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Forbes Column
February 3, 2020 There’s little question that 5G can be a perplexing topic, but matters get worse when advertisements from big players like Verizon at last night’s Super Bowl create confusing impressions about what 5G is or isn’t. Similarly, it’s easy to get mixed up between what 5G is supposed to be able to do and what it can actually do. Part of the problem is that people often confuse the capabilities 5G eventually will have with what it has now. As I’ve written previously (see “The Evolution of 5G” for more), the 5G standard, 5G devices, and 5G-capable networks are all continuously evolving, so it’s easy to get mixed up about current 5G vs. future 5G. The problem is made worse by the fact that much of the early 5G press coverage fawned over all the exciting new things 5G would enable without clarifying that many of those things wouldn’t be coming for several years. So, without further ado, here’s my take on the top 5 confusion points about what 5G is or isn’t and what it can currently do or can’t do: Fallacy Number 1: All 5G is the Same This is a big one. After all, it certainly makes sense to presume that 5G is the next step beyond 4G and is a unified offering that will bring us to the glory days of 100x faster download speeds, a record number of connected devices, and many other capabilities that we’ve never really experienced before. Regular readers of this column know, however, that there are at least two significantly different types of 5G, arguably even three, and they use very different parts of the radio frequency spectrum (see “The 5G Landscape, Part 2: Spectrum and Devices” for more on what spectrum is and why it matters). The first type is based on and called millimeter wave (mmWave), and the second one uses sub-6 GHz frequencies, which can be further broken down into mid-band and low-band. More importantly, each of the different types function very differently and have qualities and capabilities that are distinct. Millimeter wave-based devices and services offer some of the super-fast speeds that many associate with all of 5G, but they have much more limited range. In real-world terms, this often reduces their coverage down to areas measured in single city blocks. Sub-6 GHz devices and services, on the other hand, offer significantly broader range (particularly the ones based on low-band, or below 1 GHz, frequencies), but have speeds that are essentially about the same as today’s best 4G LTE Advanced. Companies like AT&T and T-Mobile are working to build out nationwide 5G service based on low-band sub-6 signals, but until significant technology advances like Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) are applied to the networks, they don’t offer a compelling performance-based reason to change (see “How Fast Will 5G Really Be?” for more). The mid-band sub-6 signals, currently only being used by Sprint’s 5G service, offer a nice combination of noticeably better performance (between 2x-4x) than 4G and reasonable coverage ranges, making it one of the most attractive 5G options currently available in the US—that is, as long as you’re in one of the few cities where the service is offered. (Interestingly, most countries outside the US that are setting up 5G networks are primarily relying on these mid-band frequencies for exactly these reasons. In the US, their usage is complicated by several political and bureaucratic issues that are being slowly but surely addressed.) Finally, on a practical level, the most important reason to be aware of these different types of 5G is that you can’t presume that any 5G service or device you buy will support both. In fact, as of this writing, there are no devices currently shipping in the US that support both—they only support either mmWave or sub-6 (thankfully, all sub-6 devices do support both mid-band and low-band variations). This situation is expected to change soon, and by the upcoming Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona (and possibly even sooner), there should be numerous devices that support both types. However, even after that time, there will continue to be many devices that only support one type or another, so it’s something you need to be aware if you’re shopping for a new device. Fallacy Number 2: 5G is Much Faster Than 4G Directly related to the points made in Fallacy Number 1, the correct statement should be that 5G can be much faster than 4G, but in the current environment, that’s not always the case. In fact, as Super Bowl ads pointed out, and I’ve experienced myself (see “AT&T 5G Low-Band Service Shows Where The Technology Stands”) it’s possible to have 5G service that’s slower than 4G at this point in time. If you have a mmWave-equipped 5G device and you’re in an environment (typically only outside) where you have a strong mmWave signal and it isn’t obstructed by trees, rain, buildings, people, etc., you can enjoy download speeds that are about 50x faster than today’s average 4G speeds. But the truth is, if you have a recent vintage smartphone in an area that has strong 4G LTE Advanced Pro (the latest version of 4G) service, you can get about 5x times faster than the average 4G as well, reducing the speed gap to 10x (which admittedly, is still great—just not the 100x numbers you often read about). The other problem is that, right now, there are small areas in limited numbers of cities that currently offer strong mmWave service. So, even if you have a mmWave-capable 5G phone, you may often find yourself only getting 4G service anyway because, just as 4G phones fall back to 3G if they can’t find a 4G network, so too will 5G phones fall back to 4G in the absence of a strong 5G network signal. The story is even more challenging for sub-6 GHz-based 5G devices and services, particularly those using low-band frequencies. To their credit, carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile have said that their initial implementations of 5G service on these frequencies offer speeds that are roughly the same as 4G. While this should help to keep expectations in check, it’s still bound to be confusing to the many people who presume that 5G must be much faster than 4G. Plus, because 4G networks are now so mature and the technologies currently powering them are so refined that it is possible to encounter situations where the 4G signal is stronger and faster than the immature 5G signal for certain periods of time in certain environments. Over