations. Well, Wi-Fi suffers from the same interference issue, as well as hand-off challenges, when users move between sites. Additionally, a dense Wi-Fi network has to implement complex frequency planning to be even functional.

Impressive RoI on mmWave investments

The report has RoI analyses for a score of use cases. The one that caught my eye was about outdoor hot zones, for example, shopping malls, stadiums, etc. It shows an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 33% after four years.

This is again mainly because of the huge amount of capacity that mmWave developments offer. Once invested, it can support a large amount of incremental traffic over the years without requiring more Capex infusion, while continuing to bring revenues. 

The biggest value of this report to operators is its guidance on identifying the best opportunities for mmWave. The analysis indicates that hot zones with subscribers between 1,000 – 3000, and with 2-4 years of payback to be most optimal.

Although all the analysis in the report is based on the UK market, most of the findings are relevant and applicable to almost any advanced 5G market with similar demography, such as the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, China, and others. 

Other considerations for mmWave deployments

There are many interesting use cases and considerations beyond what the report examined that further highlight the benefits of mmWave. For example, Samsung recently successfully demonstrated the use of mmWave as a backhaul for Wi-Fi on subways and trains. This increased the user speeds by up to 25 times compared to traditional means. 

The mmWave deployments can significantly improve the uplink capacity, which is becoming a bottleneck when social media-obsessed smartphone users continue to stream, share and broadcast everything. Recently, Verizon, Samsung, and Qualcomm announced mmWave uplink reaching a whopping 711Mbps in a lab trial. This paves the way for taking 5G uplink performance to a whole new level. 

As mmWave needs dense site deployment, there are many options for operators to cost-effectively achieve that density. For example, Integrate Access Backhaul (IAB) units with Interference Cancellation (aka SLICK) allow operators rapid deployment and solve the backhaul challenge.   

Side Note: For more information on IABs, please check out my article series “5G Integrated Access Backhaul (IAB).”

In closing

The biggest reason for adopting mmWave bands is capacity, especially in high-traffic hot zones. While the Bells Labs Consulting report not only proves what is obvious but also provides a quantitative analysis to show an impressive 20-30% RoI, with less than four years payback period. Additionally, it offers guidelines on the most optimal opportunities for mmWave deployment. 

For more articles like this, and for an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, and listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

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In this comprehensive webinar and accompanying virtual event, we’ll take stock of where Open RAN is today, where it’s proponents want it to go moving forward, how critics are thinking about technology, and what Open RAN means for operators who are continually pinched by stagnating ARPU.

The post Editorial Report: From greenfield to brownfield: Open RAN in 2022 (With large scale carrier commitments in place, what’s next for the Open RAN ecosystem?) appeared first on RCR Wireless News.

The latest Opensignal 5G experience report revealed that T-Mobile US has “an impressive lead in 5G Download Speed” thanks to its deployment progress of mid-band spectrum. T-Mobile’s score increased 35.6% since July, hitting 118.7 Mbps, while Verizon saw their average 5G download speeds increase by only 3.7 Mbps to 56 Mbps and AT&T saw a 0.8 Mbps decline that brought it down to third place at 51.5 Mbps.

However, because AT&T and Verizon are about to receive the first batch of C-band spectrum in December, and also have their own mid-band plans, the pair might start seeing download speed improvements more comparable to T-Mobile’s when those deployments kick in.

AT&T has said it expects to cover 70-75 million people with its C-band spectrum by end-2022, rising to 200 million by end-2023. Verizon revealed that it plans to start using C-band spectrum in the first quarter of 2022, with initial coverage of around 100 million people, rising to more than 175 million people by 2023.

T-Mobile US also came out on top in the categories of 5G availability and 5G reach, according to Opensignal. T-Mobile US users connected to its next-gen services 34.7% of the time — a decrease from 36.3%, and the carrier achieved a score of 7.2 points out of 10-point for network reach.

For availability, this score represents than double the amount of time connected to 5G than for AT&T users, who were connected 16.4% of the time to 5G networks. Verizon users spent only 9.7% of the time with 5G service.

For reach, AT&T came in second with 4.9 points — a 0.6 decrease compared to July, and Verizon “follows at a distance,” with a score of 3.4 points, but shows the largest increase of 0.4 points compared to the previous report.

“Often, we see a seasonal effect on the mobile experience in the U.S. and other countries,” Opensignal stated in the report. “A drop in 5G Availability was likely due to seasonality as mobile users spend more time outdoors in different, more rural, parts of the country during the warmer months.”

When it comes to services on the network, Opensignal found that Verizon maintained its title of best 5G Video Experience with a score of 61.3 points, which is statistically unchanged compared to its previous score of 61.2 points from the previous report, while AT&T users saw their 5G Video Experience score decrease from 61.3 points to 50.6 points — a 17.5% change. This decline puts AT&T in last place, somewhat of a fall from grace after jointly winning the award with Verizon in July. T-Mobile saw a slight improvement of 0.6 points to its 5G Video Experience, after scoring 54.8 points last time.

Version also took home first place in the 5G Games Experience category with a score of 80.6 points on a 100-point scale, ahead of AT&T and T-Mobile which scored 73 points and 67.2 points, respectively.

Below, is a regional analysis of the findings. “T-Mobile dominates our regional 5G Download Speed award table as it wins outright in D.C., as well as in all 35 states analyzed,” Opensignal wrote.

In September, Opensignal released a report with a more global outlook on 5G progress and impact, concluding that the average 5G download speed globally is 447.8 Mbps, with FarEasTone users in Taiwan getting the fastest 5G download speed of all.

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