11542 search results for Open RAN

The promise that 5G allied with AI, and especially machine learning, would transform robotics has inevitably led to some disillusionment, but there are nonetheless examples of significant progress. It is more realistic to regard 5G as accelerating progress towards mobile, autonomous and reconfigurable robots, in a journey that certainly began with LTE and has a long way to go. The benefits of faster, higher capacity, more robust and lower latency wireless communications opened the door to mobile high-performance robots able to benefit from levels of computation that would not be possible onboard. This embraces mobile ground-based and airborne robots, overlapping with drones, able to perform feats of navigation, manipulation and control beyond the current generation. It also means that cables…

Intel to invest €80bn in European foundries and target automotive sector As anticipated, Intel plans to invest heavily in European chip plants as it looks to build up its foundry business to challenge global leader TSMC, taking advantage of intense demand from the automotive sector, in particular, as semiconductor shortages and pandemic-driven supply chain disruptions bite. CEO Pat Gelsinger has made the creation of a large-scale foundry business a key element of his growth strategy but he said he is not interested in “investing backwards” to support old designs, even to address short term opportunities from current shortages. Instead, Intel will spend up to €80bn on European fabs over the next 10 years and focus on the most advanced nodes,…

The Smart Africa Alliance is a project with the ambitious goal of creating a common digital market spanning 32 countries. Currently  it is in a lobbying position, trying to secure commitment from governments, while it is also developing blueprints and processes that could be used in a more immediate and tactical way for cross-border business. Its latest member is Afriwave Telecom of Ghana. Its contribution centers on its status as the only licensed Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH) operator in Ghana, providing these services to the countries four MNOs – MTN, Vodafone, AirtelTigo and Glo Mobile. It also provides these services to international wholesale carriers that route traffic into Ghana. Afriwave hopes to place its framework into the Alliance’s One Africa Network…

A UK government-backed project focused on 5G in manufacturing has moved into its second phase. 5G-ENCODE’s first phase was based on 4G and aimed to establish a baseline against which results from the private 5G network testbed could be benchmarked. The results of Phase 1 will be shared next month. This new phase will assess how well 5G meets specific industrial use cases in manufacturing such as AR/VR to support training or design; tracking of time-sensitive assets; or real time in-process monitoring, among others. This stage of 5G-ENCODE sees project participants creating a network slice that knits together slices from one transport network and two separate private networks, located several miles apart. “For the first time in the world, an…

Any new and disruptive technology will have teething problems, especially one in which many operators and vendors are trying to assert their influence, and one that carries the weight of political expectations also. Open RAN is such a platform, and continues to attract its share of scepticism – some commercially motivated, some very valid – while also building up its support base. One complication is the presence of Chinese intellectual property and member participation in the O-RAN framework, the most prominent set of specifications underpinning the push towards an open disaggregated RAN. This works against the US-inspired narrative that Open RAN will be a way to exclude Chinese technology (and alleged spyware risks) from 5G networks and build local ecosystems.…

While 5G roll-out is barely beginning in many markets, the USA and China are squaring up over 6G as a major focal point for their global competitiveness, both eyeing up 2030 for first deployments. China first identified this date as a target for first availability of commercial services back in 2018 when the country began 6G research, firming up on this in a paper published early June 2021 by the government-backed China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). This paper set out three core use cases and 10 key technical developments that would underpin them. Then three months later, the USA’s Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) staged its inaugural 6G Summit in Denver on August 31. This was a…

Operators are increasingly seeking partnerships with hyperscalers to help them expand into new geographies and services, but vendors, too, know that alliances with cloud giants can be valuable tools of expansion. Nokia has been particularly active in partnering with US cloud providers to accelerate the growth of its cloud-based enterprise networking offerings, and to avoid direct conflict with such powerful stakeholders. Now NEC is looking for similar benefits, extending its strategic collaboration with AWS to target government and enterprise customers. For operators, there is a risk that their key vendors will be able to offer some services, such as private networks or hosted 5G cores, on their own, bypassing telco connectivity and placing the cloud providers at the center of…

European governments are very interested in the idea of national clouds that would support data sovereignty and privacy, guard against cyberattacks, and exclude Chinese technology. The national telcos are obvious partners in establishing such platforms, especially as they are themselves considering whether to invest in their own cloud infrastructure to support virtualized networks. That would give them greater control over their networks than a public cloud strategy like that of US operators AT&T or Dish. It would also enable them to monetize the cloud as well as supporting their own network functions. However, it would represent a major investment, and would place them in direct competition with the hyperscalers. One often discussed option is for several European groups to co-invest,…

Special Report: Global parterships The classic mobile telecoms model is increasingly reliant on scale. MNOs cannot expect significant increases in ARPU from their established mobile broadband user bases and applications, yet they have to invest in new capacity on a constant basis. Upgrading to 5G architectures, though imposing a capex spike, can reduce the total cost of ownership of providing that capacity over the life of the network. However, growth will depend on operators doing at least one of two things – pursuing new revenue streams, especially in under-tapped enterprise environments and emerging Industry 4.-type use cases; and/or achieving huge network scale in order to improve cost efficiency and market share, and have sufficient capacity to support wholesale business as…