time, network enhancements, additional spectrum allocated to 5G, and technologies that combine signals across multiple frequencies will change this situation, but it’s important to understand the realities of today’s networks. Fallacy Number 3: 5G Offers Significant Latency Improvements versus 4G This one is probably the most surprising and least understood fallacy about current 5G networks. For years we’ve been hearing that, in addition to speed, 5G networks would have less lag time, or latency, than 4G networks, enabling more responsive service. For applications like cloud-based gaming, where rapid response time can literally translate between the life and death of your character, this reduced latency has been touted as a key feature of 5G. It turns out, however, that we won’t see the types of significantly improved response times that many promised until we move to what are called Standalone (SA) versions of 5G networks (and they aren’t expected to be widespread for another 2-3 years). All the initial implementations of 5G are using what’s called Non-Standalone (NSA) mode, which basically means they’re leveraging a portion of existing 4G networks to make the transition to 5G both smoother and faster. (See “The 4G-5G Connection” for more on the different 5G network modes.) Achieving the much-ballyhooed 1 millisecond (msec) response times (or frankly, anything under 10 msec) that was initially promised for 5G requires a completely 5G native core and access network. To be fair, there are some refinements in the 5G NR (New Radio) standard, which makes 5G signals inherently faster than 4G because of some efficiency improvements, but the 5-10% speed-up in latency isn’t likely to be felt by anyone. Again, part of the problem is that enhancements made to 4G over the last several years have dramatically reduced the latencies in 4G (down to the low 20 msec range). As a result, the differences between high-quality 4G networks and 5G networks are decreasing. Fallacy Number 4: 5G Inherently Enables New Types of Applications This one can be a bit confusing, but it turns out some of the more interesting new capabilities being touted for 5G—including network slicing, massive IoT, smart cities, and many other futuristic applications—aren’t really dependent upon 5G. They just happen to be ready for use at the same time that 5G networks are becoming available. In fact, some of them, including network slicing, cloud-based gaming, and AI-based edge computing, could also be done on 4G networks, but it makes more sense from both a timing and economic investment perspective to enable them on 5G networks. Depending on how long 4G networks stick around, we may even see some of these capabilities being retrofitted back onto 4G after they’re initially launched on 5G. As a result, some of the points about 5G driving billions of connected devices and enabling futuristic applications like remote robotic surgery aren’t completely true. In fact, when it comes to IoT, many current and future implementations are actually going to be leveraging connection technologies like NB-IoT (NarrowBand-Internet of Things) and Cat-M1, both of which are actually part of the 4G LTE standard. We will see enhancements to these as part of 5G, but many of those enhancements are also several years off. Essentially, many of these interesting futuristic applications are simply in need of a fast, reliable wireless connection with a modest (and relatively consistent) lag time. The best 4G networks can deliver that now, but the plan is to have all 5G networks offer these capabilities in the future. Fallacy Number 5: 5G Is More Expensive Than 4G While logic would suggest that a fancy new network technology might cost more than the one it’s replacing, the truth about pricing and costs when it comes to 5G is a bit more nuanced. Certainly, carriers are having to spend a great deal of money to build out their 5G networks and those costs need to somehow get reflected in the pricing of their 5G services. However, one of the primary motivators for carriers to move to 5G is because the efficiencies it will enable will lower their costs to deliver data traffic—and that’s what they primarily make their money on today. Basically, it will cost less money per bit to move data across the 5G network and that, in turn, will allow carriers to both increase the amount of data traffic they can handle and do so at lower prices. In the near term, what’s been interesting to see is that some carriers have chosen not to raise prices for at least some of their 5G services. Referring back to Fallacy Number 1, it turns out the type of 5G service (sub 6GHz or mmWave) has the most noticeable impact on the pricing for any given plan. Both AT&T and T-Mobile, for example, are not charging extra for their low-band sub-6GHz 5G service—of course, they’re not offering any significant speed improvements over the best 4G LTE right now either, so that makes sense. Verizon does charge roughly $10/month extra for their mmWave 5G service (on top of an unlimited data plan), while the other carriers are essentially bundling in their faster mmWave or mid-band sub 6GHz 5G service with their top-of-the-line unlimited plans, making it difficult to tell exactly what the 5G premium is (or if there actually is one). Given how competitive the wireless carrier market is, however, I expect we’ll see a number of downward pricing moves for 5G over the course of this year and next—particularly as more lower-cost 5G-capable phones become available. Despite all the concerns and confusions that exist around what 5G is today and what it can or cannot do, it’s important to point out that 5G is unquestionably the future of wireless networks. In a few years, some of the issues raised here will prove to be nothing more than distant memories, but as people try to make sense of 5G in the present, it’s important to know what’s true now and what really isn’t. Disclosure: TECHnalysis Research is a tech industry market research and consulting firm and, like all companies in that field, works with many technology vendors as clients, some of whom may be listed in this article. Here’s a link to the original column: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobodonnell/2020/02/03/the-top-5-fallacies-about-5g/Forbes columnist Bob O'Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, a market research and consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community.
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