Limited customers, speed only occasionally reached. Qatar Airlines is the first to deploy for Ooredoo's > 1 gigabit service, now being offered to selected customers in selected locations. C114, one of China's best tech pubs, is my source for the 1.2 gig speeds, confirmed by four other news publications. That the world leadership has left the U.S. and Europe is a major story, even if the details may be slight puffery.

Over a year ago, I discovered that True in Thailand was one of the first in the world to deploy 4x4 MIMO across the country, matched in 2017 in many other networks. That's just starting to be matched in the U.S. and Europe. Five companies - Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE - are the source of almost all the 4G & 5G networks today. They sell the same gear in Qatar, Myanmar, Berlin, & Chicago. Except for Verizon and 5G mmWave - coming in 2018 - the Western telcos are no longer ahead.

From Nicaragua to Zambia, a basic 1 gig/month connection is too expensive for as much as half the population. In Vietnam and Pakistan, 1 gig costs less than 2% of the average monthly income, the A4AI goal for affordability. (Green on the map.) In Nicaragua, a comparable figure is 8% (Orange); in Zambia, 12% (Purple.)

     In every country, many are far below the average income. Inequality is high in many of these countries, far above the European level (31 Gini coefficient) although closer to America. (Gini coefficient 45.)

T-Mobile Netherlands and True Thailand choose 8 antennas for FDD spectrum, joining Kuwait in choosing Huawei gear. 8 antennas will rarely deliver twice the throughput of four antennas but will often deliver a 50% increase in capacity. 32/64 antenna Massive MIMO has been chosen by BT, DT, & FT but that is in higher frequencies running TDD.

32 antennas for 700 MHz spectrum would be too large to be practical most places. 256 antennas at mmWave frequencies are the size of a large chip and can go almost anywhere. 64 antennas at mid-frequencies like 2500 MHz need 1.5 to 3 meters, practical on most towers. Antenna size goes up with lower frequencies, making 32 antennas at 700 MHz a challenge and often impractical at 1800 MHz. 

Slowly, the U.S. has dropped to #57 in the world. Reliance Jio has a world-class network built in the last three years. Verizon had a world-leading network in 2009-2012, the first large LTE network in the world. U.S. 4G speeds are half those in Canada and Spain. We are behind Russia, Brazil, Tunisia and dozens of others.

Singapore, South Korea, and Norway are the fastest. Eastern Europe does surprisingly well, presumably because their networks are more recent. The map and the detailed chart below are published by Open Signal, where the originals are interactive.

At Huawei's London MBBF, BT CEO Gavin Patterson went first, saying, "The business case isn't there." DT CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, adding "For 5G, Deutsche Telekom still has no business models."  FT/Orange SVP Arnaud Vamparys followed with a second agreement.

3,000 miles away, Verizon was finalizing the announcement that they would rush to deploy ~30M homes of 5G mmWave. At NGMN and elsewhere, the top tech people share freely what they know. All are working with essentially the same understanding. How can we explain the different choices?

Verizon landlines cover only about 1/4th of the U.S. They need an offering to compete with cable and DSL.

A gigabit median at 600 meters. A year ago, most experts expected mmWave to be limited to 150-250 meters. Earlier this year, Verizon mentioned good results at 400 meters. Now, Verizon is often seeing excellent results to 600 meters and further. A gigabit is common. 

The result is that far fewer new cells are required. The green dots are where Verizon already has cells. As you can see, there are few red dots for new cells. The cost is coming in so low Verizon does not expect to raise their capital spending. "Management stated that overall capital expenditures would not change substantially during the 5G rollout as internal resources are shifted from the 4G to the 5G platform."

It will be fixed only in 2018, with Verizon promising to support mobile as soon as the technology is available. Intel and Qualcomm expect 5G phones in production in 2019.

Ted Rappaport of NYU has long had an alternate "channel model" that predicted higher speeds, now confirmed. 

CEO McAdam in 2016 carefully said the decision hadn't been made. In fall 2017, he told Wall Street Verizon hasn't budgeted any increased spending for 5G even in 2019. He has good reason to be coy. Verizon and the Euro CEOs constantly use the (often claimed) high spending needed for 5G as a reason for regulators to be weak and governments provide subsidies. NTT DOCOMO CTO Seizo Inoe and many others planning the networks see little if any capex increase.

So I was surprised when I discovered Verizon VP Charla Rath in spring 2016 wrote, "Just as Verizon invested billions to be the first mobile carrier to deploy our world leading  4G LTE network, we plan to do the same for 5G. Sanyogita Shamsunder, Verizon’s Director of Wireless and Technology Strategy, outlined this commitment during the opening panel."

Verizon & Korea are building. NTT DOCOMO & China Mobile close. Many others mostly holding back, doing little until 2021-2023.

2019 for mobile phones, Qualcomm promises, as TSMC ramps 7 nm process to produce the chips.  

Latency will be 5-10 milliseconds to the cloud controller intelligence.

1-2 milliseconds will be measured from the tower to the phone, but that's meaningless until and unless intelligence moves to the edge. That's likely very rare for a decade because there's no apparent market for 1 ms. Most "use cases" are bogus according to experts in connected cars, virtual reality, and telemedicine. Gerhard Fettweis's Tactile Internet is inspiring but years or decades away most places.