| |June 20189CIOReview5GGoogleDensificationThe general shift in the wireless in-dustry for new site builds is from cell towers to street poles, from large-sized structures to miniaturized equipment. Densification means adding more sites where users congregate--on city streets and inside large buildings. Metro cell deployments continue to attract a lot of attention, and deploy-ments have begun to accelerate in North America. The question is when there will be a major uptick in other parts of the world. I expect to see a significant increase for these kinds of deployments in the coming two to four years.The in-building wireless market continues to move from a carrier-funded to enterprise-funded model. We've been talking about this transi-tion for a while, and it continues to make headway. The big challenge here is getting the MNOs and enterprises on the same page in terms of roles and responsibilities, deployment qual-ity and other logistics. CommScope continues to strengthen our exten-sive partner network to better serve and empower enterprises in their wireless needs.Densification also includes adding more spectrum to existing sites. For macro network base station antennas, we continue to integrate more capa-bility and add more ports on antennas (up to 8, 10 or 12 ports) to help push more capacity to existing sites. The evolution to the 4.3-10 connector size is important here. The industry is also exploring millimeter wave spectrum, which we see playing a role in fixed wireless access networks.VirtualizationEverything is being virtualized in wireless networks. The first step in network evolution toward capacity virtualization is deploying Centralized Radio Access Networks (C-RAN), which pull baseband processing into a centralized location serving multi-ple cell sites. A US MNO is already utilizing C-RAN to link three macro sites and 30 metro sites across the downtown area of a major city. Fib-er cabling connects all of these sites. In the future, such deployments will enable true C-RAN, meaning Cloud-RAN, where network capacity can be moved around to hot spots, as needed, throughout the day. At the cell tower site, the C-RAN architecture makes it possible for op-erators to use smaller cabinets and platforms at the bottom of the tower because there is less equipment re-quired at the edge. CommScope now offers pre-assembled steel platforms with cabinets and generators already installed and tested to address this market need. MNOs will hopefully enjoy some cost savings due to lower power requirements and leasing costs in the C-RAN model.OptimizationOperators are still highly focused on providing a secure, reliable user ex-perience, and rightly so. Keeping customers happy is the core of their businesses. How to make the best use unlicensed spectrum is a question be-ing sorted out now. The rudimentary first steps involve offloading traffic onto Wi-Fi, but that does not enable the level of service quality MNOs want. LTE-Unlicensed and License-Assisted Access make carrier-controlled use of unlicensed spectrum possible. MNOs still get the benefits of offload but can better control the experience. Ulti-mately there will be a co-existence of Wi-Fi, other unlicensed technologies and licensed spectrum especially in-side buildings. Managing spectrum to minimize network performance issues remains a mission-critical concern.Network ConvergenceLooking down the road a bit further, an emerging trend--and buzz word for last 10 years--is network conver-gence. It's been talked about a lot, but I see it truly happening in 5G. Net-work convergence means wireline and wireless networks coming together to best serve users. Fiber networks will become more pervasive in carrying wireless network traffic, migrating from the core to the network edge. The last mile can be fiber or wire-less, with millimeter wave competing with fiber for short drops in the RAN. Wireless has clearly won in user pref-erences, but it will be a combination of wireless and fiber that links them back to the core. None of these trends--densifi-cation, virtualization, optimization and convergence--is brand new. But CommScope is seeing more work being done, and more resources be-ing deployed, for each of them. The deployment of more cell sites, capac-ity, virtualization, spectrum and fiber will all continue. The one constant in the wireless industry is "more." Us-ers want more bandwidth, MNOs need more capacity, and vendors like CommScope are moving quick-ly ahead to develop more solutions and make them more efficient in the process. While that might sound like "more of the same," current efforts are laying the foundation for 5G. Ray Butler
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