11568 search results for Open RAN

For most of this year, NFV (network functions virtualization) has been suffering from the almost inevitable backlash against a highly complex and immature technology which has been hyped to the skies. More urgent moves are needed to avoid fragmentation of the platform, and to deploy NFV in a flexible way, said speakers at last week’s NFV/SDN Congress in The Hague. But in addition to those familiar complaints, some CTOs also think operators have been too timid and need to set far bigger goals for their virtualization programs. Arash Ashouriha, Deutsche Telekom’s deputy CTO, told the event: “From day one the aspiration was to learn from the hyperscale companies and the reality is that we are far away from the pure…

After the sale of its devices business and the $16bn acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, finalized in 2016, Nokia ended up with a significantly different portfolio mix. Through the ALU deal, it turned back on its mobile broadband-only strategy – the result of another of its serial restructurings in the first half of the decade – and made a massive step into fixed broadband and transport, as well as pay-TV infrastructure and integration. The ALU deal also coincided with its re-entry into the handset business through the back door, following the launch of Finnish start-up HMD Global in early 2016. This firm has licensed the Nokia name and some intellectual property, enabling it to launch a low cost smartphone, plus featurephones, including…

Two mobile network semiconductor announcements, made over the past couple of weeks, highlighted the contrast between the ‘new and old’ ways of approaching radio network design. Ericsson opened a design center in Austin, Texas, focused on ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) for 5G and representing a significant investment in very expensive chips. Meanwhile, Sigfox said it was working on an “ultra-cheap disposable radio” which could be priced around 20 cents. Of course, these two radio efforts are targeting very different use cases and network types, but the Sigfox plan feeds into an increasingly lively debate. Are the high costs of optimized cellular radio networks really justified by their complexity and performance demands, or has the industry just been able to…

One by one the major operators are standing up to say they will not build the next generation of mobile networks in the same way as the current ones. They need an entirely new cost structure, and if the major vendors are not prepared to deliver that, then the MNOs will look to new entrants. Those new companies are being supported by open source initiatives such as Facebook TIP (Telecom Infra Project), which a Deutsche Telekom executive described last week as “one of the most important projects in the telecoms industry today”. The comment, by Axel Clauberg, DT’s VP for aggregation, transport and IP, echoed similar views expressed by other TIP aficionados like BT, SK Telecom and Orange (the latter…

Another aspect of network automation relates to network planning and optimization, and there is a move to go beyond SON (self-optimizing networks) and apply AI techniques to create a responsive network which orchestrates physical and virtual resources, and adds a high level of intelligence to the automation. Mirko Voltolini, VP of technology and architecture at Colt’s technology services group, said automation and AI were important areas of development for the enterprise fiber operator. He told the SDN/NFV Congress in The Hague that Colt has created a new AI-driven conceptual platform called Sentio, and is aiming to develop fully automated service management capabilities for network functions such as traffic flow classification, fault prediction, path optimization, capacity management, security, intelligent bandwidth-on-demand, and…

Virtualization, open source and common standards may help drive down the capex cost of mobile networks over time, putting the expected density of 5G at least in striking distance of commercial viability. But operators also need to slash operating costs if they are to invest in serious levels of densification and ubiquitous coverage – which will be needed to enable new premium revenue streams from some mission critical, enterprise and IoT applications. The key to an entirely new approach to operations will be full automation, according to some operators, which were very vocal at last week’s SDN/NFV World Congress in The Hague, Netherlands. Deutsche Telekom said the industry would ultimately get to a network which could run with “no human…

Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Ridecell has acquired Auro, an autonomous vehicle tech developer, and announced that it has launched the ‘first complete autonomous new mobility solution,’ which it hopes ridesharing operators will use to power their platforms. It’s an all-stock deal. Octo Telematics is acquiring the UBI insurance assets of Willis Towers Watson, chiefly its DriveAbility system, and will partner with WTW on future insurance products. The Industrial Internet Consortium and the Avnu Alliance have announced a liaison, to advance the development of Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) open standards. // Hardware // STMicro has added support for Alibaba’s AliOS to its STM32 range of IoT…

Shanghai-based startup Energo has announced its expansion into South Korea, following tests in China and the Philippines. The plan combines two trends in our IoT sphere, blockchain and smart grids, and hopes to provide a trusted platform for consumers to trade energy on. Blockchain has huge potential in environments that require trust between a number of third-parties, and a microgrid is a great use case. Using its own smart meters (which do look rather neat), coupled with a smartphone app for the consumers, the announcement sees Energo declare its intent to build a decentralized autonomous energy (DAE) community – with Energo taking a slice of the action, of course. Energo would install one of its EME 1.0 meters in each…

