BROWSING: Opinion

The 5G sweet spot is not the iPhone (Reader Forum)

Apple's 5G iPhone is a sure sign that “wireless is the new fiber.” The pace of innovation is simply stunning. But it’s not your phone that will bring you this wireless revolution first. It will be in your network fabric, on your towers, phone...

Students around the country need Congress and the FCC to act (Reader Forum)

  The coronavirus pandemic has placed schools across the United States in unprecedented circumstances. Thousands of schools are offering instruction exclusively online. Thousands more are operating with hybrid models that couple distance learning with time inside school buildings, an approach that likely will continue into...

What will the role of signal repeaters and boosters be in 5G networks?

Signal repeaters and boosters have shifted the conversation around network densification It is widely accepted that to achieve the coverage and speeds promised by 5G, it will be necessary to increase network capacity via the addition of more cell sites. However, the level of network...

Getting the 5G band together (Reader Forum)

The success of 5G for both mobile and fixed wireless access will be built on deployment in wide contiguous blocks of spectrum. 5G extends the catalogue of applicable frequency bands compared to previous cellular network generations, bringing together new spectrum and the re-use of...

Telcos vs. hyperscalers in the race for 5G edge computing (Reader Forum)

As telco operators around the world ramp up 5G networks, they’re increasingly faced with competitors that are making it difficult to successfully monetize those networks. Despite that operators have made huge investments in networks – both legacy and 5G – their returns haven’t been...

From 1G to 5G: How innovations in celluar have shaped our lives (Reader Forum)

Each generation of cellular networks fundamentally changed the world we live in. 1G brought us the brick phone utilizing analog technology in the ‘80s. For the first time, phones became truly mobile albeit they were bulky and expensive, and limited to voice features. In...

Why network slicing is the Holy Grail for telcos in the 5G era (Reader Forum)

Legacy generations of networks have predominately provided services with best-effort delivery. While this has worked for voice, text and best effort broadband services, end users are hampered with buffering, delays, and drops as the demand for feature-rich services continues to grow. The 5G-era promises new...

Kagan: Do not upgrade to Apple iOS 14 yet

Warning, warning, warning! It is that time of year again when Apple releases its next iOS upgrade. Like many of you, I have experienced the hell Apple puts many users through, which is why I always recommend not being the first to download and...

95% of gamers willing to pay more for 5G services if it means better playing

60% of gamers would pay 50% more a month for a better gaming experience With gaming being hailed as a killer use case for 5G, Ribbon Communications commissioned an independent study to explore just how “killer” we’re talking. RCR Wireless News caught up with Ribbon’s...

Kagan: T-Mobile needs to update its marketing strategy

Marketing plays a significant role in the long-term success of any company, product or service. That’s the lesson T-Mobile learned several years ago under then-CEO John Legere. Their new CEO Mike Sievert is continuing the marketing push making big claims about T-Mobile success. Let’s...

The promise and pitfalls of Open RAN (Reader Forum)

It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. But it should not mean intervention. Such is potentially the case with the proposed effort called Open RAN or O-RAN, which offers software solutions to telecommunication networks but shouldn’t be considered a panacea to relieve...

3 practical steps when automating your service and network operations (Reader Forum)

Business demands are changing rapidly and communications service providers (CSPs) are struggling keep pace. In order to manage keep on top of and manage the demands of their customers, CSPs require automation of service and network operations.  As we’re catapulted faster than expected into a...

5G and the future of healthcare (Reader Forum)

Integrating 5G network technology and today’s digital healthcare technology will improve patients’ access to doctors, increase the availability of the latest healthcare technologies, improve patient outcomes, and increase the efficiency of healthcare delivery. To improve patient access and patient outcomes, and accelerate the acquisition of...

5G was going to be huge before COVID-19 swept the globe: What’s next for 5G-enabled devices

The building of 5G networks across the globe was moving full-steam ahead until COVID-19 began wreaking havoc, triggering a worldwide economic slowdown. The immediate effects have been felt in virtually every industry, causing widespread layoffs and record unemployment, and severely curtailing consumer spending. As...

Connecting the unconnected–what are we waiting for? (Reader Forum)

COVID-19 has caused a seismic shift in demand for internet capacity with millions of students suddenly shifting to various levels of remote learning – from primary schools to universities – at the same time that many of their parents are continuing to work from...

Tapping into Industry 4.0 with 5G private networks (Reader Forum)

“Productivity isn’t everything, but, in the long run, it’s almost everything.” This oft-quoted aphorism from economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has new life in the shadow of Covid-19. Despite its hefty toll on the global economy, the pandemic presents an opportunity to refocus...

Wi-Fi 6 and 5G: Which is more secure and where is my data going?

While Wi-Fi 6 and 5G may both be secure, important questions about data ownership remain Historically, one of Wi-Fi’s biggest drawbacks, particularly in comparison to cellular, was the level of security it could offer. Unlike Wi-Fi, wireless cellular technology has the wireless security layer as...

Private networks exist to provide a dedicated service MNOs can’t compete with (Reality Check)

A few weeks ago, the industry trade body representing the interests of the world’s mobile operator community, the GSMA, released a report looking at the impact of global regulators offering enterprises spectrum for the creation of private 4G and 5G networks. So called ‘set aside’ spectrum,...

Now is the time for 5G-powered proximity tracking (Reader Forum)

Before the world was interrupted by COVID-19 and swathes of the global population went into lockdown, 5G was at the top of mobile operators’ agendas. Some businesses reported 5G delays while others maintained that their deployments were on schedule. That’s hardly surprising. The coronavirus...

IoT connected devices will be more demanding than human customers (Reader Forum)

Enterprise IoT will play a key role in the 5G era, bringing with it multiple revenue and monetisation opportunities for operators. Research conducted by GSMA Intelligence has shown that 5G is set to contribute $2.2 trillion to the global economy over the next 14...

Open RAN 101–Role of CI/CD approach for RAN automation: Why, what, how, when? (Reader Forum)

History The DevOps movement inspired large, enterprise organizations with agile practices to allow developers to make quick changes, but it was very difficult to get full benefit, as their legacy development process was not designed for supporting short software development delivery cycles and frequent production...

Made to work together: Two ways Wi-Fi and 5G coexist

WBA: Wi-Fi and 5G coexist on the physical layer of a network and in a way that delivers the “best connected” experience Wireless Broadband Alliance’s (WBA) Director Bruno Tomas told RCR Wireless News that the only way in which Wi-Fi and 5G are currently being...

5G networks will be dense and unforgiving: Why dynamic, automated inventory is critical (Reader Forum)

The evolution to 5G is off to a strong start among communication service providers (CSPs) and momentum is building. As of March 2020, 84 CSPs have announced plans to launch 5G, and 57 have already done so, according to Omdia’s 1Q20 report. These announcements...

How do mobile service providers handle the shifting economics of 5G (Reader Forum)

With the advent of 5G, mobile service providers (MSPs) have an estimated 50% bandwidth growth requirements, yet mobile/wireless is only about 10% of all global bandwidth. There conservatively needs to be a 2x growth in data capacity to support 5G, yet that currently linearly...