Shawn Carpenter Program Director, 5G & Space
Deployment strategies for 5G
5G in 2021 will be all about deployment – the infrastructure and handsets are available and is being rolled out as we speak.
However, carriers have taken a very diverse range of approaches to this deployment. For example, some carriers have used long range, low frequency bands that don’t add that much bandwidth to mobile user download speeds, compared to the low-range, high frequency, high speed bands that are also part of 5G. This means that in effect, a consumer could purchase an expensive 5G phone and not necessarily experience a superior connectivity speed to the one they enjoyed with 4G / LTE. However, there will also be some areas that will be able to access the breathtakingly fast speeds that 5G is capable of.
5G deployment is also very complex. Some carriers are completely ripping out and replacing their 4G infrastructure with 5Ginfrastructure that is backwards compatible – but this is a very expensive approach. Other carriers are installing 5G equipment on 4G masts and either working to avoid interference, or actively looking at dynamic spectrum sharing – and yet more are creating two separate systems for 4G and 5G, which means buying two sets of equipment.
