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The 5G phones finally arrive quickly and furiously. For example, Samsung's recently announced Galaxy A90 5G brings the best of Samsung's smartphone expertise and 5G technology to a much more reasonable price. There is just one small problem: it will probably not be compatible with the majority of 5G networks in the United States. And it will certainly not be the last 5G phone of this type that will not end up in the US this year or next year.
For a variety of reasons, most US carriers (T-Mobile, AT & T, and Verizon) have chosen to leverage a significant portion of their 5G efforts on a technology called millimeter wave, commonly referred to as "mmWave" in the industry. . This type of 5G operates in an extremely high portion of the RF spectrum (over 24 GHz and up to 60-70 GHz), and was driven primarily by the Qualcomm modems and chipset developers as well. 39, key element of the promise of 5G. But this promise has been extremely slow to achieve.
mmWave is extremely expensive and difficult to deploy, as coverage often requires literal block-by-block deployment in urban environments where these deployments are in progress. When you talk about thousands of city blocks, the task can quickly seem comical in its breadth and speed compared to the experience it provides. mmWave 5G is wayward. It has a very short reach, treats site line obstacles poorly and does not result in any appreciable penetration of the inner signal. Of course, it can be very fast, but if it's too fast as long as you do not turn a corner or enter a store, this speed may prove much less useful than a slower, but more consistent link.
But mmWave has another bigger problem: most phono makers seem almost totally indifferent. OnePlus does not want to use mmWave. LG has not yet adopted the technology, its only 5G device being a mid-band phone (a term for 5G between 2.5GHz and 5GHz) on Sprint in the United States. Nothing indicates that the new Google pixels will accompany it. Chinese manufacturers have essentially no reason to support the technology at the moment, since China, and hardly any other country in the world, uses or plans to use mmWave for its 5G networks in a near future. As for the 5G, American operators such as Verizon said that it was better to start by using mmWave, which is a good long-term strategy because it's the hardest part but the most important of creating a real 5G network. This seems more and more obvious: the first 5G speed tests carried out in the United Kingdom, for example, revealed losses of close to 1 Gbps on medium-band broadband frequencies. If a megacity like London is not an ideal market for mmWave, what is it?
The United States is all alone on the question mmWave (Korea is with us!), The US market then suddenly becomes the leader in advanced telecommunications. If the vast majority of demand for 5G devices in the world over the next few years will be almost exclusively 5G medium band, the United States will become an atypical market. And that almost certainly means we're going to see a lot of cool phones, either stripped of the 5G on their arrival in the US (that's exactly what's happening with the A90), or not coming in from the all.
MmWave optimists may point out that a similar situation had occurred at the beginning of 4G, but that it was mostly a tape compatibility point and that the US was generally ahead of schedule. much of the world in deploying the LTE standard. With 5G, there is a fundamental technological disagreement that will act as a fragmenting force on the market. mmWave is not just about switching a switch in firmware or paying royalties to Qualcomm: dedicated antenna modules, sometimes more than half a dozen of them, are an integral part of industrial design of a phone. Although Samsung has proven that it is possible to create a normal looking phone with these antennas (the S10 + 5G and Note10 5G models are not huge monsters at the beginning of the 4G), it is clear the associated engineering, component, and design costs are obvious. For the same reason that most phone manufacturers refused to support ultra-high-frequency Wi-Fi in their handsets, mmWave might not be attractive. Designing an entire phone around a technology whose use base is negligible is not a trivial matter.
I know what you're asking now: why do not the United States use only the 5G median band, like the rest of the world? Do we know something that they do not know? Unfortunately, the answer is no, not us. In fact, most of the reasons American operators have turned to mmWave technology are a result of the US government's spectrum policy. It's complicated in terms of a complete explanation, but in the short version, our federal government has a lot a median band spectrum that shows no sign of willingness to yield to carriers. This could be slowly changing with the announcement of a bid at 2.5 GHz earlier this year and a wider spectrum of winning spectrum leasing at the FCC, but the results such changes will take years to materialize. Operators will have to bid on this spectrum, and it is only once their access is assured that they can actually create a network. Extrapolate the time needed to order and test compatible handsets from manufacturers. It will probably be at least two years before this spectrum dramatically changes the landscape of 5G in the United States.
It seems more and more that America is betting on the bad fast track, the 5G. And going out will be a slow process.
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