Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1156271
AUGUST 2019 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 39 Wood: Right now, you have a lot of inter- nal growth. I just heard that retail in Chi- na was at a 14-year low, so that may have an impact. There may be a slowdown that will consolidate the market. At this point, if I were a PCB company, I would continue what I was doing and look for cost efficiency and final yield. Often, the chemistry cost is nothing compared to the final yield; if you can improve 0.5%, then all of your savings would be there. Matties: Those are all bottom-line dollars. Wood: Absolutely. Matties: Is there anything we have not discussed that you would like to share with the industry? Wood: I believe the one thing that people are doing to lower their cost is to buy a piece of automated equipment—VCP sys- tems. The advantage of VCP is if one an- ode is bad, you have another 99 of them, so you lose less than 1% of your thick- ness distribution on one side—one out of 100. But if you have a hoist and that an- ode is sitting in the middle of your panel, you can plate low thickness and create scrap. Right now, everybody is moving toward VCP because they want a high output with low coefficient of variation (COV). To pay for it, they want the high- est plating amperage and plating speed, so the key area is efficiency. We can save money on metal consumption over many months and no anode sludge. I also see automation utilizing robots for loading and unloading of panels, and the equip- ment suppliers are doing a good job of taking advantage of improvements in de- sign. Matties: Well, we certainly appreciate your time today. Thank you. Wood: Okay. Thank you. PCB007 Mobile Performance Report Shows Incredible Speeds on 5G Compared to LTE South Korean operator LG U+ held an edge over the com- petition in Seoul by delivering the fastest 5G speeds and lowest latency among all networks while also providing out- standing 5G data reliability, according to the first in a series of 5G First Look Reports by RootMetrics—the standard for mobile performance benchmarking by IHS Markit. The report discusses 5G performance by South Korean operators KT, LG U+, and SK Telecom, offering insights into the world of 5G and how 5G networks perform from the consumer's perspective. Key takeaways from the report include: • Each operator's median download speeds on 5G were much faster than those on non-5G mode or LTE • All three operators were on 5G during at least 42.2% of RootMetrics download tests • KT and LG U+ led the way with latency with both operators' 5G median download latency twice as fast as that recorded in non-5G mode • Operator highlights: All networks show dramatic speed improvements on 5G LG U+ had a 5G median download speed of 426.4 Mbps that would take only 12s to download a 600MB TV show. Although KT delivered the slowest 5G median download speed across all networks at 163 Mbps, it would still only take about 30s to download a TV show at this speed. Meanwhile, SK Telecom delivered a 5G median download speed of 286.9 Mbps. (Source: IHS Markit)