It's clear it's here. Get used to it. Verizon and the three Koreans are taking orders for 5G phones and will turn on the networks in April. Almost half of Korea is already built, mostly with 100-450 meg speed sub 6 GHz. No other country is close to half built, but AT&T intends to get there in 2020.

"We’ve talked about 200 million pops (60%) in 2020 being covered with 5G, that will be a software upgrade."  CFO John Stephens 

T-Mobile, which had to build a network for the newly-acquired 600 MHz band, intends to turn on NR across most of the country. It's almost a meaningless gesture; at 600 MHz, 5G NR adds very little to performance. (Much of the 5G enthusiasm is meaningless hype.)

At MWC, Huawei announced they had shipped 40,000 radios. Samsung has shipped 36,000.

Lenovo-Motorola claims the only phone Verizon will sell for 5G will deliver 300-500 megabits, slower than good LTE from T-Mobile 4G.  T-Mobile delivers 500 megabits in Manhattan using LAA. In theory, 5G sub-6 could offer 20-52% more capacity, but tools like LAA mean 4G will often be faster in the next few years.

The illustration from Motorola at left suggests 5G is 10X faster. 10X faster would be 5 gigabits using the T-Mobile comparison. Verizon elsewhere has reported LTE speeds over a gigabit. 10X would be over 10 gigabits, not 300-500 megabits. 

I first wrote: 4G 1.2 gigabits. 5G 1.5 gigabits. This is one of the first apples to apples comparison, both running on the same Samsung Galaxy phone. These are plausible figures for sub-6 GHz LTE and NR. The best available projections are that 5G in theory would be 19-51% more capable, so this was plausible.

The question mark is there because it's possible the 4G might actually be a third more efficient than the 5G. Cho Mu-Hyun at ZDNet discovered the LTE was three bands, presumably 60 MHz, with 4x4 MIMO antennas. The most common 5G testing uses 100 MHz. Adjusting for the spectrum difference would result in the 4G being a third more efficient than the 5G.

SK combined the 4G and 5G signals for a total of 2.7 gigabits in their test.  That would be a remarkable advance if ready for market. I don't know anyone else doing similar. Samsung and SK haven't yet answered my questions about how much spectrum and product availability date. 

Far too many companies, from Swisscom to Qualcomm to Verizon, refuse to provide basic information with their releases. Verizon won't give a meaningful answer about actual speed or about how many cells are deployed or the percent of the population covered.

The core, the RAN, the home gateway and just about everything else will be in the cloud when e-commerce powerhouse Rakuten turns on Japan's fourth wireless carrier this fall. The system is working in tests today and the company is rapidly deploying radios.

CTO Tareq Amin played a crucial role at Reliance Jio, the greatest telecom disrupter of the century. He's bringing that spirit to Rakutan's new network, including a rare willingness to take chances on the newest technology.

Only a handful of people each decade have the opportunity to deploy a large greenfield network, Amin is now on his second one. 

The BOM for 5G is only ~$80 over 4G. Xiaomi's new flagship Mi Mix 4G is €499. 5G is €599 =  much less than others hoped to charge. Oppo/Vivo wanted US$200 more. Xiaomi has now forced the market to something more reasonable. Everyone except Apple has a 5G phone to announce at Barcelona MWC. Likely, no one will show a phone actually working, fearful to be the first exposing how low the real speeds are for now.

Samsung was first to announce a foldable tablet, seven inches for US$2,000. Then Huawei came in at eight inches for US$2,600. Huawei claimed a download speed of 20 gigabytes/minute. I don't believe they were able to demonstrate anything close but I'm in NY, skipping Barcelona. 

Almost all the announcements are very early. Don't expect many shipments until summer. 

Deutsche Telekom may be the first carrier in the world to install an Edge Cloud, which they are doing at a remarkably low cost. By going further back in DT's transport network, they reduced the number of boxes required from 10,000's of thousands to hundreds.

A cloud like this - highly reliable but not quite as fast - would be a very small percentage of a carrier’s capex budget. (A carrier has the fiber and other equipment in place.) It would cut the latency on your network by 40% to 70%. Perhaps more important, the latency would be much more predictable.

DT started with an initial dozen sites, which connected to almost all of the country. It is also installing at as many as 900 additional locations in the regions. This is a Level 3 Cloud - on the carrier's network but several hops from the towers.

 If drones stop shutting down airports, the telcos see a major business. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg promised at CES 2019, "Verizon is committed to being the first to connect 1 million drone flights on its 5G network." Saudi Telecom, KT, Vodafone, and KDDI are doing active testing and hope to go into commercial operation in 2019. 

The number of drone flights will likely be limited until practical flight control is demonstrated. 5G (and most 4G) networks can easily handle the modest number of drones in the air if human control is needed.  Military and civilian research into truly autonomous control of drones is active worldwide.

Turkcell is using a Huawei system in 3.5 GHz. Verizon is working with Ericsson in mmWave. 

Now that nearly everyone in the developed world has smartphones, data growth is falling dramatically. The trend has been down for several years. Cisco sees growth in Asia-Pacific falling to 37% and Latin America to 34% by 2022. Folks who make business decisions on the assumption of high growth will be disappointed.

Since the technology is improving at something like 40% per year, that means either excess capacity or capex cuts. Verizon is building the most advanced wireless network in the world and cut capital spending in 2018. Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO, and Orange/FT have all told investors that capex will be flat to down as they build 5G networks.

The developing world continues remarkable growth, especially in India. Cisco's estimate for Middle East and Africa is 48% for 2022. As smartphones approach saturation, growth will slow.