AT&T Sees First Big Rollouts of 5G Not Happening Until 2020, Top Executive Says
AT&T has filed for more than a dozen patents on 5G technologies and is “in the throes” of making 5G work, Bill Smith, president of AT&T network operations, said at a Jeffries financial conference Tuesday. “It’s the next exciting step in our technology,” he said. But Smith conceded “the reality is” that standards won’t be in place until “probably 2018” and large-scale commercial rollouts are unlikely before 2020. “We’ll be on top of that,” he said. “The minute it’s commercially viable we’ll be deploying.” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel also spoke about 5G in her remarks to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, posted by the FCC Tuesday.
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“We’re working very aggressively on 5G,” Smith said. “Technology developments don’t happen with press releases. They happen with work in the laboratories.” AT&T plans “a fairly significant” test of 5G in Austin this year, he said. “But again it’s very much in early stages.”
Rosenworcel said she was in Chicago last week to see the city’s buildout of what it's calling the array of things, with 500 wireless nodes across the city. “These nodes will measure pressure, light, air quality, temperature, foot traffic -- and an array of other things,” she said. “The data produced will be available to the city -- and the public -- at no charge. From this data, the city hopes to reveal patterns -- patterns that will allow it to better plan urban activity and learn to prevent problems -- like childhood asthma, flash flooding, and street congestion -- before they occur.” The nodes are like a fitness tracker for an entire city, she said.
As 5G is rolled out, it will depend on high-frequency spectrum, Rosenworcel predicted. “We will need to bust through this old 3 GHz ceiling and create new possibilities for millimeter wave spectrum in the airwaves at 24 GHz and above,” she said. These frequency bands present challenges, don’t reach far, and will depend on small-cell deployments, she said. “It won’t be simple to put these bands to use,” she said. “But last year, at the World Radio Conference in Geneva, a number of these bands were put on the table for study at the next gathering in 2019.”
The FCC released an NPRM on the future use of some high-frequency bands, and reply comments are due later this week (see 1510220057). “We are moving forward now,” Rosenworcel said.
Unlicensed also will be key to 5G, Rosenworcel said. “Today, of course, we have extensive unlicensed activity in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands,” she said. “But we need to do more than treat unlicensed as an afterthought -- because we need a cut for unlicensed spectrum going forward.” Rosenworcel also said the FCC needs to get creative in its approach to spectrum, as it has in the 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band. “The approach we’ve put in place in the 3.5 GHz band is both creative -- and efficient,” she said. “It’s one to watch for the future.”
Small Cells Have Part To Play
AT&T plans to use small cells as part of its network, Smith said elsewhere in his remarks. “If you’ve got a broad capacity situation that you’re trying to solve, then providing more spectrum or doing macro cell splits is probably the most cost effective,” he said. Small cells are best suited to addressing a “pocket of demand” within a cell site. AT&T has calculated that using a small cell to add capacity is four to eight times more expensive than deploying a more traditional macro cell, Smith said. But in some cases a small cell is the most cost effective, he said. “It’s really an engineering situation that you look at on a case by case basis.”
High-frequency spectrum has many unknowns, though it is clear that 5G will use “millimeter-wave” spectrum, Smith said. 5G will likely rely on low-band spectrum for “coverage” and high-band spectrum for “capacity where you need the capacity,” Smith said. AT&T has “a plan for how we would go forward with that and it will use all of the above” as well as unlicensed spectrum, he said.
Network security is also a key issue, Smith said. AT&T has a “world-class” team looking at cybersecurity “but our network is under attack every day,” he said. “The level of sophistication of those attacks is really amazing at times. We spend a lot of time and energy making sure that our network is secure.”
The TDM to IP transition is a big focus for AT&T, Smith said. “We’re deep into that,” he said. AT&T doesn’t want to have to run two networks at the same time, he said. “I’ve got a team dedicated to consolidating, harvesting legacy equipment as quickly as possible while we migrate customers onto the new IP platform.” Smith said he is also spending lots of time on integrating DirecTV into AT&T, a process that he said is also going well to date. AT&T has trained the majority of its technicians to do satellite TV installations, he said. AT&T does 1,500-1,700 integrated installations a day, with installation of both satellite TV and broadband, he said.
AT&T also is pleased with early deployments of voice-over-Wi-Fi, Smith said. The company is carrying almost 2 million calls a day over Wi-Fi, he said. “Frankly, the performance is very, very good,” he said.
Smith conceded that AT&T faced capacity issues in recent years. “We went through some challenging times with our network a few years ago and we’re never going to let that happen again,” he said. “First and foremost we [must] stay ahead of the capacity needs of the network.”