Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Thursday, October 01, 2020

5G in Argentina: operators without urgency and pending regulatory issues

The mobile market lacks news in 5G for 3 reasons: operators do not see an immediate need to move towards the next generation; the pandemic made it necessary to allocate efforts in 2020 to address changes in traffic behavior; and from the regulatory point of view, it is still time for evaluations, even more with the shock of DNU 690. Faced with the current scenario, 5G would only be commercially available in Argentina in 2022.

For Hernán La Rosa, Product Development Manager at Movistar “Today there is no need for 5G in Argentina. It is ncesssary to understand for what it is going to be used. If we take into account the possibility of having higher throughput, the one provided by 4G is enough for current mobile use. Regarding the latency reduction to 1 or 2 milliseconds, it will be needed for apps that can be remoted and require it. For 5G, you should sacrifice 4G spectrum and sacrifice throughput", he said.

For Telecom, regulatory definitions and technological standards are needed, mainly the allocation of spectrum and greater facilities for the deployment of mobile antenna infrastructure. Meanwhile, during 2019 the NSA (5G Non-Standalone) functionalities were deployed in the Core EPC, as a prelude to an eventual deployment of 5G.

Claro has been working on the Core of its network so that it is prepared for the leap “when the conditions are organized”. Alejandro Quiroga López, director of Regulatory and Institutional Affairs for the firm in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, mentioned among these conditions the availability of spectrum and the existence of an ecosystem in the bands. “But before that, we have to see how DNU 690 comes out. It is not only a semantic issue (in reference to the definition as a public service), but we must know what the rules of the game will be. If the conditions are adverse and the business cases do not go out, the investments are complicated. It is the moment of greatest uncertainty in the last 15 years”, he warned.

In terms of use cases, Telecom sees municipal governments as an ally for 5G, due to the potential for smart cities. It is also preparing on the path to 5G "taking another step in the IoT value chain", as an integrator of end-to-end solutions, and not just as a connectivity provider.

An alternative that operators handle as a first step - and without certainty in the new 5G spectrum landscape - is Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), or dynamic spectrum sharing between 4G and 5G, promoted by the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance association. Claro Brazil chose this path due to the postponement of the tender to 2021 in that country. Ericsson, who participated in this launch as its first case of 5G in Latin America, clarified that with DSS a great change in the provision of services is not achieved, since a shared resource is used (about 10 MHz in 1,800 Mhz and another similar portion at 2,100 Mhz). With new frequencies for 5G speeds between 10 and 20 times faster are achieved.

Brainstorming. From the field of public policy, the Ministry of Public Innovation has been working on the exchange of ideas on the allocation of spectrum for 5G. In any case, it is estimated that until well into 2021 there will be no news.

On the regulatory front, the Ente Nacional de Comunicaciones (Enacom) began a comprehensive study on spectrum management in May, together with Subtic, to verify how the allocation is used and to observe the allocation trends worldwide. Martín Olmos, head of Subtic, admitted in a recent virtual event that the pandemic “changed the agenda” in terms of spectrum evaluations and motivated them to these reevaluations. The survey would be ready by the end of the year, considering not only the attribution for 4G and 5G mobile services but also TV Blanks (TVWS, a field in which there is a strong lobby from manufacturing companies, such as Microsoft, Carlson Wireless Technologies , Metric Systems Corporation, Aviacomm and Adaptrum, among others) and an analysis of frequency reservation for vertical markets.

On the other hand, Telecom had to return the 40 Mhz that exceeded its cap last June, but the stop associated with Covid-19 left the maturity dates on hold. It is estimated that once the emergency is over, the deadline will be set for the fulfillment of this obligation, essential to advance in the reordering of the available spectrum and see how it modifies the caps to be allocated to each operator.

While these issues are being settled, the total economic impact of 5G in Argentina was estimated at US $ 301.9 billion in a survey presented by Nokia, for the period 2020-2035. In terms of productivity, the figure rises to US $ 778,000 million.

Shy advance of eSIMs. Personal pioneered eSIMs in Argentina in August 2019. It estimates that the number of suitable terminals will grow in 2021 as new devices for IoT (wearables), logistics, sales and after-sales emerge on the market.

Movistar launched eSIM at the end of October 2019. The use is low, because there are few terminals that adopt this technology. There are about 1000 eSIMs enabled: more than 90% correspond to iPhone devices.

Coming and going Tests. ?Claro plans to test 5G between February and March 2021 alogn with Nokia. One of the complications they face is the importation of equipment, despite the procedures initiated before Enacom.

In the field of Open RAN, as a new model of open, standardized and more collaborative networks for the 5G era, Movistar had selected NEC, and the idea was to face tests in Argentina, according to Ricardo Kraus, manager of the Bandwith program, confided to Convergencialatina in the Commercial Management of NEC Argentina. Due to the creation of Telefónica HispAm and the refocusing of the Spanish firm on four main markets - Brazil, Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany - it was decided not to carry out this test in Argentina and to carry it out in Brazil and Chile. The Japanese NEC is one of the vendors that seeks to make a place in the 5G era, and even slipped that Movistar could opt for them for an eventual deployment in Argentina.

Quarantine effect. The confinement by Covid-19 forced operators to detect new consumption “red zones” and dimension networks for traffic demands. Personal experienced an unusual increase in the use of its services, with a rise of 70% in mobile voice services and 30% in mobile data. Movistar took customers from voice to data to improve audio quality, which is why its VoLTE product was enhanced, to decongest sites with more compromised 3G coverage: 30% of voice traffic is made over the data network and 75% of its fleet of smartphones supports VoLTE. Hernán La Rosa spoke of a reduction in mobile network traffic due to Wi-fi home connections, with a low peak of 20% in April, although it then stabilized and is at similar levels at the end of 2019. For this reason, mobile data traffic fell by 15%.

Other specific effects of quarantine are:

Faced with a communication that is perceived by the user as critical, 30% choose to carry it out through the data network, instead of Wi-Fi.The prepaid customer has less use. Although the operator does not usually lose it, it demands less from the service.The natural tendency is for it to fall by 5% to 6% year after year, but there were peaks in the first week of quarantine, of 20% on mobile and fixed. Now it stabilized and went to video conferencing.Wi-fi use grew by 20%.Voice over IP (WhatsApp Voice, Teams, Zoom, Skype) grew by 30%.Changes in streaming behavior: Facebook advanced against Instagram and YouTube for the transmission of live events.

Claro deployed its NB-IoT network mainly over 700 Mhz. Since mid-August, it has been available throughout the country and the operator advances with verticals, both through partners of the Supported by Claro program, specialized in business verticals, and with private companies.

The Narrow-Band IoT network was deployed mainly over 700 Mhz. "The adjustments in the sites have been carried out according to a defined plan and dedicated resources were assigned for the NB-IoT network", as explained from Claro.

The operator's plan suffered certain delays, because a business case was not detected. In the latter, connectivity needs emerged focused on the efficient use of bandwidth, and on the autonomy of the devices with respect to the long battery life, two aspects that can only be covered with specific networks for IoT such as NB, and that thus justified the deployment.

The opportunities in NB-IoT seen from Claro are mostly in Smart City: they mentioned the management of street lights or street lighting, parking and waste; measurement of temperature, humidity, alarm systems in smart buildings and smart monitoring of water and gas, among other use cases. On the other hand, the fleet management product, which is sold as “Claro Logístics”, will not use the NB-IoT network, because it does not have efficient battery use needs, and its connectivity needs are covered with other operator networks.

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