Category Archives: Wade4Wireless BlogCast

How will Tech differentiate Carriers Going Forward?

December 16, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

Does Wi-Fi need an exit strategy after 5G is released?

This is a legitimate question if 5G does all that they say it does. We already know that 4G will have an exit strategy. We see LTE going away once all carriers convert their systems to 5G, maybe in 2024 or 2025. What about Wi-Fi?

Why am I bringing this up? Because I read an article at the link below, that mentions an exit strategy for Wi-Fi.

https://networkmatter.com/2018/11/30/amazon-enabled-federated-wireless-private-lte-initiative-should-serve-as-a-shot-across-the-bow-for-public-operators/

It talks about using private LTE as an exit strategy for Wi-Fi. I believe that they are showing that an enterprise can have a license free or better yet a lightly licensed CBRS LTE system. They don’t need to have an open system but something that is licensed, somewhat protected, and efficient. Maybe it’s something that the smartphone can use seamlessly with the carrier’s LTE system.

I think that Ruckus and SpiderCloud are going to push the initiative. Why not, it’s a professional system that is slightly better than Wi-Fi. However, many enterprise love Wi-Fi and they are eager to try the 60GHz spectrum.

I can’t wait to see what happens with Wi-Fi, but 5G should be a game changer, and I truly believe that 5G as license free and lightly licensed will be there next big push. Why wouldn’t it? It makes sense to have 5G in all spectrums. That is the way the OEMs and the carriers were going for LTE. Now that there’s something new they should jump to 5G immediately for all spectrums. One technology will make life so much easier.

Also, Qualcomm would be pleased to have licensing of the 5G NR in everything. They would make so much money! There needs to be some competition for 5G.

I think that 5G is an expectation of all systems. Sprint is rolling out 5G in their new massive MIMO system from the start. Article below.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sprint-preps-new-york-city-for-5g/

Sprint knows that 5G is going to take over the world and for the first time in a long time they are making a smart technology decision to move ahead. I am only pointing out the WiMAX and Nextel systems that they had to retire. I would imagine they lost a lot of money on both gambles. Anyway, I digress.

The massive MIMO is something that T-Mobile talked about, and the spectrum that Sprint has in 2.5GHz is perfect to roll out LTE and 5G concurrently. No wonder T-Mobile sees the value in this. They have the 600MHz for rural and the 2.5GHz in urban and suburban areas. They would quickly put AT&T in the dust by just rolling out the new systems. That and the John Legere marketing would force the other two carriers to compete or concede.

Now, let’s look at what Sprint did with the Magicbox, WOW! They seem to have all aspects covered, don’t they?

When they have 5G available, will they care as much about Wi-Fi? Sprint hasn’t played up Wi-Fi as AT&T did. In fact, they didn’t see the value like AT&T. T-Mobile, on the other hand, had great success rolling out the Wi-Fi systems and using Voice over Wi-Fi. However, why don’t they push that as much today? I honestly don’t know, but I would think that they didn’t like it as much as they had hoped. Although, it was very popular.

What technology will survive, 5G, LTE, or Wi-Fi?

So which is it? Which one will be around in the year 2025? Will they all be here? Will we be looking at Wi-Fi and 5G and talking about the demise of LTE? Will we just compare 5G to the next thing?

These should be a consideration to futurist. Today, those questions don’t matter. In fact, all we care about is seeing which 5G system will come out first. We are all hoping to see the first 5G smartphones roll out. Then, I would think we would look for the cost-effective chipsets that could be installed into laptops, tablets, and other devices. Not to mention IOT systems that are super cheap.

I guess I am way ahead of myself. To be honest, we need to get through the 5G lab and FIT, right? I am confident it will happen for both FWA and mobility. They need to be released and GA, (General Availability), before we start talking about how great it is.

5G will stumble, all new technology does. But the 3GPP group will right the wrongs, make the problems disappear as they did for 3G and 4G. They are brilliant people and will make 5G better than anything before. They will have more spectrum than ever to see how far we can push the limits. It’s inspiring.

We all know 5G will survive and at some point, LTE will be sunset. I didn’t think it would happen so fast, but the public is hungry for the new “G,” as well as all the marketing people and the OEMs trying to make money off RAN and small cells. It’s an evolved ecosystem that everyone is feeding off of through 2022. After all, we all have families to feed, right?

When I look at the OEMs and see how they scaled back on LTE-U, it makes me wonder if they have changed course. Will they continue to rely on Wi-Fi for offloading or will they push a 5G license-free format? Could it be they are moving towards LTE-U, but not advertising it? It doesn’t seem that way to me. I don’t even hear Qualcomm pushing MuLTEfire anymore, and there is a MuLTEfire alliance!

I wonder, will Multefire change to a 5G format? Would that be the future so that we can have stood along 5G systems? I think if they want that to happen, they need to start pushing that initiative today or it will start to die as LTE-U did.

If I sound confused, it’s because I am. I mean, what direction are we headed? Will the carriers and OEMs run away from LTE altogether, or do they want to have LTE as the offload technology of choice?

Here is what I do know.

Not many carriers are looking at unlicensed at this time.
They are all concentrating on 5G rollouts and how to make LTE last longer.
They are trying to get VoLTE to be stable and reliable.
They also want to sunset 3G sooner than later. Maintaining 3 technologies is a nightmare.
They want to find an IOT model that works and is cost effective.
They need to find new subscribers and break into new markets.
They need to boost income and RPU.

I think that covers most of it using today’s standards as a reference.

Evolution is amazing. Remember when having a laptop or even a Kindle with the carriers chip on it made it more valuable. Now we turn on the Wi-Fi hotspot in our smartphones and rely on that to connect the Wi-Fi enabled laptop.

I would say the main reason for that is because indoor coverage is not keeping up with the outdoor coverage. I don’t see the carriers improving it anytime soon.

Who wins?

If looking at technology, who cares, right? This is about who makes money. The licensing fees with 5G and LTE, they win. The OEMs are making the equipment, they win. The carriers sell the service and add new subscribers for new services, they win.

Wi-Fi, the vendors that sell the equipment, they win. People who install the systems, and I mean more than macro sites. Small cell, CRAN, VRAN, DAS, and all the indoor systems, they win. It’s a matter of getting it out to the people.

I don’t see Wi-Fi being sunset for a very long time, in my opinion, it’s already a winner. Why not go with that.

Differentiators:

I am not talking about technologies alone. Sprint and T-Mobile will have massive MIMO and Verizon and AT&T will have FWA. What will the consumer see? What will they experience?

How are the carriers going to differentiate themselves from each other to the consumer? Maybe they can’t! They are trying to differentiate themselves from the cable companies. They will work very hard to make you choose them over the Comcast’s of the world. That’s the new goal. They want to become even more valuable to the end user who wants a mobile device and a high-speed ISP.

Verizon and AT&T already made one move with fiber to the home. Now they are going to make another push with fixed wireless. The more products and services they can get a person to commit to the more that person is liable to stick with them, assuming they treat them right. T-Mobile made sure that customer service and no contracts matter to the end user. The world has changed.

Let me ask you something though. How do they differ from each other? Seriously, if you switch from Verizon to AT&T to T-Mobile, what changes other than coverage? Maybe the price, but how significant is that. Sprint’s last campaign entirely revolved around that one issue. They said, hey, we’re good enough and cheaper, why not go with us. So begins the race to the bottom. Way to go Sprint!

I think of the quote from Seth Godin that states, “How do we know that brands like Verizon and AT&T are essentially worthless? Because if we switched someone from one to the other, they wouldn’t care.” While this is an older quote, it’s more relevant today than ever because what is the difference for mobile coverage?

Ask yourself these questions, then think about the world we live in today:

Do you remember when Verizon was the monopoly?
In mobile coverage and in landlines, more or less.
Do you remember when landlines mattered?
Do you remember when you picked a carrier based off of coverage?
Do you remember when you went with a carrier because there was something unique about them?
Seth Godin’s quote came from one of these blogs; I included both to make the point about Verizon being a monopoly at one time.
- https://qz.com/work/1461996/seth-godin-does-your-logo-matter/
- https://seths.blog/2008/06/learning-from-f/

The industry has evolved. The carriers are becoming more and more alike. Sprint is in serious financial troubles even though they are running leaner than ever. The cheaper carrier that’s almost as good, say within 1% as good, is struggling to make it until T-Mobile can take over.

Do you know who your carrier is? Of course, you do! It’s the one who gave you the best deal with the best coverage where you need it the most. It was either your decision, or your company had a corporate deal with one of them to save money.

In 5 years, will it matter? What will the differentiator be? Will you decide based off of technology? You might. AT&T had the iPhone exclusively for a year, does it matter now? Will you choose AT&T because they had the iPhone first? Probably not, I mean seriously, who cares today?!?

The choices you make may be personal, perhaps loyalty to a carrier you’ve been with for years. It might be because you were with a carrier whose customer service sucked so bad or they charged you outrageous roaming fees that you swore you would never go back to them. I did that, sorry Sprint, but you really poised me off! How could you do that to me?

