With operators at risk of a ‘build it and they will come'
approach, can a converged video contribution and delivery network monetize 5G?
The lack of a business case for the fifth-generation
cellular network belies the recent fulsome pronouncements made by operators and
chip makers about its potential as a game-changer.
Nokia, for example, talks about innovating “the global
nervous system” which it describes as “a seamless web of interconnected
intelligence that underpins our digital lives.”
Intel has said 5G will “enable new experiences across a
variety of industries and categories including automotive, virtual reality,
artificial intelligence, homes, buildings, factories, cities and
infrastructure.”
Ericsson sees no impediment to 5G’s success. “Since 5G
networks are designed to operate with ‘slices’, allowing traffic to be
segmented according to their specific requirements such as latency or bandwidth
constraints,” says Giles Wilson, CTO, head of portfolio & architecture,
solution area TV & media, at Ericsson. “5G can usefully be ‘all things to
all people’ without significant compromise. This is one of its clear
advantages.”
Operators, chipset developers, and handset makers are
jostling to set new performance benchmarks and to deploy upgraded elements of
the 4G standard in advance of a global agreement on the technology, regulation,
and market for 5G.
“This is undoubtedly the elephant in the room,” says CCS
Insight principal analyst, operators, Kester Mann. “For all the
proofs of concept and ‘world first’ demonstrations, the mobile industry appears
little closer to establishing solid business cases to justify the significant
investment required.”
Intel is not alone in attempting to define the main industry
verticals that operators will want to monetize. Missing from the list is media
and entertainment (M&E), something that mobile operator EE-owned by U.K.
telco BT—is keen to put front and center of the global agenda.
“We are pushing the industry in the direction of M&E as
a vertical alongside automotive, broadband, manufacturing, and e-health,” says
Matt Stagg, who is responsible for video and content technologies at EE.
The initial goal is to define what M&E means in this
space. “It is about convergence,” explains Stagg. “5G is more than mobile. It
encompasses the contribution and distribution of all media and entertainment.”
That ranges from IPTV and 4K/8K video to outside broadcast
cameras, live as well as linear video, video on demand (VOD) and caching, the
CDN and virtual/augmented reality.
“Longer-term it is about looking at the potential of 5G as
replacement for DTT [digital terrestrial television],” says Stagg. “We are at
an early stage of defining this, but we believe convergence means using the
same technology for all TV and video delivery mechanisms rather than using
different formats. Because you get less fragmentation the [data] flows end to
end and you can streamline the process. We also include radio (and audio) in
this to an extent.”
While 8K will be inclusive of the ultimate 5G specification,
Stagg is dismissive of any near-term broadcast applications using the network.
“Even 4K is limited because content is limited,” he says.
Far more important from a monetization point of view is the ability to offer
more video particularly around live events. He points out that only around 10
percent of all video captured at a live event (such as a football match) is
actually distributed. The transition to IP and remote production architectures
combined with distribution over 5G will permit far more of the in-game
assets—such as streams from player cams—to be monetized.
EE argues that the technology should be disconnected from
the application and that unicast, multicast, and broadcast should underpin all
verticals.
“Convergence is not just for streamlining video,” Stagg
says. “You need to broadcast information to cars that tells the [automated
system] when a traffic light is red, for example. Sending the same data to each
car is inefficient and adds latency and demand on the network.”
Reinvigorated 4G
This work is already in progress as operators worldwide look
to deploy and promote upgraded versions of 4G, elements of which will evolve
into the 5G network.
“You can’t afford to focus on 5G without evolving 4G—the two
are inseparable,” says Stagg. “You can’t underinvest in 4G and then leapfrog
into 5G. It’s not like 3G to 4G, which were completely separate systems. 5G
will be built on top of the other from a radio perspective.”
Variously marketed as 4.5G, 4.9G, LTE Advanced Pro, or
Gigabit LTE, CCS Insight calls a reinvigorated 4G “incredibly disruptive.”
“Network operators see Gigabit LTE as an opportunity to
extend the return on their investments in 4G networks,” says CCS Insight’s Ben
Wood.
The analyst says video will represent the main monetization
opportunity for telcos in serving more data over a ramped-up 4G. “Given
consumers’ insatiable appetite for connectivity on the go, expect telcos to
sway consumers to sign up to bigger bundles,” suggests CCS Insight’s vice
president, multiplay and media, Paolo Pescatore.
How Should Publishers Prepare?
“Ultimately, most of the content today is developed for the
big screen and then adapted for smaller screens,” Pescatore points out. “Expect
most, if not all, content and media owners to continue with this approach.
However, some content owners are thinking about developing solely for mobile
screens. We don’t foresee any significant changes that need to be undertaken
for 5G; not only is it still too early to say, but no changes have previously
been made for 3G or 4G.”
