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Market analyst Earl Lum slowed down long enough to talk with me about the recent Mobile World Congress Americas conference and his take on 5G, the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) and small cells.
Among the topics covered:- We discussed the different approaches to 5G by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. Both of us are surprised that 5G's beachhead in the U.S. is at millimeter wave.
- While the U.S. will lead in millimeter wave 5G, we're lagging in allocating mid-band spectrum, i.e., between 3 and 6 GHz.
- The initial CBRS rollout will be in the interior regions of the U.S. using General Authorized Access (GAA) licenses.
- The FCC is trying to streamline the regulatory process for deploying small cells, a key component of the 5G network. They want to avoid local politics and unreasonable regulations.
Earl has a wealth of information and is always fun to speak with. Listen to our conversation, which we recorded the morning of 21 September 2018:
