5G: Hype migrates to facts. 5G has been a hype machine. And so complex that few can truly distinguish reality from fiction. Appledore have recently blogged on Is the Bloom Off the 5G Rose?; this series of three blogs expands based on learnings from MWC-A, Los Angeles. It’s not that 5G is without merits. It is potentially fast, reliable and low latency. But these gifts come with some serious conditions. Looking this gift horse in the mouth, we see that that speed and capacity comes with the baggage of millimeter waves, which means small cells, site acquisition, back-haul, trenching, etc. Cost and time. Millimeter waves: The technology that giveth, taketh away: In the lower spectrum, cells are bigger and therefore these costs are reduced. But so is capacity, speed, and latency increases (after all, latency is fundamentally 1/speed). Appledore has thus argued that any discussion of 5G revenues must begin with specific use cases, customer sets, SLA requirements, and associated willingness to pay. Will they pay for all those cells? Must those cells be in-factory (and thus private)? We’re finally beginning to see practical considerations. Nokia‘s CTO for the Americas gave assembled analysts a very good look 5G evolution, current […]