5G roadblock: labor

Wed Jan 15 10:20:05 UTC 2020

Le 29/12/2019 à 23:49, Michael Thomas a écrit :
> 
> https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/29/big-barrier-trump-5g-america-089883 
> 
> 
> An interesting article on the road to 5G that they need to about double 
> the size of the workforce to roll it out. I expect that this affects 
> some of you directly.
> 
> But one of its premises seems a little shaky to me: has the US ever led 
> the pack rolling out new network technology? I always thought it was 
> Japan and South Korea that were years ahead of us. In silicon valley and 
> SF it's still very rare to see FTTH. I'm not sure why we would expect to 
> get to 5G any faster than we normally do.
> 
> Mike
> 

In France, the situation is the following: it is not clear whether or 
not 5G will be available to lambda end users (Mr "tout le monde") in 2020.

All the data below is from publicly available sources like printed 
press, TV, and the web.

There is a plan by the regulator to allocate the 3500MHz band to various 
  operators, for money (auctions, "enchères").  There is a public 
ambition under the form of a timeline running until end of year, with 
various well identified steps.  One of the key steps is the delivery of 
authorisations to operators in the second trimester (3-month period of 
the year) of 2020.

Arcep mentions that, depending on 'department' (region), the 5G 
frequencies will be available for use in 2020 or in 2021. (remark 
'availability for use' different than 'selling').

Arcep (the regulator) today mentions 5G in 2020 will be mostly an 
improved 4G, not the full plain 5G.  (makes think of 4G+ which is 
already widely available since some months).

SFR operator touted "5G in 2020" by certain TV advertisements in 
December (CNEWS) but it stopped since.  It's important because in the 
past they also touted 4G before all the others, even though they were 
almost the first to deliver.

iphone 11 is sold since September, with a feature list including codecs 
and frequencies which make think of 5G.

Several 5G trials are listed and centralized on an Arcep site.  They 
have publicly visible specific licenses (pdf documents) which last 
explicitely for about 6 months, to be reviewed.  Warning - some of them 
are not really using 5G freq bands, but other techs.  Some of them are 
internal in buildings, not outdoors.  Only a very few approach to what 
5G is.

Spain and Germany witness similar evolutions.

All these data, dates, timelines, commitments change every few months. 
For example, in a region named 'Saclay' 5G was ambitionned for 
demonstration in 2019 with public announcements.  But it was retired a 
few months before 2019 by a manufacturer.  The retiring of the 
announcement was public, but in silence so to say.  The reasons given 
for the retirement of the 2019 5G ambition are technical.

Alex