IoT Generation: What Should a Mobile Operator Consider Before Launching 5G?

[Shishirgano9]

Very soon we will witness a landmark event: for the first time, a technological breakthrough in the telecommunications industry will be associated not so much with communication between people, but with machine-to-machine interaction. The emergence of the 5G standard will open the way to a number of solutions united by the concept of the Internet of Things. These will be all kinds of smart devices, gadgets and sensors used both in everyday life and in a wide variety of industries: in agriculture, retail, energy, transport, etc. According to a popular forecast by Gartner, by 2020 there will be more than 20 billion of these very “things” in the world, interacting with each other and with various control and accounting systems. And 5G technology assumes, among other things, support for up to 100 million devices within 1 sq. km.

However, one should not listen with such enthusiasm to the united states of america phone number library claims of marketers that 5G will become the starting point for a technological boom – and the world will be transformed in a matter of weeks. From the point of view of a telecom provider, everything may turn out to be more complicated and mundane – but this is the picture that perhaps most truthfully describes the situation with the new communication standard.

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Standard
Any communication technology will not develop fully until the relevant standards are approved at the global level. In our case, good news comes from time to time from the consortium of developers of specifications for mobile telephony 3GPP and the International Telecommunication Union: for example, at the end of 2017, the completion of the first phase of standardization (Release 15 NSA Non-standalone) was announced - a non-standalone version of the 5G architecture on the 4G core network was approved. Literally any day now we expect the adoption of full specifications (Release 15 Full).

However, even the final approval of all standards will not give the go-ahead to operators to start the race for technological leadership. In fact, this race has already begun, but unofficially, at the level of creating test zones and prototypes of subscriber devices. It is clear that after the aforementioned go-ahead, a race will begin not among operators, but among vendors - to have their products recognized as the closest to the standard and the most innovative. Here, there is a "Big Three" that will compete for medals: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia. Mobile operators will act here, rather, as strict referees.

Coating
LTE was launched in Russia in 2012, LTE-Advanced — in 2014. However, carpet coverage of these networks still remains the privilege of million-plus cities. In the periphery, even 3G is often a great success. The technological features of 5G technology — short wavelength at dedicated frequencies of 3.5 GHz and 28 GHz — will require the operator not only to modernize existing base stations, but also to build a large number of new antenna-mast structures.

Of course, in this regard, megacities will be lucky again, first of all, where it is easier to install towers and get a return on investment faster. But we dream of unmanned vehicles - this means that it will be necessary to at least provide uninterrupted communication on the main highways... And what about unmanned vehicles for industry? And housing and communal services sensors? Enormous investments in infrastructure are ahead.