In November at ITU’s World Radio Conference 2019 WRC-19 meeting in Sharm-el-Sheik Egypt global spectrum regulators agreed to allocate over 10 GHz of mm wave frequency bands for 5G in the 26, 40, 47 and 66 GHz ranges.
In Australia the government intends to auction the first of the mm wave spectrum in early 2021. 2.4 GHz of spectrum in the 26 GHz band (24.1 – 27.5 GHZ) will be auctioned and available for 5G networks. The current 5G networks launched by Telstra and Optus are utilising 3.6 GHz spectrum auctioned in December 2018. In this auction 125 MHz was licensed.
The 2.4 GHz of bandwidth to be offered in 2021 is 19 times larger than the current 125 MHz of available 5G spectrum in Australia and is 2.6 times larger than all the spectrum available (925 MHz) for all the nine bands used for all mobile networks today. Using aggregated 100 MHz wide channels which 5G will offer will once deployed provide some outrageous bragging rights speeds.
The problem for mm wave spectrum, which has already been seen in the USA where this spectrum is already in use, is its very limited and unpredictable range. There is some great work being done around beam steering in both base station and mobile antenna systems to optimise mm wave coverage. Despite this, in the near term at least, the mm wave bands will see greatest benefit and use in providing fabulously fast 5G connections and massive capacity in high density areas like airport lounges, sports arenas, shopping centres, large city downtown areas as well as in some industrial settings.