11528 search results for Open RAN

M&A, IP, Patents­­­­ Avatel Telecom, a rural provider in Spain, has reportedly attracted bids from both STC and Telefonica, valuing it at around €1 billion. Zegona Communications, which is currently acquiring Vodafone Spain, has also been linked to an Avatel bid. STC has reportedly made it to the second round of bidding for Altice Portugal, with rival bidders Warburg Pincus and Iliad asked to revise their bids. All bids are thought to be less than the €10 billion target, however, but Altice has been hit with a French investigation into the fraud allegations that kicked off this latest turmoil. STC is also reportedly interested in buying Spanish rural connectivity provider Avatel Telecom, said to be worth €1 billion. Telefónica and Zegona…

Security and anti-fraud provider Hiya won a GLOMO award for its wares at MWC, but VP Head of Marketing Patchen Noelke was visibly frustrated with the lay of the land. “There isn’t trust and identity in the MNO realm. There is a presumption of danger, with massive loopholes for spam and fraud. In some markets, 94% of users believe that an unknown number will be a scam call, but still some 21% will answer it anyway, because of the fear of missing a very important call. Legitimate calls are so important, that this situation allows around 20% of the population to be defrauded each year, to the tune of around $500.” Hiya’s Global Call Threat Report makes for good reading,…

Chip maker and software titan Broadcom promised that it would make big changes at VMware, when it acquired the virtualization firm in November last year. Now we are seeing some of these changes in action as VMware grows its relationship with tier 1 MNOs and sets its goals on high value customers. VMware was not long in the balance, about two years, between having been created as a spin out from Dell in November 2021 and then snapped up by Broadcom for $69 billion in late 2023. The buyout is paying off already. Broadcom reported first-quarter revenues of almost $12 billion this year, up by 34% with the contribution from VMware. Though Broadcom is reporting strongly elsewhere, with 11% growth…

Trend Micro spin-out CTOne is positioning itself as a 5G enterprise security provider, and an essential part of the security system of private Open RAN networks. CTOne posits that since Open RAN vendors, particularly in the 5G core, are building their products from scratch or using open-source components, they do not offer the same security as established vendors. And to add to that, 5G networks, especially enterprise networks, provide plenty of opportunities for bad actors – since any part of the network that can be interacted with, can be a security risk. In addition, the number of devices connected to private networks, especially when including IoT devices, is growing exponentially. So goes the sales pitch. Where previously corporate networks were…

Private networks were a major focus of Open RAN interest at MWC 2024. Firecell’s Olivier Dhotel, Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer explained that the company was set up in 2021, with its founders sharing a common heritage in Expway – a multicast specialist acquired by Enensys. “An old customer got in touch, asking about private networks. We interviewed 40 companies and saw there was a big gap in the market – with one interviewee even promising to be our first customer if we could bring this to market,” said Dhotel. This product was a complete, turn-key 5G software stack, including the core RAN and network management service, designed to run on COTS hardware. “Manufacturing and logistics are the target customers,”…

Layer 1 5G IP specialist AccelerComm has been busy applying its optimization coding in Open RAN and satellite projects. At MWC, the firm exhibited its satellite ‘LEOphy’ product, and has a bespoke NTN offering set to launch imminently as part of Lockheed Martin’s project to put the first 5G base station in space. The UK firm specializes in channel coding and forward error correction that enhances and optimizes the performance of a 5G radio. “We take chips and turn them into 5G modems for applications, such as satellite or low power,” said Will Brown, AccelerComm’s Director of Product Management. “Typically, we come in when the choice of chip is constrained, such as with satellite or cloud computing, when you are…

Europe’s largest pure-play towerco, Cellnex, held its capital markets day last week, setting out details of its aggressive cost efficiency plans which includes pulling back from private networks – though the firm is still looking for new sources of revenue. In the later 2010s, Cellnex was on a wave of expansion, mainly through acquisition of tower portfolios but also diversifying into adjacent businesses including private networks and active RAN sharing. Over a year ago, however, it said the era of large-scale acquisitions was over, and appointed a new CEO who has been pulling back from some new businesses. This strategy is common to several large and formerly expansionist towercos, such as Crown Castle in the USA, as these infrastructure operators…

M&A, IP, Patents­­­­ Xavier Niel will buy a 19.8% stake in Tele2 from investment firm, Kinnevik, for €1.16 billion to become a leading shareholder in the Swedish operator. Vodafone has confirmed it is in discussions to sell its Italian assets to Swisscom, which will house them inside its Fastweb subsidiary. The deal is worth around €8 billion and comes after Vodafone rejected a bid from Iliad back in January. Boldyn has completed its purchase of Edzcom from Cellnex, providing the neutral host provider with a private 5G network specialist – marking towerco Cellcom’s exit from the private networks business. Cellnex also announced a €971 million sale of its Irish tower assets, to Phoenix Tower International. BC Partners is reportedly looking…

