11569 search results for Open RAN

Over seven years of research and lobbying have gone into the effort to harness the white spaces in sub-1 GHz TV spectrum, for wireless broadband. Most deployments, however, have been in remote areas in emerging economies, but Microsoft is now seeking to trigger adoption in the US. Microsoft was joined by Google, Dell and others in pushing the TV white spaces (TVWS) technology, and the US was the first country to open up the spectrum for wireless. However, real world deployments have been limited – even though some of the work on spectrum sharing and geolocation databases laid the groundwork for the 3.5 GHz CBRS system in the US, which has greater potential commercial impact because the spectrum is more…

SAP has significantly expanded its Leonardo IoT platform, adding a suite of new services and announcing new partnerships with Bosch, Centrica, Samsung, and Apple. Unveiled at its Leonardo Live event, the expansion aims to snap up new big data and Internet of Things customers on SAP’s HANA cloud platform, leveraging the enterprise software company’s brand recognition and expertise. Leonardo is the IoT-focused piece of SAP’s cloud strategy – which is centered around its HANA platform, the in-memory database technology that has evolved over the years to its current cloud-based iteration. Seeing AI and machine learning as core building blocks for IoT applications, the goal is to get as much data into the SAP platform – and Leonardo is that conduit.…

Auctions in the mid-band spectrum between 3.4 GHz and 3.8 GHz are piling up as regulators and operators start to take these bands seriously as opportunities to deploy early 5G services. Though the US and China are setting the pace – though with no alignment of their activities – many regulators are preparing auctions, and the relatively plentiful capacity available may encourage new entrants. This has happened in the Czech Republic, where two new entrants acquired spectrum in the 3.7 GHz band, along with two incumbents. Existing MNOs O2 and Vodafone each gained a block of 40 MHz in the auction, held by the Czech Telecommunication Office, as did newcomer PODA. But the other new player, Nordic Telecom 5G, grabbed…

Facebook has high ambitions for its acquisition of virtual reality (VR) headgear maker Oculus. Reports indicate it aims to launch a low cost wireless headset which will not need to be tethered to a handset or PC, which it believes could popularize VR in the same way that the iPhone made mobile apps ubiquitous. Currently, VR has far more limited applications or appeal than the smartphone’s app store, but Facebook sees this as a chicken-and-egg issue – the more accessible VR technology is, the more uses will be found for it, well beyond its current heartland in gaming. And creating demand via better devices could be a trigger for mobile operators to upgrade their networks to support the low latency…

UK-based Lime Microsystems epitomizes the hopes that 5G might usher in a new, open ecosystem and lower barriers for all. Its LimeSDR platform ticks many boxes for those hoping that the established supply chain of mobile networks will be broken apart in 5G – software-defined, open source, white box, even crowdfunded. Now it has secured an alliance with Vodafone to develop solutions based on LimeSDR, which follows on the heels of a similar deal with the UK’s leading MNO, BT/EE. Lime’s story has a Cinderella element which seems appropriate to the operators’ quest for a new, open industry to make 5G affordable and flexible. Founded in 2005, the start-up has toiled away in RF transceivers – hardly the rock stars…

Network slicing is arguably the technology which will make the business case for 5G. But can it be implemented without making a high-stakes early move to a new network? Affirmed Networks, already known for pushing the boundaries of the virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC), says yes, with a new offering based on LTE. Slicing allows an individual service or user to call up a virtualized slice of the network, on-demand, and optimized for its particular requirements for speed, latency, device capacity, security and so on. This would enable network owners to support a far wider range of services, some of them mission critical, without building separate infrastructure or overlays for each one; and to support web-like pay-as-you-go models. Many vendors…

As operators look to virtualized RAN and commoditized, open source base stations to slash the costs of deploying 5G networks, those savings could be cancelled out by the need to invest in large amounts of fiber to backhaul large numbers of cells, and to provide fronthaul links between cells sites and virtualized, centralized baseband units. Some mobile operators, of course, are part of converged groups which already have dense fiber in place and can monetize it with multiple services including access, backhaul and enterprise. NTT Docomo of Japan, for instance, has talked of the relatively low capex cost it expects for 5G because it already has so much fiber installed – in the right places, and of the right quality,…

For the first time, the radio is not the heart and soul of the mobile network. Once, it was the radio where interoperability was essential, where vendors gained their competitive edge and customer lock-in, where operators differentiated their services. Now, as telco networks become increasingly software-driven, that center of control and industry power has shifted to the software which manages and coordinates all the applications and virtual network functions (VNFs). SK Telecom of South Korea is the latest in a series of operators seeking to establish their influence over this vital element, by creating inhouse technologies to ensure multivendor interoperability and future-proofing, and by extending their overall ecosystem power by opening their developments to other carriers. The company’s T-MANO joins…

Google’s machine-learning research team have unveiled MultiModel – a new neural network architecture that can handle multiple domains (image recognition, language translation, speech recognition, etc.), simultaneously. Declaring it a first step towards the convergence of vision, audio, and language inside a single neural network, it’s a very notable achievement for an industry that is on the brink of transforming computing. The team notes that in the last decade, the capabilities of Deep Learning have progressed at an astonishing rate. However, they add that “the current state of the field is that the neural network architectures are highly specialized to specific domains of application. An important question remains unanswered: will a convergence between these domains facilitate a unified model capable of…

There is no let-up in the whirling dervish dance that is M&A in the US telecoms and media markets. With the leading cablecos reportedly in line to merge with one another, or Sprint, or even Verizon; and the Sprint-TMO rumors rumbling on, Dish is never far away from the action. It has tried to acquire Sprint and has been linked with TMO, Verizon and Comcast. Its latest supposed suitor is Amazon – and if that deal were to happen, it could be more disruptive than any of them, bringing another powerful web and cloud giant into the ring and possibly provoking counter-moves from Google. The satellite TV supplier has a strong portfolio of spectrum these days, but has still not…

