5G for fixed connectivity in Cuba

ETECSA reports that over 110,100 Cuban households have DSL connectivity using their Nauta Hogar service. There are also shared facilites -- 986 WiFi hotspots (127 in Havana) and 347 Navigation Rooms (44 in Havana) with 1,309 computers (304 in Havana).

These services are dead-ends on the road to hoped-for "computerization." The Cuban population is around 11 million so, after three years, roughly one person in 100 lives in a Nauta home and the services are limited geographically since DSL is only available in the vicinity of telephone central offices and WiFi hotspots and Navigation Rooms are at fixed locations. Furthermore, the connection speeds are low and the prices high.

When the U. S. began making fixed Internet connections to homes, schools, businesses, etc., we had an installed inventory of relatively new last-mile phone lines, television cables, and longer fiber links and we have been expanding that infrastructure for forty years. Cuba does not have those assets and, even if they were willing to invite foreign investment, the gap would continue to grow. (Furthermore, I wouldn't wish a foreign monopoly or duopoly on anyone).

Could 5G wireless help with Cuban fixed connectivity?

Medium-Earth orbit (MEO) satellite Internet service provider SES has been providing Cuban international transit for two years, so they have an established relationship with ETECSA. SES also provides 2, 3 and 4G mobile backhaul and managed mobile service in places like Chad, Pakistan and Papua New Guinea. (They also offer WiFi hotspots as a service).

SES is planning to offer the same services plus focused small-cell connectivity for 5G networks when their next-generation mPower satellites come online. SES has 20 MEO satellites in orbit today and in 2021 they will be adding seven next-generation mPower MEO satellites with over 4,000 shapeable and steerable beams that can be switched under program control, giving the constellation over 30,000 dynamically reconfigurable beams and over 10 Tbps capacity. The mPower satellites will work in conjunction with their current MEO satellites and their geostationary satellites.

Expected Starlink coverage, mid-2020

How about using low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for 5G backhaul? Several companies are developing LEO Internet-service constellations, but SpaceX's Starlink constellation has a clear lead. Simulation of their announced plans shows that they will have coverage over Cuba by around the middle of next year and after that capacity will grow steadily as they launch new satellites. SpaceX plans to focus on the US market at first, but Elon Musk is an iconoclast who refused to serve Trump and I would encourage ETECSA to at least reach out to SpaceX.

So much for backhaul and system integration, how about connectivity to the thousands of local small cells that would be required for fixed broadband? That would require a lot of local fiber, which could be planned and installed by local people. Decentralization of the design and installation of the edge of a fixed 5G network would require more than capital and new technology -- it would require a political shift to a telecommunication policy focused on economic and social goals. Unfortunately, that seems less likely today than it seemed before the confiscation of SNET and other community networks.

Cuba is emphasizing and investing in mobile connectivity today and phones and tablets are fine for applications like content consumption, online shopping, social interaction, and Twitter-style politics, but businesses, schools, content creators, software developers, etc. need larger computers with fast, fixed connectivity. If Karl Marx were alive today, he might say mobile phones were the opiate of the people.

Havana can have 5G before Miami

(Click here for a Spanish translation of this post).

Havana needs 5G more than Miami does.

Compared to Miami, Havana is an Internet desert, but Havana may have 5G wireless connectivity before Miami. 5G architecture, US politics and policy, and the 5G timetable favor Havana. Let's start with 5G architecture.

Architecutre

Small cells (source)

5G will require many "small cells" because it uses high-frequency radio signals that don't travel as far as 4G signals and are more easily blocked by obstructions like trees and buildings. For example, there are about 154,000 cell towers in the US today and the CTIA, an industry association, estimates that there will be 800,000 small cells by 2026.

