Lately, the US cellular operators’ commerce affiliation CTIA launched information from its annual survey of members. Its headline centered on a really massive quantity – 100 trillion megabytes – which CTIA claims was the whole quantity of cellular information visitors within the US in 2023. Unsurprisingly, CTIA then pivots to speaking about acquiring extra mid-band spectrum and the necessity for unique nationwide licenses.
However problematically, CTIA’s announcement leaves a number of questions unanswered – and depends on a number of non-sequiturs in arriving at its coverage calls for.
The US is uncommon in how information corresponding to this are revealed. In most international locations, the nationwide regulatory company or telecoms ministry publishes information on the numbers of subscribers, volumes of voice and information visitors, community protection and way more. Companies corresponding to UK’s Ofcom, France’s ARCEP, Japan’s MIC, China’s MIIT and lots of others accumulate info from licensed operators, combination it and publish a wide range of statistical outputs to be used by policymakers, buyers, analysts and others.
However within the US, the FCC and different companies put out little or no statistical information of this sort. As an alternative, that is left to our bodies just like the CTIA, which launch information primarily to assist their very own lobbying positions, slightly than as an unbiased snapshot of {the marketplace}. They will and do body information in a method that helps their place on matters corresponding to spectrum coverage.
At a trivial degree, this will simply be seen within the current launch. No one counts cellular information in megabytes (MB) anymore – most plans and evaluation have used gigabytes, and even terabytes, for ten years or extra. The one purpose that CTIA selected that metric is to create a big quantity for the press launch. I suppose we should always really feel relieved they didn’t spell out ONE HUNDRED TRILLION in all-caps, too.
However the information factors themselves want nearer scrutiny. CTIA claims the visitors figures jumped 36% in 2023, up by 26 trillion MB, from 74T to 100T. (On stage at a current spectrum convention, they even rounded up the 36% to about “40%”).
However what does that quantity truly characterize? The place is that further information from, and what’s it used for? There aren’t any extra specifics, not less than for public consumption.
Helpfully nonetheless, CTIA’s personal report inadvertently offers some hints. From late 2021 onwards, fastened wi-fi entry utilizing 4G/5G networks has grown considerably, including round 4 million new subscribers throughout 2023 alone. A fast estimation reveals that the huge bulk of the claimed visitors derives from FWA, not regular cellular broadband (MBB) for smartphones, autos and comparable units.
That is vital for quite a few causes:
- FWA doesn’t want unique, high-power spectrum to be deployed in all places, not like MBB. Its customers are fastened – properties or enterprise websites. This implies it might probably depend on shared or locally-available spectrum, slightly than needing nationwide licenses. There are various examples of FWA working completely properly in unlicensed spectrum bands, in addition to utilizing CBRS GAA shared spectrum.
- As well as, numerous distributors are engaged on repurposing current 5G mmWave bands (which stay nearly unused by US MNOs) for FWA utilization. Nokia now claims a spread of as much as 12km for line-of-sight utilization. In different phrases, carriers have numerous spectrum choices at their disposal, in the event that they wish to increase their FWA footprint. It doesn’t want but extra unique spectrum.
- FWA subscribers generate round 20-30x the visitors of common MBB customers, however roughly the identical income. That implies that any complaints about visitors development impacting the carriers’ economics and funding are both overstated, or self-created. Why are carriers willingly creating a lot further low revenue-per-bit visitors on their high-cost licensed spectrum – when lower-cost shared and unlicensed bands can be found?
- FWA tends to be deployed and marketed by MNOs primarily in areas the place they’ve extra capability, and “spare” spectrum, corresponding to rural districts or sparse suburban markets with restricted fastened community availability, pace or competitors. This can be why they’ll afford the 20x per-user visitors development, as it’s absorbing spectrum and RAN capability they’ve already paid for.
As well as, CTIA doesn’t make a distinction in its “cellular” visitors statistics between information consumed indoors vs. outside. Trade estimates normally put indoor utilization at 70-80% of mobile information – primarily delivered “outside-in” in properties or companies via the wall from the primary “macro” community towers.
Critically, a lot of this indoor information could possibly be shifted to Wi-Fi – which might additionally probably cut back the power required and carbon footprint as properly. This is a vital space that policymakers ought to be monitoring and amassing information about.
No matter the potential for “offloading” visitors to Wi-Fi or devoted indoor mobile methods (which may additionally use CBRS or mmWave bands), there may be one other situation right here: Greater midband frequencies, particularly above 3GHz, are poor at outdoor-to-indoor penetration, particularly into well-insulated buildings. Because of this even when new full-power spectrum within the 5-8GHz band is made out there for 5G, will probably be nearly ineffective for many of the precise information consumption by finish customers, or not less than very wasteful. Blasting via partitions with superior antennas would simply imply losing many of the capability on warming up the concrete or bricks. And the end-user machine radios and batteries would wrestle much more.
In different phrases, CTIA’s claims about 100T megabytes of cellular information and continued development want a lot nearer scrutiny. That development is generally – maybe 90% – the end result of a deliberate selection by the MNOs, promoting high-traffic / low-revenue FWA companies the place there may be spare capability. It’s padding out the numbers, largely as a result of different 5G companies have been disappointing. Certainly, a lot of the remainder of the information utilization is consumed indoors, the place midband spectrum is of restricted use – and the place Wi-Fi is normally out there as a superior various.
Ideally, policymakers would accumulate their very own statistics about cellular information visitors from the MNOs – and ask for way more granular element about what it’s used for, the place, and wherein bands.
If the carriers wish to make arguments for extra spectrum, it’s incumbent on them to offer way more details about the utilization of their present frequency allocations, and the way that’s altering over time. Given the claims concerning the volumes of knowledge flying round, it appears ironic how little of it pertains to the networks’ personal operation and utilization.
Appendix – FWA visitors estimation methodology
The typical US family makes use of about 650GB of knowledge monthly by way of fastened broadband, with “energy customers” producing as a lot as 2TB of visitors or much more. A remark from T-Cell to an trade web site in January 2024 about its 5G Residence Broadband service says that 1.2TB/month, the purpose at which throttling kicks in, is “over 2X the typical person”, which means that the typical is 400-600TB. (If it was lower than 400GB/mo, then it will have stated 1.2GB was over 3X the typical).
So broadly talking, we will estimate that in 2023 about 4 million FWA clients have been added. If we take a midpoint of 500GB monthly, that interprets to 500,000MB / month, or 6 million MB / yr. That will suggest that, roughly talking, an additional 24 trillion MB within the yr derives from FWA. Clearly these becoming a member of late within the yr wouldn’t have 12 months of visitors, however that’s statistically balanced out by these becoming a member of late in 2022 whose information wouldn’t have utilized earlier that yr.
That 24T MB would suggest that about 90% of the claimed further visitors in 2023 got here from FWA, even with out including in any further utilization by current FWA subscribers. Even when we’re beneficiant and recommend a few of these new customers are comparatively “mild” clients, it appears possible that not less than 70% of the visitors development (18T MB) is from fastened wi-fi. There’s even a small likelihood that current cellular broadband visitors fell, and that FWA made up greater than 100% of the web improve. If CTIA releases extra correct information about FWA visitors – or if the FCC collected and revealed it – we could possibly be extra sure.
Editor’s observe: Dean Bubley (@disruptivedean) is the Founding father of Disruptive Evaluation. He is among the main analysts masking 5G, 6G, Wi-Fi, telco enterprise fashions & regulation, and the emergence of applied sciences corresponding to quantum networking and AI.