AT&T, Verizon, & most big carriers want the vendor flexibility of software-defined networking, NFV, & open source. Nokia's strategy is to sell everything "end-to-end." In a stunning financial call, Ravi Suri slapped in the face many of his largest customers, 13 times calling for end-to-end. He makes the argument that a single vendor taking care of everything will have better results. That's not unreasonable, but almost the whole industry is going in the opposite direction.

Suri is remarkably candid about how this lets him squeeze customers on price. 

"Our end-to-end portfolio shows its power here, as well, as we are able to ask for offsets for any concessions that we make."

While AT&T's John Donovan is telling investors  he wants the opposite

"More than 55% of our network functions were virtualized at the end of 2017, and we're well on our way to meet or exceed our goal of 75% virtualized by 2020. These and other cost management initiatives have helped drive 13 straight quarters of cost reductions in our technology and infrastructure group."

T-Mobile's $3.5B deal with Nokia implies CTO Neville Ray doesn't share that goal.

Thanks to Mukesh Ambani & Reliance Jio's low prices, almost 300M Indians connected via 4G. Vodafone chief executive Sunil Sood finds, “Data cost dropped 90% and the cost of voice come down 58% in last 1.5 years.” That's the most dramatic growth in Internet history, I believe. In two years, India has gone from one of the most backward Internet countries to carrying more mobile data than anyone else. 

Qualcomm expects to have enough mobile mmWave chips for a few hundred phones before Xmas. Unless Samsung or Huawei has a stealth project, those few hundred will probably be all the 5G phones in 2018. Buried in the bottom of this Ericsson-Verizon pr is 

To prepare for 5G, Ericsson has released its first commercial 5G RAN software, allowing operators to turn on 5G in commercial networks when ready.

None of the other four major vendors - Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE - has announced their mobile version of the RAN software is commercial. The line between trials and early deployment isn't always clear. Ericsson's announcement does not imply they are ahead, but mobile 5G, at true gigabit speeds, is a great accomplishment for any company. Fixed modems can be bigger, have larger antennas, and be line-powered. Shrinking to the size of a phone is remarkable. 

"Fixed wireless 5G" is in "commercial production" at Elisa in Finland, Ooredoo in Qatar, Etisalat in UAE, & Saudi Telecom.   They have all put out press releases they are "first in the world." (Elisa with Huawei.)

Massive MIMO produces a 2-7X capacity improvement, far more than the 15-50% of 5G NR software. Every engineer knows the 5G hype has become ridiculous, especially because Massive MIMO is a key component of 4G.

Guido Weissbrich of Vodafone Germany confirms they have moved from trials to deployment. His colleagues are in production in Australia. Bharti in India is covering much of Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta. Verizon is widely deployed in the U.S. but has released few details.    

All of these, I believe, are below 2.1 GHz and are FDD. One vendor off the record guessed FDD Massive would only be a 1.5X improvement.  Karri Kuoppamaki of T-Mobile expects a 2-3X improvement.

"I told you 5G mmwave phones would be ready by Christmas," email Ted Rappaport, the "Prince of mmWave" and NYU Professor. A second source confirms the likelihood of “a few hundred” phones this year. Qualcomm has now announced they are sampling a small, highly integrated radio frequency and antenna module, the QTM052. I believe they will imminently announce they are sampling the X50 baseband modem and supporting a reference design.

Qualcomm is delivering a year before almost everyone expected the phone. mmWave antennas are really small. One guess is that the little unit at left has 8 of them. The small size of the unit is remarkable. Nothing is certain, of course, until production units are shipping.

Intel, Huawei, and Samsung are chasing as fast as they can as well. Skyworks, Broadcom/Avago, and Qorvo are rushing to have their RF frontends available as well. To protect against U.S. boycotts, the Chinese are speeding research in RF as well.

The early phones will be big, drain batteries rapidly, and very expensive. Few expect large volumes before 2020 and maybe later. No one except Verizon has committed to a major mmWave network this decade, although AT&T, Korea, and China are possible.

Even at twice that rate, every prediction is blown out of the water. While "experts" and especially policy people worry about growth rates they think are 50% and 70% per year, the industry has long known the real growth is falling well below that. Cisco's VNI, the best public forecast, has projected growth to fall to 30%. The higher rates were an anomaly brought on by the introduction of smartphones. As smartphones approached saturation, the growth has been falling.

CTIA, the U.S. wireless association, combines the figures direct from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and enough others to cover over 95% of usage. It should be highly reliable. However, I suspect there is an anomaly in the data for some reason; the individual companies have been telling Wall Street they have higher growth. As it is, I assume there is an artifact of a changed definition or something and the rate will go up in the next year's report.

Yet another DC type got this wrong two weeks ago. "Americans’ appetite for mobile services is insatiable." Hogwash. 

Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, D.C., & Philadelphia/New Jersey - or a city nearby - appear to be close to ready to go commercial. Only Sacramento and Los Angeles are announced. This is not a firm deployment plan.

Verizon has been doing trials in eleven cities. They are running fiber and beginning to deploy in literally hundreds of other places. They will make final decisions based on the results in each city, marketing, and politics. They've publically committed to 1,000 base stations by the end of 2018, the largest mmWave deployment in the world. That would likely be enough for 3 to 10 square miles per city, but it will not be evenly distributed.

Millimeter wave performance differs enormously based on terrain, height, foliage, and even traffic. Verizon trials and early deployments are locations with different physical features.

"Dave, you've got to see these pictures," Jennie insisted when a friend brought a 3-camera Huawei P-20. The Girl is a video pro and not easily impressed. Other comments were less restrained, including "The best camera of 2018." Perhaps even more remarkable were the reviews saying how little difference there was between Huawei-designed Kirin 970 and Qualcomm's 845, the best wireless chip so far developed. Anyone who thinks China needs to copy is LOL stupid.

As Apple's market value approaches a $trillion, Huawei is surpassing them in sales volume. Apple is selling more high-end, high margin phones and maintains historically unprecedented profits. Their phones are incredible - but no longer unique. Phones are largely a fashion business. If fashions change, Apple could get clobbered. (That's a possibility, not a prediction.)

Apple is vulnerable to a Chinese reaction to the U.S. attack on ZTE.