O2 Criticism – EE Defends Plan to Launch UK 5G Mobile in 2019

Mobile operator EE has today rejected criticism from rival O2, which claimed that their plan to become the first in the UK to launch a commercial 5G mobile network would only result in a “lite” version of the future ultrafast mobile broadband technology (i.e. missing key features).

The situation began earlier this month after the CEO of BT Group, Gavin Patterson, promised (here) that EE would “lead the market to 5G” by “looking to have a commercial product launched within the next 18 months” (i.e. by the end of 2019). This is well ahead of the late (H2) 2020 period, when most of the major operators are expected to begin their commercial rollouts.

Meanwhile the national regulator, Ofcom, has previously said that much of the 5G targeted radio spectrum bands (3.6GHz+, 700MHz etc.) may not be completely ready for commercial use until sometime in 2020, which is also true for other EU member states. Likewise we don’t yet know how much commercial grade hardware will be ready to support the final 5G standard in 2019 (both for the network and consumers).

A Spokesperson for O2 UK said (5G.co.uk):

“It’s likely that there will be a lite version of 5G launched [in the UK] prior to 2020. Any UK operator launching ‘5G’ before 2020 would be using a ‘lite version’ of 5G.

Everyone in the world (including O2 in the UK) is expected to deploy 5G using a ‘non-standalone’ architecture to start with but it’s the ‘standalone’ version which comes after that and will offer the complete 5G experience.

Effectively this means that a 5G launch before 2020 will lack certain capabilities (e.g. super low latency, vehicle communications for autonomous driving, enhanced security).”

However a spokesperson for EE told ISPreview.co.uk that they expect 5G to “evolve massively after its launch, which we’re targeting for 2019” and this “will be real 5G with 5G devices“.

In fairness a lot of network operators may have trouble delivering key features, such as sub-5ms latency, in time for the real-world at launch, albeit with the possible exception of fixed wireless broadband links for home and business connectivity.

A Spokesperson for EE told ISPreview.co.uk:

“4G also evolved from launch to where we are now – we launched with 10MHz of spectrum, and now many of our sites have 65MHz live, so streaming and downloading is a totally different experience today – from a maximum of 50Mbps, to speeds in excess of 400Mbps. And we introduced 4G Calling to the UK in 2016 – before that, voice calls were carried on 2G and 3G. All generations of mobile technology evolve from launch – there’s nothing different about 5G in that respect, and there’s no need for confusing terms like ‘5G Lite’.

5G, at launch, will be another significant step forward in the way consumers experience mobile broadband – lower latency than 4G and more capacity for users to share. And it will evolve over time to see more capacity, even lower latency, the ability to connect billions of devices, and the network slicing capability that opens up vertical markets and new applications.

We’ve always been clear to our technical audience that we’re launching with non-standalone 5G, based on 3GPP Release 15 Option 3. And we’ll be very clear with customers about the capabilities of our 5G at launch, and as we introduce new features that enable new experiences.”

At this point it’s worth casting your minds back to the early launch of 4G services, which initially weren’t much faster than the best that 3G (HSPA) networks had to offer. Similarly LTE-Advanced (4G) technologies are already pushing peak network speeds into Gigabit territory and it will be interesting to see how much faster the early 5G services are in a real world environment.

Lest we forget that there are also some very real limitations that come into play outside of urban areas, where end-users might often only be covered by lower frequency mobile spectrum bands (e.g. 700MHz). In these areas it’s hard to see how 5G will push miles ahead of 4G performance, at least until more of the existing spectrum is re-purposed to support it.

Whatever the outcome, we’re excited to see what emerges between late 2019 and 2020.