i3 - November/December 2018 - 60

Business

By Bobby Baumler

BY T H E N U M B E RS

Residential 5G Broadband
Brings Speed to Consumers

ollowing several years of testing and standards development, network providers will for the first-time begin
offering consumers 5G wireless connectivity. While
many use cases exist for 5G, including for edge computing, IoT
devices, mobile devices, medical applications and self-driving
cars; fixed-wireless residential service is among the most
impactful for consumers in the near term.
Broadband access is paramount for economic opportunity and consumers have
come to expect internet speeds good
enough to simultaneously connect multiple devices for a variety of purposes,
such as streaming content, gaming or
basic internet searches. According to the
Federal Communication Commission's
2018 Broadband Deployment Report,
90.8 percent of the U.S. population has
access to 50 megabits per second
(Mbps)/5Mbps broadband connection
(though just 64 percent of the U.S. rural
population). This means millions of
Americans are limited to either a zero or
a single broadband provider.
Residential 5G service will increase
both consumer access and competition
with low latency, high-speed wireless
data connections in the home. Earlier
this fall, Verizon launched its 5G residential service with AT&T expected to
begin mobile 5G service by year end.
This will be followed by Sprint and
T-Mobile launching offerings to consumers in early 2019. By 2020, it is
estimated that full-scale deployment
for both residential and mobile service

CTA'S SALES & FORECAST REPORT: 5G HOME GATEWAYS

$ MILLION

Expected wholesale
revenue on 50,000
units in 2018

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

295 MILLION

Expected wholesale
revenue on 2.4 million
units in 2019

960 MILLION

Expected wholesale
revenue on 8 million
units in 2020

1.61 BILLION

Expected wholesale
revenue on 14 million
units in 2021

2.42 BILLION

Expected wholesale
revenue on 22 million
units in 2022
I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

James Teohart/Getty Images

will be underway and new internet
providers may emerge.
The technologies will vary by provider
with short, mid- and high-range millimeter waves delivering high-speed access to
mobile and fixed-wireless devices at
speeds exceeding today's typical fixedline home broadband connection. To
deliver high speeds over limited range
spectrum, providers must install antennas at far closer range than traditional
cellular towers. Comparatively, 4G
equipped cellular towers provide a range
of several miles, whereas 5G service is
limited in many cases to several hundred
feet. This requires the installation of
antenna units on existing infrastructure
including on lamp posts, telephone poles
as well as indoor antennas in public
spaces like airports and sporting venues.
AT&T's 5G service will initially be
deployed via mobile hotspot devices and
utilize a short-range millimeter wave while
delivering peak speeds of roughly 1 Gbps.
Sprint's 5G network incorporates MIMO
(multiple input, multiple output) antennas
within the 2.5 GHz spectrum, which
allows for dual deployment of 4G and 5G

i3 - November/December 2018

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