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Ericsson | A practitioners’ guide to accelerate 5G for business in 2020
Chapter 4: Three types of spectrum
What different 5G spectrum options mean for your business With 5G, businesses can create a more diverse portfolio and unlock new networking opportunities. The radio spectrum that’s used defines the service characteristics each option can support. In this blog post, we explain the radio spectrum using terminology that any business leader can understand so you can ensure you adopt the best 5G services for your business. This blog post is not for those of you who are already able to explain C-band, sub-6, and mmWave in a way that your kid could understand. But for everyone else, it will help you to communicate to your teams what the 5G spectrum is in simple terms.
How radio spectrum affects your business
Most businesses pay little attention to the radio spectrum used for 4G services, and 4G has spoiled us with ubiquitous mobile network coverage and connectivity. We take mobile networks for granted and expect them to cover every place the sun touches, outdoors and indoors. However, radio spectrum for 5G, includes a range of different frequencies, each with different characteristics. Each of the three variants comes to the market in materially different way, when it comes to performance and coverage. Combinations of two or three spectrum types are possible if they are deployed at the same radio site, but you cannot assume that’s the case from start. The perceived speed has a strong correlation to the number of users sharing the capacity in any given area. The user experience for a larger number of users in a high-speed urban area and fewer users in a rural area with lower network speeds can be perceived as similar. Here we will focus more on the coverage dimension, which is a key factor in early deployments. A word of caution: the interpretation of some of the distance metaphors used vary for each of us, and they are included to illustrate distances rather than providing an absolute measure.
High band: for revolutionary creativity
The most talked about 5G option unlocks creativity in ways never seen before. This variant offers exceptional network speeds, both to and from users and their devices, over short distances. This type of 5G both enhances the mobile broadband services to your phone and allows for fiber-like speeds for fixed wireless broadband in areas not yet covered by fiber. As a rule of thumb, you can expect this option to provide Gigabit speeds over distances shorter than a mile. Either indoor or outdoor, but not reaching through walls and windows. Network build-out with this spectrum type is highly selective. The high band spectrum is appropriate for adding outdoor capacity in urban zones with a high concentration of users, such as train and bus stations, central business districts and around landmarks. Secondly, it can provide fixed broadband to businesses and residential homes in suburban neighborhoods where fiber does not reach yet, and is deployed one neighborhood at a time. The third deployment type is high use places, where 5G can unlock new business value in manufacturing plants, warehouses, sports venues, universities, hospitals, and so forth – where wires are too static and alternative wireless technologies are too slow, too unreliable or to insecure. Expect the high level of creativity made possible here to generate new business models, complementing classic mobile broadband models. One option is to bundle connectivity services and applications for experience centric innovations, to complement mobile broadband where all applications are delivered over the top.
