PRESS RELEASE 19th November 2015 GSA predicts over 270 5G networks by 2025 in the first Executive Committee report “The Road to 5G”. 19th November 2015: A new report from GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) “The Road to 5G: Drivers, Applications, Requirements and Technical Development” published today predicts over 270 5G networks will be deployed by 2025 and points to two significant trends that are driving the wireless industry to develop 5G network technology. These are the explosive growth in demand for wireless broadband services, which require faster and higher capacity networks to…
The Road to 5G: Drivers, Applications, Requirements and Technical Development
New Report: The Road to 5G: Drivers, Applications, Requirements and Technical Development 19th November 2015 A new report from GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) “The Road to 5G: Drivers, Applications, Requirements and Technical Development” predicts over 270 5G networks will be deployed by 2025 and points to two significant trends that are driving the wireless industry to develop 5G network technology. These are the explosive growth in demand for wireless broadband services, which require faster and higher capacity networks to deliver video and other content-rich services and the predicted massive growth of Internet of Things…
GSA forecasts market for LTE Broadcast services will reach $14bn worldwide by 2020
PRESS RELEASE November 14th, 2015: A new report from GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) “Evaluating the LTE Broadcast Opportunity” published today finds rapidly rising interest in LTE Broadcast, increasing evidence of a solid business case for deployment, and predicts that numbers of deployments will grow significantly over the next five years, reaching a potential customer base of two billion by 2020. Trials of LTE Broadcast services based on eMBMS have been taking place all over the world. Over 30 mobile operators have so far been involved in technical lab or field trials of eMBMS with…
Evaluating the LTE Broadcast Opportunity November 14, 2015 - [1.3 MB] The GSA’s report, “Evaluating the LTE Broadcast Opportunity”, analyses the drivers and barriers to deployment of LTE Broadcast services based on eMBMS, reviews operators’ activity in the form of trials and service launches, the availability of eMBMS-compatible devices and considers the business case for eMBMS investment. Its production was sponsored by a number of operators actively reviewing the capabilities of LTE Broadcast: EE, PCCW HKT, Plus (Polkomtel), Smartfren and Telstra, together with several vendors from GSA’s membership.
Operators worldwide are investing in LTE-Advanced systems and peak speeds are increasing. GSA's Evolution to LTE report published on 21 July 2015 confirmed that 131 operators i.e. over 30% of LTE operators, have launched, or are deploying or are trialling LTE-Advanced technologies in 60 countries. This figure includes 97 operators that have commercially launched LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation in 48 countries. This paper from GSA summarises the theoretical peak downlink speed for each of the commercially launched LTE-Advanced networks worldwide, according to research by GSA. Data is provided on networks deployments capable of supporting user devices…
GSA attended the Huawei Global Mobile Broadband (MBB) Forum in Hong Kong between the 2-4th of November 2015. Hosted by Huawei and the GSMA it was a spectacular event with the largest presentation screen we have ever seen. Around 1,000 people were in attendance and we listened to presentations from senior executives in the mobile industry including Ken Hu, Deputy Chairman and rotating CEO at Huawei, Alex Arena from Hong Kong Telecom, Peter Wong from Hutchinson 3, Alex Sinclair from the GSMA and Hroshi Nakamura from NTT DOCOMO. There were also very enlightening presentations from the 5G Forum-Korea, CNN, Time Inc., Google, Visa, Vodafone, China Telecom and Facebook to name just a few.
There was a very strong 5G theme over the two days with most presentations mentioning the Internet of Things (IoT) as being a main driver for 5G deployments.
Ken Hu pointed out from the very beginning of his presentation that there is still 1 billion unconnected in the world and 4 billion have no Internet access – this is creating a new digital divide. The industry focus should be to bridge this digital divide and one requirement is for regulators to make more spectrum available.
It is generally agreed that 5G will be about a better user experience – high definition audio and video – with video (4k now and 8k later) anticipated to be up to 70% of all network data traffic by 2020.
Both Google and Facebook referred to video as a main driver for 5G with CNN and Time Inc. echoing this message.
Bill Gajda, who is ex-GSMA and now VP of Innovation & Strategic Partnerships at Visa told the audience they have 2.2 billion payment points – cards and PoS terminals – and that they expect 50 billion by 2020 as multiple devices become payment enabled. There will be Access Points in the edge network to manage this huge growth in payment points using secure tokens to protect user data.
But lets get back to the discussion around IoT and some of the requirements that are driving the revolution or evolution to 5G.
Standards – Costs – Ecosystem – these are three key IoT areas.
Luke Ibbertson from Vodafone talked standards for Narrow Band Cellular IoT and the strides being taken to standardize NB-IoT. There should be commercial products based on the standard in the summer of 2016 with the 800 MHz & 900 MHz bands proposed as the ideal frequencies. Applications included pet trackers and parking bay sensors to inform drivers where the spaces are were suggested.
IoT access costs are currently running at around $5 but need to move to the next growth step of $1 per connection to drive rapid IoT deployments. We also think that clear and simple Service Level Agreements (SLA) need to be in place that encourage developers and product companies to enter the IoT market. Simple to understand SLAs will help drive a healthy ecosystem supporting fast market entry of new kinds of mobile devices and applications.
Our question at the event was to ask, “What will constitute a commercial 5G network or device? What performance criteria needs to be met for a network operator or vendor to be able to claim it is 5G?”
