Connectivity Technology Blog

Mobile internet has become the backbone of modern life, yet the latest GSMA report shows that progress is uneven. While billions enjoy fast 4G and 5G connections, hundreds of millions are still left outside the digital world entirely. The real challenge now is not just building networks but making them sustainable, affordable, and meaningful for the people who need them most. Connectivity has never been closer to universal, but the final stretch is proving to be the hardest. The GSMA’s latest report on 'The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2025' paints a mixed picture of progress and persistent challenges in global mobile internet connectivity. While mobile broadband coverage has continued to expand and network quality is improving in many regions, significant gaps remain, particularly in the world’s most vulnerable communities. As of 2025, 96% of the world’s population lives within the footprint of a mobile broadband network. However, that still leaves around 300 millio...

It's been nearly four years since we made a tutorial on Fixed Wireless Access ( FWA ). Since then a lot has changed. 5G has rolled out much more rapidly then anticipated, more of the LEO satellites are being launched and more operators are being convinced to roll out mmWave based FWA.  At the Qualcomm 5G Summit 2022, Federico Agnoletto – senior economist, GSMA Intelligence, held a Fixed Wireless Access MasterClass. In that, he explained the key business and technical considerations that impact the cost to deploy and operate Fixed Wireless Access networks and services. The following is from the masterclass summary: As 5G Fixed Wireless Access continues to grow and transform broadband access, this masterclass teaches operators how to maximize the return on investment for these technologies. GSMA Intelligence gives insight into the results of its detailed business analysis of Fixed Wireless Access, including comparisons with alternatives, and addressing ever-growing customer and soci...

GSMA's Drone Interest Group ( DIG ) consists of mobile operators and other members from around the world, working with UAS and UTM suppliers and other ecosystem players to encourage the use of cellular communications for drones. The aim of the DIG is to explore opportunities for mobile connectivity to be deployed in commercial drones, share industry knowledge and position mobile operators as key enablers for the autonomous BVLOS growth. DIG hosted their first deep dive session in May which provided a brief overview of the UAS related activities in 3GPP by Helka-Liina Määttänen from Ericsson, also a 3GPP RAN2 delegate. In addition, Francesca Stockton, Product Manager for Verizon Robotics shared real life experiences supporting drones from the Mobile Operator perspective. She touched upon network quality and management, use cases and related performance and also spectrum. The video of the session is embedded below: If you found the above video useful, you would like the video from M...

As we have already started talking about the post-5G world, we need to keep in mind that 5G still has a lot of enhancements and new features in pipeline. Many of these new features will require support of an enhanced backhaul, be it terrestrial or in the sky.  Earlier this year, GSMA released a report on backhaul, titled, "Wireless Backhaul Evolution: Delivering next-generation connectivity" that outlines the evolution of this important area. It has been written by ABI Research and details wireless backhaul for 5G era and the role played by new backhaul and existing bands, as well as technologies that improve spectrum efficiency. The summary of the report says: The transition to 5G will need a sizable backhaul evolution to accommodate growing traffic and new network capabilities. Despite the growing importance of fibre, wireless backhaul is set to play a central role in these developments. This means regulators have a vital role as their decisions moving forward will impactfu...

GSMA together with some mobile network operators recently published a white paper to promote the use of High Altitude Platform Systems (HAPS) technology to meet the need for broadband connectivity worldwide. We have covered HAPS multiple times in our blog posts. They are unmanned aircrafts that fly typically at altitudes of around 20km.  The description of the paper says: Operating in the stratosphere, unmanned high-altitude platforms (HAPS) could bring connectivity to areas that are either not covered, or are only partially covered, by terrestrial cellular networks. This whitepaper highlights the potential of HAPS to meet the need for more broadband connectivity worldwide. HAPS are very versatile: they can be adjusted to prioritise coverage or capacity depending on the use case. Moreover, an aircraft can be deployed to cover a location at short notice. As HAPS can employ LTE and 5G, there are no special requirements on the user equipment: a normal smartphone can be used. As a res...

Manufacturing is undergoing a major generational shift. Industry 4.0, the digitisation and advancement of the manufacturing processes and ecosystem, is set to create far more flexible, efficient and sustainable production lines. 5G for IoT underpins this transformation by enabling manufacturing companies and their supply chain partners the opportunity to utilise emerging technologies such as AI and machine vision to give vastly improved visibility over all aspects of their business. At MWC 2021, GSMA hosted 5G IoT for Industry 4.0 Session that focused on how modern 5G networks are able to provide a tailored, capable and intelligent solutions to enhance the end to end manufacturing process. The video from that sesession is embedded below. You can jump to specific timestamp to watch the relevant part: 00:00 Opening Keynote: 5G IoT for Manufacturing - Aruna Srinivasan, Executive Director, IoT, GSMA ( slides ) 06:41 Panel 1: 5G Networks for Industry 4.0 27:14 Keynote: 5G IoT and Industry 4...

