Key to 5G success

Here we are: first 3GPP standards for NSA and SA were released (Dec 2017 and June 2018). Vendors like Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Samsung etc. have prepared their solutions and are ready to roll it out. We even have 5G TF that is proprietary 5G solution released by Verizon that will go commercially live starting 1st of October 2018. Everything seems to be in place for a successful 5G deployment.

Two things are missing now, that are very much interconnected: 5G smartphones and people’s adoption of 5G

Why are 5G smartphones so important? Because it’s ultimately 5G smartphone adoption that will make 5G successful or not. On one hand, if a 5G smartphone will have too many features like supporting lots of 5G bands, all numerologies (including 2, i.e. 60 KHZ scs sub-carrier spacing), 4K & 8K resolutions, foldable screen (and other features) it will be too expensive and people won’t buy it. On the other hand, if it does not have enough features people won’t bee motivated to change their smartphone. The threshold between those 2 states seems to be very relative, country by country, operator by operator, OEM by OEM smartphone manufacturer. No one really knows what’s the recipe for success and all are afraid of failing big time in launching their first 5G smartphones. Apart from this there is also the pressure from operators that want to have multiple models of 5G smartphones and are willing to subsidize them (which of course will translate into 2 years contract for end user from carriers). There’s also the technical aspect as it seems not so easy to fetch inside a small smartphone so many technologies (2G,3G,4G and 5G) with so many bands in each technology and with so many CA combinations, a 3x battery compared to a regular 4G phone, plus 4 antennas needed for 5G massive MIMO. Please keep in mind that in 5G 4x4 MIMO is mandatory for each phone for f>1Ghz while DL MIMO 8x8 is optional. If you want to know more about 5G challenges of a smartphone please read this Qorvo white paper 

In the equation there’s also the price of a 5G smartphone that will add on top of the current price of a regular 4G smartphone: few tens of dollars for royalties (i.e. Intellectual Property Rights of companies like Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson, Mediatek etc.), few hundreds of dollars for 5G hardware (depending how many 5G bands it will support), up to 100 dollars for a battery that is 3 times the capacity of a current 4G phone, up to 100 dollars for the cost of R&D for 5G smartphone development, up to 100 dollars for a 4K OLED screen, up to 100 dollars for profit. I would say there will not be any 5G smartphone cheaper than 1500 dollars (entry level one); probably tip-top 5G smartphones will value over 2500 dollars. That’s quite a price that not many will be willing to pay for a 5G smartphone considering that their current 4G smartphone works just great. There has to be a lot of incentives to convince them that suddenly 4G phones (even brand new one like Samsung Galaxy Note 9) are not good anymore and they need a 5G smartphone.

Why people’s adoption of 5G is so important? Because eMBB (Enhancend Mobile Broadband) will be the main source of income from operators. URLLC and mMTC are not yet ready as both will require NGC. But what does it take for large population to easily adopt 5G? That’s a question that Mobile Network Operators will have to answer but we can hint which are the main criteria: extensive coverage (not Like Verizon is deploying 5G home only in few cities , even there partially), indoor penetration (not like Verizon is offering in 28GHz that does not penetrate much into indoor), cheap cost, unlimited plans with unthrottled policy, no caps, a large variety of 5G smartphones that should be relatively cheap, better throughput at busy hour compared to 4G etc.

Either way the 5G odyssey will come to conclusion around 2019-2020. It will be the moment of truth for an industry (Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, Qualcomm etc.) that have poured over a hundred billions of dollars into this new technology and that is betting “all in” that it will be a success. An industry that is trying now to convince mobile networks operators to spend another thousand of billions of dollars ( an estimation) to roll it out worldwide. A huge ecosystem (vendors and mobile network operators) that is hoping that from somewhere, somehow, sometime it will make a profit out of 5G from end users and from enterprises. Whether this 5G success will happen or not it’s too early to proclaim and the success scale will have anyway a multitude of degrees as I explained in another article