Coverage still matters. I can’t tell you how many kids I talked to wanted to go with T-Mobile, but it didn’t work at their house. Why T-Mobile? Because of marketing! The marketing that T-Mobile does focuses almost exclusively on millennials and veterans. T-Mobile is not stupid! They know how to grab attention.

Sprint did something similar by getting the brilliant Paul Marcarelli to take Verizon’s tagline, “Can you hear me now” to telling me that Sprint is good enough with a better price. To be honest, it worked very well. Mr. Marcarelli is still doing the commercials. Let’s face it; he’s a likable character.

What’s next for Wireless Carriers?

Obviously 5G, but now that means more than just a new G, unlike 3G and 4G. It now means that FWA is going to be a reality with the new spectrum. It means that mobile coverage has the potential to rival your ISP if you live within coverage. It means that IOT may become mainstream and affordable to all companies.

The idea of 5G should open up new offerings that the carriers can sell and compete in new industries.

Think of this; TV will change, it already has. Cable is dying, and internet TV in the form of subscriptions services is rising. Even if they use their TV, how many people rely on the Amazon Fire Stick or Apple TV, it’s an alternative to cable. Think of the millennials, how many watch anything but movies or downloaded shows on any device? Yes, including TVs. They may use Amazon Prime Video or Netflix but either way, it’s not cable.

The world is changing, open up your eyes. The carriers and cable companies need to see this. Comcast is betting heavy on Wi-fi, is that a good bet or will that become obsolete in 2021? Will the carriers create unlimited packages that run from your smartphone to the laptop on LTE or 5G? If you think it’s not possible, think about how Amazon will let you watch the same show on your Kindle, smartphone, or firestick. Carriers need to offer a similar service where you can have unlimited across several devices, just like they do with family plans on a smartphone, expand that to more than the device. That is the dream!

What’s next for Deployment?

The carriers are going to stop upgrading at some point when the systems are good enough. They won’t densify unless they can get a clear payback. They are already reducing all costs, specifically contractor costs, to keep profits high enough for the shareholders to be happy. They are all downsizing.

Is DAS going to continue to take off? Of course, just maybe more of a CRAN distribution.

Indoor needs to get better, but is that through Wi-Fi or LTE or 5G? What is it that will be the foundation for seamless coverage as well as new private wireless systems for new services? Do you really care who’s system you’re on or what price you pay?

It’s not all doom and gloom. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully, it’s not a train coming at us but new services. If the carriers can continue to innovate, like offering an alternative to the cable company as a low-cost ISP. Lucky for them cable TV packages are not so valuable anymore. Think about how many people watch shows, YouTube, Sports, and more on their devices. whether it’s a smartphone, laptop, iPad, or Kindle, they watch more and more on devices.

Will device makers get to have more of a say in the future or will they continue to play catch up?

Will Wi-Fi be here in 2025?

I can’t wait to find out! I hope I’m still working in this industry. Well, maybe not.

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

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In-Building Wireless, the next frontier for Integrators

November 27, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

For in-building wireless to become carrier friendly, the carriers need to decide how they want to grow indoor coverage. They already admitted they don’t want to put DAS and small cells in every building. They are attempting to cover form the outside in.

Unless the venue is large, they won’t be putting anything in a building if they don’t have to. So, what is the alternative?

Well, I have some ideas. They need to align with partners and be willing to roam like they do with Wi-Fi.

Carriers need to utilize CBRS and LTE-U for their systems. This means that the handset makers need to add that spectrum and functionality into the handsets. They probably will push back but if they don’t then the carriers will have to rely on Wi-Fi to offload everything. I don’t see them doing that, especially for voice. They’re going to find other ways to get in.

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Here is what I see, system integration and going to buy smaller OEM small cells in the CBRS and LTE-U bands to create private LTE systems. They will make deals with building owners, managers, and management companies. Then they can offer their service as an add-on for the carriers to roam onto it. It’s like DAS, but instead, a DRS, Distributed Radio System where someone builds the in-building network and allows the carrier to roam onto it.

Everyone wins except the integrator that wants to monetize. They will have to come up with a way to get paid. The carriers won’t pay much, if anything, to roam into a building they don’t care about in the first place. They just don’t care anymore. I’m not saying “Build it, and they will come” either because hope is not a strategy. What I am saying there is a way to become more valuable by assisting the carrier and building your own business model. Maybe by becoming the ISP for the building.

The integrator will need to supply more than RF in the building. They will need to supply Wi-Fi along with the other technologies and spectrums. They may also need to supply backhaul and edge computing systems to accommodate the needs of 5G. Perhaps even data closets to serve the building. The models are changing, and the opportunity is growing. The carriers can’t, (or won’t), do it. They won’t spend the money unless they have a serious payback model. The integrator has an opportunity to supply backhaul and more.

If you think this model won’t work, then why is Comcast using a similar model wherever they go? They will install Wi-Fi in a building for a low-cost if they have the backhaul access to the building. They make the real money off of internet access to backhaul and maintain the Wi-Fi system. This would be almost the same thing, but it would be an outlet for the carriers to roam onto and offer the end-user a Private LTE and/or 5G systems. That’s the way we want to go.

It has to make sense for all involved. Do your due diligence when you research the models. It’s not cheap to roll something like this out.

This is something like the Crown Castle is already are doing with smart poles that they roll out. Those guys were ahead of their time when they started this model. They supply all the features in hopes that the carriers will pay to go on. They need to pay for power, backhaul, and rent. It all adds up to success for Crown.

Just think “neutral host” of small indoor buildings. It will be the next wave if the spectrum is available and the models can break even or even turn a profit.

It looks like partnerships will be a crucial denominator for in-building coverage to move forward. Partnerships between building owners, OEMs, vendors, engineers, suppliers, and management companies. Then the partnership between carriers and the system manager.

The carriers have to get the spectrum and technologies in the handsets so that all of this can move forward.

Spectrum and technologies will need to be considered. We all know that Wi-Fi is almost everywhere. Will CBRS and LTE-U buildup like that? What about license-free 60GHz that was supposed to be Wi-Fi? Will mmwave start to roll out everywhere if the equipment is cheap like regular Wi-Fi?

The problem will be payment. Who will pay for these systems? Who will build them and who will maintain them? Is there s solid business case to move ahead? I think to do this we need to look outside the carriers. We need to look at more than just the Wi-Fi in the building. What other services can we offer?

Think IOT for devices, tracking, switch control and meter reading. Think of the thermal control we could have in each specific area of the building. Think of security, alarms, emergency lights and switches that could help someone. Think of the tracking we could have through the building as well as helpful apps on someone smartphone to guide them to a specific place to buy something. Here is a way to make the landlord your customer. Perhaps they need to track items in the building using RFID, or they need to monitor temperature systems and water pressure using smart meters. They may want to read the electric and gas meters more than once a month using smart meters. This is all possible when you build the in-building wireless system. Even smart lighting could be implemented if they want to pay for it.

We have to become creative in looking for revenue. A smart building will have a use for almost everything I mentioned above. They need to track everything to maintain the building’s environment. They may have to track people or equipment so that nothing gets lost. They may need to provide such an efficient building that the payback exceeds the system installation and maintenance. Good luck proving that, but I have seen that to be the case. Smart buildings were a luxury in the past, today they’ve become an expectation. It’s also more affordable than ever.

That’s the thing with Wi-Fi, it’s very cost-effective, i.e., cheap. It’s a great alternative to offload, but it just doesn’t play well with LTE. Now, we are evolving to 5G, will that change? Will 5G turn back the hands of time to accommodate an older technology? Probably not. So, when you go into a building to do the Wi-Fi and backhaul, remember that it could be the foundation for an IOT system, a DAS or DRS system. It could be the foundation for all the additional service you can see at the time of the Wi-Fi installation. Let’s not forget any retail that uses their iPads for a POS, (Point of Sale), system.

We’ll need to offload, but with 5G, will the new spectrum solutions eliminate the need to offload? Will the present unlimited data plans make it so that we only need our smart device in most cases? These are all questions we’ll be able to answer in 2020. For now, let’s move ahead with what we know and build up the in-building wireless systems with what we have, Wi-Fi, LTE-U, and CBRS. Let’s add DAS or DRS systems today.

The integrators need to think outside the box. It’s not just about DAS, is it? It’s not just about Wi-Fi or CBRS, but it’s about the package. The backhaul, the edge servers, the routing, easy access, and so on. Also, don’t forget that the building owner will want a piece of the pie. They need to get something for allowing you in their building. It no longer makes sense to pay a flat fee for rent, but if you can sign up the tenants, then you have an income stream that you can share with the building owners or managers. They want to get paid and to be honest; it’s good business.

Be smart, learn smart tech at www.wade4wireless.com. For your support, TechFecta offering consulting, tech marketing, writeups, and general guidance. Feel free to hire for the experience and because you like what you read.

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

More products from TechFecta and Wade4Wireless that support WADE!

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Putting together your smart city tech solutions, planning, development, and more…TechFecta! Guiding you to a better plan through consulting!

Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

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Will 5G be the death of LAA and LWA?

November 21, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

Did anyone realize that moving up 5G may kill other technologies? With all the fuss and arguments that Wi-Fi had with LTE-U, it turns out it may not be so vital anyway, now that 5G is coming. Wi-Fi has such a hold on us that we can’t imagine life without it. But will it be part of the 5G ecosystem?

To be clear and blunt, 5G NR will be the death of LTE in about 10 years. The real question will be if 6G will be another forklift upgrade or simply an improvement on 5G. Originally, we all thought that 5G would include LTE, I know I did, now it’s becoming clear that LTE is going to slowly, painfully, fade away.

We needed more and more throughput, so LAA and LWA were born. I know that there will be a new aggregation with 5G and LTE-U, LTE, and CBRS. I would think that even Wi-Fi and 5G may play well together. But what out all the technology improvements made to squeeze more throughput out of LTE?

Well, LTE isn’t going anywhere today. It will need to continue to improve for a two to four more years. It came a long way already. But is LTE-U still critical? Maybe for the next 3 or 4 years. It is a good supplement to the existing systems. However, it may not last nearly as long as Wi-Fi. Everyone loves Wi-Fi and understands it. Qualcomm promised us that MulteFire would be just as easy, but we never really saw much of it in the real world, did we? Device makers didn’t put it in the devices on a mass scale, and you can’t buy the hardware anywhere like Wi-Fi. It just took too long to get to market. The carriers played with it, and we’re looking forward to having LTE in the unlicensed bands. Again, too slow to market.

Will LTE-U fade away or will the carriers push to use it? Sadly, I see it fading away. Wi-Fi backers must be happy, but they were not the LTE-U killer, were they? It was really 5G NR, which ironically, Qualcomm pushed to get out. They also pushed MulteFire for LTE-U. Is Qualcomm killing its own products? However, 5G will have a huge payback, won’t it?

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I think the larger OEMs wanted to keep LTE-U for the carriers. How did that work out? What kind of numbers were deployed? Hundreds or thousands? Probably hundreds if they’re lucky. They should have pushed more cost-effective private LTE-U networks.

When 5G gets built, they will want to have it where it makes sense. So, LTE will be around for a long time until 5G matures. As aggregation goes, Wi-Fi will continue to be the offload whereas CBRS may be the best offload alternative in the USA. Maybe LTE-U will be part of that solution if it is cheap and easy to deploy. So LWA for Wi-Fi may not gain the ground it once did, in fact, it may fade away until they find a way to do something similar with Wi-Fi and 5G.

LAA may continue to roll out but will it be LTE-U or CBRS that will be the player? I am assuming CBRS, even though there aren’t many live systems. Chances are good that the CBRS systems may be the 5G NR format.

For those point to point links, or short multipoint links we have the 60GHz range which will handle high throughput areas in buildings. I am curious how the mmwave bands will play out, I brought up 60GHz because it will be license free, but the carriers are purchasing mmwave in the auctions here in the USA. The FCC is freeing up spectrum for them to grow. How will device makers add that to their devices? I can’t wait to see.

The question in mmwave, will it be licensed or unlicensed that becomes a bigger player? I see the licensed for the carriers, but we all want to play in the lightly licensed and unlicensed zones because it’s free. The carriers won’t want to play there because it’s free. unless they need to offload.

When we look at 5G, we expect new devices that will handle everything in the 5G spectrum as well as all the legacy technologies. Most devices will need to have many technologies in them like 5G, LTE, and Wi-Fi which all need to work in many bands, including mmwave. Maybe Wi-Fi and LTE-U to work in the ISM bands. Maybe even 60GHz to work in the license-free spectrum. Devices will have more and more crammed into those little packages.

We expect 5G everywhere, and it will mature as well. We expect to see the 5G version of LAA, LWA, and anything else we can imagine. If 5G is as great as they say, hypothetically it shouldn’t need any of those technologies, right?

Listen, the transition will not happen overnight. LTE will be here a long time. Look how many carriers still have 3G alive and working. In fact, they may rely on 3G for voice since they waited so long to spend money on the VoLTE upgrade. FYI, as far as I know, there is no voice solution outside of apps to provide voice on 5G as of November 2018.

The goal is to maintain as few technologies as possible like maybe 5G and 4G. The old 3G is a drain on resources. IT doesn’t happen overnight though, does it? Old technology dies slowly if customers have devices that they rely on. IT’s going to take time and look at how hard it was to kill 2G. On Star and services like that relied on that service being around longer than it was. It’s going to be harder and harder for service like that to keep up. Especially when cars last 5 to 10 times longer than any smartphone.

The wireless ecosystem expands beyond the smartphone. It goes out into all the verticals that are building business cases for it. Just like we expect to use 5G for more than voice communication. We expect to use it for more than internet browsing and testing. We want to build IOT systems, controls AI and AR systems. Are these wise investments I the technology will be replaced in 5 years?

Didn’t LTE mean Long Term Evolution? How long did that last? Roughly 5 years so far and we’re already doing another upgrade of new wireless technology. This 5G was supposed to be a software upgrade, but it isn’t. At some point, we have to stabilize the hardware the best we can, even though the OEMs will hate that. It will eventually need to software be defined if the hardware can keep up with the advances. Sorry, I got off point.

Back to the original question, will 5G play with other technologies? I think it has to because we’re not just looking at the carriers here. Wi-Fi has been around for decades and is NOT going anywhere. In fact, it can support 5G just not in LWA. I also think that LTE-U and CBRS will allow smaller private systems to be built, whether they are LTE or 5G has yet to be seen. If 5G NR is available to the public, why not build that system and then allow the carriers to roam onto it? I think that’s how the future systems will have to work.

Will private LTE systems start to roll out? Will the carriers still look at LAA to assist the broadband throughput? How will this happen? If 5G can deliver what it says it can.

Here’s the thing, few carriers have enough spectrum to make this happen. Why do you think there is a rush towards mmwave? It’s because most carriers don’t have the spectrum that Sprint has in the 2.5GHz spectrum. They need to supplement what they have. They need to plan for smaller cells to break down the spectrum and make it more efficient for reuse.

5G will need to align with the additional technologies and spectrums.

Also, license free will be quick and easy to deploy as systems grow. Carriers won’t have 5G everywhere until maybe 2023 if we’re lucky., It all depends on what the payback for the 5G is initially as they roll out in the heavy suburban areas.

By the way, when is the last time you read about anything in the news about LTE-U?

Thank you for your support and your time. And good job on learning all you can in the wireless industry, you are amazing! Now, go out and impress people!

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Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

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More products from TechFecta and Wade4Wireless that support WADE!

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Putting together your smart city tech solutions, planning, development, and more…TechFecta! Guiding you to a better plan through consulting!

Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

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Breaking down the walls with 5G Open RAN

November 20, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

When I say walls, I mean several things:

Interoperability – LTE has done a great job of forcing OEMs to play well together. Ericsson and Nokia and Cisco have to get along and share parts of the end to end ecosystem.
Security – open systems tend to be less secure than if one OEM has complete control.
Cheaper hardware – look at Wi-Fi, the hardware is so cheap. If LTE and 5G equipment will follow that path the hardware will be dirt cheap, but there will be a licensing aspect that will regulate everything.
Licensing – this is how the OEMs and suppliers will make money going forward. The licensing ensures that the software will stay up to date and security stays intact.

Most carriers are pushing for open architecture systems. Groups like Open RAN, now merged with XRAN to form the ORAN Alliance, more can be found at http://www.xran.org/news/ if interested. I think they want to drive down hardware costs. They are already pretty low and manufactured in China. In fact, most of the engineering is probably done there as well. Carriers have a score to settle with the OEMs, they want to have more competition. This would be great if it wasn’t so damn hard to get something approved to be on their network in the first place. I admire OEMs for their persistence, at least the ones that can afford to support lab and FIT of their products.

This is good and bad news for OEMs. I would think that the smaller OEMs could specialize in one thing, like a radio head, BBU, or maybe even software that is specific to that function.

This is probably the way systems will be connected. It will break down the RAN much like the carriers have broken apart the end to end system. In the days of 3G, CDMA and GSM you pretty much had one vendor from core to radio. Now, you can have many different vendors in the core because most of it is software driven with COTS, (Common Off the Shelf) servers and routers. Most everything in LTE was software driven except for the BBU and Radio Heads.

Now, with 5G, it may be broken down even more. The fronthaul is becoming interoperable as CPRI and eCPRI become open. Now the carriers will have the ability to use anyone’s radio head, like what digital DAS vendors were doing with Alcatel-Lucent when they came up with CPRI.

Now, eCPRI will open up a faster interface.

Open RAN changes more than the tower site. As small cells and CRAN become commonplace, this means that the carriers could have the vRAN. Virtual RAN and had multiple vendors radio heads out at the sites. They could have a BBU hotel, in the case of CRAN, in one are with one OEM’s BBU system while remote they have another OEM’s radio heads. This means that the system will be broken down even more than before.

