Weekly News: LTE & 5G Subscriber Growth and Forecast
April 5, 2020
1. LTE and 5G Subscriber Growth and Forecast
2. FCC presses ahead with 6GHz Wi-Fi plan
3. Docomo kills-off NB-IoT network
4. China releases 700MHz for 5G
5. COVID-19 delays 5G for enterprise use cases till 2022
LTE and 5G Subscriber Growth and Forecast
LTE & 5G Subscriber Growth and Forecast.
LTE Subscriber Growth
By the end of 2019 there were 5.27 billion LTE subscriptions worldwide. *
Over one billion LTE subscriptions (1.032 bn) were added in the preceding 12 months.
24.4% YoY growth.
LTE subscriptions now account for 57.7% of all global mobile subscriptions.
5G subscriptions more than quadrupled in the last quarter to reach at least 17.73 million globally by the end of 2019 (representing 0.19% of the entire global mobile market).
- Source of data – Omdia provided to GSA at end March 2020
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FCC presses ahead with 6GHz Wi-Fi plan
US regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prepared to vote on a proposal to open the entire 6GHz band for unlicensed use, a move officials said would help meet rapidly rising demand for Wi-Fi services.
First floated in October 2018, the plan would set aside 1200MHz of spectrum for unlicensed operations, including low-power use cases across the entire band and higher power operations in a smaller 850MHz lot.
The vote is scheduled for 23 April.
In a statement FCC chairman Ajit Pai highlighted projections that nearly 60 per cent of global mobile data traffic will be offloaded to Wi-Fi networks by 2022, adding adoption of the proposal would “effectively increase the amount of spectrum available for Wi-Fi almost by a factor of five”.
“Ultimately, I expect that 6GHz unlicensed devices will become a part of consumers’ everyday lives,” he added in a blog, naming industrial sensors, connected appliances, machines, meters and wearables as examples.
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Docomo kills-off NB-IoT network
Japanese operator NTT Docomo announced it will shut down its NB-IoT network today (31 March), less than a year after launching the service, as it looks to prioritise resources and turn its focus to LTE-M.
In a statement, the market leader said given the current business environment it decided to stop the LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) service, which went live in April 2019, “to concentrate management resources”.
The operator said it will continue to offer low-power IoT services via LTE-M, another standardised LPWA network technology, and work to improve the service.
Marc Einstein, chief analyst at research company ITR, told Mobile World Live he thinks the move is not really a matter of resources but more of priorities, as Japan had never been bullish on NB-IoT when compared with China or Europe, and LTE-M is seen as being closer to its core mobile network.
“Docomo is just downsizing because there is no need to run both networks. It also believes 5G will eventually be able to handle massive amounts of connections once Release 17 is finalised and is probably re-allocating those resources to its overall 5G network rollout,” he explained.
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China releases 700MHz for 5G
New entrant China Broadcast Network (CBN) has finally acquired its slice of 700MHz, but it is still seeking partners to help build its 5G business.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) approved the repurposing of the former analog broadcast spectrum for mobile communications on April 1.
CBN has exclusive rights to the much-coveted band, having been awarded 80MHz with its 5G license last June.
Announcing the decision, the MIIT declared the domestic industry had now formed a “relatively complete” industry chain for 700MHz. That may be true for vendors but it is not the case for the sole service provider.
Table 1: China 5G spectrum allocation
| Operator | Assigned spectrum | Total | Shared spectrum |
| China Mobile | 2515-2675MHz | 160MHz | |
| China Mobile | 4800-4900MHz | 100MHz | |
| China Telecom | 3400-3500MHz | 100MHz | 3300-3400MHz (indoor) |
| China Unicom | 3500-3600MHz | 100MHz | 3300-3400 MHz (indoor) |
| China Broadcast Network | 703-798MHz | 80MHz | 3300-3400 MHz (indoor) |
| China Broadcast Network | 4.9GHz (trial) | TBC | |
| Source: MIIT | |||
CBN, with income of around $11 billion from cable TV services, lacks the financial scale to build a national network and compete against three big telco incumbents.
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COVID-19 delays 5G for enterprise use cases till 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a delay in the standardization work that would make 5G available for enterprise use cases.
Self-driving cars, IoT connectivity, smart cities, among others, are some of the enterprise 5G use cases.
The relevant standardization body, 3GPP, has announced a deferral of this standardization until at least June 2020, which would delay commercial rollout of industrial 5G until at least 2022.
Given that most industrial enterprises are looking to upgrade their communication technology in 2021, this delay will result in 5G missing out on at least 25 percent of the revenue opportunities within industrial enterprises. This translates into 5G losing up to 10 percent of total 5G revenues, according to ABI Research.
“This is a blow to the standards bodies and the timeline of 5G,” says Leo Gergs, principal analyst at ABI Research. “The cancellation of leading industry events, such as Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, caused more complicated workflows for the 3GPP.”
Enterprise verticals will consider 5G for automating workflows in factories and other industrial environments in order to keep supply chain disruptions at a minimum.
“We will also see 5G applications for life-critical verticals, such as agriculture/food production, to pick up pace, while a growing number of countries will consider enhancing their healthcare sector with 5G-enabled capabilities,” Leo Gergs said.
Strategy Analytics, in its recent research report, said leading telecom infrastructure vendors –Huawei , Ericsson and Nokia – made more significant contributions to 5G standards than other studied companies.
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