Press Release

Verizon Business and Audi AG today announced a partnership to build a state-of-the-art private wireless network and tech-testing environment at Audi’s automotive test track in Neustadt, Germany. The dynamic, multi-core wireless network is designed to duplicate network conditions in key markets around the world, with custom-built replicas of Verizon’s U.S. public network, local European networks, and the roaming network of Audi’s MVNO partner in Asia-Pacific. Audi and other brands from the Volkswagen Group have access to the track and network.

As the automotive industry continues its evolution toward software-defined vehicles, the geographic flexibility of the Neustadt test-track network gives Audi a competitive advantage in the global market by streamlining its multi-territory R&D test cycle, better replicating driver/passenger experiences around the world, and providing access to the latest network and application technology. Testable applications include voice, video, safety, autonomous mobility, vehicle-to-cloud communication, OEM-customer interactions, cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) features and functionalities, and more.

To achieve this blend of geographic flexibility and technological capability, Verizon Business tapped into a robust ecosystem of partners. The network uses a dual 5G and LTE Modular Private Wireless platform from Nokia, C-V2X and private MEC infrastructure utilizing AWS Outposts from Amazon Web Services, and real-time video and data-transmission technology from Smart Mobile Labs (stream management and distribution, full HD streaming, push to talk, push to video, stream recording, et. al.).

“Our needs for this test track were complex and multi-dimensional, encompassing many technologies, geographic network conditions, and industry trends. Verizon Business was able to provide a complete solution that will take time and cost out of the testing cycle and give us a competitive advantage in the global marketplace,” said Petr Kozak, Head of Development Infotainment, Connectivity, Data Management and Artificial Intelligence, Audi AG.

“This is about much more than equipping a work site with a private network. This is about bringing network conditions from around the world to one test facility, allowing Audi to exceed the already lofty demands of the mobility market looking years into the future,” said TJ Fox, SVP of IIoT and Automotive, Verizon Business. “Increasingly, vehicles are not just about transportation, but a means of communication, entertainment, education, and work — effectively, rolling cell phones and high-powered computers. That means the vehicle of the future will be packed with technology that needs to work under many different sets of network conditions, and Audi and Verizon Business are solving for those needs with this state-of-the-art facility.”

Verizon Business has end-to-end responsibility for the delivery and support of the high-performance, stable and secure private LTE/5G network, which can be adapted to the developments of the 3GPP standard over time.

Want to keep up to date with all of the latest developments in the German telecoms market? Join the industry in discussion at Connected Germany live in Munich

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News

The growth of Dish’s 5G coverage masks the company’s ongoing struggles, including customer acquisition, leadership stability, and $26 billion in debt

This week, Dish Network has confirmed that 5G voice services are now available to over 200 million American’s nationwide, with the company hailing the achievement as another step towards becoming the bona fide fourth national mobile operator.

Dish has so far spent around $6 billion on expanding its 5G network across the US since 2019, seeking to catch up with the enormous scale of the country’s dominant mobile trio: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

“At DISH, we firmly believe in the transformative power of communication, and as the 4th nationwide wireless network, we are bringing competition to the wireless industry and more choice to U.S. consumers,” said John Swieringa, president of Technology and COO, EchoStar. “We are proud to now offer 5G voice to over 200 million Americans nationwide, as we continue to expand, optimize, meet milestones and advance the Boost Wireless Network buildout in alignment with our network development plan.”

It should be noted, however, that of more than 200 million potential customers, Dish is currently serving only 7.5 million. In fact, this number is down around 1.5 million from the 9 million customers the business inherited from its purchase of Sprint’s wireless business Boost Mobile back in 2020 as part of the Sprint–T-Mobile merger.

In fact, this news of network expansion actually comes at quite a troubling time for the company, which is facing major challenges not only with customer acquisition and retention, but with debt financing and even leadership.

Dish’s wireless retail chief, Michael Kelly, notably resigned at short notice earlier this week, having been in the role less than a year. He is the latest in a number of executives to jump ship, including Stephen Bye (chief commercial officer), Dave Mayo (chief technology officer), and Jonathan Sipling (chief marketing officer), all of whom left since the start of 2023.

