We attended the 5G Americas conference this week and came away with few themes we felt were impactful: NTN, more spectrum lobbying, 6G, environmental sensing, and Sliced Services. We think the most important of these themes is Satellite NTN/D2C as it has the greatest potential to disrupt the mobile market of all themes.
First, non-terrestrial networks (NTN) are front of mind for T-Mobile US and AT&T, the two major operators attending the show. T-Mobile is well ahead of its two main competitors with its Starlink service that went commercial this past June. One of the speakers at the show cited FCC statistics revealing that the US market has 40-50M users who don’t have cellular access that could be served with NTN. We think NTN D2C has the potential to strip the need to build out terrestrial coverage in rural and even some suburban areas in the 6G era. What wasn’t seriously discussed was the potential that the Starlink service could launch its own mobile service in the wake of its acquisition of $17B worth of nationwide spectrum.
Second, as always for this conference, the 5G Americas organization, the two major carriers (T-Mobile US and AT&T) and major gear-makers (including Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and Qualcomm), were lobbying the US Government for more spectrum so that can can continue to expand their mobile services.
Third, operators couldn’t point to major reasons why 6G is needed. AT&T said that as the industry moves towards 6G, that it wants to focus more on software and enhanced services instead of fixating on new feeds and speeds. T-Mobile US, similarly, said that it cannot say for sure what Terahertz spectrum would be used for, but said it is possible that during the ten-year 6G era (roughly 2030-2040), something will probably come up.
Fourth, one of the new themes for mobile networks in the US market is that the networks can be used for environmental sensing. Recall that a few years ago, Chinese vendors like Huawei have been offering Radio Access Network (RAN) gear that can detect things like incoming drones using little-modified RAN systems.
Fifth, Standalone and Slicing are actively being built out at AT&T and T-Mobile US has demonstrated two major slicing services in the past year or two (emergency services and higher-priority business mobile service).
650 Group researches numerous markets that involve satellite, RAN, and Telecom Core.