WCA May 2019

Telecom news

The carrier has established around 4,100 5G base stations and plans to increase the number to 7,000 by the end of 2019. The launches come six months after South Korea completed its 5G spectrum auctions, which raised $3.2 billion (3.61 trillion won) for the South Korean government. Australia : Australia was the second Asia-Pacific country, after South Korea, to auction off 5G spectrum, and is expected to be the second nation in the region to launch commercial 5G services. In mid-December the country’s regulator, the Australian Communi- cations and Media Authority (ACMA), concluded the 5G auction with four companies – Telstra, Optus, Dense Air Australia and a joint venture between TPG Telecom and Vodafone Hutchison Australia – paying a total of $616.02 million (A$853 million) for the spectrum in the 3.6GHz band. Telstra expects to offer mid-band 5G services in early 2019, with a full rollout across the capital cities, regional centres and high-demand areas by June 2020. The company has already switched on 130 5G-enabled sites across Australia and plans a total of 200 sites. “Combined with existing holdings, Telstra now has 60MHz of contiguous 5G spectrum in all major capital cities, and between 50-80MHz of contiguous 5G spectrum in all regional areas,” wrote Telstra CEO Andrew Penn, on the company’s blog. Meanwhile, Optus says it is committed to commercially launch fixed wireless access services in 2019, and plans to extend these to others parts of Australia with the addition of the new spectrum. Vodafone plans its 5G launch for 2020. Japan : With Japan hosting the ninth Rugby World Cup in 2020, the country is looking to limited pre-5G commercial services. Both NTT Docomo and KDDI have plans to launch pre-commercial 5G services in limited areas in 2019, with full services in 2020.

Docomo said it will focus on enhanced mobile broadband, including the delivery of high-speed connectivity to vehicles travelling at up to 300km per hour. Speaking at Qualcomm’s 4G/5G Summit in October 2018, Takehiro Nakamura, senior vice president and general manager of NTT Docomo’s 5G Lab, said the operator was currently looking only at non-stand-alone 5G NR (new radio), to improve the radio access network to deliver faster speeds. In 2020 Docomo will launch 5G, initially for areas where higher performance is needed, and will deploy 5G at venues for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in order to promote the technology. Both 5G NR and enhanced LTE (eLTE) are deployed with tight interworking. Beyond 2020, deployment areas for 5G will gradually be expanded while introducing additional technologies and frequency bands. Nakamura said Docomo may consider deploying stand-alone mode in the future with the emergence of private networks, as well as ultra-reliable low-latency services that could drive demand for stand-alone. At the same time, Docomo is making backwards compatibility to 4G a “high priority”. KDDI has a similar view, believing that 5G can revitalise the regions and help resolve social issues. The company’s president, Makoto Takahashi, said: “5G is actually the extension of 4G LTE technology. We are thinking of adding software functions which are common to 4G, and we are trying to share the facilities with other companies.” KDDI will launch pre-5G services, focused on applications such as distributing high resolution images and drone security, in limited areas next year, ahead of a full rollout beginning in 2020. KDDI, too, will be providing 5G to areas of Tokyo involved with the Olympic and Paralympic Games. 4G sharing Telecom Italia (TIM) and Vodafone Italy have embarked on a 5G network sharing project and are examining a move to share 4G infrastructure

and combine their respective mobile tower networks, covering around 22,000 sites. In what appears to be a win-win deal, the two firms say the arrangement would support a faster deployment of 5G, over a wider geographic area, at lower cost. Some separate infrastructure in larger urban areas will, however, be retained to give the companies some “strategic flexibility”. A previous passive network sharing agreement between TIM and Vodafone was restricted to 10,000 sites (around 45 per cent of the population). The new deal promises nationwide coverage. Proposed merger could cost 30,000 jobs Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union, warned the House of Representative’s subcommittee on communications and technology that the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint could result in as many as 30,000 job losses. Mr Shelton said that the deal would destroy American jobs, whilst enriching the foreign-owned parent companies of both T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom – Germany) and Sprint (Softbank – Japan), adding: “Trusting Sprint and T-Mobile with American jobs is like trusting a vampire at a blood bank.” The CWA estimates that 25,000 of the job losses will come from the retail sector. T-Mobile’s CEO, John Legere, responded to the allegations by reminding the subcommittee that his company has recently acquired MetroPCS, expanding its operations and creating jobs in the process. He also claimed that the newly merged T-Mobile/Sprint entity would require skilled workers to roll out services in rural communities, with the potential for 11,000 new jobs by 2024. Mr Legere maintains that the merger would dramatically improve connectivity in the USA, particularly in rural and hard-to-reach communities, and feels the significant increase in supply brought about by the merger makes the deal “unique”.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2019