September, 2023 | Asset Essentials

Early adopters embrace private 5G

Posted on September 27, 2023 by James

The appeal of private 5G is driving companies to explore ways to improve the performance, scalability and flexibility of their mobile networks.

Enterprise deployment of the technology has been slow due to the pandemic and an immature device ecosystem, but that’s not stopping early adopters. To help get started, they’re turning to service providers, which can include telcos, private wireless vendors, hardware vendors, systems integrators, and major cloud players.

Here’s a look at how three private-5G deployments were rolled out.

Sports arena amps up visitor experience with private 5G

The Wells Fargo Center recently rolled out 5G, using Comcast Business to help set up the network. The Philadelphia sports arena is home to the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League, the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association, and the Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League.

The deployment in the Wells Fargo Center uses a mix of 600 MHz and CBRS spectrum, according to Brian Epstein, head of strategic wireless solutions at Comcast Business. The CBRS component included a combination of CBRS Priority Access Licenses and CBRS General Authorized Access unlicensed spectrum.

“The private 5G network was ideally positioned to deploy small, less-intrusive cameras when and wherever we needed them,” says Phil Laws, the general manager at the Wells Fargo Center. Previously, the arena was using wired connections.

The cameras are used to focus on Gritty, the mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team, as well as Lou Nolan, the voice of the Flyers for 50 years.

“The 5G camera deployed at his position this season brought his famous ‘power play’ call directly onto the video board in an organic way that we had never tried before,” says Laws. “This deployment was seamless without needing cabling or really any preparation at all. Very point and shoot.”

The network was also tested for use streaming data to LED screens located on the sidewalk outside the arena. “Traditionally, displays on the exterior requiring regular updates have been fed using wired networks that fix them into a position forever,” he says. “With this type of deployment, the displays are free to roam where power can reach them. This will allow us to make adjustments to their use and position depending on the event need.”

The Wells Fargo Arena deployment also uses Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud platform, an end-to-end private wireless networking and edge computing platform that includes radio, baseband stations, and software.

The 5G network is able to support other bandwidth-intensive and low-latency applications, says Comcast’s Epstein. “For example, with video streaming, mobile phones are used to shoot HD video that is distributed to screens on the scoreboard,” he says.

Specialist builds private 5G testbed

MxD set up a private 5G network at its manufacturing innovation facility in Chicago with help from wireless-infrastructure company Betacom, which recently added 5G-as-a-service to its suite of offerings. Betacom’s service can include network design and installation, as well as ongoing security and operations monitoring and management.

MxD is the nation’s Digital Manufacturing Institute and the National Center for Cybersecurity in Manufacturing, which partners with the Department of Defense and about 300 companies, including Boeing, Rolls Royce, Siemens, and John Deere.

“We started looking at 5G three years ago,” says MxD technical fellow Tony Del Sesto. The first project was using AT&T to set up a 5-mm wave 5G system. Then, a month ago they went live with a new private 5G network that uses midband 3.5 GHz CBRS spectrum, according to Del Sesto,

The goal is to test both approaches to 5G, and to allow manufacturing companies to come in and experiment with them, which is important because different 5G frequencies can perform differently on factory floors depending on local physical factors. “It’s hard for manufacturers to do tests in their own facilities,” says Del Sesto. “Especially when you’re running a business and can’t interrupt your operations.”

Using millimeter wave means having to work with a telco, he says, but that doesn’t mean that data has to leave the facility. “Even though it’s on a public network, it can circulate locally in the factory.”

Millimeter waves can offer extremely high speeds and bandwidth. “Shorter wavelengths don’t go through walls very far,” says Del Sesto. That means that facilities using those shorter wavelengths need more antennas to provide the same coverage.

On the other hand, with CBRS, a mid-band spectrum, a manufacturer doesn’t have to work with a telco, he says, and can operate the system itself. “I’m not going to say that one system is better or worse,” he says.

With either option, a factory can replace Ethernet cables with wireless connections, making it easier to move factory lines around and allowing for self-driving vehicles.

