Signals Flash! | Signals Research Group

How Low Can You Go?

January 30, 2020

In this Signals Flash! we focus exclusively on 5G NR coverage, how it compares between the two operators’ networks as well as with their advertised coverage map. We also cover why our results (and the published coverage maps) almost...

RAN #86 Update

December 12, 2019

We just finished attending the RAN #86 plenary in Sitges, Spain. 3GPP put a partially tied bow on R16 from a RAN1 perspective. Overall, R16 will likely slip by 3 months. 3GPP also somewhat solidified the contents of R17. ...

5G Summit

October 22, 2019

Key Highlights Include the Following: Smooth Sailing. Not surprisingly, vendors felt the transition from LTE to 5G went relatively smoothly. Market hype helped since it drove the ecosystem of device suppliers who didn’t want to get left behind. We tend...

Digging Deeper

July 30, 2019

Although it is evident to us there is a “thermal issue” that is currently impacting at least some 5G smartphones – we’ve seen it with the LG V50 in South Korea and more recently with the Samsung Galaxy S10...

IT'S HERE!

April 5, 2019

On April 3rd, Verizon Wireless announced that it had launched its 5G NR service in Minneapolis and Chicago. Starting on April 4th, SRG commenced its benchmark study of the network. We are in the very early stages of testing...

Death by Tiramisu

December 13, 2018

This week (December 10-13) we are attending the RAN#82 Plenary in Sorrento, Italy. This trip follows on the heels of Qualcomm's Snapdragon event in Maui. In this Signals Flash!, we provide our thoughts based on attending these two events,...

A 450x Variance in Channel Bandwidth

September 13, 2018

This week (September 10-13) we are attending the RAN#81 Plenary in Gold Coast, Australia. With the “completion” of Release 15 back in June (Option 2) and the next major milestones occurring in December, this plenary wasn’t nearly as eventful...

Stick a Fork in it!

June 14, 2018

This week we are attending the RAN#80 Plenary in La Jolla, California. SRG has attended 3GPP meetings since the 5G standardization work started in late 2015 and we’ve been a member company of 3GPP/ETSI since 2016. Given the importance...

Signals Flash! Only [Lots of] Time Will Tell

May 2, 2018

Last week we attended the Brooklyn 5G Summit, an event that is cosponsored by Nokia and NYU, but which brings together all facets of the industry, including major mobile operators from around the world, chipset companies, vertical markets, academia,...

Signals Flash - Fun with Millimeter Wave Signals

February 1, 2018

SRG just completed its first, and likely the world's first, independent benchmark study of a 5G network, specifically a 28 GHz millimeter wave system. For this study, we used the Rohde & Schwarz TSME scanner to collect and analyze...

YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS AN APPROVED OPTION 3 NSA EARLY DROP

December 20, 2017

This week we are attending the RAN#78 Plenary in Lisbon, Portugal. SRG has attended 3GPP meetings since the 5G standardization work started in late 2015 and we’ve been a member company of 3GPP since 2016. Given the importance of...

Signals Flash - 5G in Americas

November 20, 2017

Recently, we attended the 5G America’s analyst workshop in Plano, Texas. We offer some rambling thoughts based on attending the event, along with our perspectives on some major news announcements that have taken place since that trip. We’ll be...

Signals Flash - Brooklyn 5G Summit Key Takeaways

May 3, 2017

In late April we attended the Brooklyn 5G Summit. Key Highlights A Trip Down Memory Lane. Following last year’s Brooklyn 5G Summit we published a Signals Flash report entitled, “Lessons Learned from the Three Little Pigs.” Since nearly a full year...

Signals Flash - RAN#75 Update

March 7, 2017

Although we are barely two days through the RAN#75 Plenary, in Dubrovnik, Croatia, a lot has already happened. Further, the stage is set for some important decisions which will impact Release 15 and Release 16 functionality. We will provide...

4x4 MIMO Preview and 5G Standardization Update

December 20, 2016

Since we will not be publishing our next Signals Ahead report until early January, we would like to close out the year with a special treat - a sneak preview of our forth coming study on 4x4 MIMO and...

I know what I did Last Summer

September 6, 2016

With three Signals Ahead reports in the works, but nothing ready to publish, we decided to crank out a Signals Flash to serve as a hearty appetizer for our upcoming feast of benchmark studies and 5G / NR updates. Upcoming...

Lessons Learned from the Three Little Pigs

May 10, 2016

In this Signals Flash! report we provide our thoughts following our participation at the Brooklyn 5G Summit that we attended in late April. KEY HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING: Lessons Learned from the Three Little Pigs. The greatest risk facing 5G /...

