11528 search results for Open RAN

Curious about recent expressions of enthusiasm over immersion cooling—techniques dealing with datacenter heat by shedding fans and dumping servers into a dielectric (non-electrically conductive) liquid solution—Wireless Watch’s sister-service Faultline has endeavored to dive into the topic. As we plunged, a new name appeared on our radar (or should we say sonar) – Asperitas. To put it simply, Asperitas—launched in 2017—builds the tanks for servers to be immersed in. Tank-builders of any shape or form are not Faultline’s typical interview target, yet the hype around such offerings from organizations involved in processing, delivering and storing huge volumes of video content, do appear to be justified in terms of efficiency and sustainability, at least initially. However, certain caveats remain. Notably, some immersion…

You have to hand it to Deutsche Telekom (DT) for its ability to stay at the front of conversations about AI and sustainability simultaneously. There is no doubt the operator has profited from its relentless energy on both fronts, as has to a lesser extent its majority owned subsidiary T Mobile US. On the AI front, this was highlighted again when amid the furor around the UK’s recent AI Summit hosted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, DT continued its efforts to square the circle intersecting competitiveness and safety announcing an international competition to generate fresh applications for the use of AI across the telecom sector, with cash rewards. With T-Mobile US, DT announced a top prize of €150,000 ($165,000) for…

As the clock ticks towards 5G Advanced, with code freezing of 3GPP Release 18 scheduled for March 2024, the GSMA has been trumpeting the benefits more loudly than ever, in the hope of drumming up more interest from operators. It has been joined in this campaign by the major infrastructure vendors, including Nokia and Ericsson, but none more so than Huawei, which has even tried to co-opt 5G Advanced as its own under the banner of ‘Net5.5G.’ That certainly resonates with the much greater enthusiasm for 5G Advanced among the big three Chinese operators, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, rather than most counterparts elsewhere. It comes on the back of widespread 5G core deployment for 5G Standalone (SA),…

One of the biggest disappointments of 5G for the large network vendors has been the slow uptake of 5G Standalone (SA), which requires implementation of a fully cloud-based 5G core. The equipment providers may have enjoyed a revenue boost from the rapid adoption of 5G thanks to the relatively simple Non-Standalone (NSA) variant, but with a few large exceptions, most operators find NSA, which still uses the 4G core, adequate for their current needs – and so large 5G core deals have been few and far between. Now Ericsson has released the latest updates to its 5G SA portfolio, claiming these will enable operators to monetize 5G more effectively than they have so far by implementing advanced connectivity and user…

The partial or total divestment of tower operations has been a popular way for MNOs to unlock funds and shareholder value, and reduce their debt mountains, over the past few years. However, the bubble may have burst on valuations for tower divisions, and in Europe in particular, the market is becoming highly consolidated, and the largest towercos are looking for new ways to expand, as they have been doing for some years in the USA. This may mean that the MNOs’ haste to offload these assets will have unintended consequences, if giants like Cellnex and American Tower use their expanded footprint and unregulated status to challenge their telco customers in emerging opportunities such as edge computing or active enterprise networks.…

Global smartphone shipments have declined 0.1% in Q3, to some 302.8 million units, according to IDC. Shipments in China fell 6.3% year-on-year, which is the tenth consecutive quarterly decline for the country. Europe, Japan, and the US all declined, but MEA, Latin America, and the rest of the APAC region grew. Wells Fargo has reported that the fear of environmental penalties due to lead in the cabling of AT&T and Verizon networks has been overblown, as testing from the EPA has not yet found any sites that require remedial action. Initially, the headline figure was $60 billion. AT&T has selected Ribbon Communications to provide it with network routing appliances, as part of its copper-to-fiber migration. The Neptune IP Router is…

