5G'S Olympic leap [mobile communication networks at the 2018 Winter Olympics

Abstract

BY THE END OF October, and after a delay of more than a year, UK communications regulator Ofcom expects to have sold a large chunk of the spectrum needed to deploy the fifth generation (5G) of cellular networks, a shift that many operators believe will transform not just their businesses but everyone else's. And they are now in a hurry to get there. The auction process is already beset with controversy because of the decision to impose a cap on how much of the valuable spectrum each operator can win. BT's EE subsidiary is already at the limit of what it can use immediately and so can only bid for a fraction of the spectrum that is to be auctioned for 5G. But 02 and Three pushed for a much tighter cap. Today, their combined spectrum allowance still falls behind BT's allocation despite Three increasing its capacity by a third following its purchase of fixed-wireless provider Relish. In the US the situation is even worse. At the Brooklyn 5G Summit in late April, Dave Wolter, assistant vice president of radio technology at AT&T, said: There is currently no spectrum allocated to 5G in the US with the exception of 3.5GHz. That band has rules that don't make it attractive as a base 5G layer. But operators are pushing ahead, looking at ways to introduce 5G in the face of a massive spectrum shortage and buying up parcels of spectrum that they expect to be able to deploy for the new protocol. T-Mobile, for example, snapped up 600MHz bands in the US originally allocated to 4G with the aim to quickly convert them to use 5G. The 3GPP standards body behind the huge pile of specifications for 5G has put much of its effort into defining ways to eke the most out of the radio spectrum operators can cobble together, whether it has been recovered from analogue TV stations or pushes into frequencies previously considered too difficult and expensive to use.