Qualcomm demos sub-700MHz 5G data calls via Chinese telco upstart

American chip designer Qualcomm has demonstrated what it claimed was the world's first high-bandwidth 5G data call using the n28 (700MHz) low-spectrum band. The call, which used the 2x30MHz arrangement, was performed on a smartphone-style device using a Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G model. The demonstration - performed together …

[martinusher]

...and so it starts

Our (US) government has decided to stand in the way of 'progress' because it doesn't fit its political template. So 'progress' just flows around it and keeps going.

At this rate Mongolia is likely to get far better cellphone coverage than much of the US.

I suppose the governemnt will now try to tell Qualcomm not to work in China with Chinese partners. The Trump administration ramps up its strictures daily -- more were announced today -- but I'm not sure of their efficacy, let alone their legality. (We're currently being ruled by diktats -- executive orders -- all claiming they're legal because of some kind of national emergency. The last country to do this on a large scale was in the 1930s.....Oh, never mind......)

[Nick Ryan]

Is "larger ranges, at a cost of overall network performance" down to the frequency and what blocks it, the chance for more clients within the area sharing the bandwidth or the power required on the client device to communicate on these frequencies (hence why mobile technology tends to spout download speeds and never uploads)?

[rcxb]

It's all about bandwidth and "spectrum reuse". 700MHz will go over-the-horizon, so you really can't have several towers using those same frequencies in a small area. 60GHz won't even go through your walls, and even oxygen causes quick attenuation, so you can (and need to) have one of them in every room of a home. Higher spectrum reuse means you have have one pico cell on every street that doesn't interfere with the same frequencies being used the next street over. Each pico cell having its own high-speed backhaul, multiplying the aggregate bandwidth.

Plus as you go to higher frequencies, there's much more available bandwidth, and it's much easier to make a tiny antenna in your phone that will cover much more of it, so you could have super-fast, 1GHz wide channels, where that's not practical at lower frequencies.

[David Pearce]

sub-700MHz?

The article is describing using the 700-800 MHz band, so where is "sub" coming from?

Below 700 MHz is still television broadcast

[Strangelove]

Not sub 700MHz really, more like sub 800MHz

The international designator N28 refers to

703 – 748 MHz Uplink (phone transmitter) 758 – 803 MHz (Downlink - base-station transmitter)

In the UK that sits over the top end of the TV allocation and nudging an ISM band and above that we have the GSM 900 kit. Other countries may well have other things in that spectrum too. Larger antennas at both ends of the link of course, but also to scale with the waventh larger range, and that makes for larger rural cell sizes, fewer sites and power supplies needed. Like TV won't really go over the horizon but is less worried by buildings, trees rain, and all the things that scatter shorter wavelengths.