TORONTO – Once fully deployed, the move to 5G wireless will fundamentally change how we live in Canada, but when and how that will happen is still open to much debate. That’s the message from a panel of telecom executives who gathered on Tuesday at the 2018 Telecom Summit in Toronto to discuss the opportunities and challenges of the next wireless revolution.
In time, 5G will power self-driving cars, but for now it’s the federal government that is driving the 5G show in Canada and it’s taking the slow lane when it comes to releasing spectrum. While Rogers, Telus, Shaw and Bell are all currently conducting technical trial testing of 5G across Canada, in the U.S. Verizon says it will have 5G-powered residential Internet access in three to five markets by the end of the year. AT&T claims it will have mobile 5G networks running this year in a dozen cities.
“We are currently dealing with regulatory uncertainty so the roll out of 5G here will be a progression. It is not just going to happen,” said Tim Dinesen, EVP, Network, Xplornet Communications.
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) has not set a date for 3.5GHz spectrum auction, but it did target March 2019 for an upcoming 600MHz spectrum auction. The auction will set aside 43% of the spectrum for regional competitors and potential new market entrants
“Competition will drive 5G in Canada. We need the government to get spectrum in the hands of carriers as soon as possible so we can go after each other,” added Brian O'Shaughnessy, SVP and CTO of Converged Networks at Shaw Communications.
But the reality is with billions of dollars of revenue at stake and with 5G being so closely tied to Canada’s economic future, the government wants to release spectrum thoughtfully, if slowly. Keep in mind that the 2014 auction of 700 MHz brought in nearly $5.3 billion, and the 2015 sale of AWS-3 spectrum brought in $2.1 billion.
Another factor impacting the move to 5G is Canada’s average population density which is far below hat of the United States, Europe and Japan. The relatively lower population density means it costs more for service providers to roll out 5G compared to other developed countries.
“With 5G we are talking about completely new business models being created. The real excitement about 5G is how people will innovate on it.” – Alexander Brock, Rogers Communications.
“When 5G first rolls out it will be an effort to do better 4G.” predicts Kyriakos Vergos VP Sales for North America at Airspan Networks. He contends that it will still take years to fill the capacity gaps necessary in order to fully realize the potential of 5G. Under ideal conditions, 5G is expected to have ultra low latency and a download speed of 20 gigabits (GB) per second. That’s 20 times faster than the current 4G download speed of 1 GB per second.
But unlike 4G, where humans largely drove adoption, it will be IoT devices and massive machine-type communications (mMTC) like smart meters that will likely benefit most from the data-bandwidth and latency improvements that 5G communications offers. It will be software talking to software that will drive usage of the 5G network and that will forever change what services are delivered.
“With 5G we are talking about completely new business models being created. The real excitement about 5G is how people will innovate on it,” predicted Rogers Communications’ SVP network technology Alexander Brock.
Part of the business opportunities comes from network slicing, with 5G enabling multiple virtual networks to be created on top of a common shared physical infrastructure. The virtual networks can then be customized to meet the specific needs of applications, services, devices, customers or operators. With 5G, operators can segment their networks to support particular services. Multiple networks can be deployed for different service types over one common infrastructure, while enabling fast implementation and better resource utilization.
Brock told the audience the ability to slice networks with 5G will enable “hundreds of thousands of devices per square kilometre to interact with each other.”
“The roll out of 5G for consumers and businesses is not going to be more of the same, but will unleash a real time economy. For the first time we can provide on demand service based on the value of that transaction to the user” he added.
A study released by Ericsson last year indicated that network slicing enables a 35% increase in revenue when compared to a single multi-service network, and a 15% increase when it is implemented instead of individual, separate networks with dedicated resources. Ericsson claims the initial investment in network automation can be returned in as little as one to two years.
Fiber will remain a critical component of 4G for 5G network deployment. Denser networks will be needed to support the expected rise in mobile data, IoT devices, and increased machine-to-machine transactions, all at substantially lower latency and at higher quality of service levels.
“Right now there is not enough dark fiber [unused optical fiber] to get to where we need to be to deploy 5G,” said Vergos.
To fully realize the potential, panelists conceded that service providers will also have to forge far more partnerships with non-traditional business partnerships and industries across Canada then they have when they introduced 4G.
Photo by Oleg Donner, Toronto.