The purpose of the Open RAN Alliance is to do just that, to break the OEMs down to a manageable size where the carriers will be able to negotiate the hardware prices down. This has already worked, the hardware is cheaper than ever, but now it’s the licensing they have to work with. Licensing is where everyone is trying to make more money in this software-driven world.

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So, the carriers were able to lower the hardware cost and shop around for a specific product. For instance, let’s imagine a system breakdown, theoretical of course.

Cisco makes a reasonable prices cell site router, CSR.
Ericsson has a great core solution, maybe that’s how they want to go.
Then Nokia could have a great BBU solution; they could provide that.
Then Samsung could provide reliable radio heads; they could provide that.

The problem is getting them all to work together. Don’t get me wrong, they will work together, but whenever there is a problem, there will be finger-pointing. You know what I mean, many problems are going to be network related, and everyone is going to point the finger at Cisco. Actually, the other vendors may give Cisco the finger, even though it’s not their fault. Things get ugly when working with multivendor systems.

What happens to fix that problems are that one OEM has a really smart guy that figures out the problem then works with the customer to identify the other players and what they’re doing. It’s hard to figure out sometimes, even if you have just one OEM.

This is why 5G won’t be any different. It’s going to be software driven. The radio heads need to be spectrum specific, but the rest of the system could just process the services and application the way that carrier wants. It may be optimized for specific services. Video data for movie or video for short YouTube videos. Maybe for gamers, they have AR for the users. Maybe it’s for IOT with short data bursts. Maybe it’s sliced to serve all the above.

The carriers have a conundrum; they have to service subscribers that may want just one or all of the services. Whom do you prioritize? The carriers need to find their NICHE, at least T-Mobile and Sprint do. I think that Verizon and AT&T are big enough that they will try to serve all niches. The big boys will be surprised when T-Mobile and Sprint roll out their 5G systems; they will need to find their niches. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are putting a lot of eggs in the mmwave basket; we’ll see how that pans out. I hope it’s a raging success, but new technology takes time to be adopted.

So, the infrastructure market will eventually become a cost war. That’s right, a race to the bottom for the carrier that has low expectations. The OEMs need to offer services and support. They will need to stay on top of the costs yet provide amazing applications and reliability. They also will need to provide a low-cost of operation.

Will we see a Wal-Mart for equipment? I think that we already have seen that with the rise of Ubiquity in Wi-Fi. Will Ubiquity provide carrier class equipment? Ruckus has been fairly successful providing carrier-grade equipment in the Wi-Fi market. They had an uphill battle, but it seems to have been working. Now that CommScope owns them, we’ll see if the success continues. CommScope has many weapons in their arsenal, but can they execute? We’ll see.

But what about control?

How will the carriers maintain control and security if they use too many vendors? Will the carriers sacrifice security for the cost? It seems that way. Look at how software made available to the masses gets hacked. It’s expected in today’s world. So, then they will need to beef up security on their infrastructure for more than what’s available to the public. They will need to worry about an outside force taking control of the RAN and core. While this may not seem likely, think about what’s at stake.

If someone can access the RAN and core, they could mimic what the NSA is doing and track and the caller in that system. Maybe do more than getting free airtime, but actually gain access to secure lines. It’s a potential threat. We rely on the carriers for our security as well as out private information.

If you think about the private information that gets hacked, imagine what someone could do if he or she got control of the core and the system. They could take it down, control users, and tap voice and data conversations. This may be possible now, but in an open system, it may be more of a threat.

With the good, lower costs and higher competition, comes the bad, potential security threats. It’s not all roses in an open architecture system, and I want to make that clear. I am sure that the carriers are weighing the problems as well and the advantages. Unfortunately, the lower cost is probably winning out.

Open the door to disruptors.

One thing I hope we see are disruptors in this market. If you don’t think we have seen any lately, look at what Airspan has done with Sprint’s Magic Box and SpiderCloud has done with enterprise small cells. These companies proved that with patience, tenacity, and a good product you can break into the carrier’s market.

Now with open architecture coming, we should see these and more disruptors entering the radio head market, the BBU market, and the software market.

I look forward to seeing who can do it. I have already talked to groups that have products, software, and application that could improve today’s systems. The problem is that with the major OEM’s chokehold on the carriers it will be hard for them to gain ground. They need to find their way to the carrier to improve the existing systems. I see that happening in 1 to 3 years.

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Will 5G NR and LTE work together?

November 18, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

The answer, of course, is yes to this stupid question. Why did I ask this? Well, I was reading an article by Ericsson about the advantages of having 5G NR and LTE working together, what a novel idea, like who has a choice in this?

Article found here, https://www.ericsson.com/en/ericsson-technology-review/archive/2018/the-advantages-of-combining-5g-nr-with-lte?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=social_organic&utm_campaign=TeamEricsson&utm_content=38ae46f4-4fb4-4bd6-872b-a0694d61648e if you want to glance at it. Or, download the PDF at https://www.ericsson.com/assets/local/publications/ericsson-technology-review/docs/2018/etr-2018-09-5g-radiodeployment.pdf if that’s easier.

OK, Ericsson, I am a fan of what you’ve done this year. You’ve done great things in 2018, turned your company around and added more and more jobs in the USA, (where I live). I love that because Nokia and Samsung have done all that they can to move more and more out of the USA. FYI – I am pro USA, sorry world, that’s where I live, and I see so many people losing jobs in telecom. Oh, one more thing, it’s the largest telecom market for revenue in the world, yet, all the OEMs want to offshore everything. I think its time for a disruptor!

Now, back to the article. Here’s the thing, WTF? That’s like saying 3G and 4G are better together. Why do I think that is a stupid statement? Here’s why. Any carrier in the USA will deploy them together anyway, and they probably have 3G out here as well. Not just Tier 1 carriers! Also, what about Wi-Fi, they rely on that to offload the carrier’s network. Luckily, I actually read the article.

The title is awful. Not sure who would say such a silly thing or how it could be taken seriously with anyone working on LTE or 5G deployments. When you read the article, it’s much better at explaining that they really are talking about spectrum, Massive MIMO, and planning. I don’t know why they didn’t call the article, “How to get the Most out of your 5G NR Deployments with LTE as the foundation”. Seriously, it makes more sense.

Anyway, let me break it down for you. They cover how 5G spectrum will be either be 3.5GHz or mmwave. That is for everyone but T-Mobile and Sprint. They have other plans which they are executing now. While T-Mobile has fought for 3.5GHz spectrum, they also plan to roll out 5G in the 600MHz spectrum. Sprint is already rolling out massive MIMO in 2.5GHz with LTE. They have plenty of 2.5GHz spectrum to deploy 5G in the same spectrum. Meanwhile, AT&T is deploying 5G in both mmwave and other spectrums while Verizon will use 3.5GHz and mmwave. It’s obvious that mmwave is the choice of FWA.

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The article talks about how MIMO will be a game changer. I am talking about massive MIMO which includes MU-MIMO and beamforming technologies. Who knew that when Ruckus used beamforming for Wi-Fi years ago that it would be a norm for carrier spectrum now?

The article brings out the fact that LTE and 5G will have to work together. No shit Sherlock! This is true, but more out of necessity since hardly anyone is rolling out a 5G only system. If you say DISH is doing it, I’ll believe it when I see it. They’ve done little with their spectrum to date. Dish’s history of wireless deployment is weak at best outside of TV delivery. All that money for spectrum and very little, if anything, to show for it. Although, they finally appear to be making progress in deploying something, supposedly a 5G IOT system. Again, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Spectrum is key because 5G can do more if it has the bandwidth. Sprint has prime spectrum for 5G in their 2.5GHz band. They literally have 100MHz of spectrum in most of the USA. That’s ideal for 5G. It should be a game changer that would allow them to use it for backhaul and/or fronthaul.

I believe that Verizon will also want to use the mmwave to supply backhaul to their small cells and CRAN sites and use it to deliver broadband to end users to create high-speed 5G hotspots. That’s going to be awesome.

Indoor use for mmwave should take off almost immediately, but there are health concerns. Everything I read says the spectrum is safe, but so many people are scared of it. The spectrum is the key.

I bring up safety because that’s a huge question in Quora, “How safe is 5G?” and the point I try to get across is that it’s not the technology but the spectrum and power that can hurt people. Oh, by the way, your microwave uses 2.4GHz, just like Wi-Fi in the ISM band. Wi-Fi can run in several spectrums, today most people use 5.8GHz, but 2.4GHz is still being used. What’s the difference? Wi-Fi power is so low; it’s not a safety concern whereas the high-powered Klystron is hammering 2.4GHz to through food and liquids! Power is the difference, and the FCC has strict limits that the carriers are supposed to follow when deploying on poles. Most small cells are very safe, but the CRAN radio heads could be a different story if not carefully monitored.

Anyway, I digress.