The way in which we use devices and interact with our
surroundings will shift, just as it has previously with 3G and 4G. According to
Futuresource Consulting, the targeted download rate is 20Gbps and the upload
rate is 10Gbps. This means we will have fibre-like performance available
on-the-go.
“From a content perspective, we could see UHD downloads,
access and live sharing or streaming across multiple devices, and
higher-quality file formats (i.e., super-high-quality audio),” says Futuresource
market analyst Tristan Veale. “Mobile video publishers don’t have to be
concerned with tailoring video to a mobile audience, rather they can be
concerned with monetizing the content which they are producing for larger
screens as they have the access speeds to deliver it.”
Driven by higher-access bandwidths, IP, and more capable
devices, Ericsson also foresees less requirements for video publishers to
prepare content specifically for mobile. “Mobile delivery generally now uses
the same delivery protocols, technologies, and video profiles as generic OTT
[over-the-top],” says Wilson. “As we move to 5G, we will see this become even
more ubiquitous and video delivered over mobile will include full HD and UHD
profiles.”
Pre-5G Upgrades and Standardization
On the radio side, the 4G upgrades includes using massive
multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antennas, a way of combining multiple
antennas into devices to increase the throughput dramatically without moving to
5G. Operators are also looking at carrier aggregation, another feature which
can be implemented before the 5G standard is ratified. This combines multiple
spectrum bands into a single device with more throughput and capacity.
Sixty-eight 4.5G networks were commercially deployed
worldwide in 2016, and the number of networks deployed this year is expected to
reach 120, according to Chinese handset brand Huawei.
Nokia, for one, has released a massive MIMO adaptive antenna
as part of its 4.5G upgrade; it can boost speeds up to 1Gbps, which is the
nominal 5G target. The antenna uses 3D beam-forming, where mobile signals are
targeted directly to devices, rather than broadcast in all directions. 3D
beamforming will form part of the 5G spec.
Early commercial rollout for 5G is expected mid-2020, the
rough date that ITU Radiocommunication (ITU-R) is expected to ratify a
standard.
As part of that process, the 3GPP (a collaboration
between telco associations to make a globally applicable standard) is working
toward standardization of a new access technology named 5G New Radio (NR). The
first phase of 5G NR specifications—3GPP Release 15—is expected to be completed
next year. The second part—Phase 2 Release 16—is expected to be completed in
late 2019, allowing for commercial deployment from 2022 onwards.
U.S. chip maker Qualcomm feels the technology is at a
point where there’s sufficient common ground to advance even these timeframes.
It is working with a number of other companies including Nokia, AT&T, NTT
DOCOMO, Vodafone, Ericsson, BT, Telstra, Korea Telecom, Intel, LG and Swisscom,
Etisalat Group, Huawei, Sprint, Vivo, and Deutsche Telekom to support the acceleration
of the 3GPP 5G NR standard.
Its proposal is to use “non-standalone” 5G NR signalling as
part of 3GPP Release 15. This would adopt existing 4G LTE radio and core
network technologies to advance large-scale trials and deployments from 2019,
therefore making it less expensive, it is claimed, for operators to make the
transition to 5G NR.
Huawei,
which received the Outstanding Contribution for LTE Evolution to 5G award at
Mobile World Congress in March, has made large-scale 5G NR field tests and 5G
high- and low-frequency hybrid field tests. These apparently show that
continuous coverage and super-ultra-large capacity can be satisfied
simultaneously, and that a single-user peak of 25Gbps can be achieved. In
addition, Huawei teamed with Deutsche Telekom to perform a millimeter-wave
high-frequency test procedure and achieved a peak rate of 70Gbps—an industry
first.
The 5G hype was strong at the 2017 Mobile World
Congress, where Huawei received an award for Outstanding Contribution for LTE
Evolution to 5G.
Fixed Wireless Cable Substitute
Qualcomm’s announcement coincides with its own development
of a modem capable of supporting 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G on a single chip.
Rival chip maker Intel is also making a big play for the 5G
market after missing the boat on 4G LTE. Its new 5G modem incorporates 3GPP 5G
NR—including low-latency frame structures, advanced channel coding, and massive
MIMO. It says its goal is to support early trials “and to lay a foundation
enabling accelerated development of products that will support the 3GPP NR
specification and help drive global adoption of the 3GPP 5G standard.”
The idea is that 5G will be transmitted first to fixed
wireless access in trial venues and households as a replacement for cable and
fibre optic services.
This will be extremely interesting for providing
next-generation, two-way, IP-based TV services to a wider range of consumers
whilst minimising capital spend/acquisition costs for the operators,” says
Ericsson’s Giles Wilson (right).
After all, as Veale points out, “consumers of broadband data
care little how the internet is connected to them but only that they get speed
and reliability of service.”
