Kathy Gibson reports from Wapaloza in Muldersdrift – One of the universal truths when it comes to spectrum is that there is always more demand than supply.
This makes it hard for businesses that require exclusive access to certain bands, explains Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis.
Traditionally, the organisations asking for more spectrum are those providing fixed-wireless services, public networks, or players looking for more coverage and capacity.
But wireless is growing in the indoor space, too, along with cellular connectivity.
Bubley says a number of groups are competing for spectrum: business and enterprise wireless sites; communities and smart spaces; IoT and short-range communication providers; satellite and aerial services; events organisers; public safety and defence; observation and sensing.
“The problem is that, if you add up everyone’s demand, we need more spectrum – and there isn’t enough, particularly in certain bands,” he says. “So the regulators are inundated with requests for more spectrum.”
The answer to the dilemma is spectrum sharing: when there are multiple users on the same spectrum bands, efficiency is increased and there is more democratisation.
Bubley points out that there are a number of ways to achieve spectrum sharing.
They include unlicenced spectrum; licence exemption; light licensing; pooled or wholesale licensing; dynamic database; local administrative licences; trading and leasing; specialised or opportunistic co-ordination; or AI-based models.
There are many good reasons to consider spectrum sharing, Bubley adds, because the length of time that different parties require the spectrum can range from as short as a second or two through to minutes, hours, days and weeks – all the way to decades.
“The question is whether you can you have one system that spans from one second to a decade,” Bubley says. “And I think we need several different spectrum management regimes to manage this environment.”
While 5G has the potential to transform and democratise the wireless industry, most countries are still operating under a 4G-era model that is dominated by a handful of big mobile network operators (MNOs).
With 5G becoming as easy to deploy as cellular, we are starting to see the emergence of many different networks, run by private enterprise or systems integrators.
“We are moving into a world where there are a lot more companies that can use 5G and 6G technologies,” Bubley explains. They include the MNOs, some of them starting to consolidate. But they also include rural or indoor neutral hosts for shared networks; private or industrial mobile operators; fixed wireless access; city or regional MNOs; hybrid MNOs/MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators); transport MNOs; government testbeds, and even active tower companies.
“The point is that there are opportunities for even quite small wireless specialists,” he says.
A case in point is indoors, Bubley adds, with about 80% of all wireless use being indoors. This opens up opportunities for companies to offer offload or federation capabilities to MNOs. There is also a lot of work still to be done on indoor roaming, or on combining WiFi and cellular to provide the best quality experience across a range or user devices and types.
There are some positive trends in the evolution of private networks, Bubley says, starting with more awareness from verticals and policymakers.
“There is a steady global drumbeat of local spectrum allocations – along with an ecosystem that’s growing in depth and maturity of applications, channels, and tools.”
This is aligning with adjacent trends in cloud, AI, and application programming interfaces (APIs).
There are, however, still some sources of friction, not least of which is an attempt by many MNOs to backtrack. A large number of single-use 5G networks is also an inhibiting factor, as is a lack of global harmonisation. At the same time, the costs of implementing many of these scenarios is still too high – and the skills available too low.
But Bubley envisages an environment that scales across large and small sites and that are a mixture of private and public networks. “Globally, there are currently about 5 000 private networks of medium size and about 500 that are larger – about city size. This could grow substantially.”
One of the multipliers will be the ability to deploy to smaller locations. As private wireless and neutral host networks start to converge, this will also act as a multiplier and we’ll start to see WiFi networks distributed across multiple sites.
A number of new verticals and channels are emerging, Bubley adds. Drivers include community access, temporary events, local government, military applications, and broadcast.