One of the common questions that we encounter is why are 5G speeds so low as we were promised 5G downlink speeds of 20 Gbps. Most people do not understand how the 5G speeds are calculated and what do they depend on. In many cases, the network won’t be capable of delivering higher speeds due to some or the other limitation.
In a new presentation, I try to explain the theoretical speeds and compare them with real world 5G data rates and even try to map it to why these speeds are what they are. Hopefully people won't mind me adding some humour as I go along.
Embedded below is the Twitter thread on Speedtests 😂
Speed Tests are 5G killer app 😉, @HarriHolma provides details in replies: Elisa 100 MHz 5G (8T8R radio) on 3.5 GHz with LTE dual connectivity (EN-DC). LTE phone gives 200-250 Mbps in the same spot. The configuration uses L800+L1800+L2100 #5GKillerApphttps://t.co/5ZnS2UeFkL
Not long ago we looked at the 'Impact of 5G on Lawful Interception and Law Enforcement' by SS8. David Anstiss, Senior Solutions Architect at SS8 Networks gave another interesting talk on Evolving Location and Encryption Needs of LEAs in a 5G world at Telecoms Europe Telco to Techco virtual event in March.
In this talk, David provided an insight into how 5G is impacting lawful interception and the challenges Law Enforcement Agencies face as they work with Communication Service Providers to gather intelligence and safeguard society. While there is an overlap with the previous talk, in this video David looked at a real world example with WhatsApp. The talk also covered:
Real-world problems with 5GC encryption
5G location capabilities and the impact on law enforcement investigations
eCall (an abbreviation of "emergency call") is an initiative by the European Union, intended to bring rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision anywhere within the European Union. The aim is for all new cars to incorporate a system that automatically contacts the emergency services in the event of a serious accident, sending location and sensor information. eCall was made mandatory in all new cars sold within the European Union as of April 2018.
In UK, the National Highways have a fantastic summary of the eCall feature here. The following video explains how this feature works:
Last year, ETSI hosted the Next Generation (NG) eCall webinar and Plugtests. The presentations from the event are available here. The presentations from GSMA, Qualcomm and Iskratel have a fantastic summary of many of the issues and challenges with eCall and transitioning to NG eCall.
From the Qualcomm presentation:
The eCall standardisation began in 2004 when 2G networks were prevalent and 3G was being deployed. The chosen solution was in-band modem and Circuit Switched (CS) 112 call. The in-band modem was optimised for GSM (2G) and UMTS (3G) as the standard completed in 2008.
eCall for 4G (NG eCall) standardisation was started in 2013 and completed in 2017. As there is no CS domain in 4G/5G, IMS emergency calling will replace circuit switched emergency call. Next generation (NG) eCall provides an extension to IMS emergency calls and support for 5G (NR) has since been added.
The picture above from GSMA presentation highlights the magnitude of the problem if NG eCall deployment is delayed. GSMA is keen for the mobile operators to switch off their 2G/3G networks and only keep 4G/5G. There are problems with this approach as many users and services may be left without connectivity. Fortunately the European operators and countries are leaving at least one previous generation of technology operational for the foreseeable future.
GSMA's presentation recommends the following:
New technology neutral eCall Regulation (type approval and related acts) to be amended, adopted by European Commission and enter into force by end 2022 the latest.
OEMs to start installing NG eCall /remotely programable/exchangeable modules by end 2022; by end 2024 all new vehicles sold in the market should be NG eCall only
New vehicle categories to start with NG eCall only by 2024
MNOs have initiated to phase out 2G/3G between 2020 and 2025 , whereas the optimal transition path of their choice beyond this date will depend on market and technology specifics, and may require alignment with NRAs.
By 2022 , the industry will develop solutions for the transition period that need to be implemented country by country, which will also assess the amount of needed public funding to be economically feasible.
Retrofitting to be acknowledged, completed and formalised as a process by end 2024; standards should already be available in 2022.
Aftermarket eCall solution to be completed (including testing) and formalised by end 2024; standards should already be available in 2022.