Cable giant Liberty Global is dismissive. Keynoting Cable
Congress, CTO Balan Nair said the idea made “no sense” and that the use of
higher frequencies was challenging and that significant investment would be
required to make the technology viable.
Predications for Rollout
Cisco’s latest Mobile Visual Networking Index forecasts that
by 2021, 5G will account for 0.2 percent of connections (25 million), but 1.5
percent of total traffic. Cisco also estimates that by 2021, a 5G connection
will generate nearly 30GB per month, which is 4.7 times more traffic than the
average 4G connection and 10.7 times more traffic than the average 3G
connection.
According to analysts Ovum, more than 50 operators will be
offering 5G services in close to 30 countries by the end of 2021. The majority
of 5G subscriptions will be concentrated in a handful of markets, including the
U.S., China, Japan, and South Korea.
The GSMA expects 5G to have 1.1 billion connections by 2025.
Futuresource believes early rollouts will occur from 2019 (possibly late 2018).
The pre-5G upgrades paving the way for 5G’s introduction will advance network
bandwidth, flexibility, and capacity, and will see MNOs and OTT players able to
provide faster services to more people and devices. Futuresource expects this
to be particularly relevant in two ways: first, for the ways in which we access
content on the go, and second, for the way connectivity will switch between
devices, access technologies, and channels. “We’ll have a better indication of
how services are planning when we see these implemented,” says Veale.
AT&T is rolling out 5G this summer beginning in Austin
and Indianapolis. These will showcase peak speeds of 400Mbps, which is still
someway short of the target 5G speed of 1Gbps.
Verizon is planning to get 5G to households in 11 U.S.
markets by the summer, again as a trial. Five of these networks are being built
with Ericsson to demonstrate the feasibility of fixed wireless access.
In Belgium, service provider Proximus has apparently reached
70Gbps speeds—some 100x faster than 4G—in partnership with Huawei.
“The question is how a theoretical maximum measures up in
practice,” cautions Declan Lonergan of 451 Research. “Tests in a controlled
environment are one thing, but when you have multiple users using the same
network with interference and high demand, you can expect bottlenecks in 5G as
much as 4G.”
Arguably, it is extreme low latency rather than greater
speed which is the headline feature of 5G. “That could be become a key
marketing tool of promoting 5G,” says Mann.
The first operators to launch are likely to be those in
mature Asian markets—principally South Korea and Japan—and the U.S., finds CC
Insight. “Certainly providers in these territories are showing a greater
urgency to be first-to-market and lead on 5G deployment,” says Kester Mann. “In
Europe, Germany and the U.K. are probably at the forefront of 5G. Deutsche
Telekom comes across as the most upbeat and bullish about the technology. BT
will seek to draw on its significant R&D, EE’s strong 4G investment, and
its role in the academic research consortium linked to the University of
Surrey.”
The U.K. government has voiced ambitions for the country”to
be a world leader in 5G” and set aside £1 billion to trial 5G networks.
“If you follow the logic of converged networks, then
anywhere with a greater installed fibre base will have a time-to-market
advantage,” says Stagg. “South Korea will not lose its mobile leadership in a
5G world.” The country’s SK Telecom plans major 5G public trials for the 2018
Winter Olympic Games.
Pipe Dream?
In Europe, EE points to planning and policy (rather than
spectrum) as the main obstacles to 5G growth. “It cannot remain this difficult
to build the infrastructure. We need planning and policy at EU government level
to recognise the flexibility which network operators require.”
While some efforts to launch early or ahead of
standardisation are commendable, the lack of genuine use-cases leads CCS
Insight analyst Kester Mann to question if the technology will be economically
viable.
5G is the centrepiece of technology demos for companies like
Ericsson, here showing off a 5G trial at Mobile World Congress.
“Operators appear little closer to identifying solid
business models that will justify the huge investment required to purchase spectrum
and deploy networks,” he argues. “Indeed, we are beginning to see a consensus
that the ‘build it and they will come’ approach will ultimately prevail.
Discussion that applications such as remote surgery could be a reason to deploy
early networks suggests that the industry is getting worryingly ahead of
itself.”
5G can be used to pipe video to connected cars—and
Futuresource expects media services to cars to “bloom”—but the move to mass
scale autonomous cars which also require 5G connectivity (but with far larger
bandwidth requirements) is a decade or more distant.
“Initially, personal devices will move beyond smartphones,
wearables will become more prominent,” says Veale. “Networks will adapt to
demand and capacity which will introduce new business models for consumers,
B2B, and mission critical offerings. Throw quantum computing into the mix and
the speeds of command and control and data processing that could make possible
and it is not just devices that will dramatically change but human behaviour also.”
[This article appears in the Summer 2017 issue of Streaming
Media Magazine European Edition as "Getting Ready for Video Over
5G."]
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