Today, 5G commercial use has gone through three complete natural years of 2020, 2021 and 2022. During this period, the global 5G infrastructure construction, especially China's 5G infrastructure construction, has made remarkable achievements.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the end of 2022, China has built and opened a total of 2.31 million 5G base stations, accounting for more than 60% of the world; the penetration rate of 5G mobile phone users in the Chinese market has exceeded 30%.
At the same time, in 2022, Release 17, the transitional standard for 5G development, will be officially frozen, which is the first standard formulated after 5G commercial use. On May 17 this year, at the 2023 4th 5G Technology Innovation Symposium hosted by Electronic Enthusiast Network, Liu Kangde, Director of Quectel Communications Products, said: "The freeze of the R17 standard is an important milestone, representing the first phase of 5G. Completed. In the past few years, while investing a lot of manpower and material resources to improve the 5G infrastructure, the industry is also actively exploring the commercial implementation of 5G. In addition to mobile phones and laptops, 5G has achieved explosive growth in the FWA industry.”
5G standard evolution
The 5G FWA market is growing rapidly
FWA is not a new technology, it has been developed as early as the 3G and 4G era. By definition, FWA is a connectivity technology that provides primary broadband access through customer premises equipment (CPE) that supports mobile networks. It can be seen intuitively from the figure below that, both in the past and in the future, the growth of non-5G FWA is relatively limited, and it is expected to gradually decline in 2024.
FWA market statistics and forecast Source: Ericsson
In stark contrast, 5G FWA has grown rapidly since 2020, and the growth rate is very impressive. According to Ericsson's forecast data, the number of 5G FWA connections is expected to grow to approximately 235 million by 2028, accounting for nearly 80% of the total FWA connections. The reason for this is the fit between 5G and FWA technologies.
For 5G, after the peak period of investment and construction in the first three years, there is still a large room for growth in its coverage breadth and depth. For the coverage width, getting through the "last mile" of 5G coverage is the core content of the next "5G advanced construction"; for the coverage depth, how to improve the 5G user experience in hotspot areas is the most urgent problem that the industry needs to solve.
To deal with the above two problems, the 5G coverage in the Sub 6G frequency band is large enough. For consumers and factories that cannot use wired broadband, as well as users in remote areas, 5G FWA based on this frequency band is an ideal solution. Indoor CPE devices need to be configured to meet application requirements. Liu Kangde pointed out that under the Sub 6G frequency band, 5G will gradually introduce 8Rx and PC1.5 features, which further improves the coverage of 5G base stations and can effectively improve data throughput in the marginal range.
5G FWA in the millimeter wave frequency band has better data transmission capabilities, and can increase the network density in designated areas with a performance level not lower than that of wired optical fiber in hotspot applications. It is very suitable for improving the depth of 5G coverage in cities . Of course, since 5G millimeter waves have poorer penetration into buildings, an additional outdoor antenna device is required to reduce signal attenuation. Even so, compared with the optical fiber of the physical line, the convenience and cost performance of its installation are very high. Therefore, combined with the current market situation, in urban scenarios, high-priced broadband for residential networks and office buildings will be the first to be impacted by 5G FWA.
T-Mobile FWA home broadband actual speed test (most local cable fiber optic median speed tests in the United States are less than 200Mbps) Source: T-Mobile
From another perspective, 5G also brings much-needed wireless performance to FWA technology. It can be summarized into three points: first, 5G FWA has a higher rate and bandwidth than traditional 4G FWA, and 5G FWA in the millimeter wave frequency band is comparable to wired optical fiber; In addition, it also provides uRLLC (ultra-reliable and low-latency communication) and mMTC (mass-connected Internet of Things) capabilities, which can empower more terminal application innovations; the third is that 5G brings full data life cycle security protection capabilities, making Users in industries such as medical care, transportation, industry, education, and finance can also make full use of 5G FWA.
Global operators are actively deploying 5G FWA
Since 5G FWA has huge development potential, it is also considered as an opportunity for operators to transform in the new stage of 5G. At present, telecom operators are scrambling to deploy 5G FWA. For example, at the end of November last year, Vodafone Spain launched 5G FWA services in Madrid, Barcelona and other places, and plans to expand this service to another 65 cities in Spain. Ericsson pointed out in the white paper that among the 310 operators surveyed, 238 (77%) provided FWA services. In the past 12 months, the number of operators offering 5G FWA services has increased from 57 (19%) to 88 (29%).
The number of operators providing FWA services worldwide Source: Ericsson
At present, 5G FWA has become an important means for telecom operators to seize the home broadband market. Taking the U.S. market as an example, BroadbandNow Research pointed out in a 2021 report that at least 42 million people in the U.S. do not have access to broadband. For 5G FWA, there is huge market space to be developed. Verizon is one of the first operators in the world to adopt 5G FWA to provide broadband services to families, and it has persisted until now. According to statistics from Verizon, the company is providing 5G FWA services to more than 1 million American households. In the second quarter of 2022 alone, 256,000 new FWA users will be added, most of which are new 5G FWA users.
