Spectrum, mobile & wireless update June 2017

A number of new studies reported on the increasing importance and scale of mobile connectivity across the globe:

• PriceWaterhouseCoopers' latest Media and Entertainment Outlook reported that  smartphone data traffic will exceed fixed broadband data traffic in 2020 (more here).
• Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report predicted 2.6 billion new mobile broadband subscribers will be added through 2022, averaging more than one million each day. The report also forsees the continued rapid growth of mobile connectivity with global mobile data traffic increasing to eight times its current level by 2022.
• Industry trade association 5G Americas reportred that global LTE market share compared to all other mobile wireless technologies reached 28 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2017, an increase of 11 percentage points in one year. This equates to 2.16 billion LTE connections globally.
• GSMA reported that China and India will account for half of all new mobile subscribers added worldwide by 2020. The Asia Pacific region as a whole is forecast to increase from 2.7 billion unique mobile subscribers1 at the end of 2016 to 3.1 billion in 2020, accounting for two-thirds of global growth. A further GSMA study forecasts that China will be the world’s largest 5G market by 2025.
• A study by the Wireless Broadband Alliance reported that 1.75 billion citizens in the world’s eight richest countries (by GDP) remain unconnected,  with 34% residing in major urban centres. London was found to be the most connected city, with just 7% of citizens unconnected.

UK developments:

• EE announced a 4G+ network upgrade offering speeds above 400Mbit/s in Cardiff and London’s Tech City area,  with upgrades to follow across central London and Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh city centres. EE also announced it was the first UK mobile operator to showcase pre-standard 5G backhaul capability using its air mast mobile coverage solution.
• Ofcom announced a £1.9m fine for Three after an incident in October 2016 uncovered a single point of failure in the operator’s emergency call network. Three has since taken steps to address this vulnerability.
• Highlands and Islands Enterprise announced the installation of wireless to the cabinet (WTTC) technology by Openreach on the Hebridean island of Scalpay.
• BT announced the launch of “new digital street units providing ultrafast speeds of up to one gigabit per second - the UK’s fastest free public Wi-Fi service” in London. The units, called InLinks, will start to be rolled out to other major cities throughout the country this year (more background here).
• Ericsson announced it had been selected to provide massive MIMO and carrier aggregation technology to help Vodafone UK evolve its 4G network in southern England; also see coverage from Cable in relation to Vodafone’s MIMO plans as a building block for its future 5G services.
• Ofcom published initial results from new mobile research to measure the consumer experience of using mobile services. It provides information on data service availability, and the performance of mobile voice and data services.

5G developments:

• CCS Insight reported on how fibre connectivity is becoming an increasingly important element of 5G deployment strategies.
• Ericsson announced it is to lead the European 5GCAR project to develop an overall 5G system architecture to provide optimized end-to-end vehicle-to-everything (V2X) network connectivity for highly reliable and low-latency V2X services. The project represents “a significant step towards the advent of 5G  technology for connected vehicles”.
• AT&T launched a 5G trial with DIRECTV NOW in Austin, using millimetre wave (mmWave) technology to deliver speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s. The company also announced speeds of more than 750Mbit/s in its LTE Licensed Assisted Access (LTE-LAA) field trials.

Satellite developments:

• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved OneWeb to provide satellite broadband services in the US; its service could provide low latency broadband access to remote and hard to serve areas (more here and also see Ars Technica).
• Immarsat confirmed the successful launch of its S-band satellite (Inmarsat S EAN) for the European Aviation Network (EAN), “the world’s first dedicated aviation connectivity solution to integrate space-based and ground-based networks to deliver a seamless WiFi experience for airline passengers throughout Europe.” Also see BBC News.
• UK satellite operator Avanti announced a $4.5m 2-year contract to deploy capacity from Avanti’s HYLAS fleet to a new customer in the mobility market.
• A new report from Euroconsult revealed that the total committed investment from the 30 satellite operators in high throughput satellite (HTS) systems has reached nearly $19 billion. Around another 100 GEO-HTS systems are expected to launch from 2017 to 2025, at an average of 11 launches per year. Capacity supply is now set to more than double to nearly 2,000 Gbit/s by 2018, reaching roughly 3,600 Gbit/s by 2020. Non geostationary (NGSO) HTS constellation projects are also building momentum and could add upwards of 40 Tbit/s of capacity.

Other spectrum, mobile and wireless news this month:

• NCTA – The Internet & Television Association considered the next steps for the 3.5GHz “innovation band” in the US; more background on this here.
• Swiss operator Sunrise announced it is to remove from its network “outdated 2G technology (GSM, GPRS and EDGE) by the end of 2018”. Attractive upgrade options to will be offered to 2G customers and customized solutions to business customers.
• 20th June 2017 was World WiFi Day, a global initiative led by the Wireless Broadband Alliance to help bridge the digital divide and “connect the unconnected”.