11561 search results for Open RAN

// M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Xilinx has acquired DeePhi, an AI-focused startup from China that develops neural networking software for Xilinx FPGAs. No price is given, but DeePhi has 200 staff. // Networks, Protocols, & Wireless // Ericsson and Vimpelcom have started an NB-IoT trial in Moscow, in the Maryino district, using the 800MHz Band 20 spectrum, and two base stations in the square-kilometer zone. T-Mobile says its US NB-IoT network is now live, covering its 2.1-million square-mile footprint, with prices starting at $6 per device per year for 12MB. Verizon is pushing LTE Cat M1 as the basis for utility networking, with Hawaiian Electric Company using the Grid Wide Utility Solutions cloud offering. // Big Data, Cloud, AI, and…

Following its acquisition of innovative WiFi management company XCellAir in April, Fontech (the product arm of the FON homespot business) has released its first solution incorporating the smaller firm’s technology. It has integrated XCellAir’s SON (self-optimizing network) system and analytics capabilities into the Fontech products for carrier WiFi and homespots. Fontech will go on to incorporate all elements of XCellAir’s platform, XCellRAN, into its portfolio. This will enable it to support aggregated, network-wide visibility plus QoE analytics and remote diagnostic and debugging tools, which trigger actionable insights about network and service quality for operations and customer support teams. The new offering is dubbed WiFi SON and the company says it “takes Community WiFi to the next level, delivering tools that…

The battles over mid-band spectrum in the USA continue, and in the past week, it has been the turn of the 4.9 GHz band to hit the spotlight. This band has been reserved for critical infrastructure industries (CII), but utilities are calling for access to it, while its incumbent public safety organizations insist they still need exclusive usage. The CBRS Alliance indicates that the spectrum sharing scheme which it supports in the 3.5 GHz band could be adapted for 4.9 GHz, which would enable the safety agencies to be prioritized, but other entities to jump on the spectrum when it was not being used for critical response. The 4.9 GHz band consists of 50 MHz of spectrum which was allocated for public…

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has dropped a heavy hint that handset makers and operators may face higher costs to use Android, after the European Commission imposed its largest-ever fine on the search engine giant. Pichai warned in a blog post that the EC’s judgement, and the €4.3bn fine, could “upset the careful balance that we have struck with Android”. His indirect argument is that Google is able to offer Android free because it pre-installs applications – the very reason the EC has ruled against it. Android has been free to use since it launched in 2007. Of course, the base code is open source, but the ‘official’ implementation, conforming to the Open Handset Alliance specifications, also comes free of charge.…

In the USA, MNOs and cablecos alike are piling into the 5G race, and the focus on WiFI seems to have faded. FierceWireless points out that the total number of hotspots touted by the Cable WiFi Alliance has not increased for two years, although it is still a hefty figure at 500,000, making it one of the largest public WiFi networks in the world. The Alliance was formed in 2012 as a venture between the leading cable operators of the time, several of which have since consolidated (Charter has acquired Time Warner Cable and BrightHouse, and Altice has bought Cablevision and SuddenLink. This means the current membership list consists of Comcast, Charter, Cox and Altice.) The original members committed to…

There are many ways in which the webscale giants are starting to make the rules in the markets where telcos traditionally held sway. One is in actual network infrastructure, where Facebook’s Telecoms Infra Project (TIP) is the most prominent example of a cloud giant extending its commoditized hardware platforms to the network itself. Now Amazon AWS may add to the pressure on the cosy world of proprietary telco infrastructure vendors, by throwing its weight behind white box switches. As carrier networks become software-driven, with their key functions virtualized on servers or commodity switches and routers, there is clearly more overlap between data center and network equipment than in the past. And in any debate about who will drive these markets…

