11561 search results for Open RAN

One of the features of the new open ecosystem for telco networks is the rising use of merchant silicon rather than custom ASIC chips, to drive the new economics of the white box servers, switches and routers (see separate item). However, off-the-shelf chips come with trade-offs, and even Intel has backed away from the idea that a processor, even a powerful beast like a top end Xeon, can support all the rarefied functions and demanding requirements of a carrier network by itself. Enter the FPGA (field programmable gate array), which can be programmed for particular functions, without going the full custom route. In the telco environment, FPGAs are increasingly used to support specialized coprocessors that can offload the most demanding…

In Wireless Watch, we have often analysed how operators will need to deploy more resources at the edge of the network, and combine connectivity with processing and storage to support distributed cloud and low latency services. This means the 5G network, and the broader platform that surrounds it, will involve some unprecedented decisions about infrastructure, and the ownership of it – the kind which MNOs have not previously had to consider. The first moves, being made now, towards densification of the RAN, have highlighted the challenges around finding the right sites and wireline transport to support a more distributed approach to delivering mobile services. But for MNOs which want to integrate edge compute capabilities – storage, processing and specific applications…

Metaswitch has been a pioneer in virtualized and open network platforms, but is less keen on open source. Its latest move is to announce a composable network protocol suite for white box switches, which it says will help to accelerate adoption of new network architectures and  reduce their cost. The composable network protocols (CNPs) allow networking teams to create white box routing platforms with fully decoupled control plane components and open management interfaces, said the vendor. Based on proven IP routing and MPLS networking stacks, the suite will provide the capex and opex reductions of open source, without its operational risks, says Metaswitch, claiming its “commercially supported, carrier-class applications are clearly distinguished from open source alternatives”. Like other companies such…

AT&T has been the most dogged exponent of open source and commodity technology in the carrier network, from management and orchestration software to the boxes themselves. In recent months, it has revealed results of its multiyear tests of white box routers and switches, which could transform the capex and opex costs of its networks and allow it to build truly multivendor systems. Now the telco says it will go ahead with a deployment of 60,000 white box routers, to be installed in its cell towers “over the next several years”. That would equate to about one router per cell site (AT&T has 60,000 towers and 5,000 central offices). Andre Fuetsch, its CTO, and president of AT&T Labs, said in a…

The Facebook-initiated Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is one of the most disruptive approaches to shaking up the cost structure and supply chain of the telecoms network. It has been challenged recently by the formation of ORAN, which combines XRAN – an open virtualized RAN effort originally set up by AT&T – with the Cloud-RAN Alliance. Some operators are taking sides, but both will help to reset expectations in terms of network costs – even if their actual platforms do not have commercial success. While the ORAN Alliance is largely driven by big operators’ developments and requirements, TIP reveals some of its heritage in the webscale world with a stronger focus on very commoditized equipment which could support new service providers.…

It has taken a long time for the open source revolution to reach the mobile operators. 15 years ago, the enterprise data center market had already embraced this approach, and vendors from IBM to Red Hat had adapted to it or created new business models around it. Only now that the MNOs so urgently need to transform their cost base are they, too, pushing for a new open ecosystem, and the vendors are reluctantly having to start on their own transitions. It remains to be seen whether any of the big OEMs manage to do an IBM and turn open source into a weapon rather than a scourge – or whether, as the major operators darkly hint, the network will…

[This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in Riot’s sister publication Wireless Watch, which focuses on wireless evolutions.] As outlined in a previous article, some of the most critical decisions mobile operators will be making as they prepare for the 5G era concern the edge are: How reliant will their business model be on services that are focused on edge-enabled capabilities, such as very low latency or personalization? Will they invest in edge cloud infrastructure themselves or use a third party’s? How far should edge nodes be integrated or collocated with network elements like base stations or central offices? How can they build up a developer ecosystem, and will this involve cooperation or competition with web-scale…

Xilinx has taken the wraps off of its new Everest Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip, claiming a huge step forward in performance – more than enough to bother the other main player in the FPGA game, Intel’s Altera. With $1bn invested in Everest, Xilinx is hoping to turn the screw on Intel’s own $16.7bn acquisition. The new Everest design is expected to ship in 2019. Xilinx is hoping to attract more software developers, expanding from its core hardware developer audience who have already grappled with the complexity of programming for FPGAs. New development software libraries are being offered in this vein, with Xilinx hoping to make it as easy as possible to get a TensorFlow developer on board. Everest…

Quantum mechanics remains an enigma and for many so does its application to computation, but this has not stopped academia and the big players that can afford the research from ploughing on in what seems like an endless journey. Quantum computing was touted by some futurologists as a key emerging technology that would shape the coming century, at the turn of the Millennium almost 20 years ago, and so was nuclear fusion – neither of which has yet delivered. There is a similarity between the two in that both are scientifically feasible but represent huge engineering challenges without any absolute guarantee that either will deliver on an industrial or commercial scale. In fusion, the proof of concept requires getting more…

Mobile content and payments software outfit RGK Mobile has announced a breakthrough deal with Malaysian operator Axiata. The telco’s subsidiary Axiata Digital has integrated the Spanish start-up’s cloud-based technology to launch new services for its XL operation in Indonesia and Dialog in Sri Lanka. The deployment signals the rapid rise of RGK Mobile in under four years, and provides an insight into the explosive mobile market in Asia. Saturated markets mean telcos are investigating innovations in various guises, and over-the-top video services are increasingly seen as the most lucrative add-on to an existing mobile ecosystem, particularly in south east Asia. Axiata is adding RGK Mobile software to its APIGate gateway service, to bring premium content services including Wellness, LetMeDance and…

The UK government is to invest about $35m in six projects to test 5G across a range of applications, including smart farming with drones, in-home healthcare, manufacturing productivity and self-driving cars. Each testbed will receive between £2m and £5m ($3m to $7m) in government grants as part of a total investment of £41m from private and other public sector funding, to explore 5G technologies in high frequency spectrum and how they could affect these use cases. Two of the consortium projects involve Blu Wireless, a developer of millimeter wave baseband IP.  One is the AutoAir 5G testbed for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV), which is focusing on delivering bandwidth to high speed vehicles (cars, buses and trains). The lead organization…

The P4 programming language is of rising interest to operators which want to adopt software-defined networking (SDN), and Google is behind the latest project of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), the platform for many of these telco-grade initiatives. The search giant has contributed code for three protocols to an open source project called Stratum, which will use P4 and open interfaces to manage large networks for operators and data centers. The group aims to release open source code early next year for multiple networking platforms. As well as Google, the project members so far include switch-chip vendors Barefoot Networks, Broadcom, Cavium and Mellanox; plus China Unicom and Tencent of China and Dell EMC. Google said it would “help grease the…

Japan’s Softbank, and its maverick chairman Masayoshi Son, has been interested in adding a US cableco to its growing wireless empire for some time, either to combine with its existing US subsidiary, Sprint, or to replace it. There have been various reports over the past year, of talks with major cable operators as well as T-Mobile USA and Dish Network. Now, the reports are concentrated on a possible $100bn bid for the second largest cableco, Charter. The aim, it seems, would be to create a fixed/mobile giant to compete with Verizon and AT&T. Sprint’s years of problems have been alleviated somewhat by Softbank’s financing of its ambitious densification and 5G plans, which should finally see it turning its much-vaunted 2.5…