The thing is that 5G will need new spectrum, duh! That spectrum should have enough bandwidth so that we see incredible improvements in throughput and latency. That’s why 3.5GHz is nice, but mmwave is amazing because it has so much more bandwidth. If we can get mmwave spectrum with 100Mhz to 1Ghz carriers set aside for 5G, then imagine what you could do! A lot of broadband stuff! Interactive games, AI functions, near real-time functions and more. How cool would that be to have dedicated spectrum that should be more efficient than Wi-Fi? Yet, if we have dedicated Wi-Fi, it works really well. BUT, you’re only as good as you backhaul, the carriers need to make sure that the backhaul can handle more than 1Gbps. Here is where I think Sprint might fall short. To raise all the backhauls to 100Gbps to handle the new loading costs a lot of money. It ain’t free! And, the reoccurring OpEx will be more. So now you are adding monthly costs to your sites.

How do we cover the increased backhaul costs? We need to load the sites with more and more subscribers! While we all loved densification like adding small cells everywhere. What we really want, at least what the carriers really want is to get as much money from one site as possible. This is why small cells never went into the 100,000s for deployment. They only could handle so many users. How did we overcome that issue? We deployed CRAN, a radio head that could handle all the loading of a macro site sector. That is a game changer. Now we can have very small cells in dense coverage areas that handle heavy user loading as well as high throughout.

Now, many carriers will call CRAN deployments small cells. That’s a ruse to get them deployed. A CRAN site requires a lot more fiber than a small cell, it is a bigger radio head and has more power and loading. Sorry, I’m off topic again.

Let’s sum this up, 5G and LTE will work great together; it has to. Massive MIMO is a great improvement. Spectrum matters, we need more to do more.

Spectrum – the FCC needs to be more proactive. I mean, can I go out and use 3.5GHz CBRS spectrum today? How long did they sit on that, like 3 or more years? What about mmwave? Some carriers are deploying this year. Why does it take the FCC so long to move on spectrum? No wonder there was a concern we would fall behind China in the 5G race, that falls squarely on the FCC’s shoulders. Anyway, we all know China waits for the USA to develop the technology so China can make it cheaper. Business as usual.
Massive MIMO systems – Sprint and T-Mobile are working to deploy massive MIMO this year so that next year they can deploy concentrated 5G systems along with an improved LTE system. The antenna plays a big part in this deployment. Antenna systems are very important.
5G – yes, 5G will be live next year, finally! Actually, I’m sarcastic again, no one thought 5G would be deployed until 2020, yet we’ll see it in 2019, a year early. That is working out very well for T-Mobile and Sprint. They committed to these systems.
LTE – already deployed and will have to work with 5G. If for no other reason, 5G can’t do voice and if someone has to call 911, it has to default to either VoLTE or 3G or 2G. Calling 911 is a requirement in the USA and 5G has to switch back to a voice system. There have been great advances in LTE like VoLTE, carrier aggregation, and massive MIMO. It’s better than ever.
Backhaul – If the backhaul is crappy, it doesn’t matter what technology or how much spectrum you have. If you have a funnel for a backhaul, then the forward bandwidth gets choked, and the systems look like crap. Sure, it costs more, that sucks! Just commit and do it right! Do you want to be the one who has crappy 5G because you saved a few bucks on backhaul? If that’s what you’re thinking, maybe you should have kept those T1 lines! Or maybe DS3 because it’s so much faster and this Ethernet thing is a phase! I bring that up because when we deployed the first 100 Mbps Ethernet system in Maryland, that’s exactly what I was told by all the wireless teams. They laughed at the public library system for deploying an all-Ethernet system because DS3 was the standard. I wonder what they are saying today? Oh, that’s right, they probably all retired!

For Ericsson, they need to do a better job naming their articles or white papers. That title sucks. If you need help, let me know. The information was good, not complaining about that.

Reference:

Thank you for your support and your time. And good job on learning all you can in the wireless industry, you are amazing! Now, go out and impress people!

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Will the Mini MVNO make a difference for indoor carrier coverage?

November 8, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

When the CBRS is finally released to the public, the carriers want to grab as much spectrum as possible. The thing is, they need partners to provide coverage. Currently, they are relying on Wi-Fi to offload indoor coverage, but that model is fading. The carriers will need to rely on the partners. That’s where a mini MVNO can make a difference.

The model has to change. The release of the CBRS had the carriers blinded with spectrum greed, forcing the FCC to change the rules so they would have more spectrum for a longer time. The overall solution was lost in their blind greed for spectrum. They forgot that they don’t want to spend the money to expand indoor coverage. Honestly, what were they thinking? That is where the CBRS will shine, indoor LTE and 5G coverage. It’s very limited coverage areas will make it ideal for indoor solutions.

That paired with the fact that the carriers don’t want to invest in DAS or indoor coverage anywhere they don’t have to is going to make a new business model for mini MVNOs. That’s where a smaller ISP or carrier could offer coverage in a limited area. This would be the rise of a mini MVNO.

The carriers are missing a golden opportunity if they don’t pair with smaller carriers and ISPs. They could ban together to get CBRS spectrum in buildings around a city or a region. This could make the growth of indoor coverage much cheaper than if the carriers did it themselves. A smaller company using CBRS could pair with any carrier to provide the coverage needed to improve indoor coverage.

That’s why being a mini MVNO for any carrier would make sense. The idea that the carriers won’t spend to improve indoor coverage helps a smaller company look more and more valuable. The carriers can continue with the Wi-Fi offload model, but I don’t see it as sustainable. Wi-Fi in an airport where you have to pay for the access doesn’t make sense when you pay a carrier for unlimited coverage. Why pay for the Wi-Fi? You already pay the carrier for unlimited coverage.

The example I have is when I fly from BWI airport. The airport has limited free coverage, but email on your device quickly eats that up then Boingo wants paid to use their unlimited coverage. However, I have great carrier coverage inside the airport, so I turn off Wi-Fi and rely on the LTE coverage that is there today, and it works very well. Why go to Wi-Fi when you have unlimited data with a carrier?

So for smaller companies that may have CBRS spectrum in an area where the carrier coverage is spotty at best and the Wi-Fi is very limited or nonexistent, you have an opportunity. The opportunity to create a small business model and allow offloading from the carriers in a small controlled environment.

Now, how do you make money off this model? Good question! We know that the carriers won’t pay you squat unless they have to. So one idea is you could ink a deal with one carrier exclusively to see if they would give you some monthly payment, but I would think it’s going to be a very small payment. Then there is the idea that you could get local subscribers. They would sign up to a point. Then local businesses may want to have coverage if they can use it for their back office and business systems as well as customers.

There are a few ideas. I hate to say it, but you may have to build it first. To be honest, I hate the “build it, and they will come” model because if it’s there, no one wants to pay, ask anyone who rolls out free Wi-Fi.

The idea is to get the local businesses or building owners to buy in first. Advertise so that people know that you’re offering the coverage and not the carrier. Make sure people see the difference between what you offer and the Wi-Fi in their business. If you can save someone from a large backhaul cost every month, they would buy in. Make it valuable to the local businesses and maybe the carriers will want you as a very small partner.

This is my business case for the mini MVNO using the CBRS spectrum. The FCC won’t give anything else to the small business; those days are gone. This is going to be the best you can do for now.

The CBRS equipment is out there, and the way to license is cost-effective. Let’s put together some smaller LTE and 5G systems while we still can. The FCC should be opening up the CBRS someday soon, hopefully. I know they had the big press release, but what can we do today? Seriously, who grabbed spectrum so far outside of the carriers or major OEMs to test?

So when the spectrum is free, smaller companies can start working with SpiderCloud, Ruckus, Ruckus, Airspan, and the other OEMs to roll systems out. The major OEMs may not be so easy. I was working with a smaller company that wanted to roll out Nokia and Ericsson gear, and it would take them months before they could deliver anything and they really weren’t interested in any order under 50 units. Just so you know, deal with the OEMs that want to deal with smaller companies. Not every OEM cares about smaller businesses and enterprise the way some do.

Indoor coverage for LTE and 5G are critical to all carriers. Businesses will rely on indoor coverage; the enterprise will build private LTE and 5G systems, new carriers will arrive offering limited indoor coverage. There will be disruptors in this industry.

Something to think about, as VRAN grows and becomes the new normal, smaller CBRS indoor units will make more sense. Currently, CRAN is pushing the limits of VRAN so the CBRS units will need to have the controller remote so they can be deployed anywhere. It’s going to be like the Ericsson DOT system on the controller will be off premises, not the convoluted system that they currently have. It will be cleaner and remotely controlled in the cloud, more or less.

The major OEMs will lose ground to new open source equipment providers, learn more at;

The carriers realize that the last mile is losing its value with the acceptance of unlimited data. They are already looking for new revenue sources. Spectrum is going to lose its value with more and more unlimited data plans. They have to come up with a new way to make money instead of crushing contractors pricing to save money. The model must change.

I can’t wait to see who will be the last mile disruptor. I thought it would be Google, but they didn’t have the stomach to continue to roll out FTTH, so it’s hard to believe they could roll out anything beyond Wi-Fi in a local region. I hope they deploy CBRS, but they need to find a very cheap and easy way to do it. Let’s face it. You need a strong heart and determination to deploy any wireless system. Google hasn’t proved they have either in deployment. Anyone who climbed towers can tell you how hard field work can be. Google supports the CBRS in the background, but I don’t see them deploying much of it.

