Increasing network efficiency is critical to keeping up with 5G, with a need for more sensitive receivers in base stations and user equipment, said Rob Maunder, chief technology officer of semiconductor company AccelerComm, during a Mobile World Live webinar Tuesday. Installing more-efficient equipment is often cheaper than buying spectrum licenses or installing towers or small cells, he said. “By building better receivers, more sensitive receivers, we can get more bang for our buck in the wireless network … and this creates more capacity.” Maunder predicted “exponential growth” of 5G traffic worldwide, to 178 billion GB monthly by 2027, at which point 5G will be 62% of mobile traffic. “No longer is a one size-fits-all solution suitable,” he said: “What’s needed in the industry is an ecosystem around available [technology] that addresses these challenges so that the whole industry can build solutions.” With 5G, the biggest efficiency gains compared with 4G will come through more use of multiple-input, multiple-output technologies, he said. Anastasios Karousos, Real Wireless managing consultant, said the savings will vary by carrier, but even a slight increase in spectrum efficiency means lower cell utilization and reduced capital costs.

IBM bought Sentaca to strengthen its cloud consulting business. "Our goal is to help modern networks thrive in an open, hybrid cloud environment that will bring edge and 5G to life," said John Granger, senior vice president-IBM Consulting, Tuesday.

Verizon customers are already getting faster connection speeds as the carrier turns on its C-band spectrum for 5G, Ookla, which conducts speed tests, said Monday. Verizon’s average 5G download speed increased more than 50% to 116.29 Mbps after it launched the band, Ookla said: That's compares with 70.46 Mbps for AT&T, which had a more limited C-band launch, and 187.11 for T-Mobile with its 2.5 GHz spectrum. “This massive improvement in speed shows the power of Verizon’s widespread deployment of C-band spectrum and C-band’s ability to deliver fast speeds,” the firm said. “We also saw a large increase in testing for customers across the board, but especially Verizon customers who could have seen an ultra wide band icon show up on their phone for the first time after the launch.”

The “continuous 5G migration in more regions” will be a big 2022 growth driver for MediaTek, the largest smartphone SoC maker, CEO Rick Tsai told a Q4 call Thursday. MediaTek expects global 5G smartphone penetration to exceed 50% of handsets this year, he said. The 5G penetration rate in China is the highest at 80%, and “we expect 5G unit growth to mainly come from other regions,” he said. With MediaTek’s “early readiness” of 5G modems for Wi-Fi 6E, “we have been able to penetrate the notebook market successfully,” said Tsai. Its partnerships with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices “helped us build a strong designing pipeline with all major global OEMs,” he said. MediaTek estimates more than 2 billion devices sold globally in 2021, including smartphones, smart TVs, notebooks and tablets, used MediaTek, said Tsai. It forecasts its total addressable market will grow to $140 billion in 2024 from $80 billion in 2021, he said.

5G is "the fastest-scaling mobile technology we have seen" in Ericsson's history, "and deployments around the world have truly accelerated this past year," said CEO Borje Ekholm on a Q4 earnings call Tuesday. Ericsson has 109 live 5G networks globally, plus 170 agreements or contracts with customers on 5G networks yet to be deployed, he said. The strong 5G momentum continues in North America, “where we saw very good development” in the fourth quarter, said Ekholm. Revenue in the region increased 17% year over year to 22.3 billion Swedish kronor ($2.4 billion), “driven by strong demand for 5G,” he said. “It's worth remembering” that during 2021, Ericsson signed new 5G contracts with all tier 1 operators in the U.S., “representing the biggest contracts in our company's history,” he said. “We think we're still relatively early in the 5G rollouts if you look on the globe,” said Ekholm. The characteristics of 5G are “so different from any other mobile technology that, in reality, was only consumer-centric,” he said. “With 5G, we're opening up one completely new field or new segment, being enterprises. So I think we're underestimating the growth potential in 5G."