With no clear path to profitable growth for Dish, the company owner Charlie Ergen made the move to recombine Dish with its parent company EchoStar at the start of this year, with Ergen suggesting the move would “generate significant cost and revenue synergies”. Onlookers, however, felt that the merger was more likely related to mitigating the impact of looming maturities on Dish’s $26 billion debt pile.

In conclusion, while Dish’s 5G network continues to grow steadily, its ambitions of becoming a fully-fledged fourth national mobile operator are beginning to look overly optimistic.

Want to keep up to date with all of the latest developments in the US telecoms market? Join the industry in discussion at Connected America live in Dallas

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This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Vinai Sirkay, VP Business Development, IP Networks, Nokia

If, like me, you have been in the telecommunications field for some time, you will remember that networks were traditionally architected to deliver to a service level. We used complex calculations to derive measurements such as 99.999 percent or “five nines” availability, which became the basis for … [visit site to read more]

News 

The rollout will allow for widescale efficiency and cost-savings in a variety of industries 

This week, BT has announced the launch of its new Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) network to aid its development of UK smart cities. 

The network, which according to BT covers 97% of the population, is underpinned by EE’s mobile network and will allow for widescale IoT use across various industries, such as agriculture and manufacturing. 

A NB-IoT network is a type of low power wide area network specifically designed to connect low power IoT devices, such as streetlights, sensors, or meters. According to BT, this will allow IoT devices to be managed automatically over a smart network, enabling, for example, broken streetlights to be automatically identified, thereby increasing energy efficiency and reducing costs.  

BT says that the new network will enable it to “fast-track” smart cities’s development, enabling new use cases focussed on monitoring and optimising energy use, storage, or distribution. 

“Growing numbers of businesses are beginning to realise the benefits of IoT applications, and our UK-wide NB-IoT network opens up a wide range of connectivity solutions for monitors, sensors, and other smart devices,” said Chris Keone, BT’s MD of Division X in a press release.  

“Whether it’s building the smart cities of the future or reducing carbon emissions, our network will provide customers with the reliability and efficiency they need,” he continued. 

This NB-IoT network will not only find use in urban settings. In fact, BT is already trialling the technology for the agricultural industry, using sensors to monitor haystack temperature and prevent fire risks, and safekeeping of livestock through gate sensors. 

Catch BT at this year’s Connected North, 22-23 April in Manchester – book your tickets now! 

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The Indian government is working on developing an Indian mobile phone brand, a minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, whose portfolio includes communications, said this week.

He suggested that the government would also work on creating the entire handset ecosystem in the country, arguing that the success to date of large-scale mobile manufacturing would benefit the project, encouraging ecosystem partners to come to India in the next five years.

This follows a similar initiative relating to semiconductors which has seen a Micron plant under construction and, the minister suggested, more approvals on the way. Quoted by India’s Economic Times, he apparently said: “In that sense, we are moving from the design ecosystem to fab and ATMP (assembly, test and packaging) ecosystem.”

An indigenously developed app store – Indus Appstore – has also been developed, with apps accessible in 12 Indian languages.

Of course, India does already have a home-grown mobile handset company. It’s called Lava and is a manufacturer of smartphones, feature phones, tablet computing devices and laptops or notebooks, with operations in Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mexico, the Middle East and Russia as well as India. It says it is now the only mobile handset company that makes truly ‘Make In India’ phones with complete control on design and manufacturing within India. 

Preparations are also being made to launch indigenous operating system BharOS-based smartphones on the Lava smartphone.  In the next six months there will be about 500 Lava-designed and manufactured phones in India, which will work on BharOS. 

Three expansion projects and a contract renewal: … [visit site to read more]

Open RAN vendor Parallel Wireless says it has expanded its collaboration on Open RAN initiatives with Türk Telekom to include its energy-saving xApps solution and AMD-based 5G massive MIMO solution in the operator’s trial cluster.

Türk Telekom has already integrated Parallel Wireless’s Open RAN 2G, 3G, 4G technology within its field trial infrastructure, with 5G technology currently under lab evaluation.

The expansion includes the addition of Parallel Wireless’s GreenRAN xApps, which are designed to help network operators optimise power consumption by adapting to fluctuating traffic demands. Parallel Wireless says the GreenRAN suite provides companies with power-saving applications as an additional layer, running on an O-RAN-compliant near real-time radio intelligence controller (RIC) platform.

