WCA January 2019

Telecom news

buyers for whatever flagship device it puts out “and at whatever price point.” Ø Ø Strategy Analytics also holds that the transition to 5G will result in a reordering of the current list of top smartphone manufacturers, just as happened with 2G, 3G and 4G. It advises vendors to strive to “go global” and minimise market-specific SKUs (stock keeping units, or bar codes) where possible, building from a global platform; or to commit to staying local, focused and niche. Florida bears the major brunt of Hurricane Michael, and its wireless operators come in for ‘relatively scathing’ criticism Calling on carriers to waive service charges for those in Florida affected by Hurricane Michael, Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said on 17 th October that wireless operators’ response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Michael had been “completely unacceptable.” In its report on damage from the hurricane — a Category 4 storm that landed on 10 th October — the agency said that, as of 16 th October, 4.4 per cent of cell sites were still out of service in the affected area, down from 5.2 per cent the previous day. But the outages were unevenly distributed. According to the FCC, in at least one Florida county (Bay) more than 50 per cent of the cell sites were still down. The denounced group included operators AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. As reported by Mike Dano of FierceWireless (17 th October), the operators protested Mr Pai’s “relatively scathing assessment” with accounts of their vigorous restoration efforts. Ars Technica did observe that Verizon’s fibre network had suffered “unprecedented” damage in the region, and at least one tower company weighed in on the challenges of restoring service.

Joshua Broder, CEO of New Jersey-based Tilson Technologies, said, “The first thing that struck us was that we could not effectively respond for 48 hours because they had to clear the roads. Once we got to the cell sites, we were struck by the total devastation.” Ø Ø Hurricane Michael also imposed widespread power outages on Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. But one Florida critic, Harold Feld of the public interest group Public Knowledge, noted that telecom operators in his state, at least, probably need not fear any legal repercussions from their response to the communications breakdowns. In a tweet Mr Feld urged keeping in mind that, “thanks to the rollback [by Mr Pai and the FCC] of the ‘techtransition’ order and [Governor] Rick Scott’s deregulation of Florida telcos, carriers have zero legal obligation to repair Florida networks.” Elsewhere in telecom . . . Ø Ø According to a 17 th September report in the Indian telecom media outlet ETTelecom (ETT), Nokia, Ericsson, Cisco and Samsung were invited to take part in 5G trials with carriers across India, while Huawei and ZTE were not. The Department of Telecommuni- cations (DOT) in New Delhi attributed the exclusion of the Chinese networking vendors to security concerns. ETT commented that the move could deal a “huge setback” to the two companies, especially Huawei – among the largest equipment makers globally – which considers itself the leader in 5G technology and hopes to tap into huge demand for 5G software and equipment as telecoms roll out the next-generation technology. “We are going to set up a core group in the department to push [these trials] further, so that by early 2019 we would be able to demonstrate 5G use cases in India,” said telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan. Sweden’s Ericsson launched a 5G innovation lab in India In July 2018.

Fortune ’s conclusion: “All told, the battle for dominance in high-speed wireless offers yet another example of how competition between the planet’s two largest economies is cleaving the world into two (or possibly three) rival techno-blocs.” The price of handsets is seen as limiting immediate 5G adoption, promising more risks than rewards for vendors in the short term A report from Strategy Analytics predicts that 5G smartphones will carry wholesale costs of more than $750 when they are introduced in 2019, translating to retail prices of $1,000 or more. Guy Daniels of TelecomTV also pointed out the expectation of the Massachusetts-based research firm that 5G device prices will decline at a much slower pace compared to 3G and 4G handsets, and that subsidies will be necessary to make 5G smartphones affordable to the mass market. (“5G Handsets Too Expensive for Users? Vendors Beware of the Profit Drain Zone,” 19 th October) Given that 5G consumer services will struggle to command a premium price over 4G alternatives (“Who really wants to pay more for a slightly faster mobile broadband experience?” Mr Daniels mused), the report adds pressure on communications service providers (CSPs) to make accurate investment calls on 5G deployments. “It requires magical thinking to expect that consumers are going to rush to buy 5G smartphones that are bigger and more expensive than any phone that they’ve ever bought before,” Ken Hyers, director of emerging device technologies at Strategy Analytics, told TelecomTV . He noted that only nine per cent of Chinese customers – a crucial demographic for vendors – buy phones at wholesale prices starting at $500 and up. This prompted the sceptic in Mr Daniels to wonder whether the same logic applies to Apple and its iPhone range. He observed that, despite all the pessimistic warnings, the California-based company still manages to attract huge numbers of

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Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2019