11534 search results for Open RAN

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi claims the country will have developed its own 6G platform and will start to deploy it by 2030. That would put India in the first wave of expected launches of 6G networks. Although standardization work has not begun, there is a general expectation that there will be three 5G-Advanced standards releases (starting with Release 18 in 2024) and that the first 6G release might be in 2027 or 2028. All that supposes that the industry does indeed support another ‘G’ and that it will be devised based on conventional standards processes, despite the rising influence of open source and cloud software initiatives in mobile networks, and the increasing participation of industry groups from beyond mobile…

Nokia has launched two new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings targeted at improving energy efficiency in the network and in the home. The latter could pave the way for operators to start offering smart home-as-a-service (SHaaS) features focused on cutting energy bills – a rather timely venture, given soaring fuel costs. The more straightforward of the two new offerings is Nokia Analytics Virtualization and Automation (AVA) for Energy. The system monitors a multivendor network environment, and then makes load balancing adjustments when traffic levels are low, turning base stations off or down, and waking them up again in the optimal fashion. Nokia claims this can provide two to five times improvement in energy efficiency, thanks to its AI-based system, compared to a…

As we have often noted, Open RAN will gain commercial scale first in small cells, particularly for enterprise and private networks, as well as in rural extension. It will not only be less risky to introduce brand new technologies and vendors to an enterprise network than a public macro RAN, but there is already a broader ecosystem in place around small cells. We can expect a stream of innovations from this ecosystem as commercial roll-outs begin this year, and two caught our eye last week, from chip provider Picocom and distributed unit (DU) developer CommAgility. Picocom has been developing a system-on-chip, PC802, for Open RAN small cells and unveiled its commercial offering at the end of last year. Now it…

Rakuten Mobile has a very different approach to vendor relationships, compared to most established operators. For one thing, its greenfield nature and cloud-native platform have enabled it to adopt a truly multivendor approach, although its long list of suppliers has been assembled at the cost of huge inhouse engineering efforts. And also, having set up Rakuten Symphony to commercialize its open networking platform and services with other operators, the company will choose its partners with that wider business in mind. If Symphony succeeds, it will be a far more important revenue generator for the Rakuten group than its Japanese MNO, which has to compete in one of the world’s most advanced but saturated mobile markets. The choice of partners for…

The impact of global component shortages, especially semiconductors, on the telecoms industry has been well documented, affecting service roll-outs, availability of devices, and prices across the board. Now Airspan Networks has outlined how the shortages have struck its sector of Open RAN, after reporting Q1 2022 revenues of $37.6m, a whisker below analyst expectations but 18% down year-on-year and 25% below the total for the previous quarter. This implies not just that the supply chain crunch has had an impact on a company that had been growing quickly, but that this is still intensifying. Open RAN vendors are no more exposed than others to the supply chain problems, but the situation is particularly frustrating for a nascent sector enjoying strong…

We have noted before that the USA’s major operators have their own approach to Open RAN, quite different from that of other major MNOs – and indeed, they differ from one another in their attitudes to the emerging platform. However, while AT&T has been seen as a cheerleader for Open RAN, and T-Mobile USA as a skeptic, in fact both operators have notably similar strategies now that the technology is approaching commercialization. Their rhetoric may be different, but both are interested in Open RAN, but very cautious about timescales to deploy it in the urban macro network, or to introduce new suppliers to the 5G RAN. AT&T, which contributed significant seed code to what became the O-RAN Alliance, is really…

The leap in performance of 5G has led to gamers and users of more demanding applications increasingly opting for cellular rather than WiFi connectivity, reversing the normal pattern in the 4G era. While hard data about this trend is still elusive, the latest survey from London-based mobile analytics firm Opensignal indicates that users are now becoming well aware that 5G, where available, is now often significantly better than public WiFi for both throughput and latency, the two critical parameters for gaming in particular. While earlier surveys had already confirmed that 5G running in millimeter wave spectrum was well ahead of WiFi data rates, even when the latter’s latest 6E version was deployed, the new Opensignal data is notable in finding…

Special Report: Stretching 5G   In 2022, 5G is starting to enter the ‘interesting phase’. There are now many relatively large-scale, commercial 5G networks in operation and we are starting to learn some of the real world lessons about the technology’s performance, quality of service and relationship to other forms of connectivity. Some of these are highlighted in a new study by OpenSignal (see below). But most of the networks are still based on 5G NR Non-Standalone, which uses the 4G packet core, and they are almost entirely focused on traditional user bases and use cases – basically ‘4G-plus’ mobile broadband. The interesting phase of 5G will come when its capabilities are harnessed in earnest for non-broadband use cases, especially…