Tag: smart city

City Planning for 5G

City and County administrations are struggling to deal with 5G related development and regulatory issues. However, Wireless development issues can no longer be ignored as non-essential / adhoc functions of the City administration. 5G needs urgent attention within City regulatory & development planning departments to prepare for a 5G future. Smart City development work is also part of City Planning for 5G.

5G Wireless policy / regulatory / development framework is needed for following 5G activities:

  1. City Planning Procedures and Policy for Small Cell deployment

    City / County Planning needs to better understanding FCC-18–133 order that was recently passed at federal level and what does this mean for City Planning. How to best create a balance between Public concerns, City Control on Policy & Planning and MNOs demand for 5G Small Cell deployment which is going to grow significantly starting this year and accelerate in 2020 and beyond. We have deep understanding of Wireless & 5G technologies and can be used as subject matter expert to advise City in these matters.

  2. Wireless Permitting

    Wireless deployment is going to grow at public places, Street Furniture and In-Building deployment. What can be done to facilitate In-building Wireless deployments specially as new technology of CBRS and WiFi Wireless deployments is going to grow? This issue is more urgent for deployment of wireless in public places and commercial structures.

  3. Public-Private Partnership

    City can use 5G as new revenue opportunity and create City Furniture, Street Planning & Infrastructure development that can generate extra revenue for City with very little cost. Refer our blog post on Public-Private partnership which covers different ways in which City can help in development of Wireless and what is best policy / strategy to engage in this opportunity. In our view, exclusive contracts with certain MNO (which has been done by few cities) is not the right strategy as it creates unfair advantage for them. This is likely to cause future lawsuits. Cities role is to create level-playing field for all MNOs and this role is new for Cities to play. We can help in creating City’s policy to help create a level-playing field for different MNO’s deployment instead of signing exclusive contracts with certain MNO.

  4. Smart City

    Wireless is playing a crucial role in Smart City Planning and development of smart city initiatives particularly for public parking, Traffic Monitoring, Traffic Cameras, Public Safety and City IoT deployments.

Mobilestack Inc is a 5G Consulting firm engaged with many City, County, State and Country level policy making for Wireless & 5G deployment.
Please connect with Mobilestack Inc to discuss these topics in detail and help create proper City Planning framework for 5G deployment. I can be contacted by email — pgupta at mobilestack dot com.

5G Infrastructure Pillers for Network Densification

5G race has already started. There is talk of USA vs Pacific (China / Japan / S. Korea) competition for this race. What is needed to deploy 5G quickly to win the race?

Until now, Mobile Operators have grown their network independently. All USA Mobile Operators have their own assets for end-to-end solution with very little network sharing or roaming using other MNO’s network within USA. Given the Network densification requirements, this deployment model is not scale-able.

Cost of network densification is huge and not supported by business case of new revenue generation potential as of now. Given this situation, what are the best 5G Infrastructure Pillers for Densification? I have presented my ideas in this article to start a public debate / discussion for public-private partnership that will help in 5G network densification at a reasonable cost.

Pubic Private Partnership

Several key Public Private Partnership (PPP) 5G infrastructure initiatives can be created to help in 5G network densification. Examples are:

Fiber in the ground

In my view, this is a national strategic asset in which US federal / state governments invest to create digital highways much like physical highways system. This digital asset should be available at very reasonable cost to all stakeholders as part of OPEN Digital Highway Access mechanisms.

Fiber infrastructure is a “shared” strategic asset which can be offered to private partners and operators at very low cost with equal, fair, easy access rules without much bureaucracy involved in getting access. This can be called as “building strategic national asset initiative”. Some of this nation-wide IP-network capacity can also be used for defense, public-safety, rural, Smart City and Government IP-network requirements.

Street Furniture access

It is not feasible to develop separate street furniture locations for each operators with independent fiber infrastructure for each of them. One operator with leadership in Street Furniture access or bigger fiber infrastructure will create “unfair long-term advantage” for that specific Operator and erode revenue opportunities for other operators or smaller ISPs.

There is a need to create fair and equal access rule to Government and street assets that encourage network sharing. Creating separate street furniture access for each operator is not a scale-able and economically feasible option. So, fair and equitable rules for shared site access of street furniture managed by Govt / state / city administration at break-even cost is needed.

Three Pillers of 5G

Create regulatory policy and private-public partnership for deployment of following three pillers of 5G infrastructure building blocks:

  • Smart Building

Every building can have multi-MNO neutral-host and private 5G network deployment build on 5G network architecture principles of virtualization, Hardware-software separation, Network-slicing to ensure low cost in-building solution development and operational models.

  • Smart City

5G plays a key role in building Smart City Infrastructure. Develop new regulatory policies with new investments in Retail, Roads, Utiliities, Public-safety and city-level applications that can be replicated across many cities in a consistent manner.

  • Smart Transport

    Smart Transport 5G deployment and operational models must be developed with an objective of 5-year execution plan using Public-Private Partnership investment models. Every car, truck and public vehicle can deploy a 5G hotspot or relay devices for public / private network access, connected car applications and eventually autonomous applications as a long term plan.

Conclusion

These three 5G deployment pillers with Public Private Partnership will create GDP growth that is projected from 5G investments. Without concrete action plan for 5G investments to create GDP growth, this potential will not be achieved.

Private ownership should be encourages where-ever possible. However, fair and equitable Physical Resources access policy is needed to make sure that unfair advantage is not created for a specific operator via long-term agreements of exclusive use for any public physical resource.