Sitting down with the Innovative Optical and Wireless Global Forum (IOWN-GF) at MWC was a refreshing break from the cynicism that accompanied many briefings. Here was a truly future-looking application, with immense opportunity, not yet burdened by the realities of operator bloat and bureaucracy. Wireless Watch covered an announcement between Nokia and NTT, back in January, where the pair unveiled some very promising lab results – a 125x increase in transmission capacity, a 200x reduction in latency, and a 100x reduction in power consumption. The main driver behind this is the shift from copper-based to optical networking gear, and eventually harnessing optical computing – moving photons inside a chip, instead of electrons. At MWC, IOWN was housed inside the Fujitsu…

Innovation in underlying materials was evident at MWC 2024 in various settings, extending beyond antennas to intelligent surfaces out in the wireless transmission domain. Designs are motivated increasingly by environmental consideration as well as RF performance. There are four categories of application for novel materials relating to the device itself, semiconductors, displays, device body, and the antennas. Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) constitutes a fifth category beyond the device that has come into play under 5G, particularly at the higher mmWave frequencies above 7 GHz, where ability to optimize transmission without line of sight (LOS) has become a major goal. The requirement for LOS inhibits performance and coverage in high rise urban areas especially, resolved only through excessive densification, which is…

The network API was a major takeaway from MWC 2023 with launch of the GSMA Open Gateway at the event. A year later, MWC 2024 presented the best opportunity so far to assess, progress and determine whether the concept has taken hold as quickly as had been hoped. This does seem to be the case at least for major tier 1 operators, which were out in force at MWC 2024 to trumpet the benefits of open network APIs for new use cases, as well as to show off what 5G networks are capable of beyond just higher bit rates and lower latencies. It has not all happened in just one year. When GSMA Open Gateway was launched there were already…

Most operators at MWC behave with the cool detachment of the clear leaders of the food chain; but not NTT Docomo, which was busy promoting its latest Open RAN endeavor – a JV with NEC called OREX SAI. The Open RAN system-integration (SI) offering combines NTT Docomo’s lengthy experience in Open RAN with NEC’s global footprint. The success of this enterprise will depend on Docomo’s ability to transition from operator to vendor – and then compete with Rakuten Symphony and the tier 1 vendors. The joint venture is just one step in the Japanese operator’s program to seed and monetize an Open RAN market. In 2020, Docomo launched the world’s first nationwide Open RAN 5G service in Japan and launched…

Open RAN vendors were voicing frustrations at MWC, concerning recent high-profile deals in which tier 1 vendors dominated smaller providers, as was the case in the AT&T-Ericsson deal last December. For the small Open RAN vendor, this is an encroachment on their turf by a large vendor, in their eyes playing dirty. Ericsson will have ruffled feathers by putting together an almost entirely single vendor deal for $14 billion with AT&T, although the contract does include radios from Fujitsu and other unnamed vendors. Verizon has also talked about plans to deploy virtual RAN, a first step towards Open RAN, but is also planning to do so in single-vendor mode for the first phase at least. Voices at MWC also espoused…

In a country with a highly developed 5G network, SK Telecom is seeking to be a leader in 6G standardization and has been researching 6G network structure with academic institutions in Korea. SKT brought its 6G research to the fore in Barcelona this year. The latest 6G research with Kyungpook National University looked at the degradation of connectivity as frequency bands increased in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environments. The frequencies used for measurements and simulations were those agreed as candidates for 6G spectrum at the World Radiocommunication Conference in November 2023, they are: 4.4-4.8 (Partial) GHz, 7.125-8.4 (Partial) GHz, and 14.8-15.35 GHz. SKT has outlined low and lower mid band as its preferred spectrum choice, explained SKT’s Head of 6G Development, Na…

Network slicing was much more in evidence at MWC24 than last year, featuring not just in demonstrations but also discussions about new use cases and the eternal conundrum of monetization. This partly reflects the successful conclusion of trials and early deployments, but also the prospect of dynamic slicing enabling not just new use cases but underpinning those already deployed, notably Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). Some of these trials and deployments have shown the potential of machine learning in orchestrating 5G network slicing and ensuring that they sustain the promised SLAs (Service Level Agreements). This will operate through the two species of RAN Intelligent Controllers (RIC), which will, in particular, help configure and manage dynamic slices over Open RAN networks. Indeed,…

The week after a busy MWC, Viavi announced it is acquiring fellow tester and measurer Spirent Communications, for some $1.28 billion. Spirent has had a difficult year, and with strong momentum, Viavi has swooped to shore up its portfolio. The all-cash deal is expected to close in the second half of the year. Some $800 million comes from a seven-year loan from Wells Fargo, with another $400 million from Silver Lake Investment, which will give Silver Lake a board seat and an unspecified share in the company. The remainder is covered by Viavi’s cash reserves, and it secured a five-year revolving credit facility from Wells Fargo too. Viavi and Spirent are positioning this as a highly complementary deal, which will…