AT&T sells Warner Media to sharpen focus on 5G
AT&T has u-turned by selling its Warner Media entertainment business to Discovery just three years after acquiring it in the controversial $85bn purchase of Time Warner.
This dramatic shift in direction is an attempt to refocus on the core telco business after becoming mired in debt that has deprived the company of capital to invest in its 5G network and keep pace with T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless.
This $43bn sale by AT&T is the largest of three recent retreats by US telcos from media and entertainment. Verizon sold its AOL and Yahoo assets for $5bn earlier this month, while T-Mobile closed its T-Vision streaming service in March, in that case after only five months of operation.
OPC Foundation and 5G-ACIA collaborate over 5G
The OPC Foundation and the 5G-ACIA, organizations promoting OPC-based machine protocols and wide area 5G for industry, in April 2021 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU). The pair intend to integrate the latest release of OPC’s standard protocol stack with 5G to enhance wireless communication with industrial grade reliability and latency guarantees.
OPC UA is an updated version of the widely deployed Open Communications Standard (OPC) protocol stack. The ‘unified automation’ (UA) iteration of OPC includes all previous ‘OPC Classic’ and ‘OPC DA’ capabilities but adds several functions, including discovery to locate OPC servers on local networks and subscriptions to monitor data flow and anomalies.
GSMA declares 6 GHz a perfect fit for 5G
The future of 5G is in jeopardy unless governments open up larger amounts of spectrum in the 6 GHz range (5925-7125 MHz), according to the GSMA. In a joint statement with Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia and ZTE, the association asserted that “5G is a pillar of digital transformation”, and furthermore that spectrum in the 6 GHz range is affordable and “sits at a balancing point between coverage and capacity”.
The GSMA is not only calling for release of this midband spectrum, but is also pushing for global alignment in the process. Governments around the world were diverging over their 6 GHz plans, the GSMA added, citing China’s plan to use the entire 1,200 megahertz in the 6 GHz band for 5G, while Europe, Africa and the Middle East have opted to split the band, with some going towards 5G, and the rest to WiFi.
Covid-19 could delay Indian 5G launch
The Covid-19 pandemic could delay launch of 5G technology in India, according to Gopal Vittal, CEO of Indian telco Bharti Airtel. Speaking at a press conference, Vittal anticipated that the 5G auction originally scheduled for December 2021 could be put back a few months.
Airtel in January 2021 carried out a 5G test on a live network in Hyderabad and said then its network was fully ready for a commercial launch. India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) then recently authorized Indian carriers to carry out 5G trials.