Saturday 29 June 2019

Presentations from ETSI Security Week 2019 (#ETSISecurityWeek)


ETSI held their annual Security Week Seminar 17-21 June at their HQ in Sophia Antipolis, France. All the presentations are available here. Here are some I think the audience of this blog will like:


Looks like all presentations were not shared but the ones shared have lots of useful information.


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Sunday 23 June 2019

Finland: A country with only Unlimited Data Plans


I was listening to Elisa couple of weeks back, at 5G World Summit. One of the things that surprised me was that Elisa offered unlimited data plans but the price varied based on the maximum speeds possible. The same approach was going to continue with 5G. When 5G data speeds would improve, new packages will be added with the improved speeds.


Tefficient has pointed out multiple times that even though all operators in Finland offer unlimited data plans, their ARPU has increased in 2018. This is in contrast to the other mature markets, even though they may not be offering unlimited data plans.


Same thing was pointed out by Rewheel research that highlighted in their May 2019 report that, "Finnish operators that executed ‘unlimited everything’ strategies were the undisputed champions of the 4G era"

A mashable article pointed out that "5G will be crazy fast, but it'll be worthless without unlimited data". This is very true.


Mobile operators should start thinking about how they can offer unlimited data plans, especially if they keep touting applications that are going to use loads of data. As you can see from the tweet above, a 1 hour 8K video streaming would roughly use between 7 - 10 GB of data.

Let me know your thoughts.

Tuesday 18 June 2019

3GPP Release-16, Release-17 & Beyond...

6G Summit featured quite a few talks from people looking at evolution beyond Release-16. The future releases will still be 5G, maybe become 5.5G, like 3GPP Release-13 which was known as LTE-Advanced Pro officially was unofficially known as 4.5G.


Back at the 6G Summit in Finland, Dr. Peiying Zhu from Huawei looked at the topics being discussed for Release-17 and beyond.


Thanks to Mika Klemettinen for sharing the pictures on Twitter, as the presentation was not shared.

3GPP is working towards defining Release-16. TS 21.916 - Release description; Release 16 is still not yet available on the 3GPP reflector. Once that is available, we will know for sure about all the Rel-16 changes. Release-17 is long way away. Having said that, there is no shortage of discussions as some of these Rel-17 features were discussed in the recent RAN Plenary.
Jungwon Lee, VP, Samsung also shared a summary of 3GPP Release-16 and Rel-17 features at IEEE 5G Summit in San Diego recently. Quite a few interesting features in all the pictures above that we will no doubt look at in the future posts.

3GPP also shared a presentation recently (embedded below), looking at not only Release-15 & 16 but also looking at focus areas for Release-17




Related Posts and Articles:
  • The 3G4G Blog - Ultra Reliability: 5x9s (99.999%) in 3GPP Release-15 vs 6x9s (99.9999%) in 3GPP Release-16
  • The 3G4G Blog - Update from 3GPP on LTE & 5G Mission Critical Communications
  • 3GPP - Release 16
  • Light Reading - 5G Standards Group Struggles to Balance Tech With Politics
  • Eiko Seidel - 5G Mission Critical Networks (Proximity Services in Rel.17)
  • The 3G4G Blog - Slides and Videos from the 1st 6G Wireless Summit - March 2019
  • The 3G4G Blog - Couple of talks by NTT Docomo on 5G and Beyond (pre-6G)
  • The 3G4G Blog - China Telecom: An examination of the current industrial trends and an outlook of 6G
  • Mission Critical Communications: Mission-Critical Features for Release 17 Discussed at Latest 3GPP Meetings

Wednesday 5 June 2019

New Tutorial on 5G Spectrum


We made a new tutorial on 5G spectrum. It's in 2 different formats. Short version (~13 mins) or Long version (~31 mins). Instead of embedding the slides/videos here, I am providing links to the 5G section on 3G4G page below.

Short Version (~13 mins) - click here

Long Version (~31 mins) - click here


Related posts:



Sunday 2 June 2019

Couple of talks by NTT Docomo on 5G and Beyond (pre-6G)


The Japanese operator, NTT Docomo is a very bold MNO. Not only do they do interesting research but they are very open about what they have been doing and share it publicly. For example, last month they announced development of a safe, blade-free drone propelled by Ultrasonic Vibrations (tweet). This was just amazing as it has a potential to use drones in many new areas where the conventional drones are deemed too dangerous. This is why I was very pleased to see couple of talks by Docomo available online.

The first one is by Takehiro Nakamura, SVP and General Manager of the 5G Laboratories in NTT DOCOMO, Inc. at the 6G Summit in Finland. Slides available here. Video embedded below




The next one is by Seizo Onoe, Chief Technology Architect, NTT DOCOMO, INC. and President, DOCOMO Technology, Inc. from Brooklyn 5G Summit. Unfortunately the slides are not shared but the video is worth a watch below.





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