There are many paths on the road to 5G.
5G — WHAT IT IS AND IS NOT
operation were the cause.) At the start of the pandemic, a licensed medical doctor in San Francisco told an audience of foil-hatters that 5G caused the SARS-CoV-2 virus to emerge spontaneously in humans, arguing that previous pandemics coincided with the release of new wireless technologies over history — leading to several instances of vandalism and even destruction of cellular towers, and installation crews physically threatened. After an investigation, the State of California vacated his medical license, and he has since left the Golden State. The point I am making is that many people erroneously think 5G is one thing; but, as we see from my previous discussion, it is in fact several different things. It is thus inaccurate to describe 5G in broad and blanket terms as a cause of any real or perceived problem.
Each of the 5G technologies operates in different spectrum bands, at different levels of output power, and often have widely varied applications. In addition, while 5G is a revolutionary technology, it implements what is called Control – User Plane Separation, wherein the logical path for authenticating and managing cellular devices can be separate from the logical paths for delivering data to the same device. For the first time, the 3GPP roadmap contains support for gradually shifting 4G networks over to 5G operation, rather than requiring separate networks. The 3GPP roadmap allows several transitioning methods including Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS allows a 4G LTE radio to support 5G NR connections via dynamic software reconfiguration), Non-Standalone Mode (NSA allows 5G NR radios to operate in parallel with 4G LTE radios), and a host of other profiles that allow combining 4G LTE and 5G NR radios with either 4G (ePC) or 5G (5GC) computing cores.
PERCEPTIONS AND MISPERCEPTIONS There has been a lot of negative press about 5G not living up to its promised potential. Given it is only two years since the first systems went on the air, I think it is far too early to declare any success or failure. Those of us who have been in the industry over the past two decades will remember the joke that GSM (one of the first cellular standards in Europe) stood for “God, send mobiles!”, because while Europe had built a network, there were few handsets available to subscribers. ITU-R defined the
Knowing details about the wide variety of 5G technologies, it is frustrating when my company encounters selfproclaimed experts — on social media or in local government permitting and appeal hearings — making wildly uninformed statements about 5G’s impacts on human health, the environment, or interference with other existing wireless technologies. This lack of understanding even shows up in press releases from government agencies; notably the Department of Transportation (DoT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Their dire pronouncements about possible impacts to commercial aviation from 5G in the 3.7 – 3.98 GHz range sparked a weeks-long national media frenzy that has now taken hold in the public’s mind, especially amongst the communities whom I often refer to collectively as the “foil-hattery”. One foil-hatter told me she would no longer fly on commercial aviation until “they shut down all the 5G towers”. A local government official contacted us, asking if we would investigate whether 5G sites were causing a neighborhood’s garage door openers to fail. (As it turns out, high-power LEDs used for an illegal cannabis growing
SPRING 2022 PROCEEDINGS
Mobile industry contributions to global GDP.
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