11542 search results for Open RAN

In the latest Open RAN news, Telecom Egypt is conducting trials, while Vodafone has announced an indoor small cell co-developed with Mavenir. Telecom Egypt is working with Mavenir Open RAN rival Altiostar, along with Cisco, Evenstar and the Telecom Infra Project, on its trial. It will use Altiostar software for the distributed unit (DU) and centralized unit (CU) functions, running on edge cloud infrastructure. This will be accompanied by Evenstar radio units (RUs). Evenstar is an initiative, backed by TIP, Vodafone and others, to provide common specifications for Open RAN radio units, designed to commoditize this equipment and lower barriers for many vendors to supply them, by offering readily deployable blueprints. The telco will also trial Cisco’s edge computing technology…

The Internet of Things has become a major hunting ground for tier one telcos, but also a field where revenues and especially profits are proving elusive. Many operators are eager to establish pole position in a field they believe has huge growth prospects and will eventually generate large profits, but some have been reluctant to commit heavily too soon with the risk of throwing good money after bad. They fear this would disrupt their profitable operations and also their mainstream investment in 5G infrastructure, which has proved very costly, especially where spectrum has fetched inflated prices at auction. As a result, while all operators have made noises around the IoT, some have been more serious over their investments and commitments…

Ericsson and the GSMA have made their latest call to policy makers and regulators to open up more spectrum, and relax other restrictions, to boost 5G. Ericsson’s head of Europe and Latin America, Arun Bansal, told a virtual conference that a shortage of midband spectrum was putting Europe behind advanced markets in Asia and the USA, and this would have a negative impact on the hi-tech economy. He argued that this was already visible from the 4G experience, where slower roll-out than in the USA or Japan harmed the competitiveness of Europe’s apps business. He said that, as a result, “very few unicorns or the big platform companies are coming out of Europe. That’s the risk we see in 5G…

The era of Open RAN is arriving in Europe as major operators start commercial deployments after laying down clear rules of engagement for technology and equipment suppliers. Deutsche Telekom (DT), Vodafone, Telefónica, Orange, and the TIM Group (formerly Telecom Italia) are all in various stages of early deployments after publishing their joint Open RAN Technical Priorities Document (see Wireless Watch Mary 18 2021). This resulted from work carried out under the terms of their earlier memorandum of understanding, signed earlier this year, which established their intent to cooperate to support Open RAN and drive a Europe-centric ecosystem. A couple of months on, we decided to take a closer look at the requirements document, and the progress the ‘Gang of Five’…

Huawei and Verizon are headed for the courts after attempts at mediation, over their various patent lawsuits, failed in the spring. Of course, this is no ordinary legal spat over the validity of patents or the level of royalties – it is the direct result of the 5G cold war between the USA and China. Huawei sued the US operator in February 2020, alleging violation of 12 patents and claiming that extensive attempts to negotiate a licensing deal had broken down. The previous June – as the Trump administration was imposing a growing list of restrictions on Huawei’s access to US technology or customers – Huawei had presented Verizon with a bill of over $1bn covering fees for more than…

Nokia has announced its latest patent infringement lawsuit, this time against Chinese handset maker Oppo. The two companies signed a licensing deal in 2018 but it expired last month and Nokia says the smaller firm rejected offers to renew the agreement, and extend it to 5G patents. The Finnish firm has been increasingly active in enforcing its patents through litigation in recent years. This has been partly sparked by its need to monetize its IP assets more aggressively, as its primary revenue streams came under competitive and price pressures. And the sale of its devices business to Microsoft in 2016 meant that it was no longer justifying its technology development costs through differentiation in its own products. Instead, they need…

Even more than 5G was, 6G is becoming a politicized race between various countries to achieve the lead in intellectual property. There are rational motivations for this behind the jingoism and the hype. Taking an early lead in contributing to standards, amassing essential patents, and testing advanced technology can translate into competitive suppliers and platforms in future, and into jobs and national wealth. In a time of intensifying geopolitical tensions, there are also concerns about one powerful country or another becoming too dominant in critical technologies, potentially holding others to ransom. The vision of global platforms that draw on innovations everywhere, as set out by the original GSM developments, seems far away. In particular, the early 6G efforts are becoming…

The mobile industry has always been periodically beset by patent wars, and the latest outbreaks are, predictably, tied into the early developments in 6G as well as the ecosystem’s attempt to balance conventional standards processes with the rising influence of open source or other open frameworks such as those hosted by Linux Foundation (including O-RAN). Sometimes patent spats have been necessary to establish foundational rules about how to balance open access to essential technology with protection and reward for innovation. Some processes have started in disputes but ended with stronger licensing frameworks and conventions, such as FRAND (fair reasonable and non-discriminatory) rules for access to standards-essential patents (SEP). FRAND is by no means perfectly defined or implemented, but its application…