In a cool, I think you mentioned about every 10 years, there are another new generation of technology coming out or we call it new G. So I'm just curious at what point people decide that we should be having a new technology or who decides that or what kind of new technologies that we need? >> Good question, every technology or specifically every generation of cellular technology is designed with certain goals in mind. Goals with respect to what kind of spirit you want to achieve, what kind of service guarantee you want to provide, what kind of applications and services you want to enable. So there are multiple goals kept in mind when any cellular technology is designed. So when the technology is designed it is designed to not just meet but exceed the requirements of the applications that are foreseen at that time. But once the technology is deployed, invariably, new applications and services come into existence that require far more speed, far more reliability, availability, far lower latency or higher connection density etc. So because market requirements and application aspects continuously change after a technology is designed and deployed, that is one of the most important factors that makes the future generations of technology somewhat inevitable. And when going from 3G to 4G or 4G to 5G, that is a similar rationale that you will observe that 4G was designed to meet the requirements of certain types of applications. But certain other applications and service classes were introduced, for example, virtual reality. 4G was not designed to fully meet the requirements of some of those applications. And on other fronts, the 4G design or WIFI design for that matter is absolutely insufficient to even meet some of the basic requirements of certain other applications and service classes. So in general, that is when industry as a whole begins to look for newer and alternative technologies. Now, as to who makes that decision, well, it is for nearly any communication technology, one or more international standardization bodies or consortiums as they call it. In case of WIFI for example, you may have heard of it, it is the IEEE 802.1X organization. Whereas in case of cellular communications, there are multiple entities. But in general those entities do share some common attributes in that they are international standardization bodies. They comprise members from the public and private sectors from multiple continents and multiple countries. They can also comprise private companies in the field of wireless communications such as modern manufacturers and designers, infrastructure vendor providers, cellular network operators, etc. So periodically, all those stakeholders come together under the banner of that international standardization body. And they decide what kind of requirements we would need to put forth for the upcoming technology and how that technology is going to meet those requirements. In case of cellular communication, I can give you some examples, there is something called ETSI, European Telecommunications Standards Institute. There is ITU, International Telecommunications Union, there is IMT, International Mobile Telecommunications organization. So these are some of the international standards bodies that are more responsible on determining what the next technology like 5G is expected to achieve. And then the responsibility is on another standardization body which is called 3GPP, 3rd Generation Partnership Project. To take those goals and actually design the mechanisms and algorithms that the new technology like 5G will utilize when the rubber hits the road. How exactly 5G will meet the requirements that have been put forth earlier by some of the other standardization bodies. And all those bodies work with consensus, so what you see as an end result which is called the standard as the engineers like to call it. That standard is the consensus work of multiple stakeholders of different backgrounds from different countries and continents. So this in general, how a cellular technology evolves as a matter of course. >> And those three different features that you mentioned that 5G is expecting to serve, do they all work together or do I have to pick and choose which one to use? >> I see your hesitation that is one might think that you can only perform EMBB service at a time not IOT or if you choose IOT you might have to let go of URLLC, that's a very natural and valid question. Thankfully, the answer to that question is no, you don't have to pick and choose technologically those services have been designed so that the same device can utilize multiple services at the same time, provided the network at the other end is also capable of doing so. So the answer to that question is no you don't have to pick and choose that said, how we work at least in the initial generations of 5G. Because it's a whole new ecosystem that has to be upgraded from 4G to 5G. It would be understandable if regular phones tend to emphasize one service or the other. For example, we learned EMBB is about high speed internet. So it is understandable if some of the initial generations of 5G, 4 and to focus more on EMBB that is getting high speed internet for their users rather than URLLC. So although technologically there is no limitation market forces might play out in such a way that certain classes of devices will focus on a certain service class to begin with. Whereas certain other devices will focus on certain other service class. In the long run, however, we will definitely have devices that can support multiple services at the same time. Imagine once again 10 or 15 years ago you will find it very difficult to make a phone call and browse the Internet on your phone at the same time. But today we take it almost for granted that as you can browse the internet and talk to somebody at the same time. So just like that, just how 4G evolved, 5G will also evolve in providing access to multiple services for the same user at the same time in practical terms. There are multiple interesting connotations to that and it reminds me that we are going to talk about one of those later, It's called industriality, so stay tuned for that. But there is another buzzword that I think you may have heard about, it's called V2V or vehicle to vehicle communication. It is also known as CV2X or cellular vehicle 2X meaning everything Communication. Essentially the ability for a car to talk to anybody, it could be a network, it could be an application server, it could be a mapping server or it could be another car on the road. So imagine such a vehicle to vehicle enabled car going at freeway speeds and it is downloading the map for the next 10 or 15 miles. That communication will be EMBB but if there is a safety related communication that simultaneously needs to happen with an adjacent car, that communication would be something like URLLC. To take a simple example, so that car will be able to participate in EMBB communication as well as URLLC communication at the same time. Although technologically it is very much possible, it doesn't fully exist just in all the applications and service classes. But as we go ahead with deployments, we will definitely begin to see that interplay and simultaneous usage of multiple service classes in more and more use cases.
