USING 5G WILL DELIVER A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE SAYS 7 IN 10 UK BUSINESSES

Asurvey Of 300 Businesses

carried out by UK5G has found that 70 per cent are now using 5G or planning deployments.

While barriers to adoption still exist, businesses are looking to build a commercial case for 5G that fully realises its benefits.

Almost three quarters (73 per cent) of the businesses surveyed were confident that they understood the benefits of 5G, while 70 per cent have a plan for how they will use it to achieve competitive advantage. This is evidence of the maturation of 5G innovation driven by a growing understanding of the outcomes the technology offers. For example, two thirds (66 per cent) believe 5G will make a positive contribution to their corporate sustainability efforts as well as help improve customer experience (65 per cent).

While 5G is approaching the stage of early market adoption in the UK, there are still challenges that are preventing businesses from investing or maximising its potential.

Over three in five (63 per cent) businesses cited complexity and cost of infrastructure, installation and integration as the main challenge to overcome. As well as the cost of deployment, there is still an issue with organisations not fully understanding how to deploy 5G solutions, which over half (53 per cent) say is an inhibitor.

Despite these challenges, 45 per cent of businesses are planning to invest in 5G by 2023 and business leaders demonstrated an active curiosity in the best practices which will pave the way for a successful deployment.

Almost two thirds (66 per cent) said industryspecific benefits of 5G would incentivise them to invest. However, by their own admission technology leaders need education. Almost three in five (58 per cent) require further guidance on how to integrate 5G with existing infrastructure, while over half (51 per cent) would see value in best practice guides to assist with their deployment.

Generally, business leaders understand the value of innovation networks such as UK5G as they seek greater understanding of the potential benefits 5G can bring their organisations. Organisations also want to see further insight being shared by the technology and telecoms industry, with 46 per cent saying they will turn to big tech and 40 per cent looking to mobile network operators to improve their grasp on how to deploy 5G in commercially viable way

UK5G’s Bob Driver said: “The UK has an established ecosystem of support for businesses looking to deploy 5G in a way that brings them competitive advantage and return on investment. UK5G brings together a host of expertise across the technology and telecoms industries and works with a broad spectrum of organisations to help them navigate 5G and support them”

UBICQUIA AND MOVANDI MMWAVE STREETLIGHT REPEATER PROMISES LOW-COST DEPLOYMENTS

A new mmWave repeater which will instantly plug into with 360 million existing streetlights worldwide could speed up 5G depolyments. Ubicquia, Inc. a company dedicated to making intelligent infrastructure platforms that are simple to deploy and monitor, has announced a strategic partnership with Movandi Corporation, a leader in 5G mmWave RF semiconductor technology. Under the terms of the agreement, Ubicquia will use Movandi’s technology to create a mmWave smart repeater that plugs into a streetlight’s photocell socket in minutes.

While mmWave technology enables up to 100 times more capacity than current 5G mid-band spectrum, its propagation distance is typically less than 250 metres, and it does not turn corners or penetrate buildings. As a result, 5G mmWave networks will require many more sites than mid-band networks.

Ian Aaron, CEO of Ubicquia said, “The only way mobile operators can deliver on the promise of mmWave 5G in any reasonable period is to leverage existing streetlight infrastructure. Our goal in collaborating with Movandi and integrating our IP and work developing streetlight solutions for Public WiFi, Public Safety and Carrier Small Cells, is to help mobile operators not just deliver 5G mmWave services to dense urban areas but make 5G mmWave services a reality for cities of all sizes.”

NEWS IN BRIEF ONE-QUARTER OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION NOW COVERED BY 5G

 Research by Ericsson for its annual Mobility Report has found that with more than 210 networks commercially launched across the world, 5G population coverage reached around 25 percent at the end of 2021. This is about 18 months faster than the time it took for 4G network build-out to reach 25 percent population coverage after its first commercial launch year. This makes 5G is the fastest-deployed mobile communication technology in history, and is forecast to cover about 75 percent of the world’s population in 2027.

Nokia And Elisa Achieve Over 2 Gbps 5g Uplink Speeds

 Nokia, Elisa, and Qualcomm have hit record-breaking 5G uplink speeds of 2.1 Gbps. This was achieved in a live demonstration at the Nokia Arena in Tampere in Finland. The new record, which follows the 8Gbps downlink speeds announced in 2020. During the trial, Nokia provided its AirScale base station in 26 GHz mmWave spectrum over Elisa’s commercial 5G network. The network was connected to a 5G device powered by a Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System. Additionally, Nokia deployed its Carrier Aggregation technology to make the best use of the available spectrum assets. The Carrier Aggregation setup included four component carriers of 100 MHz each.

NOTHING PHONE (1)

 The first 100 5G handsets from boutique phone manufacturer Nothing have sold at prices over £2500 through an auction system. The phone has a spectacular system of reacting to user inputs and displaying its status through lighting inside its transparent case https:// nothing.tech/

CORRECTION –A MILLION APOLOGIES

 In Issue 9 of UK 5G Innovation Briefing we looked at how T-Mobile in the US is using cloud based technology from Mavenir. In the piece we claimed that T-Mobile has 125 subscribers. This should have read 125 million subscribers. We would like to apologise for our mistake.