Lee Hicks of Verizon has driven his cost down by 50% with his "One Fiber" program. He's replaced 200,000 old boxes with 20,000 modern, efficient pieces of gear. This is definitive proof that new networks are much more efficient than older ones. The technology is much better. (The latency also comes down.)  Reliance Jio now has 330,000,000 million Indians on a network with such low costs that it is profitable at a price of US$5/mpnth.  (Audited financials.)

Charlie Ergen's DirecTV will buy Boost from Sprint, assuming the state suits don't block the Sprint-T-Mobile deal. Boost will bring 9 million customers, a full retail operation, and some important spectrum to DirecTV, a very good start for a new network. All will be initially served through an MVNO deal with T-Mobile, but Charlie wants to build his own network as fast a practical. Ergen sees it this way: 

"We have a lot of incentives to build our own network. I think it would be -- and not the least of which are severe penalties if we don't, but irregardless of that, we're going to build this network out and it's hard. All the incumbents have built networks that were primarily designed for voice and were built and designed architected in the '80s, but we're -- this is 2019.

Rootmetrics found surprisingly little difference between indoor and outdoor performance in mid-band 5G at 3.5 GHz.mmWave gets clobbered by many kinds of walls and windows. Apparently, that's much less of a problem at 3.5 GHz. A team conducted hundreds of tests in Korea, the best independent study yet. The data on 5G downloads:

• Indoor speed (out of 30 locations): 204 Mbps to 401 Mbps (median speeds)

• Outdoor speed: 160 Mbps to 457 Mbps

• Drive speed: 163 Mbps to 431 Mbps

Rootmetrics has done the best survey yet, but like all studies there are limits.

When 5G was considered high-frequency millimetre wave, most expected the short reach would make it a poor choice for rural areas. However, 22 of the 24 current 5G deployments are mid-band, which seems to have decent reach with Massive MIMO. (Limited data.) Sunrise saw an opportunity to go after a market that Swisscom was neglecting. It offers both fixed and mobile. 

In June 2019, Sunrise is covering 80% or more of 248 villages. It was able to do that simply by upgrading the existing towers, not terribly expensive. (I'd guess about US$500 per customer but I don't have enough data.) It intends to cover most of the country by the end of 2019. 

It's quite possible that the mid-band networks will be fine in many rural areas.

The pros are whispering, "AI is exciting, but most of it isn't ready to put to use." Caroline Gabriel, one of the very best analysts in wireless, surveyed many major operators and discovered a huge gap between what is being delivered by automation and the many brave words we hear so often.  She writes, 

Plans to implement advanced machine learning-based automation in 5G networks are grinding to a halt, with operators slowing investment and reducing their ambitions. ... most plans had gone backwards. Globally, only 18% expect to have more than 40% of functions automated by the end of this year. 

Last year 21% of the same operators said they would have more than 60% of processes automated* by the end of 2020. Those hitting this 60% mark fell to 14% in this year’s study, suggesting respondents had been over-optimistic previously or that projects are snagged, or harder than they seemed.

[Without effective automation, the] business case for 5G in the period to 2024 will be severely compromised – resulting in higher costs, less network flexibility, lower ROI on 5G RAN and on virtualization." 

With 2 million Koreans connected to 5G, we now have data. We have first reports from the U.S. and Europe to show how the technology works. China is going to take off in September and soon connect millions. Time to get real.

The big news: Customers are swarming. Korea is adding over 500,000 a month. In Korea and the United States, people are buying 5G phones even where they can’t get 5G. Who wants to buy a phone that will be obsolete in a year or two?

Phone prices are plummeting. Oppo offers a 5G high-end phone for US$580 in China. ZTE is at US$700. Huawei’s Mate 20 5G is only US$30 than the 4G version. The margins are better than 30% and prices like this will soon appear elsewhere. US$300 phones are due in 2020.

Companies are building faster than planned. In the U.S., Korea, and China, once one company got serious, the others felt they had no choice but to follow. I expect Germany and England will similarly accelerate by the end of the year.

Costs are much less than some predicted. When Verizon cut capex in 2018 while building 5G, I predicted 5G would not seriously raise capital costs. Since then, AT&T and Orange have predicted a capex drop and Deutsche Telekom promises flat capex. 

Everyone in telecom is now rethinking 5G strategies. I - and many others - have revised up our estimates. If I'm right about the effect of a price drop, that will lead to very heavy sales in 2020 and 2021.

Will the China price reach the rest of the world? Yes, and possibly soon. US$580 offers at least a 30% margin over parts and manufacturing costs, both of which are falling. 5G prices are headed under $300 in 2020 according to China Mobile, Huawei, and ZTE. 

I believe demand for 5G will explode as the price comes down. So I've started the 5G phone price watch to track the market. It's on 5gwnews.com, a site I'm bringing back now that 5G is real. First items:

July 30 Oppo sets the price of its iQOO 5G phone at RMB 4,000 yuan (US$580.) ZTE's Axon10 Pro 5G version is priced at RMB 4,999 (US$725.) Both are high-end phones using a Qualcomm 855 chip. Huawei's Mate 20X 5G will go for RMB 6,199 (US$900,) only $30 more than the 4G version.  

July 2019, phones appear in good supply, as do the parts required to make them. Three chipmakers are in production: Qualcomm (produced at TSMC's foundry in Taiwan,) Huawei (TSMC,) and Samsung (self-produced.) Both Samsung and TSMC have good capacity available at the most advanced node, 7 nanometres.

There now can be no doubt that fixed wireless, mostly 5G, will be a viable business in the right locations. Today's wireless has enormous capacity, enough to supply the broadband needs of a significant population. It's better than most DSL and a workable alternative to cable in many locations. Traffic demand is falling, with Cisco predicting the U.S. will fall to 31% growth in 2021. 

John Legere of T-Mobile committed to 9.5 million in-home broadband subs by 2024 in order to get FCC approval of the Sprint takeover. Brett Feldman of Goldman Sachs estimated Verizon will have 8 million by 2023. AT&T CEO says they expect a fixed market to grow in a few years. Wireless ISPs already have over a million.  Starry and others are growing, In five years, at least a fifth of the 120 million U.S. homes will be connected wirelessly.  

"We intend to have the fastest 4G/5G network on the planet by next year," emails Sara Ibrahim Al Sayed, Senior Analyst, Investor Relations, Ooredoo. She added, "We currently have 100 MHz live at 3.5 GHz. The plan is to add another 100 MHz @ 3.5 GHz and 10 MHz @ 700 MHz next year but the exact timing is yet to be announced. In 2021 we will add a further 400-800MHz at 26 GHz. We already are one of the fastest 4G networks on the planet."

Using 200 MHz of mid-band spectrum would allow Ooredoo Qatar to offer higher speeds than almost all Europeans. No one in Europe is firmly committed to millimetre wave*, so Ooredoo will likely pull far ahead. The mmWave spectrum will bring Oreedoo speeds into the very top tier alongside Verizon.

The initial results are promising. Her colleague Rob Joyce tested 720 Mbps on a Mate 20 at Costa Coffee, one of the highest indoor results for 5G. (Pictured left.) I don't have much data on indoor mid-band speeds, but mmWave is clobbered by many walls and windows.

The competition around the Gulf is becoming fierce, with Zain, Etisalat, and Saudi Telecom also building 5G.