Mobile Broadband Down Under

February 18, 2016

BACKGROUND INFORMATION Data Consumption. In total, we generated at least 800 GB of transferred data on the two networks over a period of only a few days – we’ll have an exact tally after we finish the analysis. We did...

Cloud RAN with a Chance of Virtualization

February 18, 2016

In this Signals Flash! report we provide a synopsis of the RAN World 2016 event that we attended in San Francisco in late January. KEY HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING: C-RAN – Lovers and Skeptics. Like certain polarizing political figures, you either...

Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?

November 10, 2015

In this Signals Flash! report we provide what we felt were the key takeaways from the Huawei Global MBB Forum 2015 that we attended last week in Hong Kong. Huawei's Global MBB Forum 2015 was a World Class event that...

The Long and Winding Road

October 9, 2015

Key Takeaways from the LTE Voice Summit 2015

LTE WITH CAT 9 BEATS BEING A CAT WITH 9 LIVES

May 21, 2015

Late last week we found ourselves in Guangzhou, China where CMCC is in the initial stages of deploying LTE TDD with carrier aggregation (CA). The operator is currently evaluating the benefits of carrier aggregation in its LTE TDD network...

SEEING IS BELIEVING

March 10, 2015

Last week we attended Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, Spain. We spent the week running from meeting to meeting while trying to absorb everything that we were hearing and seeing. Although we can’t come close to claiming that...

SLEEPLESS IN SEOUL

February 19, 2015

We just returned from Seoul, South Korea where we spent four days testing the LG U+ LTE-Advanced 300 Mbps network. We used the LG G Flex 2 (Model LG-F510L) smartphone with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 to conduct the study....

A LAST MINUTE STOCKING STUFFER

December 22, 2014

In order to avoid having to respond to more wellness checks, we’d like everyone to know that we are alive and well and that we haven’t forgotten about you and our Signals Ahead research publication. We’ve got several topics...

FOUR PAIR OF EYES, TWO PAIR OF EARS, AND ONE HEAD OF HAIR

November 25, 2014

Last week we attended the LTE North America event in Dallas, Texas. In addition to presenting a subset of results from our VoLTE benchmark study, chairing several sessions, and participating on numerous panels, we also took the opportunity to...

WHEN COMETH VoLTE?

October 27, 2014

Earlier in the month we attended the Informa VoLTE Summit in “balmy” London. In addition to presenting results from our VoLTE benchmark study during the first day of the event (available for download from our home page), we had...

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!

August 13, 2014

Over a four day period in early August we conducted a benchmark study of SK Telecom’s LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) network. We used a Samsung Galaxy S5 Category 6 (225 Mbps) smartphone as well as a Galaxy S5 Category 4 (150...

RIP VAN WINKLE IS IN THE HOUSE

June 30, 2014

Last week we attended the LTE World Summit in Amsterdam. In this issue of Signals Flash! we provide some highlights and key takeaways from the event. We missed getting out a Signals Ahead report last month but we have...

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2014: AND THE BAND PLAYED ON!

March 5, 2014

Last week we attended Mobile World Congress 2014 along with 85,000 attendees and 5,000 protestors who did their best to disrupt the otherwise fast-paced week of events. This Signals Flash highlights a few observations that we made during the...

SON UPDATE – NICE WAS NICE!

October 29, 2013

Last month we attended Informa’s SON 2013 conference in Nice, France. In addition to chairing Day 2 of the event and moderating a few panels, we had the opportunity to hear from vendors and operators on the topic de...

THE DOT – IT’S COOL AS SH&#!

September 30, 2013

Ericsson just announced the Radio Dot System to address the indoor coverage and capacity issues that plague all mobile networks. With the first release, the system more closely resembles a hybrid active DAS solution but the implied product roadmap...

TWO MORE CHECKMARKS ON THE SRG DRIVE TEST BUCKET LIST

September 4, 2013

Signals Research Group (SRG) just returned from a ten day self-sponsored road trip to Asia during which time we had the opportunity to drive test LTE TDD (Japan) and the Carrier Aggregation feature of LTE Advanced Release 10 (South...

SETTING THE STAGE FOR LTE-ADVANCED AND CARRIER AGGREGATION

July 1, 2013

Last week we attended the LTE World Summit in Amsterdam. In this special issue of Signals Flash! we provide some highlights and key takeaways from the event. Apologies for being late on our next Signals Ahead report, but we’ve...

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2013

March 6, 2013

Following this year’s MWC we offer the following key takeaways in an abbreviated format. We discuss each bullet point in more detail on the subsequent pages. In future editions of our subscription-based Signals Ahead reports we plan to delve...

Addressing a Huge Opportunity and a Critical Market Requirement…

February 21, 2013

Qualcomm announced its entry into the RF front-end (RFFE) market with a suite of new products and a new manufacturing/packaging process called RF POPTM.