5G Gains and Wanes in 2020

5G came out screaming in 2020, and ended the year with a relative thud. The year that unraveled and continues to highlight the best and worst in all of us ends with all three major U.S. carriers claiming nationwide 5G coverage.  5G came out screaming in 2020, and ended the year with a relative thud. The year that unraveled and continues to highlight the best and worst in all of us ends with all three major U.S. carriers claiming nationwide 5G coverage.  The 5G machine made a lot of gains this year, but it’s also apparent that the technology isn’t delivering the level of performance or capabilities it’s expected to in many parts of the country and world at large. This problem isn’t unique to any one carrier. Many people are still waiting for real 5G, let alone a 5G service that’s better than 4G LTE. That wait could drag on for another few years. Network operators and vendors are still mostly telling us to imagine what 5G will deliver versus what it is actually delivering today.  Most of the 5G use cases envisioned by these effective proprietors of 5G are still under development and relegated to labs. Operators and network vendors have a lot of work to do before the dream of a fourth industrial revolution is fueled and made possible by 5G, as has been pointed to by countless telecom and enterprise executives ad nauseam. The leaders at most of these companies are, to be fair, relatively forthright about what 5G is today and what is yet to come. The COVID-19 crisis and ongoing pandemic hasn’t helped matters on any front. 3GPP, the international standards body responsible for establishing specifications for cellular technologies, has faced many delays.  Earlier this month, it noted that the cancellation of face-to-face meetings has forced it to delay the completion of Release 17, the next set of standards, to mid-2022, and that’s working under the assumption that 3GPP can start holding in-person meetings in the second half of 2021. The timeline for Release 18, which 3GPP previously planned to complete by the end of 2021, “is not yet the center of attention,” the group wrote in its latest update. Back in the U.S., Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai set some ambitious goals for 5G at the beginning of the year, and the agency is currently working through a massive auction of mid-band spectrum that some U.S. carriers desperately need to meet their 5G vision. Despite some areas of progress, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel assailed the U.S. government and bureaucrats for failing to develop and adopt a more comprehensive 5G spectrum policy plan, an idea that was first floated in April 2019. Elsewhere in our nation’s capital, the White House’s efforts to position American companies for leadership in 5G appeared to be inexhaustible this year. President Donald Trump, some of his advisors, and agency heads have been talking about empowering U.S.-based technology companies to take the lead on 5G for almost three years, but the market realities are largely unchanged.  The federal government’s heavy-handed approach, as with all things related to the economy, is still slanted in accordance with a general distrust of the Chinese government and companies based there. However, and irrespective of government policies or prodding, many U.S. companies have developed services for 5G. The biggest shakeup to hit the U.S. wireless market in at least 15 years occurred in April when T-Mobile US and Sprint officially merged following a nearly two-year battle with regulators. T-Mobile US previously activated the country’s first nationwide 5G network in December 2019, and in August 2020 it activated the world’s first standalone 5G network operating on a 5G core.  AT&T claimed its 5G network running on low-band spectrum reached nationwide coverage in July, and Verizon announced nationwide coverage on its low-band 5G network in October at Apple’s hotly anticipated 5G iPhone launch event.  GSMA, the global cheerleader for operators, said COVID-19 caused some early slowdown in 5G deployments earlier in 2020, but claims that activity has recovered. As of mid-December, 113 mobile operators had launched 5G networks in 48 countries, according to GSMA. “The near-term outlook in 2021 depends, to a large extent, on the timing of an economic recovery from the pandemic given pressures on consumer incomes,” GSMA wrote in its annual report. “On the enterprise front, 56% of operators see manufacturing as the highest potential for 5G, serviced with a mix of IoT, cloud, and private networks,” it added. Despite all the gains 5G made in 2020, the technology still looks like a blurry mirage, something beyond the horizon that may never come into complete view. Few of the goals set out to be achieved by 5G have been realized. It’s been “early days” for 5G since late 2018, and while progress has been made it’s been incremental and slow. The global pandemic wreaked havoc on many aspects of 5G throughout 2020, and considering the resurgence of global infection rates and spiking death rates in the U.S. and other countries that should be best equipped to combat this challenge, there’s little to suggest 2021 will be any different. If anything, the industry heads into 2021 with a level of certainty that never materialized this year. Nothing, including 5G, will go according to plan, and common activities won’t commence until COVID-19 is beaten.