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It doesn’t come as a surprise EE will launch 5G next year, however, the mobile leader has officially given the cities its launching 5G services in 2019!

As expected, London and Manchester are first on the list with Birmingham, Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh following soon after. When mobile networks make first-to-the-post announcements, don’t be fooled in thinking it’ll be full-on 5G! (When 4G was rolled-out in 2013, it didn’t have a good enough strategy which is why there are still areas in the UK without 4G, even 3G) 5G is going to be incredible but let’s not get ahead of ourselves – It’ll take years before 5G is fully operational.

The added news which is also very positive from BT Group is the investment going in other locations, including Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. EE’s obviously improving existing infrastructure in the cities where the network get’s the most use, plus, as these areas are the heaviest users, 5G will clearly improve their customer experience with greater speeds and reliability. Did you know: Out of EE’s network, the 1500 masts that will have 5G upgrades (which covers only 15% of the population) carries as much as 25% in data traffic for the entire UK – Wow! Impressive stat!

How do you fancy a 5G phone and a 5G home? Well, 5G-ready smartphones are in the market-place without most of us knowing about it. The popular handsets such as OnePlus and Samsung are all operating on 5G-enabled smartphones and even cooler news for the home, EE will likely develop a 5G home broadband router, replacing the need for fibre broadband (A BIG yes from me!) – This offers far more flexibility for the household – Families will love it!

What does this mean for new homes? TARDIS4G has moved into the smart-home technology space with the partnership of Wondrwall – wondrwall.co.uk – Wondrwall’s pioneering innovation, “Intelligent Living” offers a great opportunity for all home owners, not just for new builds – Many developers and new home residents are enjoying home automation already! Although 4G can be used and is being used to connect the Wondrwall system, courtesy of us, the number of connected devices on a true smart-home system is too great for a 4G device – 2019 and beyond is going to be a lot of fun!

The 5G fight is on! Three UK announced their investment is to position them as the true market-leader for 5G capability and although they’ve already invested in cell tower upgrades (2500 masts), they’re also acquiring more 5G spectrum and connecting 20 new energy efficient data centres with dark fibre connectivity – Three are more than serious about 5G!

What does this mean for Three UK customers? In short, superior mobile services and in Three’s opinion, could totally replace the need for home fibre broadband! (This is also a personal belief of mine and hasn’t been influenced by Three UK.)

Did You Know: Ofcom suspect the average consumer will be using 13 times the data each month by 2025 – That’s a huge increase! …and because Three UK already offer “All-You-Can-Eat” data packages, the average Three customer uses over 3 times as much data as consumers on EE, Vodafone and O2!

“We have always led on mobile data and 5G is another game-changer. Also described as wireless fibre, 5G delivers a huge increase in capacity together with ultra-low latency. It opens up new possibilities in home broadband and industrial applications, as well as being able to support the rapid growth in mobile data usage. This is a major investment into the UK’s digital infrastructure. UK consumers have an insatiable appetite for data and 5G unlocks significant capability to meet that demand. We have been planning our approach to 5G for many years and we are well positioned to lead on this next generation of technology. These investments are the latest in a series of important building blocks to deliver the best end to end data experience for our customers.” Dave Dyson, CEO, Three UK

What does this mean for construction? TARDIS4G provides Three SIMs in areas where Three has the best coverage, similar to the way we configure devices on other networks. Once Three has upgraded their masts, even in rural areas, all TARDIS4G customers will benefit with immediate effect.

If you’d like to know what the TARDIS4G team and I are planning for the construction industry, please ask! We’d be delighted to shed some light on our pioneering tech!

EE, the UK’s largest-spread mobile network has used Montgomery Square as the location-of-choice for a 5G-live test. A workplace to more than 150,000 people, Canary Wharf is an obvious choice to trial 5G as vast numbers of connected devices will be the true difference to provide realistic results.

