Daryl Schoolar

5G has entered full industry hot topic mode. Vendors all want some realistic way to tie their solutions to the next generation of mobile technology. 5G ready and 5G platforms were common product descriptors at Mobile World Congress. Conferences and associations (see 4G World to 5G World and 4G Americas now 5G Americas) want that 5G shine to keep interest high as well. I get it, everybody wants to be relevant and associating with 5G should keep one relevant for the next several years to come. But, here is the thing: nobody is going to be selling much 5G gear until next decade.

On November 10 T-Mobile went against the industry norm of trying to corral mobile video. In contrast to the industry norm T-Mobile fully embraced mobile video with its Binge On offering, allowing unlimited video streaming of selected (and very popular) sites without it counting against the users' monthly data allowance. Sure Binge On doesn't deliver video in HD ( it is 480p) and it doesn't yet include some top video streaming sites, such as YouTube, but T-Mobile is still proactively taking on the biggest source of LTE data growth – video by encouraging the use of video. In contrast most operators tend to discourage the use of streaming video through the enforcement of data caps. T-Mobile is basically telling its subscribers here is our network – bring it on.

Did you miss all the news coming out of LTE World Summit the other week? Did you even know it took place? You might not have known it was even going on if you weren't there. That, however, isn't exactly a bad thing.

Sometimes when I start a project I have a pretty good idea what I will discover. Other times the results are far different than what I expected. That is the case when it comes to mobile operators' current plans when it came to shutting down their 2G and 3G networks.

Last November I had the chance to attend Huawei's Mobile Broadband Symposium in Shanghai, China. As part of the symposium I attended the small cell session and moderated an industry panel on this topic. It was during that panel I realized when it comes to the metro and enterprise space, the small cell was finally showing some real maturity. What triggered this realization for me? Nobody during the session talked about coffee coupons as a small cell application.

We have had commercial LTE Advanced (LTE-A) networks since mid-2013 launches by LGU U Plus and SK Telecom in South Korea. Both of these mobile operators made their LTE-A claims based purely on deploying carrier aggregation (CA). None of the other technology advances coming with LTE-A were used. Those features include coordinated multipoint (CoMP), higher orders of MIMO, enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC), and relay nodes.

CTIA, North America's answer to Mobile World Congress, is just around the corner with a brand new name--Super Mobility Week. The new "super" moniker is to let all of us who thought the old CTIA trade show was on its way out that it is now back and stronger and bigger than ever. Having the CTIA trade show at the same time as 4G World and Competitive Carriers Association annual trade show certainly speaks to bigger; stronger, however, remains to be seen.

It is no secret here in the United States that rural areas lag when it comes to Internet access--both fixed and mobile. It doesn't take me that long travelling by car here in Arizona to find one of those underserved areas. The reason these underserved areas remain is quite clear; the economics of spending million of dollars of infrastructure to provide services to areas where there are few people to pay for services is hard to justify. But those challenges don't mean that companies are completely ignoring those markets.

Two questions tend to bookend the month of February for me. The month starts with everybody asking me what I expect to see at Mobile World Congress, and of course the month ends with what did I see there. For me, the first question is always the easier of the two the answer is based on what I have learned over the twelve months that have passed since last year's MWC. For the second question I only have 4 sleepless days, with sunup to sundown meetings, punctuated by late meals and even later mass-transit commutes to come up with an answer. For that reason, and the fact it is only the start of February, let me share a few of my 2014 MWC predictions.

E-mail makes a great tool for measuring where I am in the year. Notes with subject lines like "hold the date for MWC 2014",  "time to schedule your annual appraisal", and "hey Daryl where are those two reports you promised me in 2013" all tell me another year is coming to an end. End of the year also signals the time of year where people like to look back on the previous twelve months and make predictions on the next twelve. I am no different than others in that area, as I love a good list as much as anybody. The following is my take on some of the things I expect to be the hot topics in LTE in 2014: