Dave Farber
2018-07-04 01:41:32 UTC
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] So What The Heck Does 5G Actually Do? And Is It Worth What The Carriers Are Demanding?
Date: July 4, 2018 at 10:18:15 AM GMT+9
So What The Heck Does 5G Actually Do? And Is It Worth What The Carriers Are Demanding?
By Harold Feld
Jun 28 2018
<http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/so-what-the-heck-does-5g-actually-do-and-is-it-worth-what-the-carriers-are-demanding/>
Itâs become increasingly impossible to talk about spectrum policy without getting into the fight over whether 5G is a miracle technology that will end poverty, war and disease or an evil marketing scam by wireless carriers to extort concessions in exchange for magic beans. Mind you, most people never talk about spectrum policy at all â so they are spared this problem in the first place. But with T-Mobile and Sprint now invoking 5G as a central reason to let them merge, itâs important for people to understand precisely what 5G actually does. Unfortunately, when you ask most people in Policyland what 5G actually does and how it works, the discussion looks a lot like the discussion in Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy where Deep Thought announces that the answer to Life the Universe and Everything is â42.â
So while not an engineer, I have spent the last two weeks or so doing a deep dive on what, exactly does 5G actually do â with a particular emphasis on the recently released 3GPP standard (Release 15) that everyone is celebrating as the first real industry standard for 5G. My conclusion is that while the Emperor is not naked, that is one Hell of a skimpy thong heâs got on.
More precisely, the bunch of different things that people talk about when they say â5Gâ: millimeter wave spectrum, network slicing, and something called (I am not making this up) âflexible numerologyâ are real. They represent improvements in existing wireless technology that will enhance overall efficiency and thus add capacity to the network (and also reduce latency). But, as a number of the more serious commentators (such as Dave Burstien over here) have pointed out, we can already do these things using existing LTE (plain old 4G). Given the timetable for development and deployment of new 5G network technology, it will be at least 5 years before we see more than incremental improvement in function and performance.
Put another way, it would be like calling the adoption of a new version of Wi-Fi â5G Wi-Fi.â (Which I am totally going to do from now on, btw, because why not?)
I elaborate more below . . .
There are a bunch of important questions to keep in mind when evaluating what we ought to do about 5G as a policy question. (a) What exactly is 5G? (b) How does it compare to existing LTE? and, (c) How much are we being asked to pay for it in policy terms?
What Exactly Do We Mean By âG?â
âGâ technically means âgeneration.â My favorite explanation can be found in this old Best Buy commercial. As a general rule, we use âGâ to indicate a significant shift in capability, architecture and technology. For example, the shift from analog to digital voice in 2G, or the inclusion of limited data capability as an overlay to voice in 3G. The shift to 4G was marked by a shift to an all packet-switched data network in which voice is supported as one feature on the network. In addition, 4G turned out to be fairly homogenous for a variety of reasons I wonât get into now. Basically, after a brief flirtation by Sprint and a few others with WiMax, all the carriers ended up using LTE.
So the switch to 5G ought to mean a major boost in both technology and speed. And it will, eventually. But for now, itâs not so much a generational shift like the previous shifts but a modest transition over time. By that I donât mean simply that we will see 5G networks operating with 4G cores for a long time. Thatâs always true. Carriers deployed LTE and still maintained (some to this day) 3G networks in parallel. That is necessary so that people and businesses can switch legacy equipment at a rational pace. What I mean is that the capabilities that are supposed to make 5G so awesome are not really that awesome right now, and wonât be for at least 5 more years.
What Makes 5G More Awesome?
Here is where it gets confusing. You can see a good tutorial on the network architecture here. But this represents a relatively recent change in how we talk about 5G. Originally, i.e., back in 2015, we were talking about millimeter wave as 5G, with nothing else going on in the lower frequencies counting as 5G.
[snip]
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-------------------------------------------Date: July 4, 2018 at 10:18:15 AM GMT+9
So What The Heck Does 5G Actually Do? And Is It Worth What The Carriers Are Demanding?
By Harold Feld
Jun 28 2018
<http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/so-what-the-heck-does-5g-actually-do-and-is-it-worth-what-the-carriers-are-demanding/>
Itâs become increasingly impossible to talk about spectrum policy without getting into the fight over whether 5G is a miracle technology that will end poverty, war and disease or an evil marketing scam by wireless carriers to extort concessions in exchange for magic beans. Mind you, most people never talk about spectrum policy at all â so they are spared this problem in the first place. But with T-Mobile and Sprint now invoking 5G as a central reason to let them merge, itâs important for people to understand precisely what 5G actually does. Unfortunately, when you ask most people in Policyland what 5G actually does and how it works, the discussion looks a lot like the discussion in Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy where Deep Thought announces that the answer to Life the Universe and Everything is â42.â
So while not an engineer, I have spent the last two weeks or so doing a deep dive on what, exactly does 5G actually do â with a particular emphasis on the recently released 3GPP standard (Release 15) that everyone is celebrating as the first real industry standard for 5G. My conclusion is that while the Emperor is not naked, that is one Hell of a skimpy thong heâs got on.
More precisely, the bunch of different things that people talk about when they say â5Gâ: millimeter wave spectrum, network slicing, and something called (I am not making this up) âflexible numerologyâ are real. They represent improvements in existing wireless technology that will enhance overall efficiency and thus add capacity to the network (and also reduce latency). But, as a number of the more serious commentators (such as Dave Burstien over here) have pointed out, we can already do these things using existing LTE (plain old 4G). Given the timetable for development and deployment of new 5G network technology, it will be at least 5 years before we see more than incremental improvement in function and performance.
Put another way, it would be like calling the adoption of a new version of Wi-Fi â5G Wi-Fi.â (Which I am totally going to do from now on, btw, because why not?)
I elaborate more below . . .
There are a bunch of important questions to keep in mind when evaluating what we ought to do about 5G as a policy question. (a) What exactly is 5G? (b) How does it compare to existing LTE? and, (c) How much are we being asked to pay for it in policy terms?
What Exactly Do We Mean By âG?â
âGâ technically means âgeneration.â My favorite explanation can be found in this old Best Buy commercial. As a general rule, we use âGâ to indicate a significant shift in capability, architecture and technology. For example, the shift from analog to digital voice in 2G, or the inclusion of limited data capability as an overlay to voice in 3G. The shift to 4G was marked by a shift to an all packet-switched data network in which voice is supported as one feature on the network. In addition, 4G turned out to be fairly homogenous for a variety of reasons I wonât get into now. Basically, after a brief flirtation by Sprint and a few others with WiMax, all the carriers ended up using LTE.
So the switch to 5G ought to mean a major boost in both technology and speed. And it will, eventually. But for now, itâs not so much a generational shift like the previous shifts but a modest transition over time. By that I donât mean simply that we will see 5G networks operating with 4G cores for a long time. Thatâs always true. Carriers deployed LTE and still maintained (some to this day) 3G networks in parallel. That is necessary so that people and businesses can switch legacy equipment at a rational pace. What I mean is that the capabilities that are supposed to make 5G so awesome are not really that awesome right now, and wonât be for at least 5 more years.
What Makes 5G More Awesome?
Here is where it gets confusing. You can see a good tutorial on the network architecture here. But this represents a relatively recent change in how we talk about 5G. Originally, i.e., back in 2015, we were talking about millimeter wave as 5G, with nothing else going on in the lower frequencies counting as 5G.
[snip]
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