Operator clocked “crazy” level of data traffic on Spain’s first millimetre wave network at MWC
Telefónica claimed bragging rights for launching Spain’s first public 5G network running on 26GHz mmWave spectrum in Hall 3 of the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona last week. The network performance was “crazy,” in terms of the amount of data consumed, according to Juan Cambeiro, Manager of 5G Customer Innovation at Telefónica.
Speaking at a media roundtable at MWC23, Cambeiro said the operator saw “huge numbers” for downlink and uplink speeds and “a lot of traffic” on Tuesday, when the number of visitors peaked, even though there are not many people who have mmWave-compatible devices.
Ericsson provided the mmWave radios and RAN processor while Qualcomm demonstrated a range of mmWave devices for the Spanish operator’s new network. The operator said its 5G mmWave in future would be able to provide download speeds of more than 5Gbps and upload speeds of 1Gbps.
Initial use cases
Large venues, stadia and densely populated urban areas are typical initial use cases for mmWave deployments because they can provide much higher capacity over shorter distances than networks using mid- and low-band spectrum.
At the Super Bowl American football championship last month in Glendale, Arizona, for example, Verizon said its customers at the event used 47.8 TB of data in and around the stadium. Of that total mobile traffic, 73.8% was on mmWave radios, according to Brian Mecum, VP of Device Technology at Verizon, speaking at the media roundtable. As the operator had mmWave capacity available in this dense calling environment, it did not have to block usage for anyone, he explained.
Eye on the prize in enterprise
While Cambeiro said boosting capacity in hotspots or stadiums is something Telefónica “must do” to ease network congestion, he said the operator “sees the most opportunities to create new services in the enterprise segment,” namely in manufacturing, logistics, and industrial mobility applications.
The industry interest in mmWave for indoor environments is mostly around giving manufacturers or logistics companies the ability to “take control of everything that moves” and “getting rid of cables,” he said.
“Everyone says the same thing to us: ‘I want full mobility, I don’t want anything fixed to the floor or walls, I want to react and make reconfigurations … according to changing conditions. For that, I need wireless communications, low latency, and reliability,’” said Cambeiro.
Telefónica is working on multiple potential mmWave use cases for industry, such as video analytics for mobile camera installations, augmented reality for remote support in manufacturing, and real-time digital twins.
Cambeiro said the strategy for Telefónica in the short term is to deploy mmWave “on demand for the enterprise.”
Verizon too
Verizon is seeing similar enterprise demand in the U.S. “The enterprise is waking up to the notion that managing Wi Fi is a losing proposition … IT groups don’t want to manage the WiFi … Enterprises are saying, ‘we want mmWave indoor because of the massive capacity and then we want you to manage it’. So there’s a lot of excitement and buzz around indoor mmWave,” said Mecum.
In Spain, Telefónica acquired 1GHz of spectrum in the 26GHz frequency band for €20 million in Spain’s auction in December 2022. Rivals Orange and Vodafone each acquired 400MHz in the 26GHz band, paying €8 million each. The Spanish government decided earlier this year to set aside 450MHz of the 26GHz band for private network use.
According to the GSMA’s latest data, 72 operators around the world have been assigned mmWave spectrum; 15 operators have launched mmWave networks; and there are 128 commercially available 5G mmWave devices.