At yesterday’s South Wireless Summit, Adelstein also discussed the implications of 5G. Despite being “probably three years out from widespread rollout,” it will require low latency networks with extremely high throughput. In turn, the U.S. will need “more cell towers, more access to poles, more antennas of all sizes to attach to structures of all sizes and the all-important fiber networks that connect all of these wireless technologies.”
Adelstein indicated that IoT requires a “Network of Reality,” because increased data usage causes congestion which requires more infrastructure to increase capacity.
So how are we going to build this new nation of networks and do we have the skills in the workforce to deal with it? Adelstein said to stay ahead of the curve, the WIA is helping to train and apprentice a workforce. Transitions will take time and money he said, but we’re going to have to “meet the demand.” Adelstein said it’s hard when the carriers are having a “price war” but said in the end we have “to build 5G networks on very thin margins. We can’t afford to have the industry saddled with expensive regulations,” or wait for spectrum options or 5G. The wireless data crunch which he noted was not just about spectrum, has resulted in exponential mobile data traffic growth – a 500 percent increase in five years.
Adelstein listed three ways to get more data and throughput: spectrum, technology and infrastructure – infrastructure being the most important. “The brute force of building networks has contributed to the ability to increase by a million, the amount of data that is available over wireless networks,” he said referencing analysis from MoffetNathanson that implies the trend will hold strong moving forward.
“We might have seen a little trough but in the long term there’s no way around densification” Adelstein added. “It is going to be the solution. We need to educate policymakers about that.”
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March 29, 2017
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