The importance of spatio-temporal infrastructure assessment: Evidence for 5G from the Oxford–Cambridge Arc

Abstract

The roll-out of 5G infrastructure can provide enhanced high capacity, low latency communications enabling a range of new use cases. However, to deliver the improvements 5G promises, we need to understand how to enhance capacity and coverage, at reasonable cost, across space and over time. In this paper, we take a spatiotemporal simulation modeling approach, using industry-standard engineering models of 5G wireless networks, to test how different infrastructure strategies perform under scenarios of uncertain future demand. We use coupled open-source models to analyze a UK growth corridor, a system-of-cities comprising 7 urban areas, known as the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. We find that population growth has a marginal impact on total demand for 5G (up to 15%), as the main factor driving demand is the increase in per user data consumption resulting mainly from video. Additionally, the results suggest only limited justification for deploying 5G based purely on the need for more capacity. Strategies which reuse existing brownfield Macro Cell sites are enough to meet future demand for Enhanced Mobile Broadband, except in the densest urban areas. While spatio-temporal analysis of infrastructure is common in some sectors (e.g. transport, energy and water), there has been a lack of open analysis of digital infrastructure. This study makes a novel contribution by providing an open and reproducible spatiotemporal assessment of different 5G technologies at a time when 5G is starting to roll-out around the world.

Surveying 5G Techno-Economic Research to Inform the Evaluation of 6G Wireless Technologies

“…Often the delivery of eMBB is compared using technoeconomic methods against existing 4G LTE and LTE-Advanced options [102]. Analyses frequently focus on evaluating the cost efficiency of using legacy technologies against state-of-the-art 5G technologies, such as via millimeter wave [103] or ultra-dense HetNets with small cells [104], either indoors [105], [106] or outdoors [107], [108]. Many of these papers have emerged in the peer-reviewed literature after the standardization of 5G in Release 15, compared to earlier work which occurred before standardization, circa-2014-2018 [109]- [111].…”

Policy Choices Can Help Keep 4G and 5G Universal Broadband Affordable

“…While there have been analyses of these selected countries focusing on various parts of the digital ecosystem (Ahmad et al, 2019;Avilés, 2020;Cave and Mariscal, 2020;Hameed et al, 2018;Ignacio et al, 2020;Mir and Dangerfield, 2013;Ovando, 2020), few examples develop a scientifically reproducible open-source codebase which can be used to test real world decisions. Building on national 5G assessments carried out in OECD markets, such as the UK (Oughton et al, 2018b;Oughton andFrias, 2016, 2018;Oughton and Russell, 2020) and the Netherlands (Oughton et al, 2019a), the Python Telecommunications Assessment Library (pytal) is developed to provide a globally-scalable simulation model which can be applied to undertake cross-country comparative 4G and 5G analytics.…”

Predicting cell phone adoption metrics using machine learning and satellite imagery

“…The problem therefore is that in areas of demand uncertainty (often exacerbated by a lack of data), the necessary infrastructure required for economic development is not delivered leading to market failure (Oughton et al, 2017;Thoung et al, 2016). Although solving coverage issues alone may not eliminate the digital divide (Reisdorf et al, 2020), infrastructure is a necessary prerequisite to gaining sustainable economic development benefits from digital technologies and the wider positive societal impacts (Chester and Allenby, 2019;Farquharson et al, 2018;Graham and Dutton, 2019;Hall et al, 2016;Oughton and Russell, 2020;Parker et al, 2014;Saxe and MacAskill, 2019). Thus, market failure issues must be addressed.…”