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DC5G 2018 Conference Offers Primer on Benefits and Challenges of 5G Deployment

Nearly 300 attendees gathered in Washington, D.C. November 12 and 13 for the second annual DC5G Conference. With no shortage of announcements of initial and planned launches of various versions of 5G service cropping up among major service providers (for example, AT&T and Verizon), the conference took a comprehensive view of how the 5G marketplace is shaping up, and offered a primer of several aspects regarding 5G deployment. A wide array of stakeholders were represented, including carriers, device manufacturers, municipalities, financial experts and more, who shared their perspectives on the current and near-term status of all things 5G.

Beyond faster mobile and fixed wireless broadband speeds, the enhanced capacity and lower latency promised by 5G provided for a lot of discussion of the usual list of anticipated applications, such as intelligent transportation systems, smart cities, the Internet of Things, virtual and augmented reality, etc. Several speakers speculated that the most compelling 5G applications may well be ones that no one has yet conceived. As a comparison, they noted that when 4G services started to roll out roughly a decade ago, ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft did not exist. Therefore, there is a lot of optimism regarding the potential for similarly disruptive yet unanticipated 5G-based apps.

Starting With The Basics: What is 5G?

The conference covered many topics, including cybersecurity, consumer privacy, the advent of smart buildings and smart cities, spectrum usage, and the efficiency of edge computing in a 5G network, among others. However, one question that consistently came up during conference sessions examined the basics: What exactly is 5G?

Conference participants tended to recognize that although standards are nearly developed, 5G still can mean different things to different people. Yet viewed broadly, there appears to be a consensus that 5G means more than just much faster speeds than 4G. The ability to handle much more data, and from many more devices, than 4G, is a key differentiator. The other main distinction is 5G’s much lower latency, which will be especially critical for intelligent transportation/smart vehicle applications, among others. 5G aims to replicate the capacity and speed offered by fiber to the premises. At the start of the conference, keynote speaker John Godfrey, Samsung’s Senior Vice President of Public Policy, referred to 5G as “fiber in your pocket; or car, or home, or workplace.”

Part of the versatility of 5G is derived from the fact that it will use various spectrum bands with differing propagation characteristics. Much attention was paid to the use of millimeter wave spectrum. This allows for very fast broadband connections, although only at relatively short ranges. This spectrum also has difficulty penetrating walls, so outdoor antennas may be necessary in many instances for fixed 5G solutions. Mid-band and lower-band spectrum, which can travel further and has less trouble penetrating obstructions, is also slated for 5G use. However, providers have different approaches to deployment, and not all will use the same bands as services are launched. As a result, at least initially, the capacities of 5G services, and the applications they can support, could vary significantly until multi-band deployments become more common. That said, much of 5G’s promise hinges upon the high-speed capacity of short-range millimeter wave spectrum, which will be augmented by other spectrum bands as the market evolves.

Need for Densification

Another basic facet of 5G that drew much examination during sessions was the need for dense deployment of 5G facilities. Due to the shorter range of millimeter wave spectrum, many 5G antennas will need to placed close together. While antenna can be placed on structures much smaller than traditional cellular towers (such as light poles, buildings, etc.), 5G facilities will be much more numerous.

One ramification of densification is how to adjust permitting and other regulations to adapt from the assumption that sites will have the same height requirements of traditional cellular networks. Many speakers at DC5G had high praise for a Federal Communications Commission Order adopted earlier this year that is intended to speed deployment of 5G infrastructure by establishing “shot clocks” and taking other steps that require local governments to take steps that are meant to reduce costs, streamline application procedures, and avoid unwarranted delays. However, some municipal representatives took issue with the Order, saying that a “one size fits all” approach will actually be counterproductive as local conditions should be taken into account. While many providers remain encouraged by the Order, the debate continues.

5G: Built on Fiber

In separate sessions, two speakers at DC5G stressed a point that often gets lost in 5G discussions: 5G will be built on fiber. As massive amounts of data traverse 5G networks, the vast majority of densely-placed 5G antennas will need a terrestrial fiber connection to manage all that information. This key point was first raised by Joshua Seidemann, Vice President of Policy at NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association, during a session about rural deployment.

Seidemann noted that cost to deploy short-range 5G services to multiple customers on a city block cannot be spread out over many customers in a sparsely populated rural area, where customer density can drop below one person per mile. Therefore, if 5G facilities are brought within range of a rural customer, Seidemann stated that “the low incremental cost of bringing that fiber several hundred feet farther to user premises justifies full-fiber networks to be complemented by the new mobile technology.”

The next day, Lisa Youngers, President and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Alliance, also stressed the need for fiber to feed the anticipated vast network of densely-packed 5G infrastructure. She noted that an estimated 1.5 million miles of fiber will have to be deployed to handle the 5G needs of the top 25 markets in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, this does not include the additional fiber that will be needed for backhaul to transport much of the data across vast distances to and from data centers, depending on the application(s) in question. The fiber component of 5G will remain a very critical factor.

Why Be First?

There was also a lot of discussion on the need to be first in the international 5G deployment “race.” In fact, an entire session was dedicated to this topic, although it was raised throughout the conference. The question of how long it would take 5G to be widely deployed also came up multiple times. Generally, conference presenters declined to give specific dates, as market demand, local regulations, and other factors will lead to various components of 5G to be rolled out at different times in different markets.

Dr. Rikin Thakker (left), VP of Telecommunications and Spectrum Policy at the Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council, moderates a panel on Winning the Global Race to 5G. Image credit: Steve Pastorkovich

Several participants wondered about the benefits of being first, and whether the rush might result in counter-productive deployment problems. Most speakers felt that the economic benefits of 5G outweighed this risk, and that in an internationally competitive market, being the first to deploy would provide an economic edge. Some conceded that given the different capacities of various 5G spectrum, it may be difficult to determine exactly who is “first” by objective measurements. However, there did appear to be consensus that at the very least, the United States should not fall behind.

Additional information, white papers, videos and more are available at http://2018.dc5g.com/resources/.

Steve Pastorkovich is a Washington, D.C.-based consultant specializing in telecommunications, trade association operations, and public policy. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-pastorkovich-4a94412/

Author Steve Pastorkovich

By Steve Pastorkovich

Steve Pastorkovich is a Washington, D.C.-based consultant specializing in telecommunications, trade association operations, and public policy. Reach him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-pastorkovich-4a94412/

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