There was some agreement with the results of a recent GSA survey on the topic of 5G commercialisation criteria suggesting that massive MIMO, 1Gbps, sub 1 ms latency, a reduction in deployment costs, 1,000 X capacity increase and network splicing were all important 5G criteria. We don’t yet have a definitive definition of what performance criteria will constitute a 5G network in the eyes of the cautious GSA. Some hints will come in the new 5G GSA Executive Member white paper due out before the 16th November.
As always, GSA will strive to agree clear criteria for agreeing 5G commercial readiness as we look to monitor and report on 5G network and device availability.
But lets not forget that we are still evolving to LTE-Advanced and LTE-Advanced Pro (The new 3GPP brand name for Release 13 and beyond). Stephen How from Bell Canada and Hans Cronberg from Poland’s “new” P4 (Play) operator explained how they continue to roll out LTE with some very interesting 4G LTE marketing from P4 in particular. You had to be there but basically P4 did actually promote a mobile service based on the promise that 4G LTE is coming!
Finally – there is clearly some overlap between what LTE will deliver and what 5G is predicted to deliver from 2020. While we don’t agree that one 5G-performance criteria being met means a commercial 5G network, there will be cases where operators could claim an early 5G network deployment based on a subset of full 5G network performance criteria. It could get messy out there and that is why GSA is striving to help the industry define what 5G will be.
5G Consensus Insights – GSA presentation given at the Global MBB Forum
GSA 5G Consensus Insights - Global MBB Forum Presentation November 4, 2015 - [3MB] Published November 5, 2015 SUMMARY GSA presentation given at the Global MBB forum 5G Round table - Hong Kong 3-4th November 2015 ========== The Road to 5G: GSA Executive Committee report summary based on a survey of GSA registered users. Identifying what are the key performance criteria that will define commercial availability of 5G networks and devices. The survey was undertaken wholly by the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), and incorporates information obtained from direct information exchanges between GSA and mobile…
CHART: LTE user devices growth 2011-2015 (current total 3,745 devices) November 2, 2015 - [214.3 KB] Growth of the number of LTE terminals referencing announcements by manufacturers as confirmed in GSA Status of the LTE Ecosystem reports over the period 2011 - 2015 (to November 2, 2015) This chart is also available as a small JPEG file (for use in your reports, presentations, white papers, etc.) at www.gsacom.com/news/statistics.php4 Use of this chart is permitted subject to referencing GSA as the source Copyright - GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association
Status of the LTE Ecosystem – 3,745 LTE Devices announced by 339 suppliers
Status of the LTE Ecosystem report: GSA confirms 3,745 LTE devices announced by 339 suppliers November 2, 2015 - [950.2 KB] This updated report, which was researched and published by GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) and published on November 2, 2015 confirms the maturity and fast growing ecosystem of LTE user devices. Our latest research increased to 3,745 the number of LTE user devices we have included in our database that have been announced to the market by 339 suppliers. Support for each of the main operating FDD and TDD frequency bands is stated. LTE1800…
CHART: Fast Facts November 2, 2015 - [509.2 KB] 3G Mobile Broadband Deployments 4G LTE update Global MBB Device Echosystem (c) GSA, Global mobile Suppliers Association
It has taken some effort - as Alan said it would - but we are almost there with the new GSA web site. The old site will run along side the new site for some weeks while we bring it fully online in all areas - there is nothing wrong in being cautious! So you can make your choice; hold out and stick with the old site or jump in head first to the new site.
So why the change?
The old GSA site had become somewhat redundant. It was hard coded in HTML4, was not editable by anyone other than the webmaster and was not mobile friendly; a key requirement from Google if you want to be high on their search list in future. There were also many parts of the site that were not being updated and were therefore redundant. And the design, though functional, was somewhat tired.
Even so - GSA registrations have continued to grow towards 70k registered online users and downloads from the site average 240k per year. In our book, that is pretty cool.
The new site is designed to make it easier to find the reports you are looking for and to enable you to download them quickly. You will find the filter feature at the top of the page useful for sifting out the papers you download the most - like the Evolution to LTE report that Alan faithfully updates every quarter. We have also colour coded the document frames, so if you are looking for LTE, it is Orange, 5G is Red. Just hover your cursor over the Communities link at the top of the page and you will see the full range of topics and their colour codes. And as always the latest papers are always first to load.
You will also see that we have different size document frames - you will find Executive member reports in full frames, while Member reports and presentation material will be found in half frames. Both of these frames have background images to better promote our members. All other papers will be in quarter frames without an image. GSA reports - and there are many of them - will be found in all three size frames, depending on the content, and the mood of the president when posting. It may sound complex but we hope you get used to it.
We know there may be some changes in the coming weeks and we do hope that you will provide feedback both positive and negative so we can continually improve the site and your web site experience. Once the site is fully established we will look to implement some new ideas that will make the GSA web site even more valuable to our members and our on line audience. More of that in the coming months.
Finally a note on why we are asking you to register again. Migrating the old database in an outdated and customized format to the new site was just not cost effective. It would have been a manual and laborious process. So we hope you take a few minutes and register - it really is quite simple.
For now we hope you will continue to come back to the GSA and download the reports, statistics and charts that GSA has become renown for.
Best regards,
Joe Barrett
President. GSA
The Internet of Things to 2020 (GSA paper) October 28, 2015 - [1.9 MB] Over the past 30 years the mobile industry has evolved from a fragmented, vehicle centric, low volume, high priced, business focused service, into a global mobile broadband business that has created new industries, new use-cases, billions of customer and innovative devices. The variety of mobile devices is about to explode as the mobile industry moves into what could be described as the third wave of Internet connectivity - a world where billions of “things” are connected. The next few years therefore…