Many of the cellular carriers are, or have dedicated a large portion of their capex budgets this year, but this doesn’t mean that millimeter wave (mmWave) 5G deployments are done. Mobile Experts, in a recent report, say that it expects mmWave investments will return in late 2023 and 2024.
Companies like Verizon and AT&T have spent billions this year and will continue to next year, all in effort to deploy 5G in their C-band spectrum. Looking at numbers, Verizon is expected to dedicate about $5 billion toward C-band this year and AT&T said it will spend $6 billion in 2023, much of which will go to C-band.
Dan McNamara, principal analyst with Mobile Experts, expects carriers will need to cover more locations with mmWave as data on the C-Band 5G networks increases. He says this because one of the fundamental values of mmWave 5G is that it offers huge capacity gains and delivers high data rates.
“The good news about C-band is that there is a lot of investment in it. And as it gets rolled out, customers will see their phones get faster and that will get them excited,” he said, adding that at this point he believes customers will flock to 5G because the difference between 4G and 5G will be much more evident.
“The current systems will see data consumption rise,” he said. “And in areas where that data consumption gets higher, the operators will support that through mmWave.”
McNamara went on to say that we may hear a lot about 5G deployments in the U.S., but it’s still a relatively new technology. “Lots of countries have not deployed it [5G] yet,” he said, noting that because of this many consumers haven’t experienced the benefits of 5G.
Per McNamara, manufacturers of 5G radios are working to integrate multiple radios into one antenna. This could mean the difference of installing one antenna that supports multiple networks (LTE and 5G C-Band) versus having to fit multiple radios together. This would also lower the number of permits and approvals that carriers require to deploy their network.
“This solves some of the operator pain points that are beyond just pure technology,” McNamara said.
The Dell ‘Oro Group also commented on this subject, noting that the 5G capex cycle will be longer than past generations of wireless. This includes LTE. According to the group, the reason 5G’s cycle will be longer is because of all the different spectrum bands that are being used for 5G from mmWave to 2.5 GHz, C-band, 6 GHz and more.