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28 October, 2019
A WEEK IN TELCO IT – 5G is starting strong, says Huawei. The company’s deputy chairman, Ken Hu, told its annual Mobile Broadband Forum (#MBBF) in Zurich, Switzerland last week that 5th Generation mobile communications “arrived faster than expected,” and that there are now 40 carriers in more than 20 countries supporting 136 different 5G-enabled devices. (more…)
In spite of public protests, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced plans to end the use of net neutrality in 2015, and in June 2018 the US officially repealed the rules that restricted the way internet providers could treat data. The impact was quickly felt. Research released in September 2018 by Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts revealed that YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and NBC Sports were the main targets of slowing data speeds, or throttling.
11 January, 2019
Cyber security technology commercialisation company, Crossword Cybersecurity plc, has released insights from its global review of academic cyber security research. The new database looked at nearly 1,200 current and past research projects from academic institutions in the United Kingdom, United States, Europe, Australia, and Africa. (more…)
15 October, 2018
What comes to mind when you think about sustainability? Curbing pollution? Prohibiting industrial waste? Filtering plastic from the ocean? A five pence tax on plastic bags? It might be all or none of the above – but it’s unlikely to be wireless networks. Yet, if implemented properly, network technology will play a significant role in ushering in a sustainable revolution in cities and urban areas around the world, writes Lionel Chmilewsky, the chief executive of Cambridge Broadband Networks (CBNL).
22 August, 2018
As 5G prepares for commercial launch, more work is necessary on the use cases that will justify the steep investment required. George Malim, the managing editor of VanillaPlus, interviews Patrick López, a board member of 5TONIC, an open lab initiated by Telefónica and IMDEA Networks Institute with a vision to create an open research and innovation ecosystem laboratory in which industry and academia come together to boost 5G technology and business innovation, to find out where the most fertile areas for development exist.
George Malim: What is 5TONIC, why has it been established and what are its goals?
Patrick López: 5TONIC is a lab, an open lab, for research and innovation and the idea behind it came about because our industry hasn’t been especially good at developing the technology for specific use cases and segments of the population. For instance, 3G [development] was about push-to-talk because at the time, in the US, the mobile operator Nextel had amazing revenue per user from push-to-talk over wireless. That’s how we ended up with push-to-talk but everyone missed that Nextel’s revenues weren’t because of push-to-talk, they were because of its demographic. Its overwhelming customer base was SMEs, with many in the construction industry, who were using push-to-talk. Other demographics were not so interested in push-to-talk.
Similarly, with 4G, the technology was pushed by the industry in order to enable voice over LTE (VoLTE) but users don’t care if voice is IP or circuit-switched – voice is voice. We missed that 4G would be mostly about video and it took years to get that to work properly.
Therefore, with 5G we’re looking at what users want. We’re looking to understand from a 5G perspective what needs to be done to satisfy specific needs. In that sense, very purposefully, the group here has been trying to identify specific industries with needs that are not satisfied today that can be satisfied by 5G.
It’s about finding the cases that will justify 5G on one hand but also about understanding if there are any gaps that need to be filled to meet requirements. We have assembled a consortium of multi-disciplinary companies composed of universities, research organisations, telecoms operators and vendors from the whole spectrum of telecoms. Capabilities run from chipsets to radio to integration and we feel we have, at a high level, all the actors that can create a new 5G experience. We then prototype and try to learn what can be done technically and what is the value of the use cases economically to organisations.
GM: You’ve recently been awarded key roles in the €50m, European Union 5G programme. What is your involvement?
PL: This group started as a collaborative effort and funding a lab to develop pre-5G technology in order to be able to solve some of the problems of different industries. In the process of that, 5tonic has become recognised as one of the leading open labs in the EU and been involved in a number of 5G projects. We’re involved in several parts of the EU Horizon 2020 programme including: 5G EVE (European Validation platform for Extensive trials) which aims to create the foundations for the roll-out of end-to-end 5G neworks in Europe, 5G-VINNI (5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure) which looks to accelerate the uptake of 5G in Europe by providing an end-to-end (E2E) facility that validates the performance of new 5G technologies by operating trials of advanced vertical sector services, and 5GGENESIS (5th Generation End-to-end Network, Experimentation, System Integration, and Showcasing) which will create an integrated end-to-end 5G facility where 5G network key performance indicators (KPIs) for various 5G use cases can be validated and brought together with a view towards their integration in one united full-stack, end-to-end 5G platform.
GM: You already have a cross-section of companies from the 5G community as members. Will you be seeking new participants in 5tonic?
PL: It’s an open lab so, although we’re not actively seeking new members and there’s no recruitment process, we’re very happy to welcome any company in the 5G ecosystem that wants to come in and collaborate – provided they meet the criteria set out in our charter. Manageability, in terms of the number of companies involved, hasn’t been an issue for us yet.
GM: What are the motivations of the members for engaging and collaborating in 5tonic?
PL: I think that, to be open, it’s about profitability. 5G isn’t going to be successful if we collectively, massively invest without understanding where the money is going to come from. There’s an inkling that the bulk of the revenue isn’t going to come from consumers. Customers are broadly happy with the services they get now so enterprises and industries are key to make 5G a reality.
We’re looking at two main areas: large industrial segments that are most likely to benefit from 5G including Industry 4.0, automation and robotics and with segments that are relevant in local markets. For example, in Spain tourism is more relevant to the country’s GDP so it’s logical that we work to investigate how 5G can better tourism clients’ experiences.
11 July, 2018
LTE data roaming within the EU radically increased last year, with traffic volumes over the summer up to eight times larger than the same period in 2016, writes Mikaël Schachne, the vice president of the mobile data business at BICS. The trigger? Roam like at home (RLAH).
27 June, 2018
There are many who talk about 5G but few, says John Strand of Strand Consult, have described what it takes to create a healthy 5G market with network deployment, service development, business models and customer demand. (more…)
23 May, 2018
InterDigital, a mobile technology research and development company and member of 5TONIC, the first 5G research laboratory in Spain, announced that the laboratory has been recognised as a Digital Innovation Hub by the European Union (EU). (more…)
03 May, 2018
Doom, gloom and a bit more doom – the big stick with which the incoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulation can hit organisations that breach its statues has raised widespread concern, writes Curtis Peterson, the senor vice president of Cloud Operations at RingCentral.
05 February, 2018
EU Regulation IV formally came into effect on the 15th June 2017 and was widely welcomed by consumers as a significant win in the face of escalating roaming costs when travelling abroad. Requiring operators within the European Union (EU) to implement a ‘Roam Like at Home’ (RLAH) (more…)
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