The European Commission to make available public funding to support OEMs and alternative solutions to legacy networks starting from 2022 , under the RRF/ recovery package (or other relevant instruments)
Legacy networks availability until 2030 at the latest. By then deployment of all alternative solutions simultaneously would have ensured that the remaining legacy fleet will continue to have access to emergency services through NG eCall.
EENA, the European Emergency Number Association, is a non-governmental organisation whose mission is to contribute to improving people’s safety & security. One of the sessions at the EENA 2021 Conference was on eCall. The video from that is embedded below and all information including agenda and presentations are available here.
Our blog post on ATIS Release-16 webinar has been one of the popular posts so it's no brainer that people will surely find this Release 17/18 update useful as well.
The moderator for this webinar was Iain Sharp, Principal Technologist at ATIS. The following were the speakers and the topics they spoke on:
Services: Greg Schumacher, Global Standards, T-Mobile USA
Systems Architecture and Core Networks: Puneet Jain, Principal Engineer and Director of Technical Standards at Intel Corporation, and 3GPP SA2 Chairman
Radio Access Network: Wanshi Chen, Senior Director,Technology at Qualcomm, and 3GPP RAN Chairman
In Release 17, 3GPP delivered important updates to 5G specifications to broaden their range of commercial applications and improve the efficiency of networks. 3GPP is now starting standardization of Release 18. This webinar provides an up-to-date view of the completed 3GPP Release 17 work with a particular focus on how the work is expanding capabilities of 5G and enhancing the technical performance of the mobile system.
The webinar will cover:
The status of 3GPP's work and the organization's roadmap for the future
The main themes the delivered Release 17 features in 3GPP specifications
How enhancements to 5G are helping the 5G market proposition (e.g., through new service opportunities, or enhanced efficiency of 5G networks)
The webinar will give a technical overview of 3GPP's Release 17 content and its benefits to 5G networks. It is suitable for people in technical roles and technical executives who want to understand the current state of 5G standardization.
The video is embedded below and the slides are available here:
Glad to see that 3GPP Rel-19 work has already started as can be seen in the roadmap below.
Jim Morrish, Founding Partner of Transforma Insights has kindly made an in-depth Edge Computing Tutorial for our channel. Slides and video is embedded below.
We often associate holograms with futuristic technology and even 6G nowadays but what if holograms could be done in a very simple way just by playing with light?
At Mobile World Congress 2022, the demo that impressed me most was by a Japanese company called Asukanet. Their ASKA 3D Plate projects images in mid air. This in combination with a 3D sensor allows to manipulate the display without touching. It may be easier to understand this by looking at how this works in the largest convenience store in Japan as shown in the video below:
This is the demo video that I got at MWC
This is us playing with the hologram
While it may not be straightforward, it would complement our smartphones or tablets display nicely.
You can watch some of the use cases on their page here.
In the last week of March 2022, 3GPP Release 17 reached stage 3 functional freeze. Now the ASN work is ongoing and it will be frozen in June 2022. After that point, any changes will need to be submitted to 3GPP as CR (change request) and would have to be agreed by everyone (or unopposed).
Juan Montojo, Vice President, Technical Standards, Qualcomm Technoloigies, in his blog post reminds us:
Release 17 has been completed with its scope largely intact, despite the fact that the entire release was developed in the midst of a pandemic that hit the world, including 3GPP, right after the scope of the Release was approved in December 2019. 3GPP has been operating through electronic means from the latter part of January 2020 and has yet to get back to face-to-face meetings and interactions. The return to face-to-face meetings is not expected before June 2022. Release 17 completion not only marks the conclusion of the first phase of the 5G technology evolution, but it is a testament to the mobile ecosystem’s resiliency and commitment to drive 5G forward. I couldn’t be more proud of 3GPP, and our team, in particular, as Qualcomm Technologies led the efforts across a wide range of projects. Release 17 delivers another performance boost to the 5G system and continues expanding 5G into new devices, applications, and deployments.
The blog post briefly explains the 'New and enhanced 5G system capabilities' as well as features related to 'Expansion to new 5G devices and applications' as shown in the image on the top.
In addition, 3GPP Rel-17 has many other projects as can be seen in the image above. 3GPP TR 21.917: Release 17 Description; Summary of Rel-17 Work Items has a summary of all the items above but it is still undergoing revision.