For those of you that don’t know:

VRAN – Virtual RAN
CRAN – Centralized RAN, radio heads controlled by a central BBU, slightly different from cRAN, Cloud RAN.
RAN – Radio Access Network
BBU – Baseband Unit
FTTH – Fiber to the home
MVNO – Mobile Virtual Network Operator, someone who may use another carrier’s network as their own, for example, Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile.
DAS – Distributed Antenna System
CBRS – Citizens Broadband Radio Service, 3.5GHz spectrum in the USA.
Wi-Fi – honestly, you don’t know what Wi-Fi is? And you’re reading this? Google it then get lost! This is for real engineers and technicians.

Thank you for your support and your time. And good job on learning all you can in the wireless industry, you are amazing! Now, go out and impress people!

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What are the Deployment Risks and How do I Protect Myself?

November 4, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

I know all of you are thinking of all the risks associated with climbing here, that’s a lot of what I write about. However, they are the obvious risks, aren’t they?

When it comes to risks, there are so many that happen. I am going to break them down by the risks in this business.

While this seems to apply to tower workers, it also applies to commission engineers, IT workers, and anyone who might be working at a remote site for a carrier, OEM, or large GC.

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1) Getting Paid for the full scope:

This is the one thing that is most prevalent in wireless deployment, yet one that few people talk about. When it comes to getting paid, the carriers and OEMs generally pay the GCs they work with. However, the money is supposed to trickle down. It doesn’t always happen that way. In fact, several small businesses won’t get paid for one reason or another. There are so many scams that happen in this industry for the deployment teams. This is why the carriers often go directly to the small business now because the GCs got a black eye. There had to be consequences for not getting a job done.

Here are some scams I’ve been told about over the years.

Larger GC will give the vendor 80% of the equipment, and then never give them the rest. Instead, they will pay another crew to finish up, the final day or two while the crew that was there for a week and did 80% of the work can’t get paid because they could not complete the job.
Larger GC will pay a partial payment and ask the contractor to do another job to get paid for the last job; then it goes on until the contractor goes broke. Several larger GCs did this in the early 2000’s and not only got away with it, but they also got rich. Sometimes unethical greed pays, even if they destroy small business and people’s lives in the process.
The larger GC will approve change orders without the carrier’s approval, then not pay. Partial payments or payment for the base scope is all they get. Make sure you have a clear Change Request process in place to handle Change Orders!
Scope creep is when the scope grows, and the contractor on site does way more than the original scope had in it for the same money. I did this all the time when I did fieldwork. There comes the point when you have to say no or ask for more money, maybe even walk off the site.
Delay penalties are built into the contractor scope. This is a common thing that many GCs do, and then the work gets delayed with penalties going to the contractor.
Scope changes at the last This is very common; it’s hard to determine a cost when the changes happen a day or two before you get to the site.

2) Long Payment Terms:

Here is something fairly new, the carriers delay payment from 30 days to 90 days, maybe longer. Larger companies can absorb this to a point, but for services, this is hard. Especially for smaller companies that are trying to make payroll every month. They don’t always have the money to float for a long time, yet the carriers are looking for a way to delay payments as long as possible.

Let me put this into perspective by looking at a little history. If you’re wondering, I have lived through all of this. If you think that the 90 days starts when you finish, guess again. It starts when the site gets accepted. A game the carriers used to play is that they would not send

someone out to inspect and accept the site for weeks, delaying payments. They, the businesses start putting language in the contracts stating that the carrier had 7 to 10 working days to accept the site. That changed a lot of things, like how soon they get out to inspect the site.

Then, the carriers would critique every little thing, and the contractor had to fix a lot of items. This would cause delays and scheduling issues. The contractor would have to come back, do the work, and then wait for another inspection. Well, the contractors wised up by bringing a crew on site and doing all the work real-time. Thus, inspection and repair are all done the same visit. However, the schedule would suffer because the scope did not define the end product that well.

Then scopes and site acceptance packages all improved, to the point it is expected to be prepared up front, which add more money and man hours to the job before anything is deployed. I got way off topic, sorry.

So, after the work is done, let’s say a week, then after the inspection is done, let’s add another week, then when the paperwork goes through, add another 2 to 5 business days, then the bill goes to the carrier, and the countdown begins. It could be 30 days or 90 days or longer, on top of the additional 7 to 15 days already included. Like I said, if you are floating paychecks to people and this is your only income, it gets painful.

3) Up Front Training:

Remember for all of this work to be done; the contractor has to have some training. They may be able to read a MOP, but they should have an SME, Subject Matter Expert, within their company to make this happen. Generally, the contractor has to do this on their own dime.

It could be climbing, commissioning, wiring, making jumpers, terminating fiber or coax, anything that could be needed at the site. Even router configurations.

IF the training is not sufficient, then the quality of the installation suffers.

4) Miscellaneous Risks:

This is something that is encountered, causes problems, but is not often talked about unless you’re working the offer.

I have a list:

Weather-related delays, maybe even hurricanes. All cost the deployment teams money and delay the project. Even if it happens somewhere else, your boss may pull you off the deployment to do repairs which are generally more lucrative than new installations.
Vandalism and theft. This is very common for contractors. Not necessarily at the job site, but when they stay in hotels or park somewhere in the city, very common. Causes delays and out-of-pocket money to replace a tool that may have been needed but left in the vehicle.
Per Diem becomes an issue for smaller contractors. They should give their workers more than a hotel room, but often, that’s all some of them get. They need to get paid for their meals. If you don’t think this happens, talk to the Hubble Foundation because they used to help out climbers that would have no food money, in fact, sometimes they get left at the hotel without getting paid. Surprisingly, this is more common, although it never happened to me! It pays to know whom you work for.
Health Matters. For many of these crews and commissioning engineers, an injury or sickness can really be a setback. They don’t’ have endless resources of people and if the work has to be done at the site, what can you do? You have to replace them, even if it’s short term.
Security is an issue in some areas. I mean physical security against theft or bodily injury. I know so many site workers, engineers, and technicians that locked themselves in a site to be safe. I know that some sites require that you have a security guard or service to protect your team or vehicles while working at the site. Sadly, all too common in this industry.
RF Safety could be an issue at a tower site. Something to think about, the climbers will be working around a lot of RF. This could cause problems if the RF is not turned down or they get too close to another antenna. While this falls under health, it really has to do with training.
Poor training. This goes without saying, but you would be surprised how many people at a site are poorly trained. You probably know, but you don’t want to admit it.
Lawsuits overwork. This is a drain on everyone, but a larger company may look at a petty lawsuit for nonpayment or injury as “business as usual” whereas a smaller company has to decide if the fight is worth the time and lost income.
People walk off the job; this is common. Sometimes people get pissed off and leave, it sucks, but there’s little you can do to control those people.
The OEM’s equipment doesn’t work. Could be a failure out of the box, or poor documentation, improper installation, wiring error, you name it. You think you do everything right, and it fails. Who pays for the equipment replacement? Something to think about.
Damaged equipment is common in work like this. We do all that we can to make sure that the equipment gets there in one piece, but this is delicate equipment, and it is a rough environment. It could get damaged, and then you have all the finger-pointing. It sucks, but it’s common. Did it get damaged in shipping, did the crew damage it, or did it get damaged during installation? We may never know the truth!
Misunderstandings happen. This could be that the contractor was going to install something that they are not familiar with. While we should all read the scope prior to the job, not everyone does. This creates confusion, could create a problem with the installation, commissioning, or testing. While this is never accounted for, it happens more often than people realize.

How do you protect yourself?

There are a lot of risks in deployment. Not just for the tower crew, but for the engineers, technicians, and especially for the small business owner. How would you protect yourself from these risks? I believe it all starts up front. I have an outline below of somethings that are probably common sense, but you may not practice them as you should.

As you read these, understand most of this has to be done up front. The paperwork matters if you want to be protected.

