5G roadblock: labor

Sun Jan 5 11:21:07 UTC 2020

On 5/Jan/20 00:40, Sabri Berisha wrote:

>
> I'm not sure if you know how that plan works, but domestic I have unlimited
> data at a fair speed (10s of Mbit/s). My foreign data is also unlimited
> but throttled at 256kbps. Which is good enough for me.
>  
> Of course they will. But the consumer might not like the price tag :)

I'm curious to see how long they can sustain this for, and how much of
your own home/office connection factors into their capacity planning and
management when they offer these unlimited plans.

I know in Malaysia, this is how 2G/3G plans started out back in 2008. By
2012, any previous unlimited plans would remain in situ, but going
forward, no more unlimited plans were being solid, not even corporate ones.

> By the time I had my own place, I did not need a landline. I had cellular,
> thanks to being on-call paid for by the ISP I was working for at the time.
>
> In fact, I never had a landline as my primary phone number. (note: I did
> have landlines going into my house for DSL purposes).

In Africa, there are more mobile phones than landlines. On our
continent, the majority of telecommunications takes place on a mobile
phone. The reasons are as historical as they are commercial.

>
> My prediction is that a similar thing will happen to data. We live in an
> era where competing wireless data technologies are being developed. 
> Cellular, wi-fi, ptp microwave, and geostationary satellite are here
> today. Low earth orbit satellite is upcoming, and cellular technology is
> evolving to a point where I think my daughter (who is now 8) may never
> need cable or dsl. My Roku uses wifi, her Roku will simply have a
> softsim, just like those Amazon Kindles that came with AT&T wireless.
>
> The (far) future is wireless for consumers. Fiber (or whatever is next)
> will only be needed for aggregation, datacenter and dc2dc.
>
> Until then, 5G is merely an intermediate technology. Just like 100BaseT
> was a precursor to the 400G that's being deployed right now.

I think you might be confusing a few things here.

I think we can all agree that the future is wireless access for
everything (phones, tablets, laptops, domestic appliances, e.t.c.).

The question isn't about whether the kids will be using wire or
wireless... we know they will be using wireless. The question is what
that wireless will be. Something has to drive the wireless, so the wire
(mostly high-bandwidth fibre) is not going anywhere. It is the
distribution, particularly in consumer applications, that will be wireless.

I just think that it will be more wi-fi than GSM data, simply because of
the cost of scaling out GSM data vs. the cost of running fibre to a site
and distributing connectivity via wi-fi.

Because you can pack wi-fi AP's a lot more densely for cheaper compared
to GSM radios, I think allocating newer frequencies toward wi-fi in
addition to the existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz makes a lot more sense to me,
and partially resolves the never-ending issues MNO's have of a lack of
spectrum.

Mark.