Thursday, Aug 17, 2017

Dubai

Global connections for the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) will increase to 1.4 billion by 2025 from just one million in 2019, the first year of commercial launch.

The 5G is the evolution of 4G with faster speeds of 10Gbps and a latency of one millisecond compared to 150 Mbps speed and a latency of 40 milliseconds with 4G. The 2G technology was originally designed for voice, and 3G was designed for data.

Sam Barker, research author at Juniper Research, said that China, the US and Japan will have the highest number of 5G connections by 2025. Together these three countries will have 55 per cent of all 5G connections.

Moreover, the US alone will account for over 30 per cent of global 5G IoT connections by 2025, with the highest number of 5G connections for fixed wireless broadband and automotive services.

In the UAE, both the telecom operators (etisalat and du) are expected to commercially launch the service in 2019.

The UAE is one of the seven countries that is driving the 5G technology. Others are the US, UK, China, Korea, Germany and Japan.

Marwan BinShakar, vice-president for access and transport planning at du, said that 5G is touted to revolutionise connectivity and lifestyle in users through high capacity speeds. In preparation for the 5G future, du is the first telco in the UAE to perform a massive Mimo (multiple input, multiple output) field trial to achieve a record-breaking cell capacity that exceeded 700 Mbps using a single carrier of 20MHz and utilised three simultaneous carriers totalling 60MHz which brings the cell capacity to more than 2.1Gbps.

“5G will completely change the connectivity experience of our customers, as transfer of information will be instantaneous,” BinShakar said.

He said that virtual reality and augmented reality will be one of the main apps of the 5G era. Globally, AR/VR has a huge growth potential with a market value expected to be approximately $110 billion by 2025.

The technology of 5G “will be revolutionary” as 4G started with 150 Mbps speed per second and then it was enhanced to 300 Mbps and it will keep evolving closer to 1Gbps by 2019.

However, he said that 5G will start from 1GB per second and will go up to 5GB in phase one and then evolve even further in later stages.

Even though when 5G is rolled out, BinShakar said that 2G will still be provided in the UAE but one of the 2G (900 and 1800MHz) or 3G (2.1GHz) spectrum will be shut down and “we are in talks with the TRA. We have already started re-farming 3G spectrum and give to 4G.”

However, he said that device manufactures will focus on one specific frequency for launch and then move to other bands from 2020.

Meanwhile, Barker said that operators and vendors must test their networks in a real-world environment at scale, ensuring speeds can compete with fibre services.

He said that networks that can deliver the highest speeds and greatest reliability will command the highest average revenue per connections (ARPC), hastening an operators’ return on 5G investment.

Juniper forecast that the ARPC would be disappointing, including Smart Cities and Digital Health. This was due to low data requirements and nominal duty-cycles. The research urged operators to develop new business models to minimise network operating costs, including software-based solutions to manage the diverse requirements of individual 5G IoT connections.

Juniper Research forecasts that total operator billed revenues will rise to $269 billion by 2025, from $850 million in 2019.

For operators, Juniper anticipates that the majority of acquired 5G connections will be users upgrading from 4G connections. As a result, Juniper does not expect an increase in the number of the active SIMs a rising from the introduction of 5G networks. However, Juniper does anticipate that 5G connections will initially carry a premium over ARPC.

Juniper’s has ranked network operators on time in development, breadth and value of partnerships and progression of 5G network testing.

Barker said that early adopters will be ‘top end’ users who are currently in the higher echelons of monthly spend. In the early years, the actual numbers of connected subscribers will be very low, rendering early trends less representative.

By Naushad K. Cherrayil Staff Reporter

Gulf News 2017. All rights reserved.