SAP has significantly expanded its Leonardo IoT platform, adding a suite of new services and announcing new partnerships with Bosch, Centrica, Samsung, and Apple. Unveiled at its Leonardo Live event, the expansion aims to snap up new Big Data and IoT customers on SAP’s HANA cloud platform, leveraging SAP’s huge brand recognition and expertise. Leonardo is the IoT-focused piece of SAP’s cloud strategy – which is centered around its HANA platform, the in-memory database technology that has evolved over the years to its current cloud-based iteration. Seeing AI and machine-learning as core building blocks for IoT applications, the goal is to get as much data into the SAP platform – and Leonardo is that conduit. SAP claims that its software…

China’s two most international web giants, Alibaba and Baidu, have both announced embedded voice software and services similar to those of Amazon Alexa and Google Home, indicating the significant growth potential of the market for natural language applications backed up by machine learning. Alibaba announced Tmall Genie, based on a Mediatek processor and similar to the Amazon Echo. Rival Baidu announced two- and four-microphone far-field reference designs for its DuerOS software using Mediatek and Conexant chips, as well as support for Nvidia’s Shield TV streaming device. The growth in this market, particularly the voice recognition and processing elements, will be a boon to certain chip providers. The Echo, which has shipped an estimated 9m units in the US and UK,…

TomTom seems to be ramping up its plan to challenge Here, the incumbent leader in the automotive mapping market, with a string of announcements last week. It comes as battle lines continue to be drawn in the industry, which is being rocked by major shifts in the supply chain. TomTom, once a leader (with Garmin) in portable navigation devices, has been overshadowed by smartphone apps and by Here, once owned by Nokia and now by three German carmakers. But it has not given up, and has recently partnered with Chinese search giant Baidu; added western Europe to its HD Map coverage; and unveiled a proof of concept (PoC) with Cisco that uses lasers and fiber optic cables to monitor cars…

As mobile operators gear up to densify their networks with small cells and even Cloud-RAN, there is a new opportunity for wholesale fiber providers, to enable fronthaul and backhaul. This is propelling fiber providers such as CityFibre in the UK and Zayo in the US to expand their activities in anticipation of new network architectures and eventually 5G. CityFibre plans to raise up to £200m ($258m) through the sale of shares in order to grow its UK footprint, and also to support service providers in the residential space too. CityFibre aims to raise minimum gross proceeds of £185m ($239m) at £0.55 ($0.71) per share in the new sale. It has the backing of new and existing shareholders including Woodford Investment…

In recent weeks, we have seen several mobile operators investing in start-ups which could reduce the power of the established network and platform suppliers. In many cases, these are linked to open source efforts such as the Facebook-driven Telecom Infra Project (TIP), and are pursuing an entirely new cost base for mobile deployment. Orange and BT have both announced programs to incubate infrastructure start-ups and connect them to the TIP ecosystem, and now AT&T has unveiled similar plans – though these are connected to its own open source endeavors. AT&T has pledged $200m to a venture capital fund to support start-ups which are focused on solutions for global telcos, particularly related to ONAP (Open Network Automation Platform). ONAP is an…

The Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) initiative from ETSI has stalled a bit lately. Operators remain interested in edge computing – a way to support low latency services, control video traffic and distributed cloud platforms close to the users. But some are concerned that an ETSI approach may be slow and cumbersome compared to one driven by an open source effort or by the IT-oriented OpenFog Consortium. Two new developments come at a good time to inject new momentum into MEC then. Huawei is spearheading a MEC initiative with the potential to have considerable market impact, while the ETSI MEC Industry Specification Group (ISG) has published its first package of standardized APIs (application programming interfaces), which will support a more attractive…

There is no let-up in the whirling dervish dance that is M&A in the US telecoms and media markets. With the leading cablecos reportedly in line to merge with one another, or Sprint, or even Verizon; and the Sprint-TMO rumors rumbling on, Dish is never far away from the action. It has tried to acquire Sprint and has been linked with TMO, Verizon and Comcast. Its latest supposed suitor is Amazon – and if that deal were to happen, it could be more disruptive than any of them, bringing another powerful web and cloud giant into the ring and possibly provoking counter-moves from Google. The satellite TV supplier has a strong portfolio of spectrum these days, but has still not…

Unlimited, zero-rate and free data – most MNOs don’t currently seem to be able to think more creatively than that in the battle to win consumers. The US market has been shaken up by the return of unlimited plans as Verizon and AT&T respond to T-Mobile’s Uncarrier and Binge On deals (Sprint always had unlimited in some deals), while TMO’s influence is being felt further afield too, with copycat launches in the UK and elsewhere. So marked is the fall in data prices for consumers that one CEO, Andrew Penn of Telstra, is even predicting this will reach zero in the next 5-10 years. He told the recent Mobile World Congress Shanghai conference that operators must diversify away from connectivity…

Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // ABB has acquired Keymile’s Communication Networks Business, in a move to expand its smart grid portfolio and ABB Ability suite. No extra details are being shared. Intel is laying off up to 140 jobs in its IoT division, in the wake of its decision to exit low-power chips. The unit accounted for less than 5% of sales, on $721m last year. Aggreko has acquired Younicos for $52m, adding the startup’s energy storage software to Aggreko’s mobile power leasing business – a $2.6bn business. ARM has acquired Simulity, an embedded OS specialist with an eSIM portfolio, for £12m, only 9-months after equity…