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Current Data Growth Rates May Not Justify Move to 5G-Advanced: Dell'Oro

5G-advanced requires mobile data traffic consumption to increase at higher rates than is now expected to justify investment, Dell’Oro Group said Tuesday. Expected annual growth rates for data are 30% over the next five years, the firm said: “At these…

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rates of growth, existing sub-6 GHz and Millimeter Wave (mmWave) spectrum allocations will be more than enough to support another 10x of mobile data traffic expansion by 2030.” Video could be a “game changer,” Dell’Oro said. “With the typical phone user still spending less than 5% of total smartphone screen time streaming videos on the wireless network, the successful introduction of a new virtual reality or augmented reality device for the masses that would trigger a change in behavior -- increasing the amount of time users spend consuming video on the mobile network.” Industry also needs to rethink the role of high-band spectrum, Dell’Oro said: “While mmWave has come a long way in just a few years, the reality is that the sub-6 GHz spectrum continues to represent the most economical solution, enabling operators to minimize the need for incremental cell sites. Not surprisingly, mmWave still comprises less than 2% of global RAN investments.” The radio access network is “just one piece of the larger connectivity puzzle,” the firm said. “As Huawei representatives pointed out during the company’s Connect 2022 Summit, the shift toward 5G-Advanced needs to be accompanied by improvements in core, storage, computing, optical, and data communications, to name just a few areas,” it said.