{"id":275445,"date":"2018-09-23T13:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=275445"},"modified":"2018-09-23T13:02:44","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T11:02:44","slug":"when-to-expect-affordable-5g-routers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/275445-when-to-expect-affordable-5g-routers.html","title":{"rendered":"When to expect affordable 5G routers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mobile operators are readying themselves for the launch of 5G, with many piloting fixed-wireless access using new CPE (customer-premises equipment).<\/p>\n

The 5G craze has spread to South Africa, too, with\u00a0Vodacom<\/strong><\/a> and Comsol<\/strong><\/a> recently trialling 5G connections with speeds of 700Mbps and 1.75Gbps respectively.<\/p>\n

While Vodacom’s demo was a temporary trial, Comsol’s live network will be active until the end of November 2018 and will be accessible to the public.<\/p>\n

For the tests, Vodacom made use of Huawei’s indoor and outdoor 5G CPEs for its demo, while Comsol’s pilot was deployed using Samsung hardware.<\/p>\n

The first wave of these 5G routers are prohibitively expensive, however, and are subsequently not viable for the average consumer.<\/p>\n

MyBroadband spoke to Huawei and Samsung about the development of their 5G customer hardware and when they expect 5G routers to become more affordable.<\/p>\n

Huawei<\/h3>\n

Huawei said it expects to deploy higher production volumes of its equipment in the second half of 2019.<\/p>\n

“Huawei will provide a 5G indoor and outdoor CPE by 2019,” said Huawei Consumer Business Group GM Likun Zhao.<\/p>\n

“Huawei expects the 5G CPE to support large-scale deployment around H2 2019.”<\/p>\n

When it comes affordability, Zhao said Huawei should achieve high device volumes by 2020.<\/p>\n

“Huawei believes that by the year 2020 we will achieve around a million shipments of these routers. The cost will depend on the volumes.”<\/p>\n

“In terms of technical challenges, there are three aspects that we are focusing on.”<\/p>\n

“The first is the development of a 5G chipset with emphasis placed on performance and power consumption,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The second is the adaption of 5G devices with 5G chipsets and a suite of services to offer new features and improved user experience. The third is the compatibility for 5G devices with 5G networks.”<\/p>\n

This means all networks will have to go through rigorous testing in order to ensure that all standards and requirements are adhered to.<\/p>\n

\"Samsung<\/a><\/p>\n

Samsung<\/h3>\n

Samsung told MyBroadband that the company is already selling its 5G CPE.<\/p>\n

“Samsung is already selling both indoor and outdoor CPEs in other countries around the world,” the company said.<\/p>\n

“As soon as the 5G network is commercially available in South Africa, these units will be available.”<\/p>\n

Samsung stated that the rollout of 5G technology will be split into 5G mobile and 5G fixed-wireless access (FWA).<\/p>\n

“5G mobile would cover mobile devices like phones, modems, and routers, while 5G FWA is an alternative to FTTH – where a customer can get a high-speed, low-latency connection by just installing a CPE.”<\/p>\n

“The only obstacle at the moment in South Africa is the availability of spectrum to roll these various solutions out.”<\/p>\n

Now read:\u00a0Verizon launches 5G home Internet with 300Mbps speeds<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MyBroadband spoke to Huawei and Samsung about the development of their 5G CPE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341028,"featured_media":275449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[19420,53861,53863,35,1982,53865,645],"class_list":["post-275445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-5g","tag-5g-routers","tag-consumer-premises-equipment-cpe","tag-headline","tag-huawei","tag-likun-zhao","tag-samsung"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275445"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277023,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275445\/revisions\/277023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}