My take on how 5G will transform wireless forever

5G is on its way, but questions still abound regarding what 5G is and what impact it will have on cell towers and small cells. In this article, we focus first on what 5G is and secondly on 8 ways it will impact the future of cell towers and small cells.

1. Calling it 5G doesn’t make it 5G. So, AT&& and Verizon, start calling your plans for 5G what they are - pre-5G. 

5G and 4G reference the generation of wireless service in place with 4G widely presumed to be LTE. Verizon and AT&T are throwing around the term 5G as if it is already here and that 5G is currently defined similarly to 4G. T-Mobile and Sprint are more willing to indicate that they are researching 5G and testing equipment. OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) like Ericsson and Nokia each claim to have 5G capable equipment for sale. Unfortunately, there are no standards yet for 5G- especially not for mobile use. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and 3GPP set the standards for 5G and expect to have 5G standards defined by 2020. Furthermore, the FCC hasn’t fully clarified what spectrum will be available to the wireless service providers. 

Any so-called “5G” network being tested or deployed today is nothing more than marketing hype and pre-5G efforts. 5G isn’t the province of wireless carriers and just because they issue their own standards doesn’t mean that those standards will be adopted by the standards bodies. 

2. While 5G will make your phone faster, it will do so much more. It is about scale, cost efficiency, and reliability of communication between all types of devices with all types of use cases. 

Whereas 4G was mostly defined by the LTE standard with its focus on higher speed to the mobile device, 5G will include a number of technologies, frequencies, and standards, some of which are forecastable now, and many which are not. The hallmarks of 5G as defined by the ITU are enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable and low-latency communications, and massive machine-type communications. 

• ENHANCED MOBILE BROADBAND. Users expect to be able to watch video and other high bandwidth applications where and when they need it but aren’t likely to need to move around a lot while doing so. In urban or highly dense populated areas, 5G must provide sufficient capacity for users in addition to throughput for more data intensive applications. By contrast, in rural areas, users want connectivity no matter where they are even if they are moving, but may be willing to accept lower throughput. In other words, 5G technologies and standards are intended to provide the end user what they need at reasonable fees. The question of what is reasonable though can only be answered by the free market. There is a substantial amount of CapEx required to deploy 5G and the companies expending it expect to profit off such deployment. 
• CRITICAL COMMUNICATIONS. Some users will need extremely reliable communications at low latency. Latency refers to the amount of time that a packet of information takes to get from one designated point to another. For example, think about self-driving cars or public safety uses- where lives hang on the delivery of data immediately and reliably. The network must be able to prioritize the most important traffic at extremely high accuracy rates. The network must also be sufficiently resilient to meet the demands of being on-air at critical times. This means cell site hardening and redundancy built into the network. 
• MASSIVE INTERNET OF THINGS. If you have smart home equipment in your home or a smart meter measuring electric use, these are machine to machine communications. Forecasts exceed 20 connected billion devices by 2020. While the communication between these devices may not need to be fast or use a lot of data, the sheer number of connected devices means that the network must be able to handle the cumulative amount of information flowing. 5G will enable connections between these devices at the appropriate priority, latency, efficiency, and speed.

3. 5G will connect more devices together than we can remotely imagine, but not all in the same network.

As if anyone could reliably predict how many devices will be connected to the network in the next 4 years, that doesn’t prevent “experts” from projecting that 20 billion to 50 billion devices will be connected by 2020. While the communication between the vast majority of these devices does not need to be fast or use a lot of data, the sheer number of connected devices means that the network must be able to handle the cumulative amount of information flowing. 5G will enable connections between these devices at the appropriate priority and speed about each specific device use case. Here are some of the potential hallmarks of 5G networks. 

• 5G will use frequencies from 600MHz to 71GHz. 
• 5G will facilitate speeds of up to 1 GB/s. Yes, 1 Gigabyte per second. 
• 5G will be fast- like 1ms latency fast. 
• 5G will use both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. 
• 5G will facilitate both indoor and outdoor transmissions. 
• 5G will work for both fixed and mobile wireless devices. 
• 5G will handle huge single data files simultaneously with trillions of very small ones. 

The key here is that no single network will facilitate all use cases and devices. We are about to see the development of devices that connect to themselves and to multiple networks as needed. Just as some companies are building out low power wide area networks that specialize in such devices, other companies will develop extremely specific and dense point to point networks for very intensive use cases. 

4. 5G will use significantly more and variable types of antenna sites than ever before. 

Historically, wireless carriers used macrocells as the primary type of antenna site with microcells and repeaters added as needed. With the need for better coverage indoors and in some notoriously difficult zoning municipalities, the wireless carriers started using Distributed Antenna Systems and small cells. However, macrocells still handled the lion’s share of wireless transmissions. Coverage, not capacity was the name of the game. However, in the last half decade, the focus is on adding capacity as the wireless carriers have built out their macrocell coverage network to provide service where they believe the economics of providing service warrant it. 

Small cells will increasingly handle the capacity demands of the network both indoors and outdoors. As mentioned previously in our Second point above, wireless carriers will focus efforts towards increasing system capacity in those areas where users congregate or use significant amounts of data. With 80% of wireless data used indoors, the carriers will endeavor to increase network capacity indoors through both indoor and outdoor small cells and outdoor macrocells. Eventually, the connected wireless devices themselves will become “nodes” within the network, capable of communicating between themselves as part of the overall “mesh network.” 

Connectivity to the home or premise (“Fixed Wireless To The Home (FWTTH) or Fixed Wireless To The Premises (FWTTP)) or business will be critical. While fiber will continue to be the preferred connection when already built to the unit, fixed wireless will be the preferred method of connecting to new homes and locations that don’t have fiber routed to them. This means new fixed wireless point to multipoint antennas on the towers or rooftops or other structures and antennas in or on the user’s residential unit. 

