If 5G is 'done right' we won't need a 6G
Source: totaltele.com View: 204 Date: 2014-05-19

The mobile industry could be on its last ‘G’, if comments made this week by U.K. operator EE are anything to go by.

"My wife asked me: ‘how many ‘Gs’ do you have left in you?’ Looking at my pension, I’d say there’s at least one," said Andy Sutton, EE’s principal network architect, on Thursday, insisting that "there might not be a 6G if we get 5G right."

EE expects the first 5G networks to come online around 2020 and for widespread adoption to commence two-to-three years after that.

"5G is very much at the fundamental research phase…but it’s the right time to do that fundamental research," he said at a press briefing in London.

Indeed, according to Ed Ellis, EE’s senior manager of network strategy and forecasting, data traffic will see a 22-fold increase between the end of 2015 and the end of 2030. By then, 76% of data traffic will be video, driven by ultra-high-definition 4K and 8K streaming services.

"4K and 8K device adoption will happen much more quickly than we expected," he said. "The required bit-rate to support these services leaps" compared to HD and standard definition video.

To understand the industry is headed it is important to look at it has come , explained Sutton, who took the group of assembled journalists on a whistle-stop PowerPoint tour of 2G and 3G, before delving into the latest developments in 4G networks and some of the emerging technologies that together crystallise his vision of what a 5G network will look like.

Technologies like massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) and millimetre wave spectrum will help deliver higher data rates to devices, while SDN and NFV are "fundamental" to 5G, he said, because they will allow telcos to provision capacity and services much more quickly in areas they are needed most. Meanwhile, SON technology will speed the deployment of thousands if not millions of new macro and micro cell sites.

Communications must become "invisible [and] completely pervasive" like electricity, Sutton said, envisioning a future new buildings have brick-shaped small cells built into the walls that can direct the signal either indoors or out into the street, depending on coverage and capacity are needed.

He said that 5G networks will be ultra-reliable, instilling confidence in cloud-based applications and services. They will be application-aware, so the amount of capacity is tailored to an individual’s needs. What’s more, "5G won’t exist on its own, it will be integrated with WiFi and 4G," he said.

Sutton believes that if all the component parts do what they are supposed to do, and network traffic growth continues in the manner that the industry expects, then 5G networks will evolve to meet our needs for the foreseeable future and we won’t need saving by some magical 6G.

"There will be perceived infinite capacity," he said.

This is all fantastically stupendous news for everyone in the whole world including operators…except for the people working in their marketing departments.

For these people, the emerging picture of 5G poses a bit of a challenge because the migration path is a gradual one that sees the 4G network augmented and upgraded using more spectrum and new technology so it becomes increasingly more advanced until a point it can adequately be described as a 5G network.

There’s no big ‘on’ button for the CEO to push in front of a crowd of cheering people. The EE representatives on Thursday were pretty much stumped when they were asked how they might start pitching 5G tariffs to consumers.

I suspect some 5G launches will be more conclusive than others, with some operators simply re-branding their existing 4G service as 5G and then upgrading the network later, much like what happened in the U.S. with 4G a few years ago.

In 2010, MetroPCS, now owned by T-Mobile US, laid claim to the country’s first 4G service when its LTE network went live in Las Vegas. Not long after that, every operator in the country was claiming to offer 4G. To be fair, Verizon had an LTE network and Sprint was still pushing WiMAX, but in the case of AT&T and T-Mobile, it was plain old HSPA+ with 4G branding slapped all over it.

This was because the ITU had recently tweaked its wording so that as far as it was concerned, any technology that offered significantly better connectivity than standard 3G could be described as 4G, hence the marketing field day had by AT&T and T-Mobile.

If the ITU applies that same logic to 5G, then in some cases it will probably be left up to the marketing people to decide what qualifies as a 5G network, rather than those pesky scientists.

 

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