Smartphone users don't see 5G value over their current subscriptions, with 13 percent saying they’re willing to pay more for 5G, said Parks Associates' Craig Leslie Tuesday. Over half of U.S. broadband households are unfamiliar with 5G, he said: Limited availability means it won’t replace 4G LTE or fixed services “anytime soon.” Carriers need to communicate benefits and uses of 5G more effectively to convince customers to upgrade, said the analyst. Still, it's a “significant influencer” in carrier selection, Leslie said, “even if consumers are unwilling to pay more” -- 31 percent of U.S. broadband households consider 5G availability very important when choosing a new provider. U.S. broadband households buying a smartphone fell 40 percent from Q1 2016 to this Q1.

The “bright and lucrative future” for 5G could be “hampered” by early deployments that “were designed to fit the needs of the consumer market first,” said ABI Research Thursday. So “costly and time consuming” are the early consumer deployments that if mobile service providers (MSPs) were to “rely solely on consumers to justify their investments in 5G rollouts,” it could take them up to 15 years to see any returns, it said. MSPs “have every hope” 5G will help them reduce the cost per gigabyte of bandwidth but “network densification” will make 5G “much more expensive” than its “predecessors,” said ABI. “The implementation and democratization of 5G will come at very high costs.”

Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm and colleagues met with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on 5G and pressed for FCC action on the C band that many stakeholders want for fifth-generation wireless use. "Not only is timing important, but Ericsson would like to see enough spectrum in the band made available to serve multiple operators with 100 MHz channels," the company asked the agency: "Reconsider its proposal to devote the entire 6 GHz band to unlicensed use." The executives "highlighted its commitment to its U.S. customers as they roll out 5G products at an increasing rate,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 18-122. It noted its new 5G smart factory in Lewisville, Texas (see 1909190042).

Mobile handsets with 5G functionality will capture 56 percent of the global smartphone market in 2023, from 10 percent in 2020, said Gartner Thursday. “As a result of the impact of 5G, the smartphone market is expected to return to growth” next year, rising 2.9 percent from 2019, it said. “After years of growth, the worldwide smartphone market has reached a tipping point.” The researcher projects smartphone sales will decline 3.2 percent in 2019, the worst single-year decrease since the category’s inception 13 years ago. Consumers hold "onto their phones longer,” said Gartner. The quality and technology features of premium smartphones “have reached a level today where users see high value in their device beyond a two-year time frame,” it said. “Unless the devices provide significant new utility, efficiency or experiences, users do not necessarily want to upgrade.”

Because communities' needs vary, so, too, will rollout of 5G, municipal telecom officials were told Wednesday. "If you’ve seen one county, you’ve seen one county. If something works in one county, it doesn’t mean it will work in another," said National Association of Counties Associate Legislative Director Arthur Scott at the NATOA conference in Tampa. It's "hard to apply a cookie cutter formula" to carriers and 5G, he said. "When we start having fees for local governments, we’re not just trying to" hurt industry, "we’re trying to leverage the investment the local government has made in the infrastructure," he said of such application fees. Scott recommended to communities that they partner "with their telecom providers to establish a working model" on the wireless standard. "This is not just one small cell, this is many, many cells in many, many places through a community," he said. "This is going to require significant upkeep" by the locality, he continued. "Those fees that are associated with small-cell applications are critically important."

What some at the FCC liken to a pizza box to deploy 5G is much larger, local telecom officials at a NATOA conference in Tampa was told Wednesday. Showing a photo of himself standing in such a facility, engineer and lawyer Jonathan Kramer, who represents some municipalities, joked at a panel that "it's quite slimming." He showed an array of such facilities that could be up to about 28 cubic feet, under commission rules. While carriers look at rolling out fifth-generation cellular as "a five-year issue," Kramer said that "we as local governments are looking at our communities' aesthetics for the next 50 years" with siting of such structures. "What is the impact on our communities," he asked. The FCC declined to comment.

The new mayor of the host city of NATOA encouraged carriers to collocate equipment for 5G, and isn't a fan of a related state law that makes it harder for communities to act in this area, she said in an interview after speaking to the conference of local cable and telecom officials Tuesday. "We're trying" to encourage such telecom gear sharing space in the same facility, said the Democrat who took office earlier this year. "We're working on that," Jane Castor (D) said Tuesday of Tampa's 5G efforts more broadly, including with carriers. On Florida's small-cell law that's facing legal challenges from other municipalities, "the state is usurping local rule," she said. "I disagree with it" because communities have to make some of their own decisions on 5G, she said. The small-cell issue at the "U.S. Conference of Mayors was a very relevant topic," Castor said. It's hard to achieve "balance" in the 5G permitting process, she continued. Asked about Tampa's overall experience with telecom providers, she said "we have a good relationship." The mayors group says some members of the FCC, "Congress, and state legislatures have wrongly characterized this balancing act among competing interests for the public rights-of-way and maintenance of local authority as barriers to 5G deployment and, instead, have put the interests of national corporations ahead of the needs of communities and imposing a one-size-fits-all policy which preempts existing state and local policies." The U.S. Conference of Mayors "works closely with NATOA and its members on these matters," emailed Kevin McCarty, the mayors' group staffer who has worked on telecom and related issues. The mayors' group continues to oppose the 2018 small cell order and hopes that the 9th Circuit will reverse and remand it, he said.

U.S. 5G rollout is proceeding apace, as the country competes with South Korea to be a leader on the standard, said Nokia's Dev Khoslaa, a head of IoT sales. "From the U.S. point of view, we are at the forefront of these developments." He noted the country's top four and other carriers are deploying it, while South Korea quickly gained 5G subscribers after it was introduced there. "We continue to see very good traction" in 5G overall and "there’s still growth in 4G" expected for now, the executive told local telecom authorities gathering Monday in Tampa. "It is on a fast path in terms of ramp up." The standard can help address the digital divide, he said at the NATOA conference. It can address households without fiber, which is most of them in the U.S., he added, as Microsoft finds some 160 million people don't use the internet at broadband-fast speeds. "There is a gap here that needs to be addressed," Khoslaa said. "Even within the cities, there is still … a disparity" and fixed wireless can address these "challenges," he continued: "Fixed wireless access is really here and now. So there are opportunities here" to provide broadband.

Strand Consult estimates the cost of swapping all the Huawei and ZTE equipment purchased since 2016 and installed in European markets at $3.5 billion. That's much less than the $60 billion estimate reported by some, said its report, set for release Sunday. “The claim that Huawei is needed to create competition cannot be supported by the fact that the company increasingly has a monopoly position and it uses anti-competitive practices.” Removing the equipment would make the networks more secure, Strand concludes: "If there were no security risk to doing business with China, then NATO would buy Chinese fighter planes. There are categories of products and services whose supply is restricted for justifiable security reasons, and national security has long been a part of telecom policy and regulation. National security has long been a part of telecom policy and regulation.” The companies didn't comment Friday.

Ericsson will build a 300,000-square-foot fully automated smart factory in Lewisville, Texas, producing 5G and advanced antenna system radios. The factory will begin operations early 2020 and be “powered by Ericsson 5G solutions tailored for the industrial environment,” the company said Thursday: “Fast and secure 5G connectivity will enable agile operations and flexible production.”