There is much discussion of the bid for self-sufficiency in strategic technologies by the USA and China, with considerable focus on 5G and mobile communications. But other major economies have similar concerns and initiatives, including the European Union and Japan, and nowhere is more ambitious in this regard than India, and in its national bid to control its own high-tech destiny, Reliance Industries (RIL) is the critical player. RIL has been assembling the core elements of a 5G platform within its Jio Platforms division, which houses the disruptive operator Reliance Jio as well as a growing collection of acquisitions and developments, including RAN stack developer Radisys, broadband wireless provider Mimosa and 5G hardware design and testing house Rancore. Much of…

Vodafone is one of the most active and impactful operators in driving Open RAN forward. But it is unusual because it is not a greenfield like Rakuten or Dish, and because it largely sticks to vanilla Open RAN specifications – unlike the US incumbents with their customized approaches to multivendor, cloud-based 5G. Vodafone is increasingly looking beyond its own deployment plans and aiming to use its experience and ecosystem to help accelerate uptake elsewhere, while spearheading progress in key areas such as semiconductors. At an event last week, it offered more vision and detail around its plans for a global role, leading to speculation that, like NTT Docomo, Rakuten and Reliance Jio, it may take the logical next step and…

The big three US operators all posted Q3 2023 results that beat expectations over most counts but not revenues, which remained rather flat. All three took solace from what looks like a bottoming out of the recent decline in share price, as investors reacted favorably to the results. The stock value of all three witnessed a modest spike after publication of the results, sufficient to suggest that the longer-term slide over the past year has come to an end as performance stabilizes. As MNOs, all three have been under pressure from cable operators offering converged packages as MVNOs, even though these run over their networks in most cases. Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) has allowed them to hit back, more especially…

A pivotal point is approaching for emerging converged 5G-NTN (Non Terrestrial Network) services as World Radio Conference 2023 (WRC23) looms next month, which will settle key questions over allocation of relevant radio spectrum and associated satellite orbits. The omens are good in that momentum has been building rapidly behind 5G/NTN convergence amid a spate of collaborations and trials, exerting pressure on regulators to apportion frequencies constructively. A key question concerns spectrum between 7.125 GHz and 24 GHz, which is a major gap as far as cellular is concerned, lying between the regions designated by the ITU as FR1 (below 7.25 GHz) and FR2 (above 24 GHz often referred to as mmWave). The most urgent task for the 3GPP, as the arbiter of…

For the past year, T-Mobile USA has been softening its stance on dropping its mobile-only status and investing heavily in fiber connectivity. Since gaining a 5G spectrum windfall, when it acquired Sprint in 2020, TMO has talked extensively about its strategy to support fixed broadband, and converged fixed/mobile services, through 5G alone, and it has deployed fixed wireless access (FWA) across a substantial part of its suburban footprint, targeting 7-8 million customers by 2025. That target looks achievable, but it is only around 6% of the number of US households, and gaining significant fixed-line or converged market share may force TMO to invest in a fiber acquisition or partnership rather than stick to its wireless-only approach. Rumors are swirling that…

There has been a lull in high-profile 5G patent lawsuits since Nokia settled its spat with Samsung at the start of the year, and Ericsson made peace with Apple in December 2022. But patent royalties are particularly important to the two Nordic giants when they are going through difficult financial times, as they are this year – as outlined in a separate article. Ericsson has kicked off the latest round of litigation by suing Chinese giant Lenovo, which acquired the Motorola handset business in 2014. This particular dispute highlights not just the complexity of licensing for 5G standards-essential patents (SEPs), but the added impact of the intensifying technology stand-off between China and the west. Ericsson claims that Lenovo has refused…

There is nothing wrong with BT’s mobile operator EE striving for new revenues, in its newly launched online marketplace, offering services such as subscription management and home security alongside products like gaming consoles. But the mantra ‘beyond telecoms’ is old hat and serves to underline that the company is playing catch up with rivals already playing in online markets in various ways. This is an idea that is doomed to disappoint. The online marketplace is, however, ‘beyond EE,’ in the sense that it is reaching out for customers of rival operators, as well as products and services that it may not be directly involved in. Indeed, at the London launch, CEO of BT’s consumer division Marc Allera emphasized the platform…