In Miami, small cell radios will be installed by professional employees of and contractors to the large mobile phone companies. Havana has only one telecommunication company, ETECSA, but it is home to SNET, the world's largest community network that is not connected to the Internet. Today, SNET is illegal but tolerated, and if ETECSA were willing to legitimize and collaborate with SNET, SNET members could play a role in siting and installing small cells. SNET's legal status is currently being reconsidered and by the time Havana is ready to deploy 5G, SNET could play a major cost and time-saving role. (Note that Cuba's new constitution de-centralizes executive governance by reducing provincial government and strengthening municipal government, possibly increasing the likelihood of local control of Internet infrastructure).

Havana's population is about 4.5 times that of Miami, but the population density is about one-tenth of Miami's. Low population density lends itself to citizen installation -- antennas will be relatively easy to site and install. Furthermore, obtaining permission to install them in Havana will be easier than Miami. Wire-line Internet service providers have already installed broadband infrastructure throughout Miami and, since 5G will offer a fixed-broadband alternative, the incumbents will resist it politically. On the other hand, 5G will fill a near-vacuum in Havana -- Havana needs 5G more than Miami does.

Time

Average 4G download speed, Mbps (source)

Wireless standards are complex and evolve over time. The Third Generation Partnership Project was established in 1998 to define 3G mobile standards and is now defining 5G standards. Thousands of people from equipment manufacturers, telecommunication companies, national and international standards organizations, and professional societies are involved in the process and the technology and standards evolve over time. (For example, between February of 2016 and January 2019, average 4G download speed doubled in the US).

While we will see an ad proclaiming that Miami "has 5G" this year or next, the capability and applications will be marginally improved over 4G and only available in limited parts of the city. Perhaps five years from now 5G standards and equipment that can support novel applications will become available.

In the interim, neither city will see much 5G impact, but it will give Havana time to continue with their current program of stopgap measures like 3G mobile access. If the price of 3G is significantly reduced, Cuba will develop trained, demanding Internet users and app developers who are ready to embrace 5G once it is available.

Stopgap measures like 3G, public WiFi, and home DSL will not close the fiber gap between Miami and Havana, but in five years improved terrestrial wireless and low and medium-earth orbit (LEO and MEO) satellite connectivity will be available for 5G backhaul. Cuba is already a customer of MEO Internet-service provider O3b and in five years O3b will have significantly improved capacity and performance. Additionally, LEO providers SpaceX, OneWeb and China's Hongyun Project all plan to be offering service over Cuba in five years. SpaceX is based in the US and OneWeb in Great Britain, so Hongyun may have the inside track here, although they will have less capacity than their competitors.

Politics and policy

source

Trump's trade war with China favors Havana over Miami. As FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel points out: "levying new tariffs on everything from semiconductors to modems to routers is not going to make it any easier to deploy 5G wireless service. In fact, it will make it much more expensive."

His ban against Huawei further advantages Havana since Huawei is the world's leading producer of telecommunication equipment for service providers with a comfortable lead over their 5G competitors Nokia and Ericsson. They are also the number 2, in unit sales, and number 3, in revenue, smartphone manufacturer. If the ban persists, Miami will not have access to Huawei equipment.

By contrast, Huawei has supplied nearly all of Cuba's Internet infrastructure from its backbone to WiFi hotspots and home DSL and they are almost certain to be Cuba's 5G vendor. It is likely that China will contribute financially if they see Cuba as a strategic ally in their effort to extend the Digital Silk Road to Latin America and the Caribbean.

The US government was instrumental in funding the development of the Internet and could adopt positive 5G policies like investing in R&D or providing incentives to participate in the global 5G standards process, but Trump eschews global cooperation and Chinese companies are playing a leading role in the definition of 5G standards, which will solidify Huawei's leadership. Chinese telephone companies with 1.58 billion mobile phone subscriptions, will also influence standards as large 5G equipment customers.

Rather than seeing 5G as a cooperative global effort, Trump sees it as a competitive race and his 5G policy focuses on spectrum allocation (which is going poorly) and a call for State and local governments to improve "access to land, infrastructure, and property that will support new wireless networks, including rural America." [sic] That call sounds like it was drafted by a lobbyist for the incumbent mobile telcos or perhaps an ex-Associate General Counsel at Verizon like FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and it will meet resistance. (China has no such conflict).

