I do not disupte the fact that 5G NR is better than 4G LTE. However, it isn't going to have monumental spectral efficiency improvements that aren't available in the LTE world. Mostly the capacity improvements are coming from moving from 2x2 MIMO to something like 64x64 MuMIMO (which is available in the LTE world) or through new spectrum.
Rural fixed service is best served by fixed operators (WISPs), not mobile companies. The mobile companies keep trying to do fixed service, but it always sucks... badly. Generally they come in, announce some new, spectacularly awesome service. Customers leave the local company for the mobile company. They often return within 60 days because the service was so bad. In those areas where the mobile companies aren't doing 4G at the moment, you might as well discard any hope that they'll ever do anything useful for you and look for the local WISP to solve your need. Post-600MHz auction, US operators generally have some reasonable amount of spectrum below 1 GHz, which is good for good building penetration. They generally have pretty good amount of spectrum from 1.7 GHz - 2.3 GHz. Really only Sprint uses anything between 2.3 and 10 GHz. Anything above that is going to be short-range LOS only. I'm not sure what hype train is winning the race, IoT or 5G. Most IoT devices are not going to have high bandwidth requirements, but will need low power usage. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brandon Butterworth" <bran...@rd.bbc.co.uk> To: "Mike Hammett" <na...@ics-il.net> Cc: "Shane Ronan" <sh...@ronan-online.com>, "nanog" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2019 9:29:30 AM Subject: Re: 5G roadblock: labor On Tue Dec 31, 2019 at 08:10:20AM -0600, Mike Hammett wrote: > I would still find it hard to believe you would need that kind > of speed, today, in any reasonable situation. Who said it's all for you? Marketing may tell you it is to get you to buy but it's really for everyone else. In some places 4G is quite congested, a lack of enough low spectrum leads to congestion and the expensive clearance and recycling of 700Mhz from TV to mobile (UK currently doing this) Moving as many as possible to 5G gets operators out of a hole, equipment manufacturers are doing dual 4/5G kit to make dynamic use of the limited low spectrum So you don't need it but they need you to believe you do. > Also, today's infrastructure can more than handle that in most places Rural for lack of anything better is being sold (in UK) LTE home routers and VOD is popular so the sooner they can move low (they will never get high) spectrum to 5G the better. We do still have a lot of rural without 2G though so it's not clear what they will do there There is also a 5G land grab of other uses making it out as good for lots of things (IoT, factories, rural access), I presume that is the same elsewhere? > I'm not saying what we have will work for us forever, but it > will solve no current problems. There is no need to rush like > the network is on fire. It is in places, they predict it will be elsewhere if they get the customer base they are aiming for. So they do want it to put out the fires they are starting plus with equimpment cycles their best hope it to get as many to upgrade with the newness hype otherwise they will join the long tail and be difficult to move later once they find it wasn't necessary. brandon
