11542 search results for Open RAN

Dish Network is aiming to be the second operator in the world to deploy a cloud-native, open and multivendor 5G network, following in the footsteps of Japan’s Rakuten Mobile. So far, it is not following the Rakuten playbook in terms of suppliers, and has selected some unexpected partners for the radio end of its network. The first radio provider it chose, earlier this year, was Fujitsu, which makes very advanced products for Japanese MNOs, but has little presence in macro networks abroad. Now Dish has added Taiwanese supplier MTI, which usually supplies larger network vendors rather than going direct to operators. That is a sign, in itself, of how open interfaces could shake up the supply chain and see MNOs…

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for open RAN architectures. The US regulator, the FCC, said open RAN architectures would be eligible for its ‘rip-and-replace’ programme, which provides support for smaller carriers to remove Huawei or ZTE equipment from their networks. However, the agency did not mention any specific suppliers, though the sort of rural and regional providers which have commonly bought Chinese gear could be a strong target for emerging open RAN platforms. These are not deemed ready to power heavily loaded, ultra-resilient macro networks – unless heavily customized like Rakuten’s roll-out – but they are already playing a significant role in trials and deployments for more localized platforms such as rural extensions or enterprise and indoor networks.…

Delivering broadband to rural regions has never been more critical. Small communities face sustained struggles from the long term effects of Covid-19, increasing the flow of young people to the cities and leaving small and medium sized businesses in the dust with wheezing internet connections. For all the billions of dollars promised to fiber infrastructure upgrades, the fact of the matter is that many communities will forever be forgotten by network operators and governments alike. In the UK market, we’re talking about the forgotten 2%, or approximately 590,000 premises that are without access to broadband connections up to the standards of handling the demands of a typical household today. Even using the word “demands” seems unfair for something that was…

Enterprises now have at least a three-way choice for their local wireless communications as they move away from lingering fixed line options. There is WiFi in its latest version, WiFi 6, private cellular and public cellular. The latter can in turn be split into 5G and 4G, so there is a substantial choice on offer, although in many cases the use case will narrow this down or even point to just one candidate. There are now though some cases where there is overlap and this is where enterprises should boil down their requirements into capacity, speed, scalability, device constellation and latency needs. The mobile industry can help by not being too didactic and not dismissing WiFi out of hand when…

V2X (Vehicle to Everything) communications will be a major revenue driver for the IoT sector as a whole over the next decade and the question for both mobile operators and their technology providers will be how much of that fast-expanding pie they can cut for themselves. This question is considered in depth in the latest report and forecast from our analytics arm RAN Research, entitled ‘Cellular set to win automotive connectivity wars: Creating direct revenue opportunity of almost $50bn by 2027’. The report dissects the automotive connectivity sectors and identifies some of the emerging as well as established players in the surrounding ecosystem, which is already generating a hierarchy of opportunities around the new V2X connectivity. The headline is that…

As telecom networks become cloud-based, and IT and network infrastructure converge, the jostling for position between telco, IT and cloud players is fascinating. The past five years, in particular, have seen the webscalers getting closer and closer to the telecoms operators. Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon AWS and Facebook have all, in different ways, embedded themselves in the telco space. They have invested directly in connectivity, especially to extend access to their services in underserved areas, harnessing shared spectrum. Google even tried to deliver a kick to the US fiber-to-the-premise roll-out by investing in its own, briefly. Longer term initiatives include Google Loon and Microsoft TV white spaces networks in emerging markets, or Amazon’s trials of enterprise edge services in…

Intel and Marvell have benefited from Nokia’s shift away from its homegrown base station chip architecture, towards a system-on-chip (SoC) based on merchant products. Nokia’s high profile change of heart may have thrown the spotlight on the two chip providers’ latest 5G-related announcements, but it is not the only news. Both companies have been discussing the developments they would have unveiled at the cancelled Mobile World Congress, and these reflect a rapid pace of change in the mobile network chip space. This change is driven, of course, by the migration of the macro RAN from proprietary platforms based on equipment vendors’ own ASICs (application specific integrated circuits), to basebands running as virtual network functions (VNFs) on cloud infrastructure and general…