Juan also did a webinar on this topic with Fierce Wireless, the video is embedded below:
Over the last couple of years, I keep on coming across Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA). A simple way to explain is that the standard model of security is known as perimeter security model, where everything within the perimeter can be trusted. In zero-trust (ZT) model, no assumptions is made about trustworthiness and hence it is also sometimes known as perimeterless security model.
This short video from IBM clearly explains what ZT means:
This blog post from Palo Alto Networks also clearly explains ZT:
By definition, Zero Trust is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that secures an organization by eliminating implicit trust and continuously validating every stage of a digital interaction. Zero Trust for 5G removes implicit trust regardless of what the situation is, who the user is, where the user is or what application they are trying to access.
The impact of Zero Trust on network security specifically protects the security of sensitive data and critical applications by leveraging network segmentation, preventing lateral movement, providing Layer 7 threat prevention and simplifying granular user-access controls. Where traditional security models operate under the assumption that everything inside an organization’s perimeter can be trusted, the Zero Trust model recognizes that trust is a vulnerability.
In short, Zero Trust for 5G presents an opportunity for service providers, enterprises and organizations to re-think how users, applications and infrastructure are secured in a way that is scalable and sustainable for modern cloud, SDN-based environments and open-sourced 5G networks. Delivering the Zero Trust Enterprise means taking Zero Trust principles, making them actionable and effectively rebuilding security to keep pace with digital transformation.
A research paper looking at Intelligent ZTA (i-ZTA) provides an interesting approach to security in 5G and beyond. The paper can be downloaded from here. The abstract states:
While network virtualization, software-defined networking (SDN), and service-based architectures (SBA) are key enablers of 5G networks, operating in an untrusted environment has also become a key feature of the networks. Further, seamless connectivity to a high volume of devices in multi-radio access technology (RAT) has broadened the attack surface on information infrastructure. Network assurance in a dynamic untrusted environment calls for revolutionary architectures beyond existing static security frameworks. This paper presents the architectural design of an i-ZTA upon which modern artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms can be developed to provide information security in untrusted networks. We introduce key ZT principles as real-time Monitoring of the security state of network assets, Evaluating the risk of individual access requests, and Deciding on access authorization using a dynamic trust algorithm, called MED components. The envisioned architecture adopts an SBA-based design, similar to the 3GPP specification of 5G networks, by leveraging the open radio access network (O-RAN) architecture with appropriate real-time engines and network interfaces for collecting necessary machine learning data. The i-ZTA is also expected to exploit the multi-access edge computing (MEC) technology of 5G as a key enabler of intelligent MED components for resource-constraint devices.
Ericsson Technology Review covered Zero Trust in 5G Networks in one of their issues. Quoting from the article:
The 3GPP 5G standards define relevant network security features supporting a zero trust approach in the three domains: network access security, network domain security and service-based architecture (SBA) domain security.
The network access security features provide users with secure access to services through the device (mobile phone or connected IoT device) and protect against attacks on the air interface between the device and the radio node. Network domain security includes features that enable nodes to securely exchange signaling data and user data, for example, between radio and core network functions (NFs).
The 5G SBA is built on web technology and web protocols to enable flexible and scalable deployments using virtualization and container technologies and cloud-based processing platforms. SBA domain security specifies the mechanism for secure communication between NFs within the serving network domain and with other network domains.
While the new requirements and functionality introduced in the 5G specifications are already aligned with many of the zero trust tenets. It is already evident, however, that further technology development, standardization and implementation are needed in areas such as policy frameworks, security monitoring and trust evaluation to support the adoption of zero trust architecture in new telecom environments that are distributed, open, multi-vendor and/or virtualized.
While various technologies can support organizations in adhering to the guiding principles of zero trust as part of their total active defense strategy, it is important to remember that technology alone will never be sufficient to realize the full potential of zero trust. Successful implementation of a network based on zero trust principles requires the concurrent implementation of information security processes, policies and best practices, as well as the presence of knowledgeable security staff. Regardless of where a CSP is in its transition toward a zero trust architecture, the three pillars of people, processes and technology will continue to be the foundation of a robust security architecture.
