BROWSING: Opinion

Rising COVID scams and malware protection for mobile operators. And a point on connectivity (Reader Forum)

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...

The wireless route to telehealth (Reader Forum)

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 to fellow tech execs: ‘You have an obligation to fight racial injustice’

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...

Unlocking the promise of IoT with standards (Reader Forum)

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%...

16-fiber MPO provides an attractive path to 400 GbE (Reader Forum)

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...

Who disaggregated my RAN? Part 3: Open RAN and fronthaul: The last mile

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...

Telcos are at a 5G crossroads: To plug-in into an ecosystem, or to orchestrate it

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...

Older Americans face new coronavirus Risk: Robocall scams (Reader Forum)

  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...

Who disaggregated my RAN? Part 2: RAN ecosystem–new and improved

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: 2020 smartphone shipments to drop 11.9% due to COVID-19

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...

Can we conquer the challenges of open RAN rollout? (Reader Forum)

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...

Get your core (network) in shape during COVID-19 (Reader Forum)

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...

Tracking anything, anywhere – the promise and pitfalls of asset tracking (Reader Forum)

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...

Who disaggregated my RAN?

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...

FCC’s ‘big news’ around tower co-location provides network predictability, cost savings

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...

The internet of forgotten things will bite back (Reader Forum)

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...

What happens to deployment TCO when mobile operators deploy OpenRAN only for 5G? (Reader Forum)

When you see the many announcements around innovation in OpenRAN for 5G, what you may not realize is that the 4G and 5G-only OpenRAN approach is only suited for greenfield deployments. So, what does that mean for brownfield or existing wireless networks? There are...

Is latency key to realising 5G’s potential? (Reader Forum)

Much of the discussion around a new generation of mobile technology traditionally focusses on its increased throughput, and this seems no different for 5G. Everyone from Zoom video conference users to Unknown Battlegrounds players regularly experience that other key characteristic of digital communications systems,...

Wi-Fi turns the knob to 7 (Reader Forum)

  With the recent FCC announcement to make the 6 GHz band available for unlicensed use, it is important to understand the significance of this event. This decision carves out 1.2 GHz of contiguous spectrum (5.925 – 7.125 GHz) and represents the largest amount of...

The importance of reliable indoor mobile coverage during lockdown (Reader Forum)

Nextivity: Uninterrupted 4G coverage in public sector buildings in the U.K. cannot wait As COVID-19 lingers on relentlessly, mobile telecoms and home broadband services are providing society with some semblance of normality. Everyday life involves homeworking on a level the world has never seen, socialising...

A balanced network densification strategy is key to 5G success

NB+C president: without a balanced network densification strategy, 'the backlash will be palpable by the entire industry’ For the last three decades, the demand for mobile data has grown exponentially. In fact, an IDC study reports that worldwide mobile data traffic has grown at a...

Monetizing the enterprise–the main obstacles facing operators (Reader Forum)

5G deployment is a lengthy and expensive process, with operators globally looking for that killer use case to monetise the latest generation of mobile technology. Mobile operators have long known that the enterprise is one of the key areas for 5G ROI. According to...

Sharing spectrum licenses to boost network capacity in the greatest time of need (Reader Forum)

We measured spectrum usage in two markets and were able to verify that T-Mobile and AT&T are using spectrum licenses on loan from others to improve their wireless services.    National U.S. operators T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T were loaned spectrum licenses that were not being used...

Kagan: AT&T deploys Synchronoss Personal Cloud

Every wireless carrier is looking for new ways to offer new services that will solidify their relationship with customers. That’s why AT&T recently announced the AT&T Personal Cloud. This is a new service for AT&T Mobility wireless customers. This gives them the chance to...