I used the word "can" instead of "will" in the title of this post because the outcome depends upon the will of the Cuban government and ETECSA.

A 5G, community network strategy for Cuba (and other developing nations)

In a previous post, I suggested that Cuba might be able to leap over 4G to 5G wireless infrastructure using satellite and terrestrial networks for backhaul. While that would require political and policy change, it would be a good fit with Cuban culture and skills.

Before talking about Cuba, let me say a bit about wireless generations.

Each mobile technology generation used new technology and enabled new applications:

• 1G: Voice calls
• 2G: Digital data for text and sending small images
• 3G: Smartphones for low-quality video, Web browsing, and GPS
• 4G: High speed, lower latency communication for video streaming and chat and interaction with complex Web content

Fifth-generation wireless will be faster than today's 4G and latency is expected be on the order of 1 ms within the 5G network. Radios will be capable of beamforming -- rapidly switching focused beams among large numbers of devices -- and simultaneous two-way (full duplex) transmission at a given frequency. This will enable real-time applications like control of autonomous vehicles, remote medical procedures and augmented and virtual reality as well as fast file transfer and streaming and other, un-imagined applications.

Do not think of this as the evolution of the cell-phone network; think of it as a discontinuity in wireless communication to mobile and fixed users.

In addition to enabling new applications, each mobile computing generation uses different frequency bands and 5G is being designed to use very high frequencies. High-frequency radio waves enable high-speed transmission and small antennas. Being able to fit multiple small, cooperating antennas in a phone or other device (multiple inputs and outputs (MIMO) increases transmission range and speed. However, there is a high-frequency tradeoff -- low-frequency waves travel farther and are better able to penetrate obstacles like buildings and trees than high-frequency waves.

Small cell on the terrace
of a building in Bangalore

High-frequency networks will require a multi-tier architecture. With the current cellular network, phones and other devices communicate with a relatively distant base station that is connected by fiber or high-speed wireless to the Internet. Fifth-generation wireless will require many "small cell" radios that communicate with those high-capacity base stations.

Now back to Cuba (and other developing nations).

As of last year, there were 879 cellular base stations in Cuba, 358 of which had been upgraded to support 3G communication. As of 2016, 85.3% of the population was covered by 2G cellular and 47% of the population had 3G coverage. (Note that 2G coverage has barely increased since 2010 and it has been flat since 2012). If they continue rolling out 3G, it should reach the 85.3% fairly soon, but new base stations will have to be added to cover the entire population.

Upgrading from 2G to 3G requires new equipment and also more backhaul capacity between a base station and the Internet because 3G transmission speeds are greater than 2G and 3G applications use more data. For most Cubans, it would also require the purchase of a new phone. High-speed, 5G service would require much more backhaul capacity and new phones.

In densely populated areas it will be economically feasible to provide that backhaul using fiber, but fiber to support 5G capacity throughout the island would be very expensive. In many locations, satellite connectivity may turn out to be a better backhaul medium than fiber. SES Networks (O3b) will be offering connectivity using their middle-Earth orbit satellites before Cuba is ready for 5G and by the time they are ready, low-Earth orbit satellite connectivity from vendors like OneWeb and SpaceX Starlink will be available.

But what about the large number of small-cell radios that be feeding 5G base stations?

Like today's WiFi radios, they will be installed and maintained by community members and users. Cubans are known for do-it-yourslef innovation, for example in keeping old cars running and installing motors on bicycles and they have built community networks in places like Gaspar, Camagüey and Pinar del Río. Havana's SNET, is said to be the largest community network in the world that is not connected to the global Internet and there are over 8.000 amateur radio operators and over 1,400 active, self-employed programmers in Cuba.

