This year’s big American football game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals was accompanied by an interactive and immersive experience that wowed fans and the global tech community alike. The US wireless network operator Verizon gave thousands of in-stadium supporters the opportunity to engage with multiple camera angles and augmented reality overlays of player stats on their smartphones, while those cheering at home could connect with friends and family to watch together.
The technological feat was made possible by Verizon’s 5G network which was supported by 5G millimetre wave (5G mmWave), which broadcasts at higher frequencies to deliver far wider bandwidth, faster speeds and greater capacity when compared with lower-frequency 4G or 5G bands. This heightened 5G connectivity in high density environments really brings the Internet of Things, and virtual and augmented reality experiences to life while allowing tens of thousands of users to enjoy high-speed data simultaneously at particular locations.
Just a few European governments have auctioned the radio frequencies above 24GHz needed to operate 5G mmWave, but in the US, Japan and South Korea, where mmWave is more widely available, it has been shown to offer consumers and business users a more seamless internet experience – from gaming and virtual or augmented reality to high-definition video streaming and real-time mobile access.
The promise of 5G mmWave represents an opportunity that needs the space and time to grow and mature, says Henry Calvert, head of networks at the GSMA, the trade association for the worldwide mobile telecommunications industry. The GSMA’s role is to unify the mobile industry ecosystem to support positive business environments and societal change; this includes working to support the development of common standards around 5G so data can travel across the globe between different handsets and networks.
“If 1G and 2G were single track and main roads and 3G was a dual carriageway, then 4G is akin to a motorway with some ability for priority lanes,” says Calvert, using a popular tech analogy to explain how the radio spectrum is becoming more and more crowded at lower bandwidths, with a host of networks crammed into a narrow fragmented bands of frequencies up to 3.5Ghz. “Now we’re going to 5G, which will need to be comparable to a superhighway of 8-10 lanes or more, driven by demand and capacity as enterprises use mobile connectivity to engage with their customers.”
The rapid take-up of 5G, with one billion subscribers to 5G networks predicted by the end of this year, driven in part by home working during the Covid-19 pandemic and the increasing popularity of gaming and XR (or extended reality), is building a case for the need for 5G mmWave-supported connectivity.
“At some point in the near future,” Calvert says, “if we've got a billion people starting to use video, and that video is starting to move across onto XR platforms – different reality platforms – we’re going to need a bigger highway. Otherwise we're going to get traffic jams and then the reliance and performance of networks will start to degrade.”
At the most recent World Radiocommunication Conference – specifically convened every three to four years to review the use of the radio-frequency spectrum as well as satellite orbits – in 2019, national governments and regulators were given sanction to consider mobile assignments across the 5G mmWave spectrum.
Calvert says the growth of 5G is gaining momentum and that the GSMA is looking ahead to “road planning” and the advantages that 5G mmWave-enabled “superhighways” at 24Ghz might bring to the reliability of 5G for enterprise, such as the mobile operators, and ultimately, consumers too.
Different visions of the future are also being explored by the GSMA as 5G take-up and subscriber behaviour evolves, such as spectrum sharing and carrier aggregation that may mean moving up to 24Ghz is not essential. Then there’s the recent development that the 6Ghz spectrum has been ratified by the Third Generation Partnership Project or 3GPP, an umbrella organisation that approves standards in mobile telecommunications. However, with the increasing need for higher capacity and wider bandwidths, mmWave spectrum offers the room to accommodate bandwidths of 800MHz and above.
Momentum around 5G continues to build. GSMA figures show that there will be an estimated 2bn 5G connections by 2025, when it will also account for more than 20 per cent of total mobile connections and more than 40 per cent of the global population will live within reach of a 5G network. This is unprecedented growth that will represent the fastest generational roll-out for the mobile industry.
While it’s all too easy to fall down a rabbit hole into technical discussions about bandwidths and spectrum sharing, Calvert is keen to point out that the ‘how’ is rather less important than the quality of service experienced by users, whether that’s making a phone call across oceans without interference or a live telepresence video conference between two people. “We’ve got to work out how you use the different spectrum bands and bring them together for the best application that can be done,” he concludes.