As part of its 5G launch programme, EE recognises that high capacity zone testing is critical – Did you know there will be a further 10 locations in East London capable of 5G technology by the end of October! Businesses and consumers alike will benefit from hyper-fast speeds – No doubt, we’ll hear more about this in mainstream news as we get closer to Christmas…

For the techies out there, the 40MHz EE acquired from the 3.4GHz spectrum will use 5G New Radio – This is highly likely to be fundamental of “early” 5G networks and BT Group want to test how it behaves in a real-life setting, not just at Adastral Park. Even though Huawei has been announced as a security risk to UK plc, EE continue to test their capabilities with the Chinese giant.

Please note, Canary Wharf isn’t the sole 5G test EE has… In the last 24 months, with particular testing in labs, including the 5G Innovation Centre at University of Surrey (5GIC) and other cities like Manchester, EE has previously generated download speeds of 700Mbps and more recently, nearly 3Gb! (We don’t need the internet that fast but amazing to think what’s possible on existing technologies!) These tests were proven on 3.5GHz spectrum and last year, alongside the same Chinese giant, EE became the first major network to showcase 5G backhaul technology in the UK.

What does this mean for the construction industry and TARDIS4G?

The construction industry like most of you know is very behind the curve with innovative technology. Arguably, there are contractors such as Mace, Skansksa and Willmott Dixon that openly explore options to improve existing methods but apart from Advanced BIM, not much requires a hefty bandwidth to pass data traffic. In the years TARDIS has been providing military-grade comms systems to the sector, this level of detail doesn’t go unnoticed and although we have a direct API into the core EE network, we are actually working alongside another major network with focus on IoT for professionals on the construction site – EE is heavily focused on consumers – A VERY different marketplace!

When you think of 5G, those “in-the-know” think about the Internet of Things (IoT) and how many billions of connected devices there’ll be in 10 years time – amazing when you think about it, but, most people forget the need to be able to use reliable WiFi, and actually, this will play a huge role in the stability of 5G.

The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) understands from over 60 telecom-tech companies that 5G will come to be formed by a combination of licensed and unlicensed technologies. The generational leap (802.11ax) is expected to become one of the key components and 5G is following WiFi in adopting a number of key capabilities, such as the use of an EAP authentication framework.

Interestingly enough, the key areas of interest were “Smart Cities” and “Saftey/Surveillance” which will heavily rely on a converged next-generation network. The white paper from WBA outlines precisely what needs to be done to prepare for 5G, including enhancements to the WRIX framework that will meet the needs of 5G roaming.

“While plans to roll out 5G networks are well on their way, the industry still needs to agree upon the standards for the technology before 2020. The WBA has put together this report to highlight the significant impact that WiFi is having on the definition of 5G and what we as an organisation can do to bridge the gap between licensed and unlicensed technologies within this time-frame.” Shrikant Shenwai, CEO, Wireless Broadband Alliance

FYI – for those that don’t know, the WBA was founded 14 years ago with the mission to “…champion the development of the wireless broadband ecosystem through a number of interoperable unlicensed wireless broadband services.” Existing members include BT, Comcast, Cisco, Microsoft, Huawei Technologies and Google.

From an early age, I’ve always had a natural desire to learn more about telecommunications and to be a market-leader within a niché, so far, so good! An idea I had over ten years ago was to use existing street furniture as “small-masts” – this is finally happening thanks to an initiative from Arqiva which was given the green light recently from London Borough of Lambeth.

Believe it or not, there are 15,000 lamp posts across The London Borough of Lambeth alone and Arqiva have exclusive rights to turn them into “small-cells” in the preparation for 5G. Other boroughs that have similar progammes in place are Barnet, Brent, Camden, Hammersmith & Fulham, Haringey, Harrow, Hounslow, Islington, Merton, Richmond upon Thames and Wandsworth.

The original plan was to boost mobile capacity where demand is particularly high or improve existing coverage if it’s poor. With 5G only a couple of years away, these small cells will be fundamental to supporting the number of connected devices.