Rakuten, with the luxury of a cloud-based business model and a greenfield mobile network, has nevertheless struggled with the technological challenges of implementing a macro vRAN in a cloud-native environment. There have been plenty of accounts of the difficulties of tuning up the infrastructure to cope with the RAN virtual network functions (VNFs) and there have been various delays to full-scale launch. However, the Japanese new mobile entrant remains a poster child for the ability to deploy a network differently, and has stuck by its pledge of rolling out an end-to-end cloud-native platform involving hardware and software from many suppliers (18 in all). It is now looking close to achieving its goal of having the first commercial, large-scale, cloud-native vRAN.…

All the drama in the cellular industry last week surrounded the cancellation of Mobile World Congress (MWC) as a result of the current outbreak of coronavirus in China and beyond. One by one, large companies had pulled out of the show, citing fears for their employees and customers, despite many safeguards put in place by organizers the GSMA. But the impact of the epidemic will affect the industry on a far wider basis, with analysts starting to assess the effect on semiconductors and handsets. The effect that a year without MWC has on participants’ performance will be assessed over the coming months, and the GSMA will be fearing that companies find it to be relatively low, perhaps arming them with…

The rising pressure on Huawei, especially in Nokia’s heartland European markets, gives it opportunities to replace the Chinese vendor in markets which decide on restrictions in the 5G RAN or core; or to increase its share of multivendor customers. This is true of Ericsson too, but perhaps particularly significant for the Finnish company, which suffered severe 5G setbacks last year, mainly related to its decision to develop its own base station system-on-chip (SoC), a platform that incurred delays and high costs. To take full advantage of Huawei’s plight, it needs to convince operators that it has a clear and near term plan to migrate to new platforms and address initial teething problems, which were said to be responsible for launch…

More details have emerged of the UK’s decision to give Huawei limited access to 5G networks, which was announced as we went to press last week. Although the country resisted US pressure to bar the Chinese vendor from 5G altogether, its Supply Chain Review decided to exclude “high risk vendors” from core networks; to cap the amount of RAN inventory they can supply at 35%; to limit the amount of Internet traffic per year that can pass through their equipment, also at 35%; and to restrict the amount of fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network equipment, such as GPON or DOCSIS 3.x, they can supply, again to 35%. Those high risk vendors were not named, but since ZTE does not have a UK…

One of the most fascinating questions in the 5G networks market in 2020 is how far operators’ dreams of a more open, multivendor supply chain will come true. A sceptical view says we have heard all this before, especially when the WiMAX and 3GPP communities were fighting to set the 4G agenda – one of the appeals of the former was the promise of a more WiFi-like ecosystem with lower barriers to entry, pooled patents and communal support for expensive processes like interoperability testing and certification. In that case, and in other attempts to break open the market – in small cells, in unlicensed LTE and so on – there has been limited impact. Operators have been too nervous, in…

We start our retrospective with the five main predictions we made at the start of the year. All remain surprisingly valid, given the changes that were around the corner, though of course, all will be somewhat impacted, in terms of timescales or regional patterns, by the pandemic. Greater diversity in how spectrum is allocated and regulated. Regulators, including those in Malaysia and Taiwan, are increasingly ready to consider alternatives to auctions as a way to keep spectrum affordable and, potentially, open it up to new deployers which may better serve the needs of some industries and challenging use cases. Last year, regulators in Germany and elsewhere went as far as to earmark some spectrum for industrial deployers, but some –…

It’s the time of year when Wireless Watch traditionally casts an eye back over the key events of the year, and how they will reshape the mobile industry in 2021, sometimes in ways that were unexpected at the start of the year. In this issue and the next two (December 21 and January 11), we will select some of the most important developments we covered this year, taking four months in each issue. Some of them were clearly significant at the time, others have assumed new importance with hindsight, but in all cases we’ve looked not for big headlines, but for news that will have a deep impact on how the industry will change and respond in 2021 and beyond.…