The biggest problem for enterprises today, Del Sesto says, is that the tablets and sensors and other IoT devices factories use aren’t yet ready for 5G. That will come, he says. Until then, factories might want to experiment with 5G gateways that gather data from IoT devices via wired connections but backhaul to data centers via 5G.

“By putting the sensors on a gateway, you usually save a bunch of installation money,” he says. “And there’s the flexibility. If you need to move a factory line, it’s a lot easier to move the gateway than to reroute all the Ethernet cable.”

Australian Football League taps system integrator

Marvel Stadium, an arena owned by the Australian Football League, chose to go with systems integrator Accenture for its private 5G network. Accenture partnered with Google Cloud and Australian telecom Telstra for the deployment, which is set to go live in in March of 2023.

The private 5G network will allow fans to navigate the stadium using smartphones. They’ll also be able to hold up their phone cameras to receive information about the environment or to access content such as player statistics and promotional communications from the football league. Other applications include augmented reality (AR) multi-player games and pre-game AR shows

“Technology such as 5G, AR and cloud have a wealth of potential to create new and innovative experiences,” says Behren Schulz, Accenture’s director of design and innovation in Australia and New Zealand.

Click here to read the full article from NETWORKWORLD.

The average US 5G connection is getting faster

Posted on September 21, 2023 by James

T-Mobile is still the fastest 5G provider in the US by some distance, but all three of the major national mobile service providers recorded major increases in their average connection speed between March and June of this year, according to a report released today by Opensignal.

Much of the across-the-board increase, the report said, is due to the carriers beginning to use the mid-band 5G spectrum that was auctioned off recently by the FCC. Opensignal said that areas where C-band spectrum is available have seen noticeable improvements to average connection speeds.

Other areas of mid-band spectrum, however, are the reason why T-Mobile continues to boast a substantial lead over both AT&T and Verizon in Opensignal’s speed tests. T-Mobile averages 171Mbps over a 5G connection, compared to 72Mbps for Verizon and 53Mbps for AT&T, thanks in large part to its early acquisition of 2.5GHz spectrum, the researchers said.

“However, T-Mobile is not remaining idle and is continuing to advance the quality of its users’ 5G experience with rising 5G download speed and other measures,” the report said. “This is a clear indication that the carrier is pushing ahead on its plans to expand both breadth and depth of its mid-band 2.5 GHz 5G network.”

Verizon’s more rapid C-band build-out gave it a larger percentage bump to 5G speeds than its competitors, rising by nearly 30% over its mark since the last report. That compares favorably to a 10% bump seen by AT&T over the same period. The lower band 2.5GHz signals used by T-Mobile also offer an advantage in coverage range, given their stronger ability to propagate over long distances, and the report found that T-Mobile’s 5G network was available 40% of the time, compared to almost 19% for AT&T and just 10% for Verizon.There were also significant variations in average speeds when broken out by region, according to Opensignal – Verizon’s 72Mbps national average was pushed upward by figures of 100Mbps in several states, including Minnesota, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Indiana and Michigan. AT&T posted numbers of between 79.3Mbps and 82Mbps in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia.

The major carriers are more tightly grouped when it comes to upload speeds, however. T-Mobile still leads, at 17.8Mbps, but Verizon and AT&T are close behind at 14Mbps and 10Mbps, respectively.

Click here to read the full article from NETWORKWORLD.

T-Mobile Now Serving Up High-Performance 5G ‘Network Slicing’

Posted on September 13, 2023 by James

Serving up something good one slice at a time isn’t just for pizza; it’s also been a longtime goal of 5G. And now after years of “network slicing” not living up to earlier delivery predictions, T-Mobile says it’s begun offering this high-performance flavor of 5G wireless to customers.

In a post Monday on T-Mobile’s corporate blog, EVP and chief technology officer John Saw recounted how T-Mobile had staged a first-ever commercial deployment of network slicing to support Red Bull’s 2023 Cliff Diving World Series in Boston.

Saw writes that the carrier provided a virtualized slice of its 5G network for Red Bull’s exclusive use so that it could “easily and quickly transfer high-resolution content from cameras and a video drone circling the event to the Red Bull production team in near real-time over T-Mobile 5G” at speeds that topped out at 276Mbps.

