11528 search results for Open RAN

Streetlights and 5G smart cells are made for each other, according to Germany’s O2 Telefonica, which started piloting the concept in Frankfurt during 2021 where it is now expanding city-wide. Other operators around the world are also picking up this idea of combining 5G small cells with street lighting to achieve the required densification at the same time as serving new “smart city” IoT applications from these converted poles. This can be regarded as the second generation of smart street lighting, succeeding early incarnations where connectivity was provided by LPWAN networks, often based on the LoRa protocol. Indeed, Rethink Research described Philips Lighting’s choice of Vodafone for its CityTouch connected street lighting platform as early as March 2016, as part…

The fair share debate dominated the opening sessions of this week’s Content Delivery Summit, the annual warm-up to its big sister event, Streaming Media East. Attended by Wireless Watch’s sister service, Faultline, the topic of what media services owe to network operators was fiery. Mark de Jong, Chairman of the CDN Alliance, implored the Boston-based audience to pay closer attention to the very real legislative happenings across the pond, as the European Commission takes a step closer to giving ISPs more power to charge content providers for network tenancy. It is a debate fiercely familiar to patrons in Europe, yet one that is dangerously detached from overseas organizations – or so the CDN Alliance fears. The bottom line is that…

There may be disappointment at perceived slow progress in Open RAN, or in the power of traditional vendors in its ecosystem, but momentum is still building behind the would-be open, multivendor, cloud-based architecture and its potential to disrupt the mobile network supply chain. Even Ericsson – which, as the market leader in traditional closed RAN, has the most to lose – is acknowledging the strength of operator demand and at this year’s Mobile World Congress, said unofficially that it would support the next iteration of the O-RAN Alliance’s most foundational spec, Open Fronthaul. But Ericsson has always opposed Open Fronthaul’s choice of 3GPP Split 7.2 – one of many variations in how network functions can be divided between the physical…

Mavenir and i2i Systems have announced a business partnership, to target the Turkish market with Open RAN offerings. Mavenir software is being combined with i2i’s BSS and network software. UScellular has reported 100,000 FWA customers, calling it “wildly successful.” This comes against a backdrop of struggling cellular performance. Casa Systems and Inseego are providing CPE for the customers. Omantel and Telkomsel have joined the GSMA’s blockchain trials, as part of the organization’s eBusiness Network. The goal is to demonstrate the benefits of blockchain technologies for MNOs, but immense skepticism prevails. Amdocs is acquiring rival Teoco’s service assurance wing, for $90 million, having just posted Q1 revenues of $1.22 billion. This comes some nine months after Amdocs tried acquiring another service…

Chinese smartphone OEM Oppo has announced that it is shutting down its silicon design unit, due to a slowdown in smartphone sales. While more of a problem in the Chinese consumer market, only Apple appears to have escaped this fall in demand, and it is unclear when this bad weather will pass. The Zeku unit, which was set up in 2019, had achieved promising results. These were centered around its MariSilicon neural processing unit (NPU), which was intended to provide image recognition and analytics. The chip featured in the Oppo Find X phone, and Zeku unveiled an audio-focused Bluetooth chip in December 2022. Chinese OEMs have been pushed towards in-house semiconductor designs by the USA’s trade embargos and political pressure.…

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) OpenWiFi platform has gained scattered traction around the world since its launch in May 2021. The latest is the first in Africa, Microsoft-backed ISP Mawingu, in collaboration with WiFi network company Think WiFi. This deployment is also the first of OpenWiFi to be funded by an ad-based sponsorship model, providing free access to subscribers in peri-urban settings, that is areas at the edge of towns and cities that are less densely populated than typical suburbia. OpenWiFi has been positioned for such localities where population density is sufficiently dense to make ubiquitous provision of WiFi access feasible as an alternative to cellular connectivity. Here the WiFi network has been built over Mawingu’s existing ISP infrastructure, using…

Late last week news service Telecom TV said it had confirmed that investors in virtual cloud software provider Mavenir, in its latest $100 million investment round, included both Qualcomm and Intel. You have to ask what’s in it for them in such an investment – sure it may simply just be a vote for Open RAN from their respective VC funds, but you must ask what each might have to directly gain from the relationship. The key is likely found in the past 40 years, during which “Open” has come to mean the opposite of proprietary, and is associated with cheap, rather than expensive. There is a playbook of cheats and cons to prevent any software marketplace from being entirely…

It is easy to assume that, in the age of accelerating fiber build-out, non-fiber backhaul technologies will be in decline. That is true of copper lines, but microwave backhaul remains a significant, and growing, part of the global mobile network and accounts for about two-thirds of the base. Even in 2027, 35% of the world’s installed base of backhaul links (excluding small cells) are likely to be microwave, according to Ericsson, and deployment of these technologies is growing at a steady CAGR of about 6% a year in capex terms (whether by MNOs or wholesale infracos), between 2021 and 2027 (GSMA). However, that 6% is dwarfed by the 45% CAGR expected growth in the number of public network cell sites…

The neutral host model is poised to emerge as a primary driver of private 5G, rather than just a spin off benefit for operators and enterprises. Several factors are conspiring here, one being the availability of suitable mid band spectrum such as the CBRS band in the US, and another increasing deployment of private 5G for other use cases such as control of UAVs in factories. There are also signs of increasing interest from enterprises to help justify deployment of private 5G or LTE in the first place, and derive extra revenue afterwards. For operators, neutral host promises to solve indoor connectivity problems exacerbated by modern building materials such as energy efficient windows. After all, 80% of mobile calls originate…

Deutsche Telekom has been one of the most stable of the major European telcos in recent years. Its debt mountain, while large, has been more manageable than that of peers such as TIM and Telefónica and by contrast with Vodafone’s albatross venture in India, it has been buoyed by the recent success of its US holding, T-Mobile USA. Its first quarter results, announced last week, were happy reading for shareholders, with a rise in profit and in full-year guidance, boosted by TMO and the sale of a share in DT’s towers operation. However, underneath solid figures there are warning signs of challenges ahead. Like all the European leaders, DT faces rising capex bills to support 5G and fiber expansion, and…