Small cell radios will be semi-automatically configured and simpler to install and maintain than the WiFi radios used in today's street nets, but that is the easy part. Decentralized technology calls for decentralized decision making. Local people who are locally elected should decide questions like how many small cells to deploy in a neighborhood or rural area, where they should be located and how to pay for them. Would the current municipal electoral districts (from 200-3,000 inhabitants) be an appropriate locus of network control?

ETECSA would cede local control but be responsible for acquiring international bandwidth and providing backhaul over fiber or satellite from their base stations. They would also serve as consultants to local communities and could negotiate high-volume discount purchases of locally-owned equipment.

Note that I am still assuming a major role for ETECSA in spite of the fact that historically, nations like Cuba have privatized telecommunication and licensed foreign operators in exchange for investment in infrastructure. In previous posts I have suggested that vested interest and bureaucracy at ETECSA and uncertainty over control may be stifling Cuban Internet expansion. To the extent that that is the case, the new administration would have to change the organizational culture to focus on Cuba's stated economic and social policy goals -- leapfrogging current regulation and policy along with the technology. That may be wishful thinking, but if they are able to do so, they will have an advantage over nations in which private company profit trumps (no pun intended) social goals.

The technology is also ill-defined and unproven. While the standard for the first version of the 5G radio interface between a device and base station is complete, other hardware and software standards are still being developed and 5G is based on technologies that have been tested in trials, but not in large scale practice. The first deployments are not expected until next year, user and network equipment prices are not set and competing technologies like Starry may impact pricing and deployment.

Novel, unproven 5G wireless technologies (source)

In spite of this policy and technology uncertainty, ETECSA can start the ball rolling today by cooperating with and providing Internet gateways to SNET and other street nets, possibly in conjunction with support of the Internet Society and the Organization of American States. They can also learn from the experience of others like Gufinet in Spain and a variety of community networks in the US and elsewhere. At the same time, they should be following the 5G standards process directly and through their vendors, primarily Huawei and SES Networks (O3b), in order to plan for the future.

Cuba's mobile-Internet strategy?

This post is speculative, but I think Cuba may use satellite for 3G backhaul and, when the technologies are ready, leapfrog over 4G to 5G mobile connectivity and next-generation satellite. ETECSA began rolling out 3G connectivity for Cubans about a year ago and a few things have led me to believe they will continue:

• Miguel Díaz-Canel, who many expect to replace Raúl Castro, has stated that "The State will work to make [the Internet] available, accessible, affordable for all." He also cites problems and responsibilities but seems on balance to favor connectivity.
• WiFi hotspots, navigation rooms and home DSL cannot scale to bring "accessible, affordable" connectivity to all, but mobile phones can.
• During 2017, ETECSA, Cuba's government telecommunication monopoly, installed 279 3G base stations, bringing the total number of base stations to 409 and reaching 47% of the population
• Mobile connectivity is becoming available in low-population areas.
• Last December, ETECSA began routing international traffic over the O3b medium-Earth orbit satellite network and now about 5% of their international routes are carried by O3b. (O3b is a subsidiary of SES an established geostationary satellite company).
• O3b added four satellites to their constellation this month and plan to add four more next year, but they will have a much more significant upgrade when they deploy mPOWER, a new generation of satellite technology, in 2021.

The following crowd-sourced maps show Cuba's mobile rollout. (Strong signal: received signal strength indicator (RSSI) > -85dB, Weak: RSSI < -99dB).

Crowdsourced mobile coverage map, February 2017 (Source)

Crowdsourced mobile coverage map, November 2017 (Source)

Given the choice, people would prefer the flexibility, convenience and comfort of mobile or home access over access at a fixed location like a WiFi park or navigation room. Cuba cannot afford the infrastructure upgrade to make home DSL "available, accessible, and affordable for all" and if they could it would require an enormous investment in obsolete technology.

But, could they provide widespread 3G mobile? Doing so would require more base stations and more backhaul from those base stations to the Intenet. I have been told that O3b currently has a satellite-Internet gateway in Jarusco, near Havana, but my guess is that they will install others to provide 3G backhaul. This would not be unprecedented -- for example, O3b provides mobile backhaul for Digicell, which has over 40,000 LTE accounts in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Could Cuba employ a PNG-like strategy for a portion of their mobile backhaul?