General Electric has announced two recent deals that caught our eye, suggesting a pretty major shake-up at its Predix Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) inside GE Digital. Initially thinking that we were seeing the beginning of the end for Predix, a quick check uncovered a recent pivot in the Predix strategy – GE is no longer investing in owning its own data centers for Predix. Naming AWS its preferred cloud provider was the source of our initial confusion, but signing SAS up to provide its Event Stream Processing for GE Transportation’s locomotives added to the questions – as the task at hand (data analytics) falls well within Predix’s remit. The AWS announcement focuses on GE’s IT applications, with GE migrating thousands of core…

[The following is an abbreviated version of an article that originally appeared in Wireless Watch, a sister publication of Riot. If you are interested in wireless networks and operators, a trial of Wireless Watch is a must.] The imminent death of Sigfox and LoRa at the hands of cellular NB-IoT has been much exaggerated. There are two important points in the favor of unlicensed spectrum solutions for LPWANs (low power wide area networks) – they have an existing market presence, and they enable non-spectrum owners to play in the growing market for digital machine-to-machine (M2M) services, including in smart cities. Delays and dilemmas in NB-IoT commercialization – seen last week in Orange’s decision to defocus on the standard for now…

When Intel acquired Altera, one of the two leading providers of programmable FPGA chips, it signalled the new prominence of this technology to support heavy duty processing tasks in the data center, cloud and telco network. But in the carrier world, it has been Altera’s arch-rival Xilinx that has been more agile, working closely with Qualcomm on its server offering, and with Amazon AWS on an FPGA cloud platform which could support telcos in future. The FPGA (field programmable gate array) can be customized to perform specific functions very well. In the mobile world, it is used by Intel, Qualcomm and others to take on specialized or high-performance tasks in many platforms from the 5G modem to the Cloud-RAN server.…

Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is the most high profile example of the disruptive trend to introduce open source and commoditized technologies into the heart of the mobile network, opening the way to a whole new cost base. Operators such as BT, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and SK Telecom are supporting the initiative, which will bring together open technologies designed within Facebook and by a series of start-ups which will be incubated by the operators. Some of the initial chosen few have been announced, giving small firms with an innovative approach to building telecoms networks the chance to enter the mainstream. In the past, MNOs have rarely felt able to take the risk of supporting small suppliers in critical networks, but…

As the deadline for comments on the FCC’s midband spectrum consultation came, the US debate about these important airwaves heated up. An unprecedented variety of stakeholders and would-be operators is eyeing spectrum between 3.5 GHz and 6 GHz, but with very different agendas. The regulator aims to get better use out of a portion of the C Band spectrum from 3.7 GHz to 4.2 GHz. Some players want a similar shared structure to the three-tiered CBRS scheme, proposed for the nearby 3.5 GHz band, to be expanded up to 4.2 GHz. This protects federal incumbents while supporting a licensed, priority access layer and an unlicensed, general access approach. Others are opposed to the whole idea of opening the 3.7-4.2 GHz…

The imminent death of Sigfox and LoRa at the hands of cellular NB-IoT has been much exaggerated. There are two important points in the favor of unlicensed spectrum solutions for LPWANs (low power wide area networks) – they have an existing market presence, and they enable non-spectrum owners to play in the growing market for digital machine-to-machine (M2M) services, including in smart cities. Delays and dilemmas in NB-IoT commercialization – seen last week in Orange’s decision to defocus on the standard for now – point to a multi-access picture persisting in LPWANs, with the power shifting to platforms that can support seamless interoperability between different cellular and non-cellular solutions (see previous item). When 3GPP finalized its own LTE-based LPWAN standards…

When the Internet of Things (IoT) was still years over the horizon, mobile operators could hold it up as the next big development which was going to heal the MNO business model and justify investment in 5G. Now, the 5G networks, with their support for huge numbers of sensors, and very low levels of latency and power consumption, are almost upon us and it is clear that the wireless connectivity will be the simplest part of deploying and monetizing a large-scale IoT platform. Billions of connections are a tasty challenge for operators for whom connectivity is their lifeblood. Thousands of applications and services, serving hundreds of vertical markets and harnessing billions of pieces of data – these are more daunting.…