And because this slice was cut off from the rest of T-Mobile’s network, this traffic didn’t slow down device use for T-Mobile subscribers at that June event. Saw compared that to the robotaxi meltdown that hit San Francisco in August, when a network traffic jam led to a physical traffic jam as a cluster of Cruise self-driving cars stopped in streets.

(Cruise doesn’t advertise which carrier it uses; the 2021 announcement of a collaboration between AT&T and Cruise’s parent company GM to provide 5G connectivity to its cars could be a clue, but Cruise’s PR department did not answer a query emailed Monday morning.)

Network slicing was one of the original sales pitches for 5G, and constituted a germ of technological truth inside vaporous claims that 5G would make self-driving cars possible. But making slicing a commercial reality has proved to be much more complicated than lighting up 5G service for smartphones.

T-Mobile tackled one major prerequisite for slicing by deploying “standalone” 5G—meaning it does not require an LTE connection to establish an initial link to a device—starting in 2020. It’s since backed multiple startups looking to build advanced apps on its 5G network, some of which would work much better with slicing, and at the start of August announced a beta test of slicing for real-time video-calling applications.

AT&T and Verizon have had a slower start, with the former beginning to deploy standalone 5G this spring while the latter began its standalone deployment last year. Verizon also announced its own network slicing demonstrations in June.

All three carriers, along with many analysts, see offering network slicing and other value-added services to business customers as one of the wireless industry’s best ways to build a business model that doesn’t rely too much on selling undifferentiated bandwidth to everyday consumers, a scenario that industry insiders disparagingly call being a “dumb pipe.”

Click here to read the full article from PCMag.

Cable Internet Weaker Than Expected as Fiber and 5G Home Internet Dominates Growth

Posted on September 6, 2023 by James

The past few years has shown that having a quick, reliable internet connection is a must-have. As a result, consumers are increasingly fleeing cable for newer and faster alternatives.

That’s according to study conducted by RVA LLC on behalf of the Fiber Broadband Association, part of an annual study that looks at the changing dynamics of the internet industry. The study, with a sample size of 4,000, found 17% of respondents had switched internet service providers. Fiber-optic lines, which offer the highest speeds possible, picked up 15% of those switchers, while wireless internet nabbed 11%. Cable was the biggest loser, having contributed most of those switchers, with satellite a distant second.

The numbers underscore a desire by consumers to seek out the fastest available service, or barring fiber service, the most convenient with 5G home internet service. Interestingly, those wireless gains come despite that option emerging in a bigger way in just the last few years, compared to the longer legacy of fiber. Indeed, interest has picked up for wireless home internet, which we call Cord Cutting 2.0, because of the clear pricing, convenience and ease of installation.

While Verizon and T-Mobile have been in the 5G home internet game for a while, AT&T last week made its first foray into the business, launching in 16 markets.

“Wireless share improvement came from 5G bandwidth improvement, especially in areas where low quality DSL, low quality cable modem, wireless, or satellite were the only previous choices to the consumer,” the FBA study said.

An interesting stat in the report is how RVA breaks down the market share of internet providers. The study says cable internet only makes up 47% of the total internet business, which is far lower than other studies that are closer to two-thirds of the market. RVA said the difference lies in how it calculates the total market, noting that other studies look at the sum of cable subscribers from publicly traded cable companies compared to the total from all publicly traded wireline companies.

RVA, however, takes the much larger total of all household internet users, which gives the total cable industry 54% of the market. But if you excise the cable fiber business, the percentage drops to that 47% mark.

That decline and the shift away from cable comes even as the cable industry has upgraded their existing networks with higher speeds and moving fiber deeper into their network, the study said.

Customers are more happy about their fiber and wireless services, with fiber boasting a net promoter score — a measure of how often a person would recommend a service — of 25%, with wireless following with 18%.

“The level of consumer support for fiber broadband is rather striking,” the study said. “This data, combined with continually increasing (fiber to the home) availability, would certainly suggest continued market share growth for fiber broadband, and potential serious trouble ahead for cable share.”

Click here to read the full article from Cord Cutter News.