Spectral and wireless/wireline convergence mark move to 5G
During a recent discussion with RCR Wireless News, a group of subject matter experts from CommScope discussed a number of key trends shaping the telecoms industry, including the evolution from LTE to 5G, sharing the 3.5 GHz CBRS spectrum band and the convergence of wireless and wireline networks.
As it relates to the commercialization and maturation of 5G, CommScope VP of Mobility Network Engineering said, “I think though to understand how this will evolve we need to understand that there’s an entire ecosystem that needs to evolve. While there are some early base stations, RAN equipment and core equipment that can support 5G, we also need to have the 5G UEs. The handsets need to be available and deployed in some volume before we’ll see some actual penetration of the actual 5G service. We’ll continue to see more trials this year, fixed wireless deployments. We’ll see some very serious mobility type deployments beginning next year, but it could be 2020, 2021 before we see the service penetration start to reach critical mass. That entire ecosystem still needs to evolve and be in place.”
CommScope’s product portfolio includes a range of in-building connectivity solutions; Butler touched on the relationship between in-building wireless and 5G, calling out the company’s ERA DAS and OneCell small cell system.
“I think as we look at data in general, 80% of data is consumed in-building. We’ve introduced recently a couple of new platforms that will help evolve in-building networks to 5G.” He said ERA “is the only DAS platform in the world where we have completely digital transport. From input to output, it takes RF analog inputs or CPRI inputs and will transport those to the remote units for in-building coverage. We see this as a platform for the future—completely flexible, dramatically reduces the amount of space needed to deploy a product, as well as reduce the cost of that product. It’s all programmable by software. If you think about cloud RAN and [centralized] RAN and moving forward, this definitely is leading the way towards true, manageable C-RAN in-building for the multi-operator, multi-band, multi-technology scenarios. That could be 5G as well as other technologies.”
On OneCell, “This is a flexible small cell platform. It’s single operator for in-building and basically provides a user-centric cell, so the cell follows the user around the coverage area inside the buildings. It’s very easy to deploy and…a 5G architecture available today for 4G LTE service. I’m pretty excited about both of these platforms and, depending on how a building owner might decide to deploy coverage in their building, either of these could be a very flexible solution.”
CBRS, which is the subject of ongoing FCC rule-making, Butler’s colleague Mark Gibson, senior director of business development fro CommScope’s Comsearch division, said spectrum sharing in the 3.5 GHz band “sort of equalizes spectrum access for anybody that wants it, which you don’t really see much in spectrum these days.”
Gibson continued: “Within the CBRS band you’ve got spectrum that for priority access license…you buy at auction similar to the way all spectrum has been bought at auction. Then there’s spectrum that’s available under what’s called general authorized access or GAA. So, depending upon your interest in spectrum surety, you can either buy a license at PAL and, like a traditional wireless carrier use that spectrum for whatever…or you can, for example for private networks, you can use the GAA and offer up your own network on spectrum you share with others. That’s on of the most interesting things about CBRS bands—there’s something in there for everyone.
In the context of 5G, the general thinking is the right mix of spectrum to deliver the wide range of service requirements will consist of low-, mid- and high-band frequencies. This sort of convergence of spectral resources is, to some extent, mirrored in the increasing convergence of wireline and wireless networks.
Mike Wolfe, CommScope’s director of technical sales for North America, said the wireless/wireline convergence is something the vendor is seeing in “many of our customers’ businesses whether we’re looking at internal changes that they’re making organizationally to better support a converged future for their network or whether we’re looking at things like the early signs of network functions virtualization where they’re starting to set the stage to put more and more of the functions of these networks on both sides of the business into software-type functions where they can merge together more seamlessly and set kind of the platform for them to bring the access layers together. We definitely see the future of a fiber dense network being able to support wireline type traffic as well as wireless traffic and giving [operators] a much more flexible and lower cost platform they can use for their future customers.”
