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“Net Neutrality” has a nice homely ring to it like motherhood and apple pie. In reality “Net neutrality” is a false cure to the problem of bandwidth starvation on our wire and cellular mobile access networks. It simply results in equal misery but does not cure bandwidth starvation. But abolishing net neutrality could be a useful step in the right direction if regulators mandated a minimum “universal quality of service” at the same time.
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Today 99 percent of transcontinental Internet traffic depends upon cables laid across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. This has not gone unnoticed by the Russian military planners. It was reported in the New York Times in October that Russia has stepped up by 50% its submarine patrols near to where these cables are buried. Should this be a worry for companies? Is there a case for companies to reflect a risk of mass cable outages in their strategic decisions on where to locate their storage and computing? Is this another reason for a switch to edge computing?
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Lightly licensed spectrum innovation needs a new entity, the Trusted Interference Manager, to create a triangle of trust upon which spectrum re-use can be stepped up by orders of magnitude and deliver the sort of transformational impact many are suggesting 5G is capable of as 5G can only transform what it covers…and that does not come cheap without bold innovations.
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If the cellular mobile industry worked together on a bold “INDOOR” 5G STORY at 3.6 GHz it could potentially deliver 1000 square kilometres of 5G coverage within 10 years at almost zero cost to the mobile network operators. It has the potential to cut the cost of urban 5G coverage by up to 60% in due time over today’s model that expects four competitive MNO’s to each separately provide pervasive urban coverage. Nobody in the industry believes today’s competition model will ever deliver such pervasive coverage. The problem for the government is that 5G cannot benefit what it does not cover. Only regulatory innovation can solve this.
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An earlier blog looks at a systematic examination of how government and regulatory changes could reduce this cost structure of 5G enhanced Mobile Broadband coverage of cities and towns. Shaving off costs wherever possible is a useful thing to do but it will not be enough. Much deeper cost reductions comes down to looking at the options for changing the competition model:
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There is no doubting the enthusiasm of the Government, Ofcom and the Mobile Network Operators (MNO’s) in wanting to see 5G to benefit the maximum number of people. But 5G cannot benefit what it does not cover. From this point on comes divergent interests. The government wants to see significant benefits to the economy from 5G . The mobile network operators would like to maximise “profitable coverage”. There is a huge investment gap between these two ambitions. One way out of this dilemma is to significantly reduce the cost of coverage through regulatory innovation.
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“The real 5G” that will emerge from 2020 on the current trajectory is a veneer of extremely high data speed hots spots, many confidence building “toe in the water” application trials and followed by a useful augmentation of national coverage from the release of 700 MHz. This will fall well short of the huge potential of 5G. We need to understand why?
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2016 is the year when visions and state of the art show pieces have to give way to a road map for the sort of 5G network technology that is mature enough to be deployed by 2020 and give mobile operators the right commercial incentives to invest in. The WRC-15 provides the first real glimmer of the spectrum options for 2020, we know the technologies within reach of industrialisation, the global standards body 3G PP is slipping into gear…the discipline now is to find the propositions that will sustain mobile network operators profitability in the long term that will be worth their while investing in by 2020
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The mobile world has spent the past 7 years finding solutions to the capacity crunch. A range of new technology and spectrum bands are on their way. The new intellectual challenge for the next 7 years will be a “coverage crunch”. It has become a three layered problem. There is the basic layer of simply getting a signal. This has been getting worse in recent times. A new layer of the coverage problem is the “coverage of capacity”. The third layer is the “coverage of dependable connectivity”and reflect how our digital life has become more essential. It is now time for the mobile community to resolve to find solutions for the coming “coverage crunch” with the same energy that they have been successfully applying to the “capacity crunch”.
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How did a single digital photograph trigger an exponential chain reaction that led within days to an identical largely irrational response from millions of people? And what political world is emerging where government policies can be changed in days under the impact of such a high velocity wave of public opinion? Have we created a digital eco-system with the potential to not only create gyrations in government policies but even tear whole regions apart?
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The mobile world is rapidly painting itself into a corner that 5G is about 10 GB/s data speeds using mmWave technology, massive MiMo and beam steering. To self-limit 5G to a dense urban nomadic story and based on a technology that may not be ready for mass global commercialisation by 2020 is a tactical mistake. We need to re-write the 5G script as a revolution in evolutionary instalments. The most pressing task for the 5G “thought leaders” is how best to remove the road-blocks in the way of the other installments.
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