Nicolas Ott, Managing Director of Telecoms & M2M at Arqiva, said: “Today’s consumers and businesses are heavily reliant on a fast, uninterrupted mobile connection – it is a necessity for everyone. Building on our strong heritage in this area, Arqiva is delighted to be working with Lambeth Council in leveraging their street infrastructure for the roll-out of small cells on behalf of the mobile operators in the years to come, when and where it will be needed to increase mobile coverage or capacity. It will allow Lambeth citizens, consumers, visitors and businesses to be better informed, entertained and connected on-the-go. It is also an integral key step in Arqiva’s strategy to be central to the UK’s telecommunications infrastructure – today in 4G, tomorrow in 5G.”

If you read my previous article about Arqiva, you’ll remember they began a 5G FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) trial in Central London – this will provide a better broadband connection than what fibre supplies today.

California will play home to Apple’s 5G testing. The popular manufacturer was granted a license to conduct 5G trials on the basis it could only do it for 12 months but this is geared towards 5G compatible products for when 5G is launched – a 5G iPhone and iPad is definitely in the frame.

Tests will focus on short-range mm wave spectrum in the 28GHz and 39GHz bands which have been approved for commercial 5G use last year, in America. Apple has filed a number of patents in recent months: a wireless patch antenna and an iPhone case incorporating wireless charging – competitive with Huawei and Samsung!

The announcement of Apple is interesting as this is the first development from the manufacturer side, not an operator. Do remember, Samsung launched their 5G-ready trials four years ago!

The mobile data market is enormous and Apple doesn’t want to miss out on any opportunities. A lot of work behind closed doors is happening which can only be good for consumers, households and businesses. 

As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, a British telecoms infrastructure company, Arqiva, have started their 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) field trial with Samsung in central London. Their joint plans were announced earlier in the year and finally, the time has arrived!

The testing experiments with Samsung’s own 5G network solution and Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) in conjunction with Arqiva’s 28GHz millimetre wave (mmWave) spectrum.

Three main components of the setup are; Radio Access Unit (RAU) located on the rooftop of Arqiva’s Fitzrovia office – This wirelessly links to the second component, a CPE (essentially a WiFi router) which sits on a window ledge in another of Arqiva’s offices and lastly, Samsung’s virtualised core managed user connections and data routing from Arqiva’s network to the internet. 5G FWA is all about stability and this trial will hopefully prove its worth.

Fixed Wireless Access services have been available in 4G, however, it’s only with the addition of 5G base stations operating on high-frequency mmWave spectrum and utilising beam-forming technology that performance will reach a competitive level. Arqiva has reported establishing a stable two-way mmWave link with downlink speeds of around 1Gb per second. Just to give an idea of this level of performance, it would allow for the simultaneous streaming of more than 25 UHD 4K TV channels.

Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO of Arqiva, said: “This trial is the first of its kind in Europe, let alone the UK – and we are hugely excited about the high data rates, low latency and growth potential we’re going to be able to demonstrate. Though only a proof of concept at this stage, we are confident that this trial with Samsung will showcase not only 5G FWA’s potential for delivering ultrafast broadband but also the value of the 28GHz band in helping achieve this. We’ve seen a great level of response so far from our entire customer base, including leading mobile operators, fixed broadband providers, broadcasters and media companies. This trial will be particularly interesting for this audience as it looks to a future of ubiquitous UHD, and the file sizes that go with it.”

Of the four major operators in the UK, Three is the smallest network with only 11% of the total market share (9.2m customers), however, its spectrum is vast. Whilst I’ve been at Tardis, Three has been a great network to collaborate with and it has been my view that Three will become the biggest force when 5G arrives in 2020. Why? Did you know that Three carries 35% of UK data, alone!?