Blame the Donald Trump administration, not the FAA, for the fight over the C band that slowed 5G deployment, former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler blogged Friday. Wheeler noted the NTIA received a letter in December 2020, before the C-band auction, raising concerns, but the letter was never passed along to the FCC or the wireless carriers. President Joe Biden has shown the leadership needed to reach a compromise, Wheeler said. “When the prior administration’s failure to resolve the interagency dispute ended up putting at risk the wireless companies’ $81 billion [in C-band bids] and threatening the economic growth promised by 5G, President Biden and his aides stepped up,” he said: “Instead of meaningful spectrum policy management, the Trump administration produced slogans.” The CEOs of two major airlines said on earnings calls last week a resolution is in sight. “While we don't have a final resolution quite yet, I'm confident we'll get there,” said United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby: “While I wish it happened earlier, the good news is we now have everyone engaged, the FAA and [Department of Transportation] at the highest levels, the equipment aircraft manufacturers, airlines and the telecoms. And I'm confident we'll soon have a clear set of objective criteria that will allow a full rollout of 5G without significant impact to aviation.” The fight wasn’t the airline industry’s “finest hour,” said American Airlines CEO Doug Parker. “It's taken a while to get to the right spot, but I feel like we're in the right spot,” he said. “I don't think you're going to see any material disruption going forward because of this.” Neville Ray, T-Mobile president-technology, emphasized to customers that C-band delays didn't affect his company because it’s mostly using 600 MHz and 2.5 GHz. “T-Mobile’s 5G network, already covering over 1.7 million square miles and 310 million people nationwide, and our customers are not affected by this,” he said: “By the time we’re ready to put our C-band licenses to use in late 2023, we’re confident today’s concerns will have been resolved.”

T-Mobile users sampled by Opensignal were connected to 5G 36.3% of the time, compared with 22.5% of the time for AT&T and 10.5% for Verizon, said a Monday report. T-Mobile also beat the other two on the reach of their 5G networks. AT&T and Verizon were roughly tied and beat T-Mobile on the “5G Video Experience” seen by customers. Verizon was tops on “5G Games Experience.”

Open radio access network revenue is projected to be some 15% of the overall 2G-5G RAN market by 2026, “reflecting healthy traction in multiple regions with both basic and advanced radios,” Dell’Oro Group said Friday. Asia-Pacific is dominating in the early phase, with more than 40% of 2021-26 revenue, the researcher said: The move to virtualized RAN is “progressing at a slightly slower pace” and should be 5%-10% of the RAN market in 2026. “Open RAN is here to stay and the architecture will play an important role before 6G,” Dell’Oro said.

The biggest news on the C-band front was that, despite the “noise,” Verizon and AT&T were able to turn on the band in key markets, New Street’s Blair Levin told investors Thursday. “The last 72 hours probably had more press stories about spectrum than any 72-hour period in history,” including a question at President Joe Biden’s news conference (see 2201190064), he said. “The dispute will leave a problematic residue in terms of spectrum policy but the important thing for investors is that AT&T and Verizon were able to begin 5G transmissions, the constraints on the service will not affect their ability to attract subscribers, and the battle did not cause a delay that would have materially worsened their competitive position relative to T-Mobile,” Levin said. Verizon and AT&T had to agree to new conditions to “placate” the FAA because they need to play catch up with T-Mobile, Mark Giles, lead industry analyst at Ookla, blogged Thursday. “It was critical for both telcos that the delay to their C-band launch was only temporary,” he said: With the C band, “the margin of difference” with T-Mobile “will be substantially reduced, and then it will largely come down to how many 5G cell sites each operator deploys, and when they can turn on additional spectrum resources -- the race is on.” The FAA said Thursday it had cleared 78% of the U.S. commercial fleet to do low-visibility landings at airports near C-band deployments, including some regional jets. That’s up from 62% Wednesday. “The FAA is working diligently to determine which altimeters are reliable and accurate where 5G is deployed,” the agency said: “We anticipate some altimeters will be too susceptible to 5G interference. To preserve safety, aircraft with those altimeters will be prohibited from performing low-visibility landings where 5G is deployed because the altimeter could provide inaccurate information.”

Ookla's Q4 market report found T-Mobile’s network was faster than those of AT&T and Verizon. Tests found a median download speed of 90.65 Mbps on modern chipsets for T-Mobile, up from 62.35 Mbps in Q3. AT&T was at 49.25 Mbps, Verizon Wireless 44.67.