BROWSING: Opinion

Advanced security is fundamental to 5G success (Reader Forum)

Security and 5G were very top-of-mind at this year’s MWC Barcelona. And this is strongly echoed in a recent survey conducted by the BPI Network called, “Securing the Future of a Smart World.” Mobile operators see tremendous potential for 5G networks to drive new revenue...

Clarifying misperceptions around 5G and Wi-Fi in the enterprise (Reality Check)

  The hype around 5G continues to grow. Many carriers are promoting this technology as a way to target the enterprise networking and IoT markets with an end-to-end service that spans indoor and outdoor coverage. Fundamentally, the carriers (and their radio network vendors) need to...

The 5G D-Day (Reader Forum)

What does this mean for building owners in practical terms and how will it benefit end users? After years of anticipation, the 5G network has finally arrived in the U.K. and the race is on between the operators for its widespread rollout. EE were the...

Rethink your BSS … Or fail at monetizing 5G (Reader Forum)

5G is coming and bringing with it an explosion of data. In fact, experts anticipate that mobile networks will be handling more than 77 exabytes of data per month by 2022. That represents an astonishing growth rate of nearly 50 percent per year. But...

5 changes enterprises can expect with edge computing (Reader Forum)

In recent years, cloud computing has revolutionized enterprise IT. Widespread access to the cloud’s scalable, reliable, powerful computing resources have unlocked countless opportunities for businesses and their customers. But this decentralization has resulted in vast distances between data centers and end-users, making latency inevitable. These...

Kagan: Wireless carriers focus on digital experience for growth

In order to grow, wireless carriers are expanding into a variety of new digital experiences like pay TV, entertainment, news, digital advertising and much more. Each is taking a different path. The good news is with new technologies like 5G, IoT, AI and the...

How to maximize visibility into cloud deployments (Reader Forum)

A recent survey found that that 42% of IT professionals spend too much of their time on troubleshooting tasks and that cloud environments were ranked overall as the second most-common place in which they encounter significant IT issues. A lack of visibility into cloud...

A retrospective look at the future of communications (Reader Forum)

It’s become an annual tradition to publish my thoughts and opinions on where I foresee advancements, trends and growth in the communications industry.  Before crafting this year’s forecast, I looked back at previous years and noticed four trends that repeatedly showed up as they...

Kagan: 5G wireless patent quality counts more than quantity

Let’s clear up some confusion. There is a battle being fought in the wireless industry over leadership with 5G patents. Some companies say the quality of patents is most important. Others say it’s the number of patents. The truth is, patent quality should not...

T-Mobile/Sprint merger will benefit smaller carriers and consumers (Reality Check)

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s recent announcement that he supports the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile with their commitments is welcome news. The merger will create a better-resourced combined company with a renewed focus on disrupting wireless with competitive prices and new innovations, and I...

Kagan: AT&T SHAPE 2019 shows growth and transformation

Have you been following the incredible transformation and growth of AT&T in the last several years? It is becoming a giant in the fields of wireless with AT&T Mobility, telecom, Internet, pay TV with DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, Uverse, news and entertainment with WarnerMedia and...

Robocall enforcement efforts bearing fruit, but key 2019 challenges remain (Reader Forum)

Robocalling, spamming, scamming, and spoofing are scenarios that play out for consumers multiple times a week - if not every day. The FTC received 3.7 million complaints for FY 2018, surprisingly down from 4.5 million complaints in FY 2017, but still the number one consumer complaint.  The...

Smart aquaculture – and the Mexican method (Reader Forum)

With populations in the developing world continuing to grow, the need to find new ways to satisfy increased demand for access to food has never been greater. In order to do this, fish farming, or ‘aquaculture’, is quickly becoming a serious contender for the...

Kagan: Influencer marketing is changing

Once again, the game of influencer marketing is changing. In recent years, I have met quite a few very interesting and successful people called social media influencers. They are regular people who, over time, have cracked the code and become top influencers. Following them I have seen how...

5G technologies will broaden attack surfaces (Reader Forum)

The arrival of 5G, with significantly faster speeds, increased capacity and lower latency, will change existing operating environments. However, these benefits will come at the expense of an exponential growth of attack surfaces. The 5G-enabled devices and networks that underpin society will be compromised...

Are we there yet? The multiple phases of 5G (Reader Forum)

It’s been a busy time for 5G launches. It started with Verizon and AT&T towards the end of 2018 followed by a flurry of recent announcements from Korea, China and more in the US. So, are we there yet? Is the long car ride...

Ditching the high fibre diet: how a network-of-networks will help smart farming (Reader Forum)

The pressure food producers face to digitally transform is mounting. With a rapidly growing population, farms find themselves at a decisive moment in their ability to continue to produce enough food to meet rising demand. As with all sectors, technology is going to be...

The evolution of enterprise network connectivity: Here’s what the future holds (Reader Forum)

The demands placed on today’s networks are higher than ever as employees now access an ever-increasing number of cloud-based and IoT applications. In fact, as more traffic travels over the public internet, the requirements of enterprise networks extend beyond 24x7 reliability to networks that...

Should utilities be like Amazon and Netflix? The intelligent edge, and where it’s going (Reader Forum)

Why can’t utilities be more like Netflix or Amazon? It’s a question you see posed in a growing number of articles and analyst reports, arguing that utilities should be more customer-centric and quicker to adapt to new technologies. But I’ve got a different question for...

Kagan: Keep your company’s AI investment on target

Companies have begun investing in AI, the next transformative technology. However, many are wasting money focusing on the wrong areas at this early stage. True, in coming years the AI revolution will completely reinvent the way we do business, but we are still just...

Smart city evolution – The need for speed (Reader Forum)

Smart cities and 5G are two of the hottest topics in tech today, and maybe the hottest topics in wireless tech (if IoT is considered a subset of one or both of these).  But what is a smart city and how does 5G play...

Smart city case study: How Calgary deployed its own LPWA network to build smart city apps (Reader Forum)

The internet of things (IoT) is a game-changer for enterprises and consumers, making every day operations more efficient for organizations and individuals. As smart cities evolve, government agencies are prioritizing IoT initiatives, and deploying low-power wide-area (LPWA) networks to collect data, and using advanced...

Should operators roll the dice with cloud gaming (Reader Forum)

The gaming industry is on a winning streak. Last year, video games were worth around $165 billion, and by 2022 are set to reach $235 billion. Online gaming in particular packs a punch, with Statista forecasting there to be over 730 million online gamers...

Making common sense of network economics (Reader Forum)

Service providers are in the unenviable position of trying to stay profitable in a highly competitive, capital-intensive market that consistently demands new services, new technologies and lower prices. Business and consumer customers want to pay less for more calls and minutes in their bundles,...