The fifth generation of wireless networks, or 5G, is upon us—or that’s what the commercial real estate industry keeps hearing. The major United States wireless carriers are racing to be the first to deliver full scale 5G across the nation, but how far are they in their mission? How close are we to having access to 5G as a whole, regardless of which carrier reaches the mountaintop first?
These questions and more were answered during the “5G Realities—Where are we Carrier by Carrier?” panel during the Commercial Real Estate Summit at the ITEXPO conference in February. Fifth Gen Media Publisher and CEO Rich Berliner moderated the discussion which included Neutral Path VP of Technology Chuks Agba, SOLiD Director of Marketing, Doug Bierbower, Telnet Executive VP of Engineering and Business Development Mike Dorranian, Nextivity VP of Marketing Joe Schmelzer and ExteNet General Manager, Enterprise Solutions Group Greg Spraetz.
“One thing about 5G that is very different than other technology iterations is that 5G is really not one thing,” Schmelzer said while presenting each of the major carriers’ 5G spectrum strategy. “5G is actually a collection of things and it’s all been packaged up and marketed by the carriers and the tech providers as 5G. In reality, it’s several different things.”
WHERE ARE WE WITH 5G NOW?
Given how much 5G is discussed within the CRE industry, it’s easy to think it’s closer to being accessible than it actually is. All of the panelists had different takes on 5G’s status, but the consensus was that it is still a little ways away.
“I’d say where we are with 5G right now is the map wars, which T-Mobile is clearly winning with their giant magenta map,” Bierbower said. “Other than that, there’s not a whole lot of impact on you as a phone user. You’re going to get a very similar service from that sort of 5G that you’re getting from 4G. What most of us really need is a little bit better 4G, but the end game of 5G will be something entirely different.”
Agba noted that there’s also a lack of 5G-ready devices on the market right now. At this point, there’s a Samsung Tablet and a few other Samsung devices.
“Outside of that, we’re still relying on our 4G LTE devices,” he said. “The application market has not caught up with the marketing message that we’re seeing from a lot of the service providers. We don’t have the devices to support it on a wide scale.”
Meanwhile, Dorranian viewed 5G as, “a work in progress and not a switch you can turn on and off.” He also broke 5G down into three categories: mobile broadband, critical mission applications like driverless cars, and massive machine connectivity (Internet of Things).
“I heard there was a surgery done remotely that used 5G technology,” Dorranian said. “The doctor can remotely operate on you from anywhere in the world—sitting in New York doing an operation in Japan. Things like that can happen.”
Spraetz labeled 5G as an “evolution” rather than a “revolution” and believes the industry is still halfway through 4G deployment. A number of carriers in the CRE space were building fiber infrastructure to support small cells and there’s now a backlog of 4G deployments, according to Spraetz.
“We’re starting to see 5G deployment and that is more mostly from a preparation perspective as we continue to deploy 4G,” he said. “And then devices and everything else over the next couple of years, we’ll follow that. There is lots to come, but I think one of the biggest elephants in the room is the actual deployment costs and how to monetize it.”
CARRIER BY CARRIER 5G DEPLOYMENT STATUS
Each panelist had an opportunity to weigh in on one of the major carriers and where they were in regard to deploying their 5G network. Dorranian spoke on Sprint, which was a unique assignment given the recent approval of its merger with T-Mobile. He noted that compared to other carriers, Sprint had a good nationwide mid-band spectrum and about 120 MHz as a bandwidth that it is using for 4G and 5G.
“They are using three to four of those carriers on 4G for the 20 MHz span, so that occupies 60 of that for 4G, so they’re left with 60 GHz for 5G—what they are using right now today,” Dorranian said. “The agreed physical channel bandwidth at the mid-level with a lower FR RAN has 100 megabyte bandwidth. That’s what you really should have; Sprint’s running it on 60 right now. On the millimeter wave, I think that’s 400 MHz.”
Sprint recently reached 700 megabits per second for downlink and 20 megabits for uplink in Chicago. According to Dorranian, no carrier has done better than 10 milliseconds of latency.
Meanwhile, Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum is part of what made it so attractive to T-Mobile. Mid-band can travel much further than mmWave—a mile radius versus 300 feet.
“You can cover your suburban and city areas with mid-band, hot spot and millimeter and the rural area with low band like T-Mobile has,” Dorranian said. “The combination of what T-Mobile has and Sprint will make it perfect as far as how they’re going to strategize to spend the least amount of money to build their network.”