Network Slicing is a hot topic on our blogs and it looks like people can't get enough of it. So here is a short introductory tutorial from Wray Castle.
The video embedded below explores what Network Slicing is, how it is used, and how it is deployed in the 5G network, as well as (briefly) the role of MEC (Multi Access Edge Computing) in support of specific use cases and potential slice deployments.
The GSMA Mobile Economy report series provides the latest insights on the state of the mobile industry worldwide. Produced by GSMA's in-house research team, GSMA Intelligence, these reports contain a range of technology, socio-economic and financial datasets, including forecasts out to 2025. The global version of the report is published annually at MWC Barcelona, while regional editions are published throughout the year.
The Infographic above (PDF) shows the latest update from 2022. The PDF of report is available here.
Selective extract from the executive summary as follows:
The mobile industry has been instrumental in extending connectivity to people around the world. In 2021, the number of mobile internet subscribers reached 4.2 billion people globally. Operators’ investments in network infrastructure over the last decade have helped to shrink the coverage gap for mobile broadband networks from a third of the global population to just 6%. But although the industry continues to invest in innovative solutions and partnerships to extend connectivity to still underserved and far-flung communities, the adoption of mobile internet services has not kept pace with the expansion of network coverage. This has resulted in a significant usage gap. In 2021, the usage gap stood at 3.2 billion people, or 41% of the global population.
The reasons for the usage gap are multifaceted and vary by region, but they generally relate to a lack of affordability, relevance, knowledge and skills, in addition to safety and security concerns. Furthermore, the barriers to mobile internet adoption are particularly acute among certain segments of the population, including women, the elderly, those in rural areas and persons with disabilities – or a combination thereof. Addressing the usage gap for these key groups will extend the benefits of the internet and digital technology to more people in society, and will require concerted efforts by a broad range of stakeholders working together with mobile operators and other ecosystem players, such as device manufacturers and digital content creators.
5G adoption continues to grow rapidly in pioneer markets, with the total number of connections set to reach 1 billion in 2022. Momentum has been boosted by a number of factors, including the economic recovery from the pandemic, rising 5G handset sales, network coverage expansions and overall marketing efforts by mobile operators. Meanwhile, a new wave of 5G rollouts in large markets with modest income levels (such as Brazil, Indonesia and India) could further incentivise the mass production of more affordable 5G devices, which in turn could further bolster subscriber growth. By the end of 2025, 5G will account for around a quarter of total mobile connections and more than two in five people around the world will live within reach of a 5G network.
4G still has room to grow in most developing markets, particularly in SubSaharan Africa, where 4G adoption is still below a fifth of total connections and operators are stepping up efforts to migrate existing 2G and 3G customers to 4G networks. However, rising 5G adoption in leading markets, such as China, South Korea and the US, means that 4G adoption on a global level is beginning to decline. Globally, 4G adoption will account for 55% of total connections by 2025, down from a peak of 58% in 2021.
By the end of 2021, 5.3 billion people subscribed to mobile services, representing 67% of the global population. In a growing number of markets, most adults now own a mobile phone, meaning that future growth will come from younger populations taking out a mobile subscription for the first time. Over the period to 2025, there will be an additional 400 million new mobile subscribers, most of them from Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa, taking the total number of subscribers to 5.7 billion (70% of the global population).
In 2021, mobile technologies and services generated $4.5 trillion of economic value added, or 5% of GDP, globally. This figure will grow by more than $400 billion by 2025 to nearly $5 trillion as countries increasingly benefit from the improvements in productivity and efficiency brought about by the increased take-up of mobile services. 5G is expected to benefit all economic sectors of the global economy during this period, with services and manufacturing experiencing the most impact.
For anyone interested in keeping a track of which 2G/3G networks are undergoing sunset, you can follow my Twitter thread that lists all the networks I become aware of
Orange is shutting down some 2G/3G networks in Europe, African opcos won't be affected. In summary: * France: 2G shutdown 2025, 3G sunset 2028 * Rest of Europe: 3G switch off by 2025 & 2G latest by 2030#2G#3G#3G4G5G#2G3Gshutdownhttps://t.co/3iYF93MWej