From the perspective of service types, telecom operators have three obvious changes when deploying 5G FWA. One is the change of tariff form. Previously, FWA services were more charged based on traffic, which is the so-called "best effort" service. At present, more and more operators are beginning to provide "quality of service (QoS)" services, that is, charging based on speed. In the past, QoS services were all fixed broadband services based on wired fiber optics. This significant change shows that 5G FWA is already comparable to fixed broadband in terms of experience, and operators have already used FWA as an alternative to fixed broadband.
Percentage of operators providing FWA services in each region Source: Ericsson
The second is a change in market direction. "South Korea and other countries with sufficient optical fiber development and small areas have relatively weak demand for 5G FWA. However, for North America, Latin America and other places with large populations and sparsely populated areas, 5G is the main means for operators to attract newcomers. At the same time, in the past In the past year, 5G FWA has performed outstandingly in emerging markets." Liu Kangde said.
5G FWA Regional Market Size Changes Source: Ericsson
Relevant statistics show that in the past year or so, 40% of 5G FWA deployments were in emerging markets. In addition, statistics from the North American telecom operator T-Mobile show that from Q4 in 2021 to Q3 in 2022, there will be a net increase of 3.28 million U.S. home broadband households. % are served by traditional fiber optics.
The third is the change of package content. Before the 5G era, FWA business was mainly sold in the form of simple data packets, while 5G FWA business showed a diversified development trend. Therefore, just like traditional optical fibers bundled with hardware such as routers, most commercial 5G FWA operators have launched packages bundled with Wi-Fi Mesh or video and games.
Data usage of FWA broadband users in the United States Source: T-Mobile
However, no matter how the business model changes, as mentioned above, CPE equipment is a necessary key equipment in FWA applications. Liu Kangde pointed out in his sharing: "At present, the 4G CPE equipment market is already in a relatively stable state, and the shipment of 4G CPE equipment will be stable at about 20 million sets/year in the next few years. The market increase will come from 5G CPE equipment, the shipments of this market segment will exceed the shipments of 4G CPE equipment in 2025, and continue to maintain a high growth rate. It is estimated that from 2020 to 2026, the annual compound growth rate of 5G CPE equipment shipments The rate will be around 30%.
He believes: "In addition to the increase in equipment shipments, the design of FWA equipment will also undergo some changes. For example, equipment in remote locations may choose 8Rx technology, that is, adopt an 8-antenna design, which brings certain challenges to solution development. challenge."
In addition to the operator business for consumer broadband and mobile hotspots, Liu Kangde said that 5G FWA also has huge development prospects in areas such as enterprise private networks, industrial Internet of Things, and smart retail.
Quectel communication module allows 5G FWA equipment to adapt to changing situations
In response to the wide range of equipment requirements in 5G FWA, Liu Kangde mentioned in his sharing that Quectel’s RG650x series modules based on Qualcomm’s X75 and X72 platforms are very suitable for creating FWA application solutions.
Qualcomm X75 and X72 platforms are the world's first 5G Advanced-ready modem and RF systems, among which the X72 platform is a 5G modem and RF system optimized for the mainstream market of mobile broadband applications, supporting multi-gigabit downloads and upload speed. Liu Kangde pointed out that the X75 and X72 platforms are the latest series of platforms that support the 5G R17 standard. Quectel RG650x modules based on these platforms have brought many leading advantages:
Support 5G Non-Standalone Networking (NSA) and Standalone Networking (SA) two modes;
Support Massive MIMO enhancement, 5G downlink carrier aggregation and spectrum expansion;
Provide SoC solutions matching with RG650x modules, supporting development based on OpenWrt or RDK-B;
Support extended 8Rx frequency band;
Can support the latest Wi-Fi 7 technology, introduce maximum 4K QAM high-order modulation, and 2.4/5/6G Hz Wi-Fi optional;
Provide rich interface resources such as USXGMII, PCIe and USB 3.1.
In addition, Quectel can also provide antenna products that match the corresponding modules to help customers optimize network connection efficiency, simplify the equipment development process, speed up the time to market for customers' products, and reduce common problems in the development process.
RG650x module application block diagram
These excellent performances allow RG650x series modules to have excellent speed and bandwidth performance in 5G FWA applications. At the same time, the RG650x module supports various Wi-Fi configuration options ranging from "2+2" to "4+4+4". +4" and "4+4" configurations.
In general, RG650x series modules can meet the design requirements of various FWA devices, including CPE, home gateway, enterprise gateway, industrial router, mobile hotspot, etc. Of course, it can also be applied to eMBB terminals or industrial automation applications, such as AR/VR equipment, drones, remote control robots, etc.
postscript
In this sharing, Liu Kangde also mentioned that in addition to the golden track of 5G FWA, the application of 5G RedCap and the application of 5G millimeter wave in the IoT field will bring huge industrial opportunities.
Of course, from the perspective of market growth, in the new stage of 5G development, the next growth of 5G FWA will be the most impressive, becoming the main means for telecom operators to attract new broadband services, and making more users around the world more flexible, high-speed, and reliable access to the 5G network. In various 5G FWA applications, the requirements of equipment will also be different. Choose Quectel 5G RG650x series modules, and you can enjoy the ultimate speed of 5G FWA no matter when, where and in any way. experience.