News

18 June, 2018

The arrival of 5G — do you have a fast data strategy?

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5G isn’t just an incremental increase in speed and bandwidth, it’s the new face of the network and a key driver of the digital revolution. Until now, the technology was regarded as a buzzword, or something “just around the corner.” But with a number of public demonstrations, including at the recent 2018 Olympics, by industry leaders including Vodafone, Intel, Huawei, Verizon, and more, it’s safe to say that we have reached the era of 5G.

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07 June, 2018

Solve the service assurance complexity of 4.5G and 5G

The first pre-standard launches of 5G are due toward the end of 2018, writes Scott Sumner, the vice president of strategy at end-to-end network and application performance experts Accedian. However, standardised 5G will probably not arrive globally and at scale until 2021-2022. In the meantime, operators are upgrading their existing LTE networks to 4.5G.

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31 May, 2018

TV whitespace has continental potential

When it comes to internet connectivity, it would be easy to assume that Europe has adequate provision – not so. In spite there being more than 700 million internet users across the continent, almost ten million households lack access to an adequate fixed broadband service, not to mention tens of thousands of businesses labouring with slow or no connections. This is increasingly becoming unacceptable, as digital technology becomes increasingly integral to our society, writes Adam Leach, the director of emerging technology at Nominet.

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25 May, 2018

How CSPs can address the challenges of preparing for 5G

In April, UK regulator Ofcom announced that the auction of frequencies for 5G mobile networks had raised £1.36bn – even though 5G isn’t expected to launch until 2020. However, several US telecom operators are planning to launch their 5G services by the end of the year, writes Michal Medrala, the head of OSS Project Management at […]

24 May, 2018

The mobile industry needs to balance complexity with seamless customer experience

The mobile industry finds itself in the middle of a paradox. Consumers would like a totally seamless mobile experience at all times, with virtually flawless coverage for everything from voice calls and messaging to live traffic updates in their cars as well as streaming video on the train to work. The paradox comes from the increasingly complex mesh of wireless networks which underpin the operator’s abilities to provide an ongoing, positive customer experience, writes Paul Carter, the chief executive of GWS.

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15 December, 2017

Rapid transformation, smart data and mission-critical connectivity top trends for 2018

With more than one-third of IT Professionals citing ‘moving faster’ as their top goal for 2018, and an overwhelming 99% of IT and business decision makers noticing an increasing pace of change in today’s connected world, it’s clear that speed has become intrinsically linked to business success, writes Michael Segal, the AVP of strategy at NETSCOUT. For companies looking to compete in the digital economy, this pace of transformation is being driven by their customers and requires speedy software releases, agility through cloud services, and automation.

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20 November, 2017

UK enterprises look to fixed wireless access for a better experience

In a recent survey, 89% of UK businesses said they would consider moving to wireless connectivity because they all – that’s 100% of respondents – have had their business performance negatively impacted during the last two years. VanillaPlus managing editor George Malim reports from an industry roundtable to discuss the findings and the prospects for fixed wireless access in the era of virtualisation and 5G

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23 October, 2017

The devil is in the service assurance detail

The digital business transformation being experienced by operators and their enterprise customers also provides fertile ground for new services from smart communications service providers (CSPs). But first, explains Dima Alkin, TEOCO’s  vice president of Service Assurance Solutions, CSPs need to get more specific about their enterprise support services.

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27 September, 2017

Prepare for the autonomous network

With the ever-increasing demand for cloud computing, mobility and video streaming, there is a growing burden being placed on our global networks, writes Loudon Blair, a senior director in the Corporate Strategy Office at Ciena. Indeed, system overload is now an imminent possibility for many organisations due to the vast amount of traffic coming – and yet to come – from Internet of Things’ (IoT) devices, 4K and 8K video streaming and virtual reality applications. This is of course in addition to the substantial amount of over-the-top (OTT) service streaming of voice and video already commonplace in daily use.

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20 September, 2017

5 tips for managing UC applications

We’ve all experienced web pages that load slowly or time out. But what’s even more annoying is a laggy or choppy VoIP call or live video stream. After decades of improved network technologies, ever-increasing bandwidth and speeds, why are we still having problems, and what should network engineers do about it? Chris Bloom, a technology evangelist at Savvius provides some answers.

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