The State Of 5G In The U.S. And How It Might Improve

The 5G Logo

3GPP

At this point, it seems nearly everyone has an opinion on 5G and whether it has delivered on people’s expectations. Many people are generally unhappy with 5G or don’t necessarily see it as a valid reason to upgrade to their next phone. I would argue that the operators and smartphone OEMs have already transitioned to 5G and continue to deprecate 3G and 4G to improve the 5G experience. Things today look much better than they did 12 or 18 months ago, but many unhappy customers don’t think they’ve realized any of the benefits of 5G. After all, carriers have been marketing 5G since 2018, leading up to the 2019 launch, and now we’re in 2023 with many unhappy cellular customers.

So, How Did We Get Here?

Some of the earliest opposition to 5G came from the misconception that 5G is a new spectrum band (millimeter-wave, or mmWave). While it is true that 5G does introduce a new frequency range from 28 GHz to 39 GHz for cellular use, that spectrum has always been supplementary to all the other previously available cellular spectrums, from 700 MHz to 2500 MHz, that existed in 3G and 4G. Fearmongers connected these new, supposedly unknown bands (already in use for other applications) to false claims of cancer and pushed municipalities to ban 5G deployments, which some did.

But all of those fears paled compared to the real issue of spectrum availability for lower frequencies, as there wasn’t enough spectrum to go around. Lower cellular frequencies are how you achieve coverage and why they are so coveted. As a result, the U.S. government auctioned the mmWave spectrum for 5G, and operators were forced to promote that as the primary 5G spectrum. At the same time, other countries—especially South Korea and the U.K.—utilized 3.5 GHz and other mid-band frequencies that had more available spectrum first and delivered better coverage than mmWave.

But that’s not all. In a rush to deliver 5G connectivity to users as quickly as possible, the industry aggressively pursued deploying 5G radio access network (RAN) equipment. Backed by the carriers, the industry standards body 3GPP implemented a half-step called 5G Non-Standalone (NSA), which allowed a 5G RAN network to be attached to a 4G Core. This took a step back from the original 5G standard, which called for an all-new network—with 5G RAN and a 5G Core—to deliver the complete 5G experience with new applications for users. That all-5G setup was eventually called 5G Standalone (SA).

5G Advanced and FWA

The original 5G standard, formally titled 3GPP Release 15, had all of the necessary tools to make 5G successful; with subsequent releases, we’ve seen improvements to power consumption along with other fine-tuning that makes 5G more applicable in more scenarios. This includes a reduced version of 5G for low-power applications called 5G RedCap (reduced capacity), also referred to as NR-Lite in 3GPP Release 17. While I believe that 3GPP Release 18 and subsequent releases will improve 5G and address the specific needs for delivering technologies such as extended reality (XR), the fundamentals are still important. And I believe that Standalone 5G needs to be ubiquitous.

Still, there are bright spots in the industry with things like Private 5G and fixed wireless access (FWA), which have started to gain momentum but might be perceived as something other than 5G by consumers. After all, if you look at most marketing from carriers including AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, they all call FWA some form of “Home Internet” or “Air” and avoid using the word 5G, even though that’s precisely what it is. India’s biggest carrier, Reliance Jio, calls its newly launched FWA 5G service “JioAirFiber,” but it could potentially reach as many as 200 million users with its 5G SA network paired with FWA gateways.

Wrapping up

There are many factors to consider when looking at the state of 5G today, but ultimately, the 5G standard and government spectrum auctions have enabled the current muddled situation. Operators have also promoted 5G in ways detrimental to its future, with some operators’ 5G deployments actually driving customers away.

That said, there are bright spots for 5G, including improving coverage, expanded standalone deployments and the rapid uptake of fixed wireless access. If you’d like to explore these topics and learn more about the current state of 5G, I recommend you download my new research paper to get more details about where we came from and where the industry might be going in 5G.

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