Author: Pat Kline

Verizon is still rushing to meet its 2019 5G release goals. Today Verizon was able to cross off another big city. The cellular carrier has launched the 5G ultra wideband access in Los Angeles, areas included would be downtown, Chinatown, Del Rey, and Venice. You will have to stick to certain major locations to have a hope of getting those promised speeds.

The initial rollout focuses on landmarks like the Los Angeles Convention Center, Staples Center, Grant Park, and the Venice Beach boardwalk. You may notice the speeds if you’re attending a Lakers game or E3, then, but you won’t have much luck keeping a 5G signal as you walk to get your morning coffee.

On Wednesday the 11th after the BofA Global research said it was optimistic over the technology companies as Qualcomm is prospects to be selling 5G chipsets to Apple.

Qualcomm stock was up 2.6%, to $86.30, near midday Wednesday. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 0.2%.

The analyst said that starting next year, if all iPhone models include 5G capabilities, Apple could contribute nearly $4 billion in cumulative sales to Qualcomm by the fiscal year 2022. His model assumes $20 per Qualcomm 5G modem sold to Apple.

In 2018 Qualcomm met with hundreds of reporters and analysts on the sunny beaches of Maui to talk about how 5G would change the world in 2019-2020. The hype level was high. Then, reality hit. Network rollouts were met with delays, you needed a map to find coverage and consumers ended up more confused than excited.

5G promises to significantly increase cellular the speeds, coverage and responsiveness of wireless networks. It can run 10 to 100 times faster than a typical cellular connection that is offered today, and it’ll also boost how fast a device will connect to the network with speeds as quick as a millisecond to start your download or upload. It’s the most significant advance in mobile network technology since the introduction of 4G a decade ago, and it could have major implications for how we live.

But for now, a lot of those promises remain unfulfilled. That hasn’t deterred Amon’s enthusiasm for the technology.
“You could argue that 200 million could be conservative, especially looking at China,” Amon said in an interview with CNET on Tuesday.
That’s an ambitious declaration for a technology that’s really just getting started. Even in Hawaii, at the Snapdragon Tech Summit, there are some doubts. “I don’t think it’s going to be mainstream,” said Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi. “But by the end of 2020, we will have a better feel for what living in a 5G world would look like.”

Two years ago, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into whether Verizon, AT&T, and the GSM Association worked together to limit eSIM technology (electronic, or embedded SIM ). The New York Times reports that the Department of Justice is closing the investigation as they have found no evidence of wrongdoing.

The DOJ was initially concerned that AT&T and Verizon attempted to lock devices on their networks even if the device had an eSIM. But the parties have agreed to change how they determine standards for eSIM, which will allow consumers to use eSIM to switch carriers, rather than having to insert a new SIM card. And as a result, the Department of Justice is dropping the investigation.

T-Mobile has flipped the switch on its 5G network, setting it live over areas of the USA that it says covers 200 million people. While the network is supposedly online today, no one is going to be using it until the 6th of December as the first two phones to support it go on sale this Friday.

The “nationwide” 5G deployment relies on a slower form of 5G, using T-Mobile’s 600MHz spectrum. This “low-band” 5G essentially takes airwaves like the ones used for LTE and bundles them together with some new technology to deliver faster throughput speeds.

The FCC announced on Monday that it will publicly auction off a valuable telecommunications asset, in a move that investors viewed as a strike to U.S. satellite communications provider Intelsat.

Intelsat shares of dropped 40% in hefty trading after Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said in a tweet that his agency “must free up significant spectrum” for 5G telecommunications. The FCC told CNBC that it expects an auction to happen “before the end of 2020.”

C-band spectrum is a key telecommunications wavelength for the FCC regulators. Four satellite operators, including Intelsat, provide C-band services in the U.S. to about 120 million households. The FCC wants to repurpose the C-band spectrum for 5G and an auction is expected to raise tens of billions of dollars. But a public auction would see the proceeds go to the government.

It takes billions of dollars to install fiber cabling in the ground, Fiber originally was the only way to deliver ultra-fast internet speeds to residential homes. The prohibitive cost has stopped some of the largest companies in the world from making a national dent in constructing high-speed broadband networks, including Verizon and Google. But Verizon and AT&T already plan to roll out 5G fixed broadband services in cities across the U.S., using wireless technology to compete with cable companies to provide ultra-fast home internet.

The CEO of Common Networks Zach Brock. The company he founded with three other ex-Square employees. For about $50 a month, Common Networks is offering 300Mb/sec to 1Gb/sec download speeds for households around Silicon Valley and Alameda (Oakland is coming soon). That’s about $20 or $30 less per month than what Comcast charges for about the same speed without promotional pricing

Enterprises aren’t doing enough to prepare for 5G security risks, will need to put a greater emphasis on efforts to virtualize and automate security, according to a report commissioned by AT&T Cybersecurity, that is a division of AT&T Business.

While the standards for 5G include built-in security features throughout local cellular infrastructure, this alone is not enough to handle all of most business security needs, according to analysts that conducted the research for AT&T. Almost 73% of the 704 security professionals that participated in the survey rated their level of concern as high or medium-high as it relates to the potential impact of 5G on security. However, 76% of users said they expect entirely new security threats to appear with 5G.

Huawei has submitted a little something of its technical expertise by breaking the world record 5G speed on a single user smartphone.

The Chinese cellular network equipment manufacturer built a 3GPP compliant test network at a Turk Telecom facility in Istanbul to achieve speeds in excess of 2.92Gbps.

Although it’s unlikely that commercial users will be able to access speeds any time soon, it does demonstrate the theoretical potential of 5G using commercial equipment. A Huawei Mate X smartphone was used, alongside a Turk Telecom 5G SIM card.

The FCC has announced that Salt Lake City and New York City will be test sites for new 5G wireless technology.

The Projects will test the new lighting fast 5G service and prototype networks like those that can support 5G technologies. Will also establishing a process to ensure new innovators can have access to this test resource while protecting current licensed users.

The FCC’s Innovation Zone will support POWDER (Platform for Open Wireless Data-driven Experimental Research) in several connected corridors of Salt Lake City. The University of Utah will oversee some of it. 5G typically refers to “fifth generation” mobile networks, offering faster speeds and more reliable connections.

The Utah State Legislature in 2018 passed a bill that allowed for 5G wireless in the state. It allowed infrastructure for it to “piggyback” on what’s currently in place, similar to how Google Fiber was able to set up in the city.