Is exclusive spectrum access a hindrance to long-term development of telecom industry?
Operators spend billions on gaining exclusive access to spectrum assets needed to meet current and future consumer bandwidth demands. But, as the capacity crunch persists, service providers are investing in technologies designed to maximize spectral efficiency while bringing new frequencies into play.
At a glance, carrier aggregation has given way to License Assisted Access, wherein licensed frequencies can be joined with unlicensed frequencies to essentially create a bigger data pipe. Data offloading on Wi-Fi is an established and growing practice, and the 5 GHz unlicensed Wi-Fi band has also been tapped for standalone deployment of LTE with MulteFire, which is initially geared toward support for internet of things implementations. And, in the U.S., the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band is the subject of potential FCC rule changes that would open the band to new users by way of a three-tiered spectrum access systems that protects incumbents while supporting carrier or other interests based on prioritization protocols.
The idea that providing more bandwidth requires more spectrum, and unique, collaborative uses of that spectrum, was front and center this week at the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance Global Summit 2018 in London.
William Webb, CEO of Weightless SIG, during a panel session at the event called for cooperation between regulators and operators to make spectrum sharing a more widespread practice. “Spectrum sharing methods have been known for decades and regulatory bodies have professed their support for many years,” he said. “Yet concepts like dynamic database access have actual use in only a handful of countries. There are various impediments often in the form of incumbents keen to maintain the status quo and risk-averse regulators. It is important to explore how we overcome these and realize the benefits that shared spectrum access clearly has to offer.”
Further pressing the need for operators to change mindset as it relates to spectrum, U.K. telecom regulator Ofcom Group Director of Spectrum Phillip Marnick said, “We live in a world where protection is key,” according to a report in Mobile World Live. “Everyone thinks they own the bit of spectrum they’ve got…we work in a way to make sure people can’t get in and it’s very much a keep off the grass approach. But, it’s a world we can’t live in. It’s an approach of ‘No, you can’t,’ and we’ve got to move to a world of ‘How do we make it work?’”
In an interview with Medium, Boingo Wireless CTO Derek Peterson discussed the spectral aspects of larger industry convergence needed to commercialize and scale 5G. Peterson also serves as a MulteFire Alliance board member and Boingo is a member of the CBRS Alliance.
“More spectrum means more throughput, reduced latency, better coverage and lower costs,” Peterson said in the interview. “But to realize many of these benefits, we’ll need to move beyond a monolithic network entity and create environments that are densely packed with wireless nodes…Powering a new generation of connectivity requires access to more airwaves, which is why we’ll see a story of convergence that leverages licensed, unlicensed and shared spectrum.”
In addition to the spectrum piece of 5G, Peterson also alluded to the massive network densification investments needed to stand up 5G. Sharing also relates to this infrastructure piece–Boingo provides neutral host systems that support multiple operators on shared physical equipment. Could that same model be applied at scale to support 5G in an urban area, for instance, where hundreds of small cells would be needed to support shifting capacity demands?
In China and South Korea, leading operators are taking a shared infrastructure approach to 5G. SK Telecom, KT and LG U+, along with broadband operator SK Broadband, are working together to avoid redundant investments, according to published reports citing officials from the Ministry of Science and ICT. Cost savings are reportedly projected at $938 million over the next decade. In China, the three mobile operations, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, have shared infrastructure costs for years through the jointly established China Tower Corp, which owns more than 2 million base stations that host network equipment from the three operators. Now China Tower is working with the electric utility State Grid Corp of China (SGCC) to share resources to cut capex and increase efficiency.
For both spectrum and infrastructure, industry leaders seem to think 5G will necessitate a shift in thinking and practice by operators who may need to work together in order to more effectively compete.
