As prices come down, I predict 5G is going to explode. ZTE has just brought a quality 5G phone down to US$700. The ZTE Axon 10 Pro 5G uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 top of the line chip. It has a 6.47-inch AMOLED display and a 4000mAh battery. The main camera is 48-megapixels, supported by an ultra-wide 20-megapixel lens and an 8-megapixel telephoto. 

One reason Korea has 1.5 million 5G users is that competing carriers offering rebates have brought effective prices down to US$600-700. Next year, China Mobile expects prices to fall to $300 and I expect demand to accelerate. (I'm watching for parts shortages but so none have appeared.)

Meanwhile, Americans and Koreans are buying 5G phones even where there is no 5G. Who wants a 4G phone likely to be obsolete in a year or two?

China Mobile identified energy efficiency as a major problem for 5G. Massive MIMO - 4G or 5G - is a major energy saver. The MMIMO advances are not quite enough to keep up with expanding usage but important. 

China Mobile estimates each upgraded cell requires 50% more power. When you are installing 2 million cells, that adds up. (China plans 600,000-800,000 5G cells in 2020.) I've seen higher estimates.

Of course, each cell carries three to ten times as much data so energy and cost per bit are much lower. The 5G standard aims for a 90% reduction of energy per bit, although I don't believe that has been achieved outside the laboratory.

With an infinite number of antennas and other requirements rarely met in the field, interference can be reduced to very little.

Soon, buying a 4G phone won't make sense except for the poor. Counterpoint Research is the first with data on where people are buying 5G phones, including in Korea. Many live in areas not yet serviced. Verizon 5G phone purchasers often live far from any 5G coverage, as you can see in the illustration from Counterpoint. Everyone in telecom is now rethinking 5G strategies. 

In hindsight, it makes sense. Who wants to buy a phone likely to be obsolete soon? If you are buying a US$1200 phone, US$100-200 more is a reasonable price to pay for assurance you'll still be happy in two years. 70% to 80% of sales of Samsung's top-of-the-line Galaxy S10 are the 5G model.  It has sold over a million units in 80 days, 12,500 per day.

My forecast is that sales of 5G phones will explode when prices come down. China Mobile predicts prices of US$150-300 in 2020, as does Huawei.

Video surveillance and analytics is the first item in Nokia's suggested uses of 5G. (Chart at left and below.) I've come to the same conclusion, although surveillance usually isn't talked about and sometimes is actually classified. 

Many are considering putting Edge servers with processing, AI, and data stores in telco networks not far from the towers. (MEC) That reduces latency from 25-50 ms to ~15 ms. That yields faster real-time processing and saves the cost of transmitting huge amounts of data to the cloud.

I've made a point of saying "Massive video surveillance," thinking Times Square on New Year's Eve as something beyond the state of the art that might need 5G. Researching this story, I discovered how much is and can be done without the 5G performance. Now, I wonder if 5G/Edge Networks will be needed.

For the millions of people living in Detroit and Chicago, face surveillance may be an imminent reality. Detroit's million-dollar system affords police the ability to scan live video from cameras located at businesses, health clinics, schools, and apartment buildings. Chicago police insist that they do not use face surveillance, but the city nonetheless has paid to acquire and maintain the capability for years. 

According to one source, China already has hundreds of millions of active cameras, many doing facial recognition and feeding terabytes to information to databases.

Verizon shocked many by specifying 30 ms as the latency on its 5G network. Its top officials predicted much faster connections; many, especially politicians, talk of 1 ms. In multiple independent tests, Verizon usually was somewhat better than 30 ms, down to 24 ms In Telstra in Australia, Daniel van Boom and Ian Knighton of CNET found 22 ms in a test. A thoughtful article. A test in Korea returned 25 ms. Several in England were 30-35 ms.

The latency can be brought down by putting special servers inside the carrier system, an Edge Network. Expect 15-25 ms depending on where in the network the servers are deployed. Most will be one to three routers from the cell, perhaps at a C-RAN or exchange. Some will be further back in the network.Verizon is also improving the transport and backhaul on its system, which could be almost as effective as a regional edge network.

1 ms works in the lab, but less than 15-20 ms will be rare on public networks for years. 

When I say anything of substance to D.C. officials, I try to make my comments public in the spirit of the FCC ex parte rules. (What they tell me is off the record unless they say otherwise.) Earl Comstock, back in government after many years, said something particularly cogent; China market of 1.4 billion people provides economies of scale that often result in leadership. So I sent him this note. There's nothing profound here but I thought he'd be amused.

Once the Chinese companies bring in the capability that’s organic to their nation, they have 1.4 billion consumers who will buy their products and then expand their revenues, increase their research and development, and then expand into international markets. 

(The context was whether the world would ultimately choose 25G & 50G Ethernet for 5G backhaul, as China is, or ​the NG-PON2 Verizon is using. Technically they are about even, but he thought the Chinese economies of scale would prevail.) 

     ​We haven't spoken in more than a decade and I didn't know you were back in government.

OFCOM, the British regulator, reports mobile data use per subscriber increasing 25% in 2018. Telefonica Deutschland expects the growth rate from 2017 to 2020 to be 37%, presumably higher in the earlier years. Cisco's VNI predicts North American wireless growth of 31% in 2022.  The traffic growth rate is crucial to get accurate; it determines when a company needs to invest to avoid a problem.

In the chart at left from Cisco VNI data, the blue is 2018 growth and the red the projection for 2022. Every region falls. That corresponds to the experience of almost every country. Growth is rapid when smartphones are being adopted then falls off when most people have smartphones. In Australia, traffic spiked when Netflix arrived. Netflix is now in most countries, so that will be rare going forward.

The important exception is China. Government and company figures are growth over 80% in 2018 despite wide smartphone ownership. My guess is that the increase is due to increased TV watching, as video on demand services like Tencent Video, Youku, and iQIYI have grown very rapidly. Cable TV subscriptions have fallen the last two years at one of the highest rates in the world.

According to a thoughtful 47-page analysis by the world's #3 manufacturer of 5G, Nokia. Looking at the top eight 5G use cases, Nokia confirms

"All are feasible with 4G."

 The inference: 5G is not essential for most of the progress in these areas*. As I looked further into each of these areas, it became clear none of them are likely to drive demand growth sufficient to raise carrier revenue significantly. **

5G will be good for the industry because it will lower costs and increase capacity, not because of new uses. In addition, most consumers believe the myth of 5G miracles and are likely to buy. One million Koreans signed on in the first two months.