Wi-Fi is arguably the most ground-breaking wireless technology of our time. From the first public Wi-Fi hotspots in the early 2000s which enabled radically increased productivity on the move, through to the role Wi-Fi is has in today’s pandemic environment, keeping us all connected...
Now more than ever, we’re seeing more collaboration in the telecoms industry. Instead of working against each other, the industry is coming together to boost the pace of innovation. This is seeing tangible successes, with many associations and ecosystems forming to help operators deliver...
The arrival of RAN disaggregation and the corresponding standards for open interfaces, hardware, software decoupling, network intelligence and automation has led to the expansion of a diverse ecosystem of RAN component players, specifically Radio Unit (RU) vendors. While this ecosystem allows operators to pick...
Anyone who has used a public Wi-Fi hotspot for more than the occasional web browsing and emailing knows how unpredictable it can be. Wi-Fi’s lack of predictability has held back the deployment of wireless in many enterprise applications where predictable performance is essential. Fortunately...
In 5G standalone (SA), the control plane has been significantly enhanced as service-based architecture. Components for policy, authentication, session management and user management have been disaggregated. They provide a flexible, open deployment framework for a range of new use cases.
Driven by the range of...
The journey to full-scale 5G coverage is a gradual process, especially as many devices currently do not support 5G and the majority of business applications today don’t require 5G-level performance. This leaves MPLS, DSL, 3G, 4G, LTE and 5G all as viable options when...
Every global crisis brings this same conundrum: While times of upheaval cause severe economic pain, they also tend to be fertile breeding grounds for innovation.
The Great Recession produced a wave of startups that are among today’s top digital brands, such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Square,...
In my last article in this “Who Disaggregated My RAN?” blog series, we covered the advances made by the O-RAN Alliance to deliver an open Fronthaul specification that supports multiple ways in which the base station will connect to the radio and ensures interoperability...
In just a matter of months, the world has shifted itself indoors. In so doing, we have grown reliant on digital means for work and leisure. For mobile operators, it has been a busy time ramping up and responding to user demand in order...
There is not much to recommend this current coronavirus pandemic. But there were two silver linings.
One was that the virus took telehealth mainstream. Two years ago, only 10% of healthcare consumers had tried telehealth. In a March 2020 consumer survey conducted by demand generator...
Aryaka CEO: 'What’s really going on inside your communities?'
Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, protesters took the streets, demanding answers and justice. In response, an unprecedented number of companies, from across a variety of industries, released statements of...
Today, users are discovering new ways to manage virtually every facet of their lives from their mobile devices, meaning the number of connected devices is set to grow over the coming years.
In fact, the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) predicts that, by 2025, 72%...
Nobody ever said the Ethernet Roadmap was a direct route. When the 25G Ethernet Consortium (Arista, Broadcom, Google, Mellanox Technologies and Microsoft) proposed single-lane 25-Gbps Ethernet and dual-lane 50-Gbps Ethernet in July 2014, it created a big fork in the roadmap. Networks had to...
As we saw in the last article in this blog series, the disaggregation of the RAN has opened up a number of new and exciting opportunities for a larger ecosystem to grow and thrive. But nowhere has the momentum been felt more than in...
Bearing Point // Beyond CEO: 'The risk of inaction is irrelevance'
This is a moment of significant innovation and transformation for the connectivity sector. Enterprises are looking to bring their digitalization plans to fruition by adopting cloud, IoT and edge technologies, and 5G has the...
As the coronavirus pandemic has evolved and new data emerges, we know COVID-19 poses a risk to everyone regardless of age and gender. That said, the health risk to older adults is high: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report eight out of 10 coronavirus deaths in the US have occurred in adults 65 and older.
Communicating the health risks...
In my first blog in this new Who Disaggregated My RAN? series, “How it All Falls in Place,” I provided the background that led to the industry’s push for the adoption of an open and disaggregated RAN.
Based on my engagements with the entire ecosystem...
IDC: 'global smartphone shipments will not return to growth until the first quarter of 2021'
The International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker forecasts that the global smartphone market will experience an overall of decline 11.9% year over year in 2020, with shipments...
Network operators worldwide are turning to open radio access network (O-RAN) architectures in an effort to simplify 5G RAN deployment and management, allowing more efficient scalability to meet rising data demands. With the recent formation of the Open RAN Policy Coalition, and a liaison...
Most of you reading this blog will be doing so under lockdown. Whether or not you are reading this while working is another matter, but regardless, you will be using data. In this current time, when so many people are staying indoors to prevent...
The internet of things (IoT) is changing the shape of many businesses. Not only does it herald greater visibility of asset effectiveness, improve operational efficiencies, and facilitate more informed decision making, it is also opening up new ways of doing business. Its reach is...
Disaggregated RAN: How it all falls in place
The promise of 5G is unlocking significant change and sparking the 4th Industrial Revolution, driving use cases such as industrial IoT and improved healthcare, to augmented reality, autonomous vehicles and smart cities. But if 5G is to...
WIA CEO: 'towers are as just important for 5G as anything else'
While moderating a panel at this year’s Connect(X) virtual conference event, WIA President and CEO Jonathan Adelstein remarked that in a world consumed with 5G, it’s important to remember that towers are just...
In the coming years, internet of things (IoT) infrastructure will become unmanageable and impossible to secure effectively, with attackers discovering a growing number of abandoned, network-connected devices and subsequently compromising them. Organizations will find themselves unable to patch, update and operate a range of...
