Pulmonary embolism at age 52 strikes down master of software-defined radio and low power rural wireless. How can you bring mobile to the hundreds of millions of Africans who live away from the power grid? Vanu Bose for a decade has been working to build inexpensive wireless systems that can run on solar power. His company, Vanu Inc., has developed extremely low power radios now deploying in Rwanda. They were the first to achieve FCC certification for software-defined networks.

Vanu played a crucial role in the White House PCAST report, which set sharing as the primary goal for U.S. spectrum policy. With backing from Craig Mundie of Microsoft and Eric Schmidt of Google, PCAST destroyed the myth that monopoly spectrum was still necessary. It was also influential at OFCOM and the EU. 

Timotheus Höttges of Deutsche Telekom, Sunil Mittal of Bharti, Gavin Patterson of BT, and Qualcomm’s Steven Mollenkopf are making wild claims obvious from 3,000 miles away. Ajit Pai of the U.S. FCC, as well as Andrus Ansip and Roberto Viola of the EU, need to hire staffers who know enough to catch the bosses' errors. I could add a dozen more. It is time to shout about the Emperor's wardrobe. We all make mistakes and perhaps the ones here will be corrected. 

Höttges, the first MWC Emperor without Clothes, wants $10’s of billions in subsidies and other favors. To get them, he wildly exaggerates the cost of building 5G. Verizon expects a U.S. (pop.326M) 5G cover will cost $50-$80B; the latest data suggests it will be less. DT's $400B to cover Germany (pop 83M) is something only a politician would believe. Another unlikely claim is that 65% of Germany will have 100 megabit fiber. 50% of the customers on a similar network in Australia (less 35b) don’t get 100 megabits and 20% don’t even reach 50 meg. http://bit.ly/NBNVector (Side note: Höttges told investors DT will have 14M lines of 250 meg DSL by the end of 2018, only a year or two behind schedule.) 

Verizon 5G reach is perhaps twice as far as expected, including with obstacles (NLOS.) That's the independent conclusion of Michael Thelander and team testing two live Verizon cells in Houston,

"Who would have thought a millimeter wave signal in an area 100% blocked from the serving cell tower by the surroundings would still be capable of supporting good data speeds?" they exclaim. "Millimeter wave signals are far more resilient than we expected, even at distances exceeding several thousand feet. Tree foliage, passing school buses, buildings, parked cars, balding heads, and glass impacted the received signal, but the resultant signals were still capable of delivering meaningful data rates – thanks in part to the 400 MHz radio channel. Verizon can deploy 800 MHz channels in some markets." The results were generally good up to 1,000 meters and behind buildings.

At MWC Barcelona next week, there will be dozens of analyses on mmWave costs and buildout requirements. Nearly all of them will assume reach of 200-300 meters. That would require at least hundreds of thousands of cells to cover the U.S. and probably millions.

They probably are wrong.

The Snapdragon X24 LTE modem has a theoretical peak of 2,000 MHz using ?140 MHz of spectrum and 4x4 MIMO.

In the real world, expect 100-600 megabits typical. This is a heckuva chip, one of the first 7 nanometer chips produced. While none of us require more than 100 megabits 99% of the time, but the total capacity is also important. The speed will be divided among the many users of the cell.

Real world speeds vary from lab speeds because cells will have more than one user, greater distances, varied topology, and other interference. There will be times when you are the only user and in the exact right spot and can get close to the peak speed. It's likely that users at the edge of the cell will see the greatest improvement.

140 MHz is very rare outside of the laboratory. Verizon and AT&T only have about 100 MHz, total. They expect to take over the Wi-Fi spectrum

Typical speeds: 100-600 megabits down, much less up. 

The new "2 gig peak" chips from Huawei and Qualcomm deliver about the same speed with a similar number of antennas and the same spectrum. You can't get much more speed without breaking the Laws of Physics, whether you call it 4G or 5G.

The real 5G uses perhaps ten times as much spectrum for practical speeds over a gigabit. You can only find 800 MHz free at millimeter wave ranges, mostly 26-30 GHz. I and most others consider Massive MIMO, 64-256 antennas, also 5G.

Early in 2017, the marketing people started to call 3.5 GHz "4G" TDD LTE "5G" even though the speed was almost the same. The result is what Dan Jones calls Faux 5G and I call Fake 5G.

The software tweak (NR New Radio) did little for the speed although NR offers other features. The marketing people love the name 5G and stuck it on everything. 

Don't believe the hype.

4G LTE with Massive MIMO as fast as 5G 3.5 GHz

Qualcomm's simulations are respected and the most accurate predictions available. They are consistent with other data. I've come to similar conclusions from expectations of the technology. One possible update to come: The results from Verizon's tests at 28 GHz are very good so far, and may raise performance estimates for millimeter wave. 

Topologies vary. There's no way to predict perfectly the number of users, distances, window and tree interference, and trees, window glass, trucks passing by and other crucial factors. Simulating wireless networks is an art, not a science, and requires great skill.

Good models are crucial for planning actual deployments. I've used the actual Alcatel and Ericsson deployment models, which are very rich. Everyone in the business has learned models will never get everything right, but are an essential starting point. 

Large wireless networks take two years to get started and more than five years to substantially complete.

Huawei's $B 5G chipset delivers a "peak" of 2.0 gig download at 3.5 GHz; Qualcomm's Snapdragon X24 LTE 4G "peaks" at 2 Gig. 

"Who needs fiber?" everyone was asking. Grahame Lynch predicted three years ago that wireless would be fast enough that the fiber broadband network was unnecessary. It's not that simple, but the new wireless certainly will be enough for many.

The $B Balong 5G01 is a remarkable achievement and big news. The release is below: It's a mainstream, 3GPP standard chip that's very similar to the advanced chips of leaders Qualcomm, Intel, and Apple. The processor cores are ARM. They showed off working routers for both < 6 GHz and mmWave. There are different chips for the two frequency ranges. These are first generation chips; second generation, due later in 2018, will be smaller. They expect routers for sale this year and phones in 2019.

December added 12M data users to 344M with 700M 2G feature phones the next target.

Rishi Tejpal, new telecom lead at Economic Times, introduced some dramatic projections in his first article. Bharti, Jio, and Voda/Idea intend to introduce 4G smartphones at 500 rupees, less than $10 U.S. He estimates that would require subsidies of ~$30/phone. The result: over 200M Indians will switch to 4G with Internet connections. I believe $5B for customer acquisition is modest compared to the $10's of billions each of the companies is spending for robust networks. (Jio and the others will generally offer >15 megabit downloads by the end of this year. Their state of the art 5G networks are bringing cost per bit so low they can make money at prices the West think remain impossible.)

Depending on how you count 2G and 3G mobile connections, India either soon will have more Internet connections than the U.S. population of 326M or may have already done so. Soon, India will have twice as many people connected at broadband speeds as the U.S., mostly on wireless. A dynamic private sector led by Reliance Jio is complemented by the sensible public buildout to over 300,000 villages. Both are moving quickly.