Fastweb, owned by Swisscom, has announced the first large millimetre wave build (26 GHz) in Europe, intending to cover a third of Italy by 2024. That's actually more than Verizon's plan, adjusted for population. (Italy: 60M; U.S. 328M.) Verizon's current plan is 30M by 2024 to 2027, about a quarter of the U.S. Fastweb expects to deliver a gigabit 500 meters, using Samsung fixed wireless gear and all outdoor antennas. (That's ambitious.)

They are building a better network than Swisscom's own, I believe, which is sub-6 GHz and generally will run at a third the speed of mmWave. Xavier Niel is taking millions of mobile customers in Italy and will soon offer fixed as well. This is a competitive response, one more datapoint that competition, not higher prices, drives investment.

Telefonica Germany has a similar plan, according to CTO Cayetano Carbajo. 

We now have data from the field: 5G isn’t close to the hype, which implies that revenue growth will be limited. Fortunately, the costs are also coming in low. This report covers how smart builds and sensible choices in focus can help in an era of limited growth.

I needed a framework to think about 5G Strategy for an analysis report I'm writing for STL Partners. This isn't everything to consider, but it's a good starting point. Improvements welcome.

5G capacity/speed  is not even close to the hype.

20% to 40% better than decent 4G at 2100 MHz or lower

~50% better at 2500 MHz through 4900 MHz (in theory)

Millimetre wave, less than 15% of 5G through 2025 or later, should be offer about three times the performance of 4G or 5G in lower frequencies.

Nubia's Red Devil Mars, runs 5G at China Unicom, has liquid cooling, includes force feedback and vibration, and a graphene heat sink! The 48 million nominal megapixel Sony IMX586 camera can produce (some kind of) 8K video.

The 4G version starts at US$400 for a unit that outclasses the iPhone in many ways. Amazon sells earlier Nubia phones and worldwide marketing is beginning.   

The phone is certified by the Tencent 2018TGA Grand Prix, sponsored by the 10% owner of China Unicom, games giant Tencent. Unicom was struggling, so the government brought in Alibaba and Tencent as shareholders and supporters. The joint marketing has been very successful.

450 million people watch esports and sponsors pay US$hundreds of millions to reach them. As you can see in the release below, the gaming features of the phone are remarkable.

In what I believe is the first announced telco drone surveillance plan, Saudi Telecom hopes to sell the Saudi Ministry of Defence and Aramco a large detection and interdiction system. Gear will be sourced from Australian company DroneShield under a Memorandum of Understanding, not a delivery contract. No use of the 5G positioning tools has been announced.

The Saudis are investing heavily in drones, including a domestic plant built by the Chinese. They hosted the Drone Racing World Championship in 2018. Saudi Telecom, as well as Zain Kuwait, have ambitious plans to sell Drones-as-a-Service. Deutsche Telekom offers the Magenta Drone Defense Shield. Vodafone is also investing in "The rise of drones." Neither has announced buyers.

Detecting small. low altitude drones is a challenge for traditional radar systems, especially as drones are becoming available with stealth material. Systems are likely to include a huge array of specialized radars, visible light and infrared sensors, and serious computer power to separate large birds and other moving objects from drones.

Sprint's latest merger filing has 40 "redactions," holding back some of the most critical information the public needs to judge whether the transaction is in the public interest. Particularly egregious are the redactions of Appendix A & Appendix B. They don't even note the subject. 

The usual reason for the FCC allowing such "highly confidential" treatment is the information would give competitors a significant advantage. I have reviewed some of the 30+ omissions and am confident that in many cases the information would be available to competitors from analysts and common industry sources. Some can be inferred from public Sprint statements.

Sprint's lawyers - Sam Feder, Regina Keeney, & Steve Sunshine - were once senior FCC officials and surely know the requirements. I believe they are all senior partners in important D.C. firms, jobs which probably pay US$5 million per year.  They also know the regulations are almost never enforced, which I believe is a scandal at the FCC.

The filing concludes, "Absent completing its transaction with T-Mobile, Sprint will have limited options, and is likely to be forced down either a repositioning path and/or a restructuring path." Proponents of the merger believe that 3 carriers would be more competitive than 4 and/or the merger will have a major impact on 5G in the U.S. If those arguments are insufficient, likely insolvency might still win approval.  

A million here (Los Angeles), a million there (New York), and soon you are talking real coverage. At Brooklyn 5G, John Saw showed two slides showing 7 million people were already covered with a 4G/5G network with massive MIMO.

AT&T and Verizon refuse to release actual 5G coverage, implicit confirmation that the deployment, unlike the pr, in very modest.* Don't believe the hype.

The 4G is live, with something like a 4X capacity increase due to the 128 antennas. The 5G is also tested and will be turned on in a few weeks when the vendors deliver final production software.

Customers in a good location should enjoy 150-450 megabits down.

Andre Fuetsch, AT&T CTO, paused for a moment to think before answering my question about telco cost trends. "“We've gone from 10 gigabits to 100 gigabits to now 400 gigabits on our fiber. MIMO and massive MIMO are extremely productive. Yes, I think 40% per year is a reasonable estimate of how our costs are going down. AT&T’s leadership in open white box and SDN will continue to drive that number higher, which is needed as network demand increases.""

Lee Hicks and others at Verizon estimated their costs were falling 40%/year. Does that that sounds right to you, I had asked Fuetsch. Andre had just presented the challenge he faces of continued traffic growth. Whether cost savings can cover the increased traffic carried is a major question.

I know cost accounting is heavily subjective; in a past life, I wrote accounting software. For example, Fuetsch leads both AT&T's capital spending and its operation. How much of his salary should be allocated to each?

Carriers have to decide whether they want to offer ~15 ms latency or 25-45 ms latency. 25-45 ms is inexpensive because it requires very few servers, The number of servers and the cost is much higher for ~15 ms. (1 ms works in the lab but it will be years before it is widely deployed. I wish politicians would stop lying about that.)

Choosing where to put Edge Servers is one of the most crucial decisions to make in advanced networks. Very few are certain the demand is there and confident about spending heavily. In the diagram (larger below), I point to 4 Levels at different speeds and costs.