A Selection of Recent Books (all available on Amazon)
The 6G Manifesto (2024)
The telecoms industry is rushing towards a 6th generation that it expects to deploy by 2030. But the vision manufacturers and researchers expound is one of “5G-on-steroids”, despite the fact that 5G has disappointed, not delivering any new services and only having limited availability.
This book shows the deep flaws with such an approach and sets out an alternative, more in line with the views of the operators, that delivers always-connected quality coverage at lower cost. It shows how this can be achieved through leveraging other networks such as Wi-Fi and satellite, and through placing intelligence above individual networks. It discusses the tactics needed to bring it about.
The book ends with a clear manifesto from “the people” for a 6G we can all benefit from.
The End of Telecoms History (2024)
Telecoms networks have improved dramatically over the last 150 years. Initially developments were focused on delivering voice calls and then from the 1990s to enabling Internet connectivity. Data capabilities have improved from early 1.2kbit/s modems to networks that can deliver 100Mbits/s or more. And data usage per person has gone from a few Mbytes/s per month to hundreds of Gbytes – nearly a 1 million-fold increase. It is natural to think this progression will continue forever.
But this is not so. Beyond around 10Mbits/s on mobile phones and around 50Mbits/s on fixed broadband, faster data rates make no difference to most. At those speeds there are other constraints such as the Internet servers that limit responsiveness. And our main use – video – only requires 3Mbits/s for high definition. Our use of data is now levelling off, with growth rates already below 20% a year and likely to fall to 0% - a flat level of usage – before the end of the decade.
Those who are well connected, with good home broadband and good mobile coverage have all the connectivity that they need. The journey that started with Morse and Marconi has come to an end. It is the end of history for telecoms. We should rejoice that we have all we need and ensure now that everyone in the world is well-connected. As one journey ends another begins.
Emperor Ofcom's New Clothes (2024)
The market approach to licensed mobile spectrum regulation has hardly changed in a mobile world that has turned itself upside down over the past twenty years. The barriers between the regulator and regulated has left no single person with a full understanding of what its full impact has been. The two authors pull back the curtains and reveal:
- The links OFCOM believe exists between the highest auction bid price and the most economically efficient use of mobile spectrum for the country may never have existed in the UK market.
- The claimed spectrum efficiency benefits of mobile spectrum annual licence fees are as invisible as the emperor’s new clothes.
As a result, what has been delivered in 2023 is a sub-standard mobile quality of coverage, a sub-optimal economic spectrum efficiency and at a cost of billions of pounds to the industry. The authors call for an end to what today is a failed pseudo-market approach and replacing it with an infrastructure quality driven revolution that can transform the current patchy basic mobile coverage to an eventual UK wide outcome where there are not only basic mobile connections available everywhere, but also sufficient data capacity to support all concurrent active users, ensuring each user experience is seamless and uninterrupted.