The contract. Read the contract and understand it. Hey, I don’t understand most contracts, so what I do is hire a lawyer who specializes in contracts. In fact, that’s what all businesses should do. It pays to have someone smart in your corner. Don’t just pay them to read and protect you but ask them to walk you through it. This sounds like a pain; I used to ignore this. I have learned that it really pays off. Ask them to explain it. It costs more to do this if paying by the hour, but it will help you in the long run.
The scope of work. I know, you all know what it takes to get the job done, but did you put in the proper assumptions and exclusions? Did you outline the change request process? Is all of this laid out in layman’s terms, so your worker has a clear understanding of what they need to do at the site. Most larger OEMs have MOPs, Method of Process or Procedures, for you to follow. Make sure they get this to you prior to doing any work.
If you are doing something new, what training do you need from the carrier or OEM? Make sure you get it. Make sure you set aside the time and resources to do it properly. If it’s cable termination, as the supplier to provide it at your location. If it’s the carrier providing it, ask them to do it in the closest market to you. What can be done online and what has to be hands on? Figure it out!
Milestones and payment terms. While this should be in the scope or the contract, lay it out in clear English, or whatever language you’re doing business in. Each milestone will need to be laid out along with a payment expectation for that milestone. If you get 80% of the site complete and the GC does not supply you with enough equipment, state that in the SOW you should get paid 50% to 80% when that much is done. Maybe you want a deposit up front, outline what the expectation is to get off your ass and start working.
Poor workers. If you have someone who is a danger at the site or stupid, you need to trim the fat. I hate losing bodies, but if you don’t, then you may wind up with a lawsuit to protect some idiot who should have been fired weeks ago.
Take care of your superstars if you want to keep them. If you take care of them with payment, per diem, and understanding, then you are ahead of 80% of other companies out there. Taking care of them is more than money. You need to listen to their ideas and explain why you are doing what you’re doing. One thing I have been complimented for is that I often give people the “ Why are we doing this? Why is it done this way? Why do we need to use this tool or training?” If you can answer these questions, then you have them understand the reason for the scope of work, and they are aligned with your goals for the right reasons. Not just the almighty dollar. FYI, this is a two-way street, if they have a better way to do something that could save money, you need to listen to them as well. Don’t just talk, listen!

Summary:

Now you have an idea of what risks you will see. This is especially valuable when bidding a job or starting out. That’s the time to look at the risks, not when it’s too late, and something horrible has happened. Then it’s too late.

You have some ideas on what to do to avoid these risks. You can’t control the weather, but you can plan around it. You can’t control accidents, but you can do all that you can to prevent them. You can’t control other companies, but you can build in language to make sure you have a viable lawsuit if things go south.

Thank you for your support and your time. And good job on learning all you can in the wireless industry, you are amazing! Now, go out and impress people!

Would you sign up for a membership site with private content? If so, email me at wade@techfecta.com and write Membership.

Do you want an occasional email with free PDFs of these reports along with book and training offers? Read posts like these offline!

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

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Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

Wade4Wireless BlogCast

What spectrum would you use for Private LTE?

September 23, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

This is a question I recently saw on a friend’s post. He gave a talk about private LTE. His point was that you have more options than the CBRS.

If you are planning to deploy private LTE then you have several options. The thing is you could use the ISM band, where you have Wi-Fi. The problem is it’s full of Wi-Fi. There could be issues with that pesky Wi-Fi that is everywhere and on almost every device. That is good and bad. Good if you need instant free broadband connections. Bad if you want dedicated spectrum. So, it may not be the best choice if you’re worried about interference.

If you want a lightly licensed solution, with limited bandwidth but low latency, you can use the CBRS. This is going to be your best choice. You can use it.

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I like SpiderCloud and Ruckus as a CBRS OEM. They make good products, and they connect to Federated Wireless for SAS, Spectrum Access System. They all work together to make sure that the private LTE system will work perfectly for your network. I know, this sounds like a sales pitch, but the tools are out there, and these OEMs will help you get around the learning curve. Why not take advantage of their knowledge?

The idea here is that you can figure everything else out. The network is already your strong suit, routers and networking are something you’ve done and will continue to do. So why make the spectrum choice hard? If you use ISM, then you may have to compete with all the Wi-Fi in your building. If you go with CBRS, you have dedicated spectrum in your building.

I was hoping that there would be some mmwave that we could all dip into, I mean something that could be used that is lightly licensed with a ton of spectrum. That may not happen. The FCC does plan to release more spectrum in the ISM band. Sure, you can use 70GHz, 80GHz, and 90GHz, but I was hoping something for the small business in the 24 to 28GHz range. Probably not going to happen since the carriers are willing to pay for that spectrum.

What would you choose?

ISM band for LTE-U? Cost effective but limited indoor-outdoor coverage areas. Chances are it’s all you need, I mean look at Wi-Fi, it’s good enough for most people.
The CBRS band? Another cost-effective and somewhat protected indoor and outdoor solution. You have more options here, but maybe not the throughput you need.
The 70GHz, 80GHz, and 90GHz bands? Cost effective with limitations, outdoor solutions. Weather can be an issue.

You could use any of them, all of them, or none of them. It’s all up to you and the business model you’re building around private LTE.

If you are interested in commenting on the commission’s planning for spectrum above 24GHz, then go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/07/20/2018-14806/use-of-spectrum-bands-above-24-ghz-for-mobile-radio-services and read it.’

Comments are welcome, email me at wade4wireless@gmail.com if you want to share some thoughts.

Resources:

Thank you for your support and your time. And good job on learning all you can in the wireless industry, you are amazing! Now, go out and impress people!

Would you sign up for a membership site with private content? If so, email me at wade@techfecta.com and write Membership.

Do you want an occasional email with free PDFs of these reports along with book and training offers? Read posts like these offline!

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

More products from TechFecta and Wade4Wireless that support WADE!

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Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

Uncategorized, Wade4Wireless BlogCast

Could you support a large Broadband Deployment?

September 23, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

I was reading several articles about the failure of Google Broadband to rollout nationwide. The article in TechDirt was really interesting. It’s listed below under resources.

The thing is, Google thought it would be easy to roll out fiber. I think they thought it would be cost-effective to be the resource and the provider. What they didn’t count on is how much hard work and upfront money is needed. The could have partnered with some smaller ISPs to leverage their expertise. In this case, they thought they knew better. They learned the hard way.

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I see the difference as Google was used to building data centers and applications. While this is work, they can test it, but they have to build it and hope the people like it. If they don’t sign up, then they can shut it down and move on for relatively little cost and no ongoing costs other than internet access.

If you deploy a system, you have a heavy upfront cost, ongoing OpEx, and expense to shut things down. You can pull the fiber and use it somewhere else, once it’s pulled its garbage in most cases.

Then, if you build it and nobody signs up, you’re losing money every month because you’re paying for that pole, that line, that support as part of a heavy OpEx whether it’s used or not.

It takes time, patience, money, and an investment to roll out fiber. It takes CapEx up front and OpEx for the long haul. It’s not an easy venture, and it takes balls.

That’s why the smaller businesses struggle, they have to do all of this, and they probably have a debt to pay. You have to pay your contractors when they do the work. You have to pay for the supplies and fiber as you roll it out. You have to pay for the permits up front, a hefty cost. You have to pay for the site acquisition up front. There are very few shortcuts.

Almighty Google learned this the hard way. That’s probably why they always complain about spectrum but have yet to win any in the auctions. They know it would be a long hard and expensive road to build a wireless system. Why do you think Virgin is an MVNO? Richard Branson didn’t want to outlay billions of dollars or Euros just to hope people would use it. So he bought minutes off of an established carrier in the countries where he wanted to do business. Then he started reselling. It just made sense. With a low CapEx and little OpEx, he can start selling smartphones on day one without hoping anyone would sign up or be limited on coverage. I wonder how he will compete in the unlimited data world?

In all honesty, Google did a great job where they did deploy fiber. It was a resounding success in the markets they reached. At least, I thought it was great. They helped to prove that it would work. People wanted them in their markets for a reason. Comcast and AT&T hated them for a reason. It all means the same thing, better internet for the end-user, which is you and me.

Planning:

It takes a plan. One thing I learned from my Smart City days is that you need to have a plan to deploy. Depending upon your job, you probably thought about this differently. What I mean is that the deployment teams think of site acquisition, labor, contractors, union issues, permitting and zoning. If you’re the financial guy, you thought about the leasing, the outlay of funds, the investment, and the payback. If you’re the pole guy, you thought about the leases, the competition, the potential for protests from the preexisting companies on the poles.

My point here is, you need to start high level and work your way down. In the early days of small cell deployment, we worked with many teams to see what we could do.

The thing is that Het Net planning and fiber planning have a lot in common. OK, when I say Het Net, I mean small cells, sorry.

Planning:

Where is the current fiber?
Getting access to poles,
Get permission from whoever owns the poles,
Possibly get permission from whoever is already on the poles, depending on the lease and noncompete clauses,
Full site acquisition which is not cheap, probably more than a year’s rent on said pole, (fiber is not so bad, but for Small Cells it gets expensive),
Permitting, zoning, approvals,
Small Cells need fiber run to them, so they have the issue of getting fiber unless they have wireless backhaul,
Backhaul connections; where is the nearest fiber connection that you can connect your new fiber or small cell to? How do you get it to this location? Can you do overhead, or will you have to dig?
Plan well, my friends!

If you wonder why I am dragging small cells into this, it’s because the FWA, Fixed Wireless Access, models are going to require sites at poles to be the new last mile. Verizon and AT&T will be using these poles to do just that. They will need either a wireless backhaul or fiber at the pole. It’s not magic, but rather a well-planned deployment hat will make it happen.

Deployment and turn up:

Here is where you need someone to deploy. It would be great if you had plug and play, but that may not always be the situation, you may need to have an installer then a commissioning engineer to make it work properly. However, this phase is efficient and pretty reasonable cost wise. It isn’t like the planning where you have to take all the what-ifs into consideration. Here you have the installer and the commissioning engineer. you may need the city to help or traffic control. For the most part, it should be straightforward as long as you know the local municipality or city’s regulations for working on poles in their jurisdiction.