One of the biggest challenges with UAVs and Drones is that there are no harmonized regulations allowing aerial UEs worldwide. While different countries may have different regulations, work like the LTE Aerial Profile is intended to standardize on an approach to remove concerns of interference with ground based users. When it is implemented by the MNOs, the policy will adapt to using LTE for drones.  In Europe there are efforts from European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to enable Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) in a safe and secure manner. The operators can help supporting in this area by, first of all, having a conversation with the national authorities and demonstrate the performances of the network. Also it is highly recommended to participate to the Aerial Connectivity Joint Activity (ACJA) work tasks to help define the right KPIs, the more mobile operators participate the better is the result. In this GSMA IoT WebTalk (embedded below) the theme of partnership is exp...

Fixed Wireless is one of the recurring topics on our blogs (see links to other posts at the end). Now GSMA Intelligence has just released a playbook on this topic. The executive summary says: One of the most interesting potential applications of 5G is in providing access to home broadband, through fixed wireless access (FWA). This hybrid approach combines aspects of traditional mobile and fixed-line delivery methods but is primarily marketed as a ‘home’ internet product. FWA offers the principal advantages of (generally) lower upfront deployment costs relative to fixed options, and capital efficiency gains through the reuse of existing spectrum holdings. The technology has been around for more than a decade through the 3G and 4G eras, particularly in serving rural areas that lack fixed broadband access or have low speeds. At the end of 2020, 492 mobile operators (approximately 50% of the sector) had launched 4G FWA services, with varying levels of ambition. 5G will enable FWA to targe...

I got to see innovations by the Latvian MNO, LMT at MWC 2019. I wrote about it on the Operator Watch Blog as well as 3G4G Blog . Now LMT has announced that they have performed a unique cross-border drone flight. The Google translated press release said: The operation of such flights is associated with a number of unknowns, including mobile network coverage in the air. To test this, on September 2, LMT conducted one of the world's first fully remotely controlled drone cross-border flights out of sight, where a connection to the mobile communication network was used to control the drone. The drone crossed the Latvian-Estonian border, changing mobile operators, but the pilot did not lose control of the drone's control. ... Previous tests performed by LMT in Latvia show that the signal strength of the mobile communication network is even better in some places in the air than on the ground, where it is disturbed by obstacles such as thick walls and trees. On the other hand, in this ...

We have seen on this blog many different companies working to beam ordinary 4G/5G from satellites to space. One new company that came to my attention is Lynk Global (Lynk) that plans to do something similar using nano satellites from the space. To their credit, they have just transmitted an SMS from a LEO satellite to a normal, unmodified mobile phone. Their website says : Lynk’s business is to provide everywhere connectivity directly to the existing 5.2 billion mobile phone users on the planet, and to billions more who will now have a compelling reason to buy a mobile phone. Today’s mobile phone users pay more than $1 trillion a year in total for service. Yet on average, at any given moment, about 750 million phone owners have no connectivity because they live, work or travel outside the range of a ground-based cell tower. Another 2.5 billion people don’t have phones, many because they lack affordable connectivity. The economics of ground-based cell towers make it cost prohi...

One of the 5G differentiators that has been touted for a long time is its ability to offer different QoS to each user and each slice. In practice we have yet to see this granularity in the commercial networks as this requires Standalone 5G networks that are yet to roll out. This has not discouraged any operator or vendor in producing any concept videos to prepare the end users that change is coming. I have talked about 5G consumer uses cases here , 5G enterprise use cases here and looked at real life enterprise 5G use cases in China here . The 5G Guide produced by GSMA talks about how operators will be able start offering differentiated 5G Connectivity for enterprises as opposed to basic connectivity. There is also the option to offer 'Beyond Connectivity' and 'Managed Solutions'. While in this post, I want to really only look at Basic vs Differentiated connectivity, I will look at the other two as well for completion. The following is from ' The 5G Guide ...

GSMA published their global Mobile Economy report recently. While there were not many surprises for me as I have used it over the years for various presentations and reports, others may be a bit surprised, especially with all the hype around 5G. Before we jump into the numbers, the chart that caught my eye is as shown above. Coverage gap is easy to understand because these are the people / areas that have no coverage. The usage gap defines people who are in a region covered by some or the other technology but are not connected. There could be various factors in play because of affordability or no need, etc. The report states that there were 8.0 billion cellular connections (excluding IoT) in 2019 and this will increase to 8.8 billion by 2025. Looking at the mobile connections worldwide, we see that in 2025, there will still be around 5% of the users using 2G (mainly GSM) technology. While this may sound like a small number, this is still roughly 440 millions users worldwide. ...

Back in July 2019, GSMA did an extensive report on 'Closing the Coverage Gap using Innovation to Drive Rural Connectivity'. The report focussed on the 3 main areas that are responsible for most costs; namely, Base Stations, Backhaul and Energy. A detailed blog is available on GSMA Mobile for Development section here . The only mild criticism I have about this blog and the report is that it completely ignores Open RAN. (You can learn about OpenRAN here and see deployment example in Peru as part of Internet Para Todos here ) The PDF of the report is available here . There was also a webinar on this topic. Slides are here and video is embedded below. Related Posts : The 3G4G Blog: A quick tutorial on Open RAN, vRAN & White Box RAN 3G4G Small Cells Blog: KT 5G Skyship Search and Rescue Platform 3G4G Small Cells Blog: Altaeros’ Autonomous Tethered Aerial Cell Tower, SuperTower ST200 Connectivity Technology Blog: AT&T Celebrates 1 million FirstNet Connec...