CommScope’s perspective: The “green shoots” of 5G outdoor wireless connections are sprouting

Lin Haifeng, Sales Director of Wireless Network Business in Northeast Asia of CommScope Carrier Network & Global OEM Sales Leader of Asia Pacific Region

The recent global economic slowdown has inevitably hindered investment and rollout of 5G networks. As we all know, the deployment of 5G networks requires a lot of money, and its operation consumes a lot of electricity. In good times, these costs can be recouped by increasing the amount of money users pay to access high-performance networks. But in today's economic climate, users themselves are also facing cost-cutting pressure.

As a result, there have been reports of mobile network operators delaying 5G network construction and scaling back plans. Still, I don't want to dwell on these headwinds here because I'm very confident about 5G's development over the next year.

The overall construction of 5G may be delayed, but it will not be derailed

Two major changes have already occurred (which may accelerate in 2024): 5G base station simplification measures that can reduce costs, and the emergence of new disruptive business use cases that take advantage of the unique capabilities of 5G networks.

The combination of these two factors will likely bring new energy and enthusiasm to a technology that is expected to remain the foundation of wireless connectivity for at least the next ten or even twenty years. So I think the next year will prove that 5G may be delayed, but it will never be derailed.

Simplify and reduce costs

The initial phase of 5G network deployment uses non-standalone networking (NSA). These networks use existing LTE networks to provide mobile networks and generate signals, taking full advantage of this method to speed up rollout. But it also increases the complexity of base station design, and in wireless networking, "complexity" is really just another word for "cost."

Therefore, this superimposed NSA network architecture had to be compromised, causing the technology to fail to achieve the expected results advertised when it was first released. To truly streamline network architecture in the future, mobile network operators will no longer be able to rely on the design of early network technologies. And thanks to some recent innovations in the industry, they no longer have to. Some measures to reduce complexity and cost include:

A new antenna design that combines active and passive RF technologies into a streamlined integrated form. Such antennas not only reduce the size and weight of tower-top deployments, but also increase mobile network operators' flexibility when designing their networks because 5G and LTE networks can operate side-by-side with little impact on performance. These integrated designs can also reduce wind loads on the top of the tower, or eliminate the need for expensive upgrades to the load-bearing structure to support the newly added 5G components, thereby reducing the upgrade cost of each base station by tens of thousands of dollars.

When mobile network operators replace the most expensive and most powerful 64T64R mMIMO solution on macro base stations with the more economical 32T32R mMIMO, rationally adjusting the scale of 5G construction can better balance costs and revenue, so as not to affect the current Reduce deployment costs when 5G services are required. In addition, further cost savings can be achieved by using optimized 8T8R passive solutions to replace the 64T64R and 32T32R mMIMO used in macro base stations and the 16T16R mMIMO used in small cells.

As the penetration rate of 5G equipment increases and high-value use cases emerge, the 5G network will transition from the NSA architecture to the independent networking (SA) architecture. This will enable networks to gradually move towards cloud-native deployments, reducing the cost of each base station equipment while also improving the network's power consumption and service delivery through AI (for example, through the use of network slicing).

These emerging improvements directly address the cost challenges of 5G deployment, making it easier for mobile network operators to start, continue or accelerate rollout work.

Of course, even smarter, more modest investments can become unjustified if the market is unwilling to bear the costs of adopting new capabilities. Fortunately, a second key factor that will emerge in 2024 will also help solve this problem.

New 5G commercial use cases—private network

5G has many unique performance characteristics. The first is its amazing speed, huge capacity and ultra-low latency. But in some ways, 5G's performance seems to have exceeded some of the needs it needs to meet. For example, although a delay of 1 ms is amazing, there are currently very few applications that really require it. High performance undoubtedly drives the development of high-demand applications, but it will take some time for these applications to reach the market.

Having said that, some new business use cases are currently emerging that regard 5G as a preferred or even essential technology platform, even if they do not require 1 ms latency. There is an increasing interest in wireless private networks in large indoor, outdoor and indoor/outdoor combination places such as enterprises, large public places, tourist distribution centers, etc. The network traffic in these places is often very large.

5G achieves capacity and throughput advantages over LTE by using a combination of higher spectrum and more capable wireless systems (mMIMO). It’s no coincidence that the first 5G devices are being installed in more urban environments, but because it’s only in these environments that 5G networks can deliver high traffic density most effectively. However, due to its link budget limitations, 5G has difficulty connecting from outdoor macro base stations to indoor users that contribute most of the traffic. Indoor small base stations and DAS solutions can solve this problem by backhauling indoor traffic to the core network, but another discrete 5G network - 5G private network - has also emerged.

With an internal 5G network, businesses (or airports, hospitals, stadiums, etc.) can provide the security and privacy of a 5G connection beyond regular Wi-Fi®. Users can enjoy the speed and capacity of 5G (only guaranteed indoors) while taking advantage of the security of end-to-end encryption to protect voice, email, text and online activities on connected devices.

In fact, the security advantages of 5G private networks will only grow in the next few years. After 2024, it is expected that the emergence of quantum-safe cryptography (QSC), perhaps five or ten years away, will significantly increase encryption strength and render current encryption methods obsolete. To this end, the GSMA established the Quantum Secure Telecom Networks Working Group last year to develop strong regulatory standards for the future use of such encryption technologies.

5G private networks will become one of the most anticipated new business use cases of 5G, and the market is still in its infancy. In 2024, global interest and investment in this safe, high-performance technology is bound to grow significantly.

5G is set for a brighter year

The global economy and dynamic international situation may slow down the overall construction of 5G, but it will never stop it. 5G technology has broad prospects and many advantages, and will not be suppressed in the long term. As far as the Chinese market is concerned, as of November 2023, China has built a total of 3.282 million 5G base stations, and 5G has increasingly empowered various industries. This year, 5G networks will continue to move forward, thanks to base station architecture optimization measures that can reduce costs and people's interest in 5G private networks.

Today, 6G is still under development, and 5G will be the foundation of wireless networks for at least the next ten years. Therefore, the current headwinds will not prevent 5G from reaching its full potential in the long term; instead, these changes are likely to lead us in 2024 in new directions that are only now starting to gain traction.