Improving the Future of Telecom

In its 6G Whitepaper, SK电讯 admits 5G has failed and says 6G will solve 5G’s problems. Unfortunately the document seems to make exactly the same mistake that was made with 5G: “deliver bandwidth and they will come” did not bring new revenues beyond the SIM and data plan neither for 4G nor for 5G, so why would 6G be any different?. The proposed 6G use cases are still Autonomous Cars, AR/VR/XR, Metaverse, digital twins,… It is unclear how the future business model of telecom will be different? There is one almighty 6G killer app: AI. AI will fix the 5G debacle because 6G and AI will “automagically” fix the fact that the telecom industry has a business case problem in which the only thing that customers want is a reliable bitpipe. I don’t think so.?

So let’s quickly summarise what will happen if no structural changes are made in telecom thinking:

• As the years pass, 5G infrastructure keeps on being pockets of proprietary technology which is on purpose made to be incompatible between suppliers [I am talking about you, Nokia, Ericsson,...]. Even OpenRAN from different suppliers is not compatible. As a result, telcos keep on spending ridiculous amounts of money on overpriced and overly complex solutions.
• All 6G use cases will slowly disappear. Autonomous cars will use 5G and LEO satellites for entertainment only because cameras and LIDAR are good enough. Metaverse and other emerging Internet apps are mostly played indoors because you cannot walk on a street and emerge inside another world at the same time. Digital twins get connected to fibre or WiFi because they are mostly inside industrial plants. AI is mostly connected to wired networks or WiFi because GPUs and other AI NPU/TPU hardware does not work very well on triple A batteries.
• 5G infrastructure debts combined with high interest rates and low new 5G revenues will drive more telcos to sell their crown jewels [i.e. tower infrastructure and last mile connectivity] and merge to find synergies [fire tens of thousands of redundant employees]. It however is just a delay of the inevitable which is going bankrupt.?

Realistically we should not care about the survival of inefficient telecom companies. Darwin will take care of them. However, everybody needs fast and reliable broadband connectivity on the go. So how can the future of telecom improve?

The ultra-efficient mobile network

Setting up a bit pipe telecom operator that undercuts all others would be extremely costly. A lot cheaper strategy is to help the existing telecom players improve their mobile coverage and reduce their costs. Given that many telecom operators already have sold their tower infrastructure to others, why not take this idea to the extreme? What if customers are responsible for setting up and managing their own mobile base station infrastructure??

Building-owners and businesses are offered open source base station infrastructure, all based on open source hardware and software, e.g. RISC-V processor, open source SDR like LimeSDR, open source boot loader, open source operating system,... The more this infrastructure is off-the-shelf and can be used for other use cases, the better. We want high volume hardware because the cost to design one chip or hardware board is high but making 100 million copies does not cost a lot more than 10,000 beyond the bill of materials which drops in price per unit. True universally compatible OpenRAN all the way.?

Also all the software to handle 5G operations and manage spectrum, antennas, connectivity, security, metering, billing,... should be open source and standardised. The cost of infrastructure and software needs to be as low as possible, so more businesses can acquire their own base stations and operate them. They are operating fixed and WiFi networks, why not mobile broadband as well??

Businesses should even be compensated to manage the networks. A spotify-type business model is best in which the base station owner gets compensated for each minute a subscriber connects to their infrastructure and makes data flow. So if your company owns a large shopping centre and many subscribers use its infrastructure, then a percentage of their monthly data plan is dedicated to compensate for the usage of the infrastructure.?

Millions of MicroMNOs

The next step is to create millions of MicroMNOs or mobile virtual network operators. Why handle the complexity of a mobile contract for each employee with all the support burden that comes with it? Let companies define their own data plans, handle their own virtual number plans,... Telecom operators were talking about Private 5G for years. Why not make every company have private 5G. If you roam on another’s company network, you pay a data cost. This way if your infrastructure is used by many others, your telecom base stations might become revenue generating instead of costing you money.

Billions of MicroMNOs

If companies can do it, why not expand the idea to retail. Why not convert your broadband modem into a mobile base station as well. If visitors do not connect to your WiFi then they can use your 5G network. Each family becomes an MicroMNO and manages their own 5G data plan.

New Revenue Generation

There are many solutions to generate extra revenues which the current generation of telecom providers is not exploring. Revenue solutions like Nearby Infrastructure, Custom Security, Custom Radio, Cadge, the Internet of Cheap Things, …? Yes I know I am being vague here. That might be on purpose ;-)??

Conclusion

We need to start preparing for a future whereby traditional telecom operators go into bankruptcy. Creating billions of MicroMNOs with new revenue-generating solutions would be a viable alternative. If you are willing to invest in this idea, why don’t we speak. If you like the idea, a reshare is always appreciated. If you think it will not work or you can improve the idea, share why and how in the comments…