December the 15th, 2020 - Croatian Telecom is only continuing its marked success over recent months as it prepares to offer access to its 5G network for more than one million Croatian residents.
As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, after being challenged by competition in mobile communications for a long time, Croatian Telecom (CT) has made a significant and decisive turn this year. The company was the first in all of Croatia to offer 5G commercially, and it already offers it to more than a million citizens across fourteen Croatian cities, then it received recognition from Spetest and Ookla that its 4G network proved to be the 10th fastest mobile network in the world, a result achieved by no other operator from Croatia.
Jutarnji list talked about this with Boris Drilo, a member of CT's board for technology and information technology. Drilo says that he expected a good placement, but that he couldn't have even imagined that CT would be declared the tenth best in the world.
How many 5G users does CT have?
At the moment, there are about 17,000 users with 5G devices on our network. 5G is available to users using certain tariffs until the end of June 2021, without paying a fee. Leading the way are Samsung's models, with a 50 percent share, then iPhone with a 20 percent share, followed by a group of Chinese manufacturers, such as Huawei and Xiaomi.
Why did you rush to offer commercial 5G to Croatian residents for free?
Because it's important to both us and our customers. For us, it's an important technological step forward, a goal in our development path by which we wanted to show ourselves and our partners what we want to achieve. This is important for our users, too, because this year, all the latest mobile phone models supported 5G technology. If you have the best tariffs on our network and the best mobile phones, we want you to have the best user experience, ie the fastest access to mobile Internet and apps.
When 2G, 3G and 4G came out, none of this was discussed, but with the advent of 5G, it was talked about. Is your 5G the real 5G considering that the frequencies for 5G won't be shared until 2021?
CR has been offering 5G commercially, and it is real 5G in terms of how data exchange between mobile phones and base stations works. That's why you have a 5G icon on your phone. Our 5G network works on the frequencies we have now. When we get new frequencies, we'll start using them. In this case it is important to understand that 5G will work on all frequencies, new and old, including those used today for 4G, 3G and 2G technologies.
What enabled you to offer commercial 5G and 5G frequencies before 2021?
When it comes to the rules on the use of the radio frequency spectrum, the regulator Hakom has expanded the definition of technological neutrality of the spectrum we use. So far, that neutrality has applied to 2G, 3G and 4G technologies. 5G technology wasn't included in it because it didn't exist at the time of its writing. This has now been changed by Hakom, which is a common practice all over the world. However, that doesn’t mean we won’t have to go for the allocation of the new 5G spectrum. This is now a transitional solution. The state plans to allocate the 5G frequencies. We hope, given that we believe that it isn't yet time to monetise 5G, that the fees that the state will demand for 5G will be set fairly to enable us to establish the proper infrastructure that will be the basis for digitalisation of the economy and society as soon as possible.
How much faster is surfing over 5G compared to 4G at the moment?
You can currently surf 10 to 15 percent faster on 5G than you can on 4G. This is because they use existing available frequencies, which have so far been used for 4G using a technology called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, and a limited set of available 5G technology capabilities. The plan with the development of 5G is to reach gigabit speeds. For this, we'll have to wait until 2021, when new frequencies will be allocated, for example those at 3.5 GHz, thanks to which the available spectrum will be doubled and a significant increase in speed will be enabled. Currently, all three operators have an average of 90-100 megahertz of spectrum available, and with the allocation of the new spectrum, each operator will receive an additional 100. In parallel, new technological capabilities will be offered on 5G, so the speeds will reach gigabit. In reality, user speeds on 5G networks at 3.5 GHz will be 2-3 times higher than those we now have on 4G.
What does the increase in surf speeds on 5G depend on?
Firstly, they depend on the allocation of a new spectrum next year and on the technological possibilities of combining the existing and new frequency spectrum. The more spectrum we're able to offer for 5G, the higher the speeds will be. At the same time, it's important that users switch from 4G devices to 5G devices in order to take advantage of all the benefits provided by this new technology.
What speeds can Croatian residents expect in the long run?
With the arrival of a new spectrum and new technological capabilities of 5G and up to ten times higher speeds in the future. Ideally up to a gigabit, potentially a gigabit and a half. However, in reality, and in real conditions, it may not be so. For example, 4G user speeds today stand at around 60-70 Mbps, not 300-400 Mbps as achieved in very favourable conditions. Additionally, 5G won't be 1Gbps for everyone nor will such speeds be available everywhere, around 300 Mbps in real conditions should be achievable, however.
Will 5G reduce the number of network crashes for Croatian residents?
5G technology means an advancement in every way. In some segments, the fifth-generation network architecture will be more distributed than the 4G architecture is, which in theory means it should be more resilient and as such more stable. However, each new technology comes with certain 'childhood diseases' that we'll need to be prepared for and work on.
Will 5G increase radiation?
The way things were for 4G are the same as they'll be with 5G. Croatia has one of the strictest regulations on this issue and that hasn't changed. So, everything that is strictly defined for 4G is equally as strictly defined for 5G. The maximum allowable radiation intensity isn't about to change. Everything is going to remain as it was, that is, we're going to remain more rigorous than many developed European countries such as Italy, France, Austria and Great Britain. Such rigorous rules aren't good because they slow down the development of networks and thus slow down the digitalisation and development of the economy and society.
We can already see that with the arrival of 5G, 3G and 4G networks will disappear, and potentially 2G will as well. Will WiFi networks disappear as well?
No. The fifth generation of mobile networks will remain in the domain of mobile networks while WiFi will continue to be used for home networks and related Internet access within households or for specific needs such as Internet access in hotels or conference rooms. Just as 5G will not replace optical Internet access, it will also not replace WiFi, which as a standard continues to evolve to enable the highest possible wireless speeds within a household connected to the Internet via an optical connection. For example, the latest WiFi 6 standard defines speeds of up to 10 Gbps, which isn't possible if you don't have a very high capacity optical connection.
However, in industrial applications, if anyone has even used WiFi until now, there is a good reason to replace it with 5G. I expect 5G to go in the direction of industrial use in this case, it will involve communication with devices, machines and robots. It's to be expected that industrial 5G modules will be much more affordable, and by its very design, 5G envisions much more industrial application than WIFI.
When we talk about technological possibilities, ie the maturation of 5G technology, what is already possible today, for example, on your 5G network?
We presented the cooperation on the transmission of video signals between drones and augmented reality glasses made by the Croatian startup Orqa via 5G. I expect 5G technology to gradually mature over the next five years. Not all 5G functionalities are there from the very beginning. For example, the 5G functionalities that will enable self-driving cars aren't yet there. This requires latency, ie the response speed of the 5G network below 10 milliseconds. For example, we're now at 25-30 milliseconds in real conditions. I think that before that comes, we'll start with the application of 5G sensors in so-called smart solutions, whether that's agriculture, logistics or the municipal infrastructure of cities. 5G is better than 4G technology, as it allows for a much higher sensor density per square kilometre.
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