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Forbes Column
February 11, 2021 Though they never get much attention and, frankly, aren’t very well understood, modems offer a critically important view into the future of wide-area wireless technologies. At a basic level, modems are the chips inside our devices that control the process of sending signals to and receiving signals from cellular networks. More importantly, however, their features provide a roadmap that enables people to understand the essential capabilities of a wireless standard like 5G at any given point in time. The bottom line is that new abilities added to next-generation modems open up new capabilities that broadband cellular networks can achieve. Conversely, even if a network offers the potential for newer features, faster speeds, etc., an individual device won’t be able to take advantage of them unless it has a modem that supports those functions. That’s why the recent debut of new 5G modems from US market share leader Qualcomm (the Snapdragon X65 and X62) and worldwide market share leader MediaTek (the M80)—both of which normally would have been unveiled at the now delayed Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show—is so important. Both individually and collectively, they provide a map that lets us see and understand where the “real” 5G market is going. The emphasis is on the future of 5G, because in both cases, the chips won’t be available until the end of this year and likely won’t show up in devices until late 2021 or early 2022. Despite those delays, the news is good on both fronts—in some cases for similar reasons, but in other instances because of unique, company-specific features. On the shared update front, all three of the new modems from the two companies are the first to support 3GPP Release 16, the latest “official” version of the 5G spec (see “The Evolution of 5G” for more on 3GPP and how 5G is constantly evolving.) Release 16 incorporates a great deal of new capabilities—some have referred to it as the “completion” of the core 5G spec. Specific improvements include things like multi-user MIMO (multiple input, multiple output), which allows for the simultaneous transmission and reception of multiple signals, as well as industrial IoT, the use of unlicensed 6 GHz frequencies, and time-sensitive networking (TSN), which is often used in industrial applications. Release 16 also includes several enhancements on power savings and more efficient use of the modem and both companies are offering their own variations on power-saving features in all their respective products. In Qualcomm’s case, the company recognized the fact that some of these new Release 16 capabilities may be rolled out over time by network carriers, so the X62 and X65 are the first to offer software-upgradability to add new features as time goes on. On the MediaTek side, the company’s newly unveiled M80 is the first from the Taiwan-based company to support millimeter Wave (mmWave) technology. MediaTek had been a leader on some other critical technologies, including the ability to combine or “aggregate” multiple chunks of different frequencies in the low-band or sub-6 portion of the radio spectrum used for 5G, but was behind on mmWave support (for more on carrier aggregation and other key 5G technologies, see “How Fast Will 5G Really Be?”). A big part of the reason for the company’s delayed introduction of this technology is that a large portion of its customers are Asia-based or in other parts of the world, such as Latin America or Eastern Europe, where there has been little deployment of mmWave 5G in their regional networks. Slowly, but surely, however, countries like China, Japan, Australia and others are starting to deploy mmWave, so it has become clear that MediaTek needed some mmWave-capable options. Another part of the delay is because mmWave is a very challenging technology to implement—particularly in conjunction with a complimentary set of chips, called an RF front end (RFFE), that work with modems to do the physical signaling of analog waveforms along with the technical steps necessary to process these signals and make them usable. In Qualcomm’s case, the company has moved from providing modems on its own to offering combined modem-RF solutions that are designed and optimized to work together. MediaTek, on the other hand, does not offer RFFEs, but instead works with partners like Qorvo, Skyworks and Broadcom, who provide separate RF solutions that vendors have to combine with MediaTek modems to create complete solutions. In addition to mmWave support, MediaTek’s M80 modem builds on some key technologies in areas like carrier aggregation by incorporating the ability to aggregate both sub-6 and mmWave signals. (Qualcomm’s X62 and X65, as well as their previous generation X60—which is currently shipping—support this multi-band carrier aggregation as well.) Not only does this allow for the ability to combine as much precious radio spectrum as possible, it also enables things like the ability to do control signaling over sub-6 and data signals over mmWave, as well as other clever uses of technology that improve both the speed and capacity of 5G networks. (See “How Will 5G Networks Get Faster? Densification” for more.) One of the biggest stories for Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line X65 is the fact that the company claims it’s the first 5G modem to have a top theoretical download speed of 10 Gbps. As a point of reference, the M80 has a peak downlink speed of 7.67 Gbps and Qualcomm’s X62 tops out at 4.4 Gbps—and don’t forget that many companies still use wired Ethernet connections that only run at that same 10 Gbps speed. In reality, no wireless device ever gets close to these theoretical numbers, but the fact that each of these companies are raising the bar on peak performance means average real-world speeds will start increasing as well—and showcases how close wireless speeds have come to wired ones. Ultimately, the good news is that these latest modems highlight the fact that the wireless industry has quickly ramped up the technical underpinnings and fulfilled the key technical requirements necessary to make 5G a mature, established technology. Will things continue to improve, with new capabilities getting turned on for 5G networks? Of course they will. However, the impact of later changes is likely to be less noticeable to most consumers and mainstream businesses, because many of the changes beyond Release 16 are focused on more specialized applications. With these new modems, and the devices that they are expected to power, as the critical enablers, we’re headed into a new era of 5G that should be significantly more capable. 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/2021/02/11/latest-modems-from-qualcomm-and-mediatek-highlight-5g-progress/ 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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