“I think the merger solidifies T-Mobile’s plan and approach to the marketplace,” Agba said.
Agba pointed to T-Mobile going live with 600 Mhz coverage cross the U.S. and lighting up 200 million points of presence.
“That strategy was really bringing 5G coverage to the masses and in a very cost effective way,” he said. “Now what they are looking at doing is expanding that 600 Mhz coverage to all of their points of presence, but then filling in the gaps in use case ways with mmWave and the mid-band 2.5.”
T-Mobile will likely put its efforts into deploying mmWave cells in areas that need additional spectrum or low latency applications, according to Agba. In terms of strategy, the carrier is focused on bringing 5G to all of its bands.
“When we talk through this conversation today, yes, it’s 600 Mhz, and then fill in the gaps,” Agba said. “But six years from now, it looks like 5G across the entire spectrum. I think (mmWave for urban, 2.5 for suburbs and 600 for rural) is the most effective strategy. I saw somewhere it would cost about a trillion dollars to build out an mmWave network and none of the operators have that. So you have to come up with interesting, innovative ways to deploy 5G to the masses.”
AT&T has entered the marketplace using their 800 band spectrum on 5G, according to Spraetz. The carrier also announced approximately 40 markets it is going into and will enter 13 of those markets in tandem with Samsung on the 5G for its low band.
“I think that’s going to be their strategy nationwide right now is to groom that and free it all up for the 5G,” Spraetz said.
ExteNet is currently working with AT&T and has deployed the carrier’s 27 Ghz on the millimeter side in some of its venues. “I think they’re still looking at it and seeing what impact it has; the use cases and things of that nature. (There’s) more to be seen on that, as well as with some of the other carriers at some of the larger sporting type venues where mmWave has a really good play right now, or an expected play. But I think all of the carriers are still thinking, ‘What are we going to get out of this? What are going to be the use cases? What drives it?’”
Spraetz said he believes AT&T’s use of 800 band now and then implementing a re-farming could be a winning plan. He also said he does not think AT&T will have to return to the auctions.
“I think they’ll be able to farm enough of their spectrum to support that in the markets. They’ve come out and announced it will cover more than 50 million people, so I think they are going after a pretty decent sized footprint and a population coverage,” he said.
Bierbower tied the desire to sell devices as to why carriers are promoting their 5G networks before they’re completed. “What they aspire to achieve is that, as the devices are released over the course of this year, you get a customer who buys one of the $1,300 5G capable phones,” he said. “That’s a captive customer for a while. They are not going to turn around and switch carriers and buy a new device three months later—it’s cost prohibitive for people. I think that is part of the motivation here.”
When it comes to where Verizon is in terms of rolling out mmWave ubiquitously, Bierbower questioned if the carrier needs to do so at all.
“When you talk about a network’s capacity, it’s dealing with the focal points of excessive demand,” Bierbower said. “You don’t need to peanut butter this spectrum everywhere. If they can provide enough capacity for customers using their low and mid band spectrum over 80 percent of the country, and use mmWave in the 20 percent where the capacity actually exists, that’s fine. The only place it’s not fine is in the comparison of the maps.”
THE FUTURE OUTLOOK FOR 5G
The emergence of 5G is something CRE owners should be aware of, but they probably don’t have to turn their buildings upside down to accommodate the network just yet. Schmelzer mentioned that projections from analysts and carriers say only 50 percent of users will have 5G handsets—five years from now.
“That means the other 50 percent are going to have 4G or 3G handsets, or whatever,” Schmelzer said. “So if you’re a building owner and you are trying to figure out what to put in your building, you have to support 4G. In the current horizon and visibility, your users are going to be on 4G. Whether they’re standalone and non-standalone for 5G that will be a different story. But for the foreseeable future, I think we’re looking at 4G as a foundation for the in-building contact.”
The future is where we’re also likely to have 5G phones making up a majority of the mobile phones sold, according to the panel. Schmelzer again pointed to forecasts of just half of the population owning a 5G phone in 2025, and Dorranian and Spraetz agreed. Bierbower however believes carriers will do what they can to get 5G phones in customers hands sooner.
“I personally think carriers will be motivated to try to get us to adopt a little faster than that,” he said. “Personally, I’d defer my purchase until the phones are going to have all the bands rather than buy one that only has a couple. The C band placed on top of what we already have—a smart move.”