We will inevitably see further regulation from municipalities looking to diminish the visual blight from these new antennas and from wireless entities looking to encourage states and the FCC to reduce local control over 5G and IOT antennas. 

5. 5G will be exponentially smarter than 4G or any wireless technology before it. 

Unlike previous iterations of wireless where each site was individually controlled and connected to the network and equipment at each location needed to be replaced to meet future demands, 5G (and 4G to a lesser extent) equipment will be designed to be software upgradable and controlled from the cloud. 

Network resources can be “sliced” or dynamically controlled and assigned based upon the then present needs of the network. The best way to visualize this is to think of an urban downtown area. In the morning, users are on their way to work. Some may be in the car listening to podcasts (a relatively low demand on the network but a mobile one). Others may be on the subway or train trying to catch up on the latest episode of their favorite TV show (a high demand on the network and a mobile one.) When they get to work, the user will then convert to using WIFI or a fixed internet connection to work (or play), reducing the demands on the system. At lunch, the user may go outside or to a restaurant or run errands, once again using the mobile device(s) on the cellular network. They then return to work until the late afternoon, where they begin their network commute home, again listening to podcasts or watching video. Once home, they may still use their mobile devices while watching TV- whereby Accenture indicates that 87% of people indicate they use their phone or mobile device while watching TV. On weekends, these same users may go back downtown to a football game or festival or concert. When these users aggregate in the same area, the overall demands on network capacity increase substantially. 

The 5G network of the future must be able to deliver capacity and reliability to the end user where and when they need it. From the wireless carrier perspective, the 5G network must also do so cost efficiently. The percentage of users in the US that have wireless devices has peaked, and the wireless carriers can no longer grow revenue by adding new subscribers. Price wars between the carriers focus on taking consumers from other wireless carriers. Wireless carriers must reduce the cost of services to grow profit/revenue. 

5G will focus on the user being “Always Best Connected” or ABC. The network will be intelligent and will dynamically connect the user to the best connection albeit with a preference for one that uses unlicensed spectrum if such connection is available without interference. Furthermore, the 5G network will “push” the user’s equipment to connect to their broadband network (cable, DSL) to “offload” data from the licensed wireless network. 

6. 5G enables essential low latency connectivity. 

Latency is how long it takes for a signal to reach the end device from the network core. For some uses- low latency isn’t important. Most people don’t care whether it takes their text message to reach the end recipient in ? a second or one second. But a delay of ? second in response time in your self-driving car could easily mean the difference between life and death. First responders also trade in seconds and will require as near-instant communication as possible. 

Latency is a function of distance and the density of the materials between the receive and transmit source- meaning the farther you are away from the transmitting device- the higher the latency. The more things between you and the transmitter- the higher the latency. 5G’s massive densification of sites will reduce the distance and the objects between you and the transmitter with the objective of getting latency to less than 1 millisecond. To put it in perspective, 4G LTE latencies are around 90 milliseconds. 

7. 5G isn’t just for adoption by established wireless carriers like the Big 4 carriers in the US- AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. 

Because 5G includes the use of exclusively licensed spectrum and freely available unlicensed spectrum, 5G standards can be used by any person or entity that uses transmitters and devices approved by the FCC. For example, WIFI and Bluetooth are ubiquitously available technologies that anyone can use without paying for anything other than the equipment to use it. LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U) standards envision an alternative to carrier owned Wi-Fi hotspots but controlled through a similar LTE interface. 

5G can and will be adopted by multiple entrants into the wireless sector. Facebook, Amazon, and Google are each investigating creation of their 5G network technologies to avoid their mobile users having to pay AT&&, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint to access Facebook, Amazon, and Google services and websites. Cable companies will look to increase accessibility to their programming while users are mobile without the cable company subscriber having to pay data fees to do so. 

New entrants are and will continue to jump into the wireless space although most if not all will focus focused on specific niches of wireless equipment/use cases. The cost to build a nationwide network that is all things to all users is exorbitant. Even companies with a substantial amount of licensed spectrum (DISH, COMCAST) have not built out competing wireless networks. However, companies that focus on niche services will build out networks designed for specific purposes. One example is companies like SigFox which are building out Low Power Wide Area networks with a focus on Internet of Things (IOT) connections. These networks are developed to connect billions of small devices each transmitting very small amounts of data on a regular or irregular basis. Examples of these devices include smart electric meters and remote temperature or moisture gauges (like the one the author is building for the family’s lake camp). 

The FCC may choose to prioritize making new spectrum available to these entrants to encourage competition and reduce the stranglehold that the Big 4 wireless companies have on prime spectrum. If that occurs, new spectrum can develop new players and new technologies from innovative companies that do not want to be bound to the terms of use that the Big 4 wireless companies will place on any entity connecting devices to its network. 

FINALLY, 5G is ambitious in scope and capability and has serious potential for disruption across multiple sectors, including the very wireless sector it is intended to benefit. 

Setting standards for wireless communications between billions of devices is ambitious; expecting use cases and devices to evolve without significant deviation from the standards by the time they are complete is reckless. Expecting that the wireless industry as it stands today is immune from disruption is downright foolhardy. In our next article, we will examine specifically how the wireless sector stands to benefit and potentially be disrupted by 5G technologies and buildouts. 

If you need assistance with valuing your tower assets, have questions on the possible impact of 5G, or want to know more about what is happening in the tower sector, please don't hesitate to reach out to me via LinkedIn messenger.