Finally, getting the customer!

The customers need to know that you have something in the market. It takes very localized advertising and connections. The carriers generally rely on a website to tell them where customers are asking. The problem is, what if they are not customers already? You have to reach them, maybe with flyers, email, snail mail campaigns, or good old door knocking.

Google did something amazing by holding contests to ask what cities wanted them. Could you imagine Comcast doing this? Who would ask them to come to them? I already know of some cities that wanted Comcast to come in, but they can’t go into another cable company’s territory, and they will only do it if they see a very large payback. I worked with Comcast engineers in the past, and if they aren’t interested, they just don’t return your calls. Sure, it sucks, but you get the hint pretty quick. Besides, in a company like that, you need an executive to push something like that. I got the impression that they really don’t care if a city wanted Comcast in your market. That is the complete opposite of Google Fiber! Everyone wanted them so much they were changing the local rules to get them. It just wasn’t enough.

One more thing, cable companies are a good old boys network, they generally don’t tramp on each other’s toes. If someone is in the market, even if they totally suck, they probably have a non-compete with big brother Comcast. Comcast doesn’t look at other cable companies as competition, they look at them as potential partners and customers. So if you want to see a new ISP, it’s either a larger carrier, like T-Mobile, Verizon or AT&T, or someone like Google. Once in a while, you have a local company build, but they find it hard unless they know they have a set amount of customer lined up and waiting. They need to see the payback before they begin if they’re smart. That’s why so many were happy when the smart city thing was happening. Now they are let down because smart city rollouts take money from someone other than the city. Again, a solid business case helps.

Resources:

Thank you for your support and your time. And good job on learning all you can in the wireless industry, you are amazing! Now, go out and impress people! Would you sign up for a membership site? If so, email me at wade@techfecta.com and write Membership.

Do you want an occasional email with free PDFs of these reports along with book and training offers? Read posts like these offline!

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

More products from TechFecta and Wade4Wireless that support WADE!

Do you know what to put in your SOW, the details needed to get paid for milestones or job completion?

Putting together your smart city tech solutions, planning, development, and more…TechFecta! Guiding you to a better plan through consulting!

Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

Wade4Wireless BlogCast

Did you get caught in the power struggle?

September 16, 2018 Wade Leave a comment

No, it’s not a question about political power, I mean with your equipment power. With all of the deployments going on, grounding and surge suppression are vital to successful deployments. This is more about the instability of the electronic and electrical systems than just weather.

Let’s face it, surges suck! I am talking about power surges here. They cause so many problems from total site failure to ongoing troubleshooting of issues that cause performance issues endlessly at a site or even in a data room. Unstable power can be a major problem anywhere in the world!

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When we plan deployments, we often just assume that the power and grounding at the site will be OK. When I did data room design, it was one of the first things we would plan, the UPS and surge protection along with proper grounding. This was the first thing that most customers hated because they thought we were trying to get more money out of them. While power and surge suppression cost more, it’s often worth the investment in the long run. I couldn’t convince everyone that when they were planning their first large data room. Even at tower sites, they rely on the DC power supply to save them. They don’t worry about power until they have intermittent problems which they can’t explain. After hundreds of hours of troubleshooting and changing equipment, they may figure it out. Then it becomes a priority. It could be the grounding or the power. They often blame the design, when in fact, they were trying to take shortcuts.

Lightning is still the enemy, but not the only enemy. That’s why companies spend so much money on surge protection. The electric in an area could be unstable, and that could cause problems or lightning could strike, literally strike a site. If lightning strikes, then you could have issues for months because the electrical system or electronics could be weakened and fail over time. Lightning can cause issues for months to come.

Unstable power is another issue that is all too common at remote tower sites or even sites in the cities. It causes problems that may come and go. Very intermittent. You may have to monitor the power to see what’s really happening. Unstable electric is still an issue. No matter where you are in the world.

Then there are the other problems we often overlook like a car hits a power pole and a surge or outage happens. Lines go down in a storm, overuse of power, like on a hot day with millions of air conditioners running, cause outages than a surge when everything is repaired.

Back in 2016, I interview Jim Grasty of Alltec, (link below), and he talked about the surge problems of the tower sites. He also mentions that a lot of his work is in the data room, not just at tower sites. He thinks that companies suffer from unstable power more often than they realize. Unfortunately, they don’t l see it until something dies or it’s been causing problems for a long time. They are still an issue today.

The problem with a small surge or unstable electric is more than a simple outage. Large surges take the site down, and you repair it. Sure, downtime looks bad on your KPI report, but it’s obvious. The real problem is that it causes in the equipment to act strangely in a way that you can’t track. The router could drop packets, the server could lose data or could be rebooting for no apparent reason. Stable power is critical in all work environments. I have seen anomalies in radios due to unstable power or surging power. Issues like this are often not looked at right away. You just assume that if it’s powered up and working that it has power. It’s got power, what more do you need? You need stability!

It’s like the grounding issues; they also cause really strange problems. These issues take weeks to troubleshoot which drains resources, time, and money. These intermittent problems could be anything; they could be data, power, software, or anything. So often we never look at power until we get a glaring alarm about unstable power. Then we realize that it was the issue all along.

Even when a site dies due to a surge, how many times does it need to happen before you take it seriously? How many repairs and replacements will you do before you actually look for the root cause? Is it lightning? By the way, lightning does strike twice in the same spot, anyone who worked on a tower that got struck several times knows this to be true. Some are more susceptible than others. Many companies have moved the site just to avoid lightning strike problems. I’ve done it! Lighting is a real issue. Unstable power and poor grounding cause strange issues.

What can you do to stop this? Make your power stable. Some do this with a UPS, some monitor the power for stability, and others install surge protectors. This is why many tower sites rely on DC power and batteries to run the equipment. DC can easily be monitored for problems. It’s generally stable and will work with unstable power.

Above I pointed out what you should look for, but it’s hard to tell all the same. It will pay to monitor power in some way if you want to invest in power monitoring equipment.

Here are some ideas to avoid power problems:

Surge protectors on the AC system. Some people put in something on the plug or something for the site or location.
- Small surge protectors on each piece of equipment. This is small, but it may be good enough.
- Site surge protectors are a lot more money, but if you have a roomful of equipment, it may be worth the investment, especially if you lose money when you have downtime.
UPS to provide clean AC inside the site, as well as reliable power backup in case of a power outage. Typical data room solution.
Use DC power for the equipment and let the AC feed the DC power supply and use DC to power everything. Typical RF site solution.
Batteries on DC, they are almost always stable when the power supplies work in conjunction with them. Typical RF site solution.
Line conditioners for clean power. These are often more money, but worth it.
Good grounding at the site or in a data room, you can’t always rely on the electrician’s ground, who knows what they used for a ground. Verify their ground or run your own.
Power monitors are a good idea. Maybe you could get one and use it as you see problems. It would be great to monitor power everywhere, but this may not be practical. You probably already have something that monitors AC power, but how good is it? It may be smart to invest in something that you can move from site to site that is a really good power monitor. It’s up to you, but it may be worth the investment. I have had several units that monitor power but only at a high level.

Plan accordingly. Your budget will determine what you can do up front. I get that. However, if you start to have intermittent problems that you can’t explain, start to look at power as one of the causes.

Resources:

Thank you for your support and your time. And good job on learning all you can in the wireless industry, you are amazing! Now, go out and impress people!

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Does Wi-Fi need an exit strategy after 5G is released?

What technology will survive, 5G, LTE, or Wi-Fi?

Who wins?

Differentiators:

What’s next for Wireless Carriers?

What’s next for Deployment?

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The foundations below do beautiful work, spreading love when all seems lost.

Climbers can get seriously injured and/or die on the job. Support the workers who build and install the wireless systems!

Together we can honor and remember the fallen in our wireless family.

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The foundations below do beautiful work, spreading love when all seems lost.

Climbers can get seriously injured and/or die on the job. Support the workers who build and install the wireless systems!

Together we can honor and remember the fallen in our wireless family.

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When I say walls, I mean several things:

But what about control?

Open the door to disruptors.

Resources:

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The foundations below do beautiful work, spreading love when all seems lost.

Climbers can get seriously injured and/or die on the job. Support the workers who build and install the wireless systems!

Together we can honor and remember the fallen in our wireless family.

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Reference:

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

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The foundations below do beautiful work, spreading love when all seems lost.

Climbers can get seriously injured and/or die on the job. Support the workers who build and install the wireless systems!

Together we can honor and remember the fallen in our wireless family.

Share this:

For those of you that don’t know:

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The foundations below do beautiful work, spreading love when all seems lost.

Climbers can get seriously injured and/or die on the job. Support the workers who build and install the wireless systems!

Together we can honor and remember the fallen in our wireless family.

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1) Getting Paid for the full scope:

Here are some scams I’ve been told about over the years.

2) Long Payment Terms:

3) Up Front Training:

4) Miscellaneous Risks:

I have a list:

How do you protect yourself?

Summary:

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