Cuba is not identical to PNG. PNG's population is only about 72% of Cuba's, but Cuba has several advantages over PNG. The area of PNG is more than four times that of Cuba and Cuba has superior, universal education, a GDP per capita about 3.5 times that of PNG and more terrestrial Internet infrastructure.

I don't know how much terrestrial backhaul capability Cuba has or what the cost of current and next-generation O3b connectivity will be, but it would be interesting to consider the possibility of free 3G mobile service. Doing so would create a generation of trained, demanding Internet users and lead to innovative, practical applications. At first, that might sound crazy, but we offer free access to sidewalks, roads, broadcast radio and more -- why not provide ubiquitous, free 3G mobile Internet?

Coming back to Earth, we might ask -- shouldn't Cuba install modern 4G technology instead of 3G?

I have long advocated a strategy of relying on stopgap measures like home DSL, WiFi hotspots, navigation rooms, street nets, El Paquete Semanal and 3G mobile service while planning to leapfrog over current technology. Third generation mobile is significantly slower than 4G/LTE, which means much less backhaul and international bandwidth is required. Furthermore, Google, industrious Cubans and other are developing applications that are tailored to work on slow connections and offline on low-cost handsets. (There were 1,432 active, self-employed programmers in Cuba as of last April).

If 3G is a stopgap while waiting for 5G wireless technology to become available, what might the future look like?

As mentioned above O3b plans to deploy their next-generation mPOWER satellite constellation in 2021. MPOWER will be a major advance. Their current satellites can link to 10 edge terminals, but mPOWER satellites will be capable of over 4,000 links each and O3b will offer several terminal models, ranging from very cheap and small (perhaps suitable for an individual cellular base station) to very large. While we may see a limited 5G rollout in advanced nations in 2019, it will not go mainstream for a year or more and will still be maturing and too expensive for either Cuba, PNG or other developing nations for some time after that, so mPOWER will be ready by the time Cuba is ready to "leap" to 5G.

Seven satellites, each with over 4,000 steerable, fully-shapeable beams

It is noteworthy that 5G terrestrial wireless is expected to be used for fixed as well as mobile access, further reducing the need for investment in terrestrial infrastructure. When we speak of 5G connectivity to fixed locations, we are moving beyond the mobile phone as a user terminal. Handheld computers work well for conversation and consuming media but not for content creation. I could have written this blog post on a laptop with a 5G connection, but not on a mobile phone.

At an mPower press conference (video), Steve Collar, SES Networks CEO asked himself a rhetorical question -- "If we wanted to deliver all of the capability that PNG would require for the next 15 years, could we do it on mPOWER without having to use any sort of meaningful terrestrial infrastructure?" and his answer to that was "yes." He went on to say that "If we can deliver the international and domestic traffic for a country on this system ... then we've got something that is genuinely unique." (Collar's comment is roughly 6 minutes before the end of the video).

Several years ago, I suggested that Cuba could use geostationary-orbit satellite Internet service as a stopgap measure until they could afford to leapfrog over today's technology to next-generation infrastructure. They did not go for that idea. Last month, I suggested that they consider low-Earth orbit satellite Internet service. This post splits the difference by suggesting medium-Earth orbit service from O3b. Since ETECSA is already an O3b customer and SES is a European company, this one may be closer to reality -- I'll save those political considerations for a future post.

=====
Update 2/27/2019

SES has published their Full Year 2018 Results. They reported a return to growth in fixed-data sales, citing a full year of revenues from O3b deployment with ETECSA in Cuba as a contributor. They also confirmed their O3b launch schedule. O3b satellites 17-20 will be launched the first quarter of this year and seven next-generation mPOWER satellites will be launched in the first half of 2021. Cuba might be planning to make significant use of these satellites for mobile backhaul and community connectivity.