Special Report: 5G in space
This edition marks the 900th issue of Rethink Wireless Watch, and in the 18 years of industry analysis that represents, there has inevitably been a huge amount of change.
Some concerns stay the same, of course. Trying to close the gap between the rise in mobile data consumption and the stagnation of ARPU remains a constant concern, for instance, and one that has only partially been addressed by 5G’s promise to support new revenue streams. Indeed, the slow adoption, so far, of the 5G core (see item below) – which enables many of those new revenues – highlights the gulf that always exists between new commercial opportunities and the complexity of the technology that is needed to support them.
Attempting to open up the supply chain and avoid lock-ins also remains a constant preoccupation. In the early years of Wireless Watch, the main attack on the incumbent vendors was coming from a community that supported WiMAX as an alternative 4G standard. Intel, Samsung and Motorola were the leaders, and deployed many of the same arguments that the supporters of Open RAN do today, though the latter have had the sense to focus on opening interfaces within a 3GPP environment, rather than proposing an alternative baseline standard.
But a great deal is new, 900 issues on. We have moved from early deployment of 3G to a similar phase in 5G, with all the changes that has brought in user experiences and enterprise opportunities. Apple and Samsung have replaced Nokia and Motorola as the leaders in devices, as the smartphone has become the norm. Equipment vendors have consolidated or disappeared – Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, Motorola Networks are just memories, and Huawei and ZTE have risen to power during the period of our coverage, and are now potentially on the wane thanks to geopolitics.
Another intensely political issue in mobile communications is the relationship with satellite. For much of Wireless Watch’s life, the satellite and cellular ecosystems have been hostile, fighting over overlapping spectrum and the satellite industry’s perception (often justified) that their interests have been ignored by regulators’ desperation to boost mobile broadband spectrum capacity and their resulting willingness to raid and repurpose satellite bands.
The battles over potential interference, whether real or self-interested, continue. Fears about the impact of cellular signals on GPS stalled the launch of the US terrestrial/satellite network LightSquared (now finally close to commercialization as Ligado). Now Verizon and AT&T have seen their launch of 5G in repurposed satellite spectrum, the C-band, delayed by fears about interference with aircraft altimeters (see item below and Wireless Watch January 17 2022).
But there is far more harmony than conflict as we look to the future of satellite/cellular relations. The introduction of support for non-terrestrial networks (NTN) in 5G standards from this year, thanks to the upcoming release of 3GPP Release 17, will enable far closer integration with satellite and drone networks than has been possible before. Where regulators have allowed, hybrid use of spectrum has been possible, with sharing between satellite and terrestrial mobile – as LightSquared aimed to do. That helped to boost spectral efficiency by avoiding wastage in underused satellite bands without excluding satellite altogether. But fully complementary networks, in which cellular and satellite broadband (fixed or mobile) can be managed as a single platform, are on the horizon.
Commercialisation of such technology will depend on investment in the kinds of satellite or high altitude platforms (HAPS) that will lend themselves to mobile broadband. The main applications of satellite in a 5G landscape are to support remote access, mobile backhaul, and IoT applications that require ubiquitous coverage. All these are improved by developments in satellite that reduce latency, and bring performance and cost closer to that of 5G so that the two technologies really can be deployed together with optimal overall price/performance. Of course, low earth orbiting (LEO) satellites are the highest-profile example, thanks to the ‘race of the billionaires’, such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, to launch in space. But HAPS, tethered balloons and drones can all play a part too.
None of the solutions provides a perfect fit with cellular, and there have so far been more failures to commercialize these technologies than successes (Google Loon, Facebook Aquila and other examples, and the jury is out on most of the LEOsat ventures that are springing up too). But investment is flowing into technology and infrastructure that can extend the reach and capability of wireless broadband even beyond what 5G promises. A new research project led by NTT Docomo of Japan, called SpaceRAN (see item below), neatly summarizes the vision, in which many types of terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks will coexist, with the ability to be managed, orchestrated and sliced as a single pool of connectivity.
When Wireless Watch reaches its 1,000th edition in 2024, we will be on to Release 18 or even Release 19 of the 3GPP standards (all these releases will be dubbed 5G-Advanced) and the shape of 6G will be getting far clearer. In all these stages, we expect that satellite and non-terrestrial networks will be playing an increasingly important role, while the constant enhancement of dynamic spectrum sharing technologies, and of anti-interference mechanisms, will hopefully be consigning the old spectrum wars to history.
To read the rest of this week’s special report, or for a trial of our Wireless Watch service contact John Constant