11534 search results for Open RAN

The latest survey of opinion about Open RAN intentions underlines the continuing divisions in the market, despite signs of accumulating momentum. This reflects not just contrasting vested interests but also genuine concerns over some aspects of the technology and the organization behind it.     And it comes against a backdrop of varying fortunes among high profile Open RAN players, with Parallel Wireless, a member of many early trial and deployment teams, announcing significant staff reductions – which other start-ups will hope is not a signal that this fledgling market will end up being dominated by major players such as NEC and Nokia, rather than making space for a far wider ecosystem.    The latest survey was conducted for US manufacturing…

The O-RAN Alliance may be only four years old, and may only have released one full set of specifications, but it’s already looking ahead to 6G. The Alliance has set up a research group to kickstart work on next generation mobile networks, aiming to secure an influential role in industry deliberations. This points to a desire to integrate its efforts more clearly with established standards bodies in 5G and 6G, especially with ETSI working on a spec for fronthaul, which is the foundational area of work for O-RAN.    The initial 6G work will be carried out by a next-generation research group (nGRG) that will “focus on the research of open and intelligent RAN principles in 6G and other future…

One of the biggest challenges that operators have identified for deploying Open RAN in macro networks is optimal integration with Massive MIMO antenna arrays.     Massive MIMO are a central feature of many operators’ 5G strategies – to a far greater extent than predicted just a few years ago. In many cases, the antenna arrays – which feature between 16 and 128 (or even 256 in future) transmit and receive elements – have taken the role once foreseen for densification, in greatly boosting the capacity of a cell, and Massive MIMO can also improve cell range and the quality of experience at the cell edge.    Clearly, then, the technology is important to many operators as they seek to provide…

Special Report: Open RAN ups and downs    This week’s special report returns to the always-active world of Open RAN, and a market that is displaying the familiar signs of post-hype turbulence. The past couple of years have seen a considering amount of hype from vendors, politicians and some operators, as is common to the early, pre-commercial stages of any hopeful new technology.     But of course, the over-optimism and unrealistic expectations of the starry-eyed period not only obscure discussion of genuine benefits, but lead to disappointment and backlash when the early stages of commercial reality blow a cold wind of realism over the sector, when the inevitable deployment challenges and teething troubles take center stage.     One way to…

Vodafone believes that, when the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) is mature, there will be an applications marketplace comparable to the Google or Apple app stores, in which operators and enterprises can download xApps and rApps for network management and control. However, the RIC is not currently mature enough for commercial deployment, according to Vodafone’s senior Open RAN manager Lucia De Miguel Albertos.    Talking to TelecomTV’s Open RAN Summit last week, Albertos said the “democratization” of the RIC via marketplace platforms would be an important element of the hoped-for impact of Open RAN on network economics and supply chains.     In traditional mobile networks, she said in the talk: “Radio resource management is dominated by a few players with proprietary…

Dish Network is finally rolling out a cellular network at national scale after a series of delays to its current 5G Open RAN project, and many years of delays since it first promised to deploy 4G services in its patchwork of spectrum back in 2011. That 4G platform never arrived, but following its acquisition of various AWS spectrum assets, and of Sprint’s Boost Mobile business, Dish now has FCC roll-out mandates.   That means it will need to keep up the pace of deployment of 5G, and it claims its 5G services, codenamed Project Genesis, are now live in more than 120 towns and cities. But it also needs to prove that its ambitious wholesale-only business model will deliver the revenues…

There has been a huge amount of speculation, discussion and pure hype around the metaverse concept, ever since Facebook changed its actual corporate name to Meta and placed the new label on a conglomeration of trends in extended reality, AI/ML, advanced graphics and digital/physical blending. Most of the conversation has focused primarily on the seamless integration of those digital and physical worlds in terms of consumer experiences, from fully immersive gaming and interacting to a whole fully blended life. But many of the more serious use cases that are being conceived actually relate to industrial or B2B applications – hence the term ‘industrial metaverse’ has inevitably been coined, and forms part of the technology roadmaps for companies from Nokia to…

China Broadnet is the new branding for China Broadcasting Network, which was allocated 5G spectrum in 2020, enabling the entry of a fourth MNO in the huge country.    Now Broadnet has formally launched its mobile services at an event at the Museum of the Communist Party in Beijing. These will be offered alongside its existing cable broadband subscriptions and will be heavily geared to supporting multi-access video and broadcast. That will expand Broadnet’s traditional business model rather than putting it fully head-to-head with China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.    New agency Xinhua said the launch would be a breakthrough in integrating cable TV with 5G and supporting multiplay services. However, it is unclear how far the new MNO…

The biggest surprise about Google’s recent announcement of private 5G services is that it has taken until now. As noted earlier this month, Google has now formally unveiled this offering, after various pre- launch exposures, some months after its two rival hyperscalers, Amazon and Microsoft.      This is yet another play in private 5G networks, where there is now competition, partnership and coopetition between providers in various categories. For operators, the hyperscalers can be both partners and rivals, although the big three vary in their stances on this count, as on others. They have different strengths and for Google a key asset is its position as custodian of the Android operating system, which makes it well placed to deliver…

The RF front end (RFFE) has become an increasingly challenging component of the mobile ecosystem with the advent of 5G, because of the wide variety of spectrum bands, and aggregated band combinations, that may be supported. Developers of RFFE – which sits between the antenna and the modem – have to support maximum flexibility so that devices can support a range of bands without each combination needing to be separately designed and manufactured. They also have to do this while minimizing power consumption, cost and footprint, all of which could potentially be increased by 5G.    But this is no longer just about smartphones and high value devices, or even just about 5G. The growth in units, if not margins,…

The fight for 5G spectrum in India, between MNOs and enterprises, is coming to a final boil ahead of the country’s first 5G auction, now confirmed to start at the end of July.     The long-running dispute seemed to have been settled when the Indian government announced, earlier this month, that enterprises would be allowed to acquire spectrum for private networks directly from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) as part of that 5G auction. The government even stated that there would be no mandatory requirement for successful bidders to make upfront payments, instead being able to spread it across 20 equal monthly instalments.    But still India’s top operators – Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea – have not…

Special Report: Enterprise 5G enablers    Enterprise and private cellular networks may still be a small part of the mobile landscape in terms of the users they support, or the revenues they generate for operators or vendors, but they account for the lion’s share of growth in an otherwise squeezed industry. However, enterprise networks need to serve a huge diversity of applications, locations and organizations without sacrificing the economies of scale that come from standards and common frameworks.     This challenge has encouraged the emergence of new vendors, service providers, developer communities, and chip and device designs, all aiming to address the varying requirements of the 5G enterprise.     And those requirements will get even more diverse if predictions of…