Can Helium 5G succeed in Sweden?
There is a lot of buzz around Helium 5G as provided by FreedomFi and Dish in US, using the CBRS spectrum . Many players around the world are looking at what is happening and considering if it would fit their business and the regulation in their countries of operation. In some countries the regulation might be or becoming similar to US with CBRS but in other countries the regulation might already have closed the door for "Helium 5G".
Below is my quick summary of the situation in Sweden. What is the situation in other countries? Please comment below or send me a DM to discuss.
Local 5G licensing in Sweden
The regulator in Sweden announced in November last year the possibility to apply for local licences in 3.7 GHz spectrum. They also announced the possibility to apply for a local "indoor licence" in 26 GHz spectrum. The licences are technology neutral but since you may need to synchronise to the nationwide public networks it may be hard to run anything but 5G (NR TDD) since the frame structure need to fit.
The local licence (n.b. not necessary private licence) give you the right to transmit from base stations and terminals within a specific area of land, a property designation area (sv Fastighetsbeteckning). All of Sweden is divided into these property designation areas, which can be around 1500 sqm for a residential villa or much bigger for an industry estate area. It is not the building but the land area on which the building stand (+ garden or other free area). The licence is valid only for one estate area but you can apply for more than one area, e.g. to combine many small into a bigger area. Your terminals much transmit from within the area of the licence and the transmit power outside the area must be less than -80 dbm/20 MHz during 20% of the time.
Please note that the licence does not automatically give you the right to build a network, which is to be decided by the land owner, but you can apply for a licence to transmit in any property designation area in Sweden.
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How does Helium 5G fit these licence conditions?
The short answer is that it does not!
The model of Helium, the "Peoples network", is that you ask people and companies to put up their own base stations with as much coverage as possible and together all these small nodes create a network. The longer your base station reach, the more other base station you "hear" and the more terminals that connect to your base station and send traffic, the more Helium coins you will earn.
But the licence condition in Sweden for local licences say that:
So, anyone who dreams of starting a Helium 5G network in Sweden need to look for another solution than the local licences in 3.7 GHz band. There are of course "licence free bands" and Helium LoRa has already got a lot of traction in Sweden. To provide 5G services however there are no suitable bands available.
What is the 5G Helium situation in other countries?
Vice President Business Development and Global Partnerships | AI for Business Acceleration & Automation | AI1 AI2 AI3
2 年Good summary Tommy ! As of September 2021, Helium reported: The @Helium 5G Network will be exclusively available in the United States to start, and we expect the 5G Network to expand into other countries and cover a variety of spectrum bands as early as next year. Hence, Helium′s expanding 5G ecosystem with Dish, FreedomFI, GIGSky... https://www.helium.com/5G In sum, beyond their dual (5G, IoT) US coverage - thanks to CBRS - Helium′s global coverage to date extends to over 659K hotspots world-wide: https://explorer.helium.com/coverage So what/who′s next ? That very much depends upon the way one looks at it: either top-down (regulated) or grassroot-up (de/unregulated). Helium for Smart Cities points to the latter. https://www.helium.com/smart-cities IMO, MVNOs and/or rogue networks stand as the 1st prospects. Remember how in Ukraine, a 4th "rogue network" emerged out of Donbass in 2014. 8 years later, all MNOs appear to have gone rogue https://www.techtimes.com/articles/273073/20220316/mobile-carriers-go-rogue-mode-to-keep-ukrainians-smartphones-alive.htm As for Sverige per se - the P2P country behind KaZaA, Skype, Joost, Spotify - my money would be on further decentralization and disruption moving forward. Ha det s? bra !
Principal Consultant | Solution Architect | Next Gen Critical Communications
2 年I think the absence of national coordination and enforcement will make this concept ultimately fail.
xG-Connect at Citymesh
2 年It is not "you may need" but you "need" to synchronise to the nationwide public networks(TDD)!.
I think Helium is a massive scam (or if I'm being generous / lawyers are reading this then "massively naive") There are huge regulatory issues, especially for self-installation by an unqualified homeowner. Who checks the conformance for height, power & all the rest? How is it registered & in whose name? Do you have a certified installer watch you on Zoom while you bolt it to your wall? There are issues that Nanda mentions about emergency calls / location, lawful intercept etc. What's the full legal position? What's the mechanism by which the hotspot owner gets paid? How much, and in proper money or some silly cryptocurrency? What are the tax implications, and terms & conditions - how do you (or the MNO) get a refund if it fails? Does it use roaming, or some sort of MOCN sharing model? How does the core interconnect work? What are the cybersecurity risks at all layers? How does cell-to-cell handoff work? Or cell-to-macro? Or carrier aggregation? Or slicing? Or 100 other features? Basically this is a complex, expensive version of WiFi offload, which itself hasn't exactly set the world on fire
Co-creator of world’s first quantum-safe mobile network. Mentoring start-up founders and execs. Consciousness, AI, Quantum, 5G. Father. Husband. Views are only my own and no reflection or connection to my employer.
2 年Helium 5G actually has very questionable regulatory status…the minute you use a CBRS network to provide a public service you are subject to all the same obligations as MNOs - legal intercept, emergency call support etc…this hasn’t been thought through. In other jurisdictions, the service will explicitly break the terms of the licence in which industrial spectrum is given ONLY FOR PRIVATE USE. Public use needs to be licensed and spectrum bid for like any other public MNO spectrum.