As reported by a national newspaper, Three is set to begin a multi-billion pound overhaul of its network in order to prepare for the launch of 5G – an investment which is likely to see Three lead the pack in 5G availability when it arrives and make the network faster and more reliable.

Rising data demands…

This is a concern for every network because the way we use our devices is changing, rapidly. To put it in perspective, each mast tower can handle X amount of connected devices but when 5G is in place, that number is magnified 100 times, easily as 5G uses MIMO (remember from my previous Vodafone article?).

Three has been poised to shake up the mobile industry for a while and once it acquired Relish, a small broadband company, this has given Three a little more spectrum which could see it roll-out 5G-ready fixed wireless broadband in major cities. That would mean super-fast home broadband over Three’s mobile network – no landline required!

Let’s not forget Three had its takeover of O2 blocked by Ofcom and the European Commission not too long ago so it shouldn’t be a surprise that investment is a high priority. There’s every chance that this could make Three a big bidder at the upcoming 5G auction (which I expect) – very little restriction on how much of the auctioned spectrum it can purchase meaning Vodafone and EE will be watching closely.

A UK-based infrastructure company has acquired an additional 28GHz spectrum license for Central and Greater London which will enhance its existing Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) plans.

This 28GHz spectrum will be used for preliminary 5G tests and countries such as America, Japan and South Korea have already used a similar testing platform on Fixed Wireless Access service trials.

FWA means ultra-fast, high bandwidth home broadband using wireless technology rather than conventional fibre-optic or copper wiring. It’s expected to become the first commercial use of 5G technology over the next few years.

Nicolas Ott, Managing Director of Telecoms & M2M at Arqiva, said: “5G FWA is an exciting opportunity to deliver true ultrafast broadband above 500Mbps to millions of households; this is especially relevant in the UK where so few households are connected by fibre to the home (FTTH) or fibre to the cabinet (FTTC). FWA has the ability to become a truly alternative technology to deliver fibre-like services. In purchasing this additional licence we are able to further our ambitions in this area, standing ourselves in good stead to deliver a compelling 5G FWA wholesale service to UK mobile and fixed operators across the country, and with even more capacity in Greater London.”

Some of you may remember that Arqiva and Samsung suggested they’ll be conducting the UK’s first 5G FWA tiral in London this summer…

Wembley Stadium played host to EE where they showcased the first commercial Gigabit LTE (4G) mobile network in Europe. The UK mobile giant used four real-life use cases to demonstrate the benefits of Qualcomm’s Gigabit LTE. Utilising Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium smartphone, EE streamed 4K HDR content from Amazon Prime, downloaded large files via Google Drive, downloaded music and video files for offline consumption, and carried out a network simulation. With live upload speeds of 110Mbps and download speeds of over 700Mbps, EE’s Gigabit 4G network demonstrated it was easily twice as fast as the UK’s fastest commercial fibre broadband offering.

It’s felt that Gigabit LTE is destined to become an essential pillar for 5G when it first arrives in 2020. While 5G’s speeds will far exceed even Gigabit LTE, the latter will provide vital high speed cover while the next generation network is in its infancy.

EE’s Gigabit rollout… EE recently made significant upgrades to its 4G network in London’s Tech City and Cardiff, the latter of which was able to demonstrate real world speeds of 428Mbps. The UK network will be bringing these upgrades to more major cities throughout 2017 and 2018.

In line with these speed improvements, EE was also the first network in the UK to support the kind of ‘Cat 16’ mobile devices (like the Sony Xperia XZ Premium) that can capitalise on this Gigabit LTE network technology.

Tom Bennett, Director of Network Services & Devices, EE, said, “Peak speeds get all the headlines, and their importance is simple: the higher the peak speed on our network, the better the average speed for every customer. And better average throughput means customers are doing more and getting their content more quickly and more consistently – and that means they’re happier. We will keep investing to stay at the cutting edge of network and device technology so that our customers keep getting the best possible network experience. Working with the best technology companies across the mobile industry is vital to that.”