Competitive Carriers Want To Stay Ahead of the Curve as 5G Rolls Out
FORT LAUDERDALE -- Competitive carriers need to help shape 5G and what it will look like, Mark McDiarmid, T-Mobile vice president-radio network engineering, told the Competitive Carriers Association convention Wednesday. One of the convention's big themes is helping small carriers get ready for 5G and starting the discussions now, CCA President Steve Berry said.
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The networks now in place will see many more years of service, McDiarmid said. But the discussions of 5G also need to start among competitive carriers, he said. “The danger is the bigger guys, the two big guys, define what 5G is in America,” he said. AT&T and Verizon aren't CCA members. “It’s a call to action for all of us to go compete against them,” McDiarmid said.
4G LTE in the U.S. was about mobile broadband and smartphones, McDiarmid said in an interview. “We didn’t have the ecosystem discussion in 4G,” he said. “It was simply, we need to do something more than 3G. … That’s where it started and stopped.” LTE has turned out to be flexible with a long lifetime. “We were fortunate,” said McDiarmid. With 5G, the wireless industry needs to make sure it's fully engaged with other industries, McDiarmid said. Self-driving cars or drones and other potential uses of the IoT require a much deeper discussion with other industries, he said. AT&T and Verizon won’t dominate 5G necessarily, but they will want to “shape” the discussion, he said.
5G has to be an evolution from 4G, not a “hard break,” as 4G was from 3G, said Glenn Laxtal, Ericsson chief technology officer. Some 5G devices will have to be “backwards compatible” with 4G devices, he said. “5G will be combination of an evolution of 4G, what we call LTE evolved, as well as a next-generation radio technology,” he said. “You put those two together and those two together on what we call 5G.”
5G will be “use-case driven,” Laxtal said. 5G should be the platform for the IoT, which creates a huge opportunity for carriers, he said. Various technologies are evolving to address the IoT, he said. “5G and the evolution of 4G can accommodate all of that and we can have one single, a globally supported platform, with a globally supported ecosystem.”
The IoT will consist of billions of connected devices that consume much less power than current devices, Laxtal said. “The devices could now last on the network for up to 10 years without being recharged.” Super-fast connection speeds, 20-30 Gbps or even higher, will be needed, he said. “You need massive bandwidth.”
Rural operators are concerned about keeping current with technology, said Ken Borner, vice president-engineering and network operations at Atlantic Tele-Network. “Typically, we’re a fast follower, we’re not on the leading edge,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of discussion around, are we asking too much from 5G,” Borner said. “We have to set the bar high. Now is the time to ask” what 5G will be, he said.
Borner said 5G will be about devices and connectivity. E-health will be hugely important in rural America as will be industrial applications, serving, for example, the oil and gas industry, he said. “Businesses will be coming up with new applications every day when they understand what the capabilities of 5G are.”