5G by 2020: Can the Philippines catch up?

MANILA, Philippines - “I think it is very important to point out that mobile telephony in the world has no borders. It has really been a success beyond anyone’s belief. With close to over five billion subscriptions worldwide, with smartphones now in use close to three billion, it (mobile communication) has reached areas where no one expected it to reach,” says Ericsson’s CTO Ulf Ewaldsson, in a one-on-one interview with The Philippine STAR.

 The country’s two biggest networks both reported increased 3G and 4G coverage, surge in mobile date usage as well as continued growth in mobile subscriber base in the first half of the year.

 Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company’s (PLDT) 68.9 million  and Globe Telecom’s 48.4 million mobile subscribers are fuelling a very robust ecosystem for mobile telephony and interesting use cases. 

Ewaldsson observes that the trend here is very similar to the rest of the world. Ordinary citizens have access to technology, but it needs to evolve.

 “First, we have the first generation (1G), which is analog. Then we have 2G or digital communication and 3G which supports mobile data. But these weren’t enough, we needed a technology that is totally data-centric for smartphone usage. That’s why we built the 4G. But now we are thinking of the next level of communication needs that can be met, totally new use cases,” he says.

 Juniper noted in its recent report, “5G Market Strategies: 4G LTE Evolution, Spectrum Analysis & Opportunities 2015-2025,” that 5G will not only enable faster connections but will act as a catalyst for a wide range of new consumer and enterprise experiences, including both data-intensive and energy efficient applications, high definition 4K-8K video, self-driving cars, advanced Virtual Reality, and a sensory and tactile Internet.

 The Ericsson CTO, however, thinks that these will not be exclusive to advanced countries. The Swedish company, which currently leads the European Union’s 5G standardization as coordinator of the METIS-II project that will develop the overall 5G radio system design and roadmap recommendation for 5G, is very bullish about the Asia-Pacific region.

 “There are different waves of different technologies for each region. Europe was first on 3G, and 4G was very much US and Korea and Japan. But we have to be clear that in the next five years, the biggest growth of mobile broadband users in the world will be in the Asia-Pacific. There is no debate that this region will have the fastest most active growth for new mobile broadband subscribers,” says Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg. 

He noted that the next five years will be extremely exciting here in the Philippines, with the networks very bullish on the upcoming trends and handset prices for 3G and 4G going down. 

“There is a high interest and high use here of technology. Social media is extremely advanced, which is a fantastic base for using mobility broadband and cloud as transformative infrastructure,” he adds.

Timeline 

Ewaldsson projects that it will start the way LTE started - in Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong. These are countries with early investments in the technology.

 While the target for the commercial rollout is already set globally by the operator community, the vendor community, and other stakeholders for 2020, Korea would have 5G technology available for pre-commercial rollout for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

 “In principle we have to wait for the standardization and for the mass market to really happen. It is not about building something and being first, it is about getting the whole world to adopt the standard and agree on it,” he says, adding that the 5G standards may be released in 2017 or a year ahead of the Winter Olympics.

 Ericsson’s proposal, he adds, is for this to be an evolution of the existing networks so networks don’t need to build out of the blue and wouldn’t require too many investments. 

 “We want to evolve LTE for 4G and we want to make sure that we can build something that can cater to things and totally new  and high-performance use cases and we want a technology that can be deployed in emerging markets as well as mature markets. No difference,” he says.

 The week prior to the Ericsson executives Manila visit, the GSMA, which represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, issued a call for additional spectrum for future use by mobile broadband in the Asia-Pacific region to meet the increasing mobile data needs of consumers and businesses.

 “In the first quarter of 2015, Asia-Pacific was home to 1.8 billion unique subscribers and nearly 3.8 billion connections, accounting for half of the world’s unique subscribers and connections. As the region is also expected to grow at a faster pace than the rest of the world, with 600 million new subscribers anticipated by 2020, it is critical that governments identify more spectrum for mobile now to meet this future demand,” the GSMA report says.

 The GSMA is specifically disappointed with the  decision of  Asia-Pacific Telecommunity’s Conference Preparatory Group (APG) to identify only 51MHz of additional spectrum for mobile broadband, which it says represents an increase of less than five percent over the total amount of spectrum currently identified for the region.

 “With 4G rising and 5G on the horizon, and without more spectrum identified, this means that Asia-Pacific cannot benefit from economies of scale and affordable connectivity and puts the future of its digital economy at risk,” the GSMA adds.

 Ewaldsson echoes this sentiment and says that if the Philippines wants a successful rollout of future technologies it is important for the regulators to look at the frequency spectrum.

 At the forthcoming World Radiocommunication Conference 2015 (WRC-15) in Geneva in November, there will be discussions on the global alignment of spectrum and how spectrum should be cleaned up and allocated for the operators.

 “Spectrum cleaning and allocation takes time, it is cumbersome,” Ewwaldsson says. “But it is really about finding the best solutions. The challenge is really to get the collaborations, standardization and our cross licensing regime to work.”

The last mile

 Of the 7.2 mobile subscriptions in the world right now, 600 million are on 4G or less than 10 percent of all mobile subscriptions. Vestberg says that by 2020,  mobile coverage will cover all people on earth except 300 million - that’s for the standard technology 2G, 3G, and 4G. 

“But the most important is to manage all technologies, all spectrums in one way. Ultimately it is about the consumer experience. You can continue the investment in technology,” he says.

 The reality is that even with this widespread coverage, there are still 1.5 billion people who don’t have a subscription and this could be due to handset prices, language problems or literacy challenges.

 “The correlation has already proven that for every 10 percent of broadband penetration, you have one percent sustainable GDP growth. There’s no doubt about the positive effects but with every technology solution there are challenges as well such as security, privacy, and resilience of data. Many of them are not solved by one unit, one organization, one government or one company,” he ends.