Two weeks ago, we covered the IEEE’s decision to adopt OpenFog as the basis of its own IEEE 1934 standard for edge compute architectures. This was confirmation of something Wireless Watch has suspected for some time – that ETSI’s Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) specifications are being relegated to a supporting role in the edge environment, and with them, the operators’ role in that value chain. ETSI’s latest MEC white paper does nothing to dispel this idea. It outlines how MEC and 5G can work together to enhance the overall opportunity for the MNO, but it also focuses on how this combination can support other players in the value chain, including the cloud providers and Industrial IoT specialists. This is a…

The sector in AI for insurance fraud detection is well populated, but still attractive to start-ups because it has been shown to work, and is attracting demand from many major providers. The same technology can be extended to wider claims management and also other sectors such as e-commerce where related types of fraud are common. Potential for savings is huge given that in the US alone losses from fraudulent claims amount to about $80 billion a year across all insurance lines, according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. That is why Paris-based Shift Technology decided to target insurance fraud upon starting up in 2014. In fact, its two co-founders spotted the opportunity to apply AI at an earlier stage of…

Backstabbing and U-turns have been common within the satellite community, especially when it comes to the sensitive subject of C-band spectrum, and how this could be shared with cellular operators. Last week, the World Broadcasting Unions (WBU) described the scenario which will ensue from the sale of spectrum to cellular players as “chaos”. The US regulator, the FCC, is currently in the process of digesting plans to reallocate C-band frequencies, in the 3.7 GHz to 4.2 GHz range, where hundreds of thousands of fixed satellite service (FSS) downlink sites operate. Some satellite fleet operators are preparing to cash in, with the spectrum proposed for 5G valued in the billions of dollars, but there is still concern that MNOs will eat…

LoRa network provider Actility has announced a deal with Here, the automotive-focused mapping platform that has major IoT ambitions, which will see Actility use Here’s Open Location Platform (OLP) to augment the location services that Actility can provide to its ThingPark network platform customers. However, Sigfox is also such a Here customer, as of June. It’s a nice win for Here, which should also help flesh out the OLP. Currently, cars using Here’s mapping systems are the main source of data to refresh the OLP, so adding new devices to the system should improve its collective accuracy – a benefit not just for Here, but for all the users. The plan is to integrate Here’s offering into a new service…

Two front-runners in the energy blockchain sector have announced a partnership that will try to establish a standard that can be used in the energy markets. LO3 Energy will be joining the Energy Web Foundation (EWF) as an affiliate, where the pair will then standardize data used in EWF’s blockchain. The main objective is creating a common tongue for end-devices that want to use blockchain-based systems – which are useful for keeping track of transactions between Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), like rooftop solar panels and smart meters, thanks to the security of keeping a distributed ledger that can help spot tampering. As it stands, there are no such options for developers to use, meaning that anything they deploy currently risks…

Vodafone has launched its V-Home smart home as a service (SHaaS) offering in the UK and Italy, following a launch in Spain in May and Germany in June. The MNO is the latest entrant into the nascent SHaaS market, which will have to battle against the consumer offerings from the likes of Google and Amazon, the latter of which just sold a million smart home devices over its Prime Day promotion. For CSPs, mostly TV providers, fixed-line ISPs, and MNOs, a SHaaS offering can massively increase customer retention – preventing them from churning away to the competition. The service is also a way to address what looks like clear, if not massive, consumer demand for these systems, and the CSPs…

Apple’s Project Titan knowledge is apparently worth risking a severe jail sentence for. Xiaolang Zhang was arrested after allegedly attempting to flee to China with a whole heap of trade secrets, ready to start a job at XMotors (Xiaopeng/Xpeng Motors). Apple had been monitoring his behavior for a while, and brought the police in to stop Zhang at the San Jose airport. Apple is thought to have spent tens of billions of dollars on its automotive project, which has apparently shifted focus multiple times – from a fully-fledged autonomous car, to just a conventional EV, to a software-only model, and then seemingly to a system that will augment its smartphone offerings by improving its location services. While it may be…