This enables Türk Telekom to enhance network performance, coverage, and energy efficiency while maintaining network performance and end-user QoE, said Steve Papa, founder and CEO of Parallel Wireless.

“Layering our GreenRAN xApps technology on top of what’s currently deployed allows us to support Türk Telekom in their journey to test and implement innovative industry developments,” Papa said in a statement.

Türk Telekom is an early adopter of Open RAN technology. In 2022, it launched a multivendor Open RAN initiative with Parallel Wireless and Juniper Networks to put together a trial Open RAN solution for testing in Türk Telekom’s Innovation Centre, as well as field environments. Juniper supplied the RIC for that initiative, while Parallel Wireless provided the Open RAN software.

“As our network grows, we are always looking for new industry developments and the best technology to allow us to stay at the forefront of advancements, to ensure superior optimization and scalable operations, while enhancing the experience for our users,” said Türk Telekom CEO Ümit Önal. “This opportunity is a win for operators who can use Open RAN to optimize network coverage and power consumption.”

News

The operator has upgraded one of its existing Open RAN masts in Devon with NEC equipment, demonstrating the benefits of interchangeable RAN components

Today, Vodafone has announced the deployment of NEC’s Massive MIMO technology to one of their live 5G Open RAN sites in Devon.

The deployment is notable for being one of the first examples of Open RAN components being swapped in a live commercial network deployment – a fact which Vodafone says exemplifies the flexibility of Open RAN.

“Massive MIMO is the cherry on top of any 5G installation,” said Vodafone UK Chief Network Officer, Andrea Dona. “It dramatically improves the efficiency of the site, and as a result, provides an enhanced mobile experience for our customers. This is an exciting development because it proves the benefits of OpenRAN. Here, we have replaced a component of a live mobile site with one from a different vendor, without operational complications, and it is running on software from Samsung. This is interchangeability and interoperability in action.”

While the components being swapped out for NEC kit are not specified, it seems likely to be Samsung equipment, given the South Korean vendor was announced as the company’s radio partner for the Open RAN deployment back in 2022. Vodafone also notes that the new NEC equipment is continuing to be run on Samsung software.

NEC has been one of Vodafone’s key partners on Open RAN since 2021, alongside the likes of Dell Technologies, Samsung, Wind River, Capgemini Engineering, and Keysight Technologies.

“We now have NEC Massive MIMO working in tandem with Samsung Networks radios, both of which are powered by Samsung management software. Underneath the hood, we have Dell Technologies servers with Intel chips, supported by the Wind River container-as-a-service software,” said Dona in a LinkedIn post.

Vodafone says it will use this new RAN configuration for the 2,500 Open RAN sites it aims to have deployed in th UK by 2027, primarily in Wales and the South West of England.

When the concept of Open RAN first hit the international stage around 2020, it came with the promise of a far more diverse vendor ecosystem, where interoperable RAN components from multiple providers could coexist happily within a single base station. Part of the motivation was to wean operators off their reliance on single RAN vendor giants – particularly Huawei –

Since then, however, this promise has gone largely unfulfilled. There have been relatively few commercial Open RAN deployments, and those that do exist are still typically reliant on a small number of players – far from the vibrant vendor tapestry vaunted at the start of the decade.

To further complicate matters, major vendors like Nokia and Ericsson are playing an increasingly significant role in the Open RAN ecosystem. Despite initially claiming that Open RAN could never contend with the capabilities of their single RAN solutions, both companies notably joined the O-RAN Alliance and have been gradually increasing their commitment to the concept of interoperability.

Indeed, we only need to look at AT&T’s decision to partner with Ericsson in a $14 billion Open RAN deal late last year to see that an Open RAN future for the telecoms industry need not necessarily mean a reduction in the network presence of the vendor giants.

The good news is, as proven by Vodafone’s announcement today, that this need not be the case forever. As Open RAN technology grows in popularly and maturity, component switching will become an even simpler process, potentially allowing operators greater opportunity to experiment with smaller vendors in live networks.

Whether this will be enough to persuade them to diversify significantly, however, remains to be seen.

Also in the news:
VMO2 records £3.3bn loss as interest rates begin to bite
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From humble beginnings: The amazing journey of Hormuud Telecom CEO Ahmed Mohamud Yusuf

One new regional fiber route, and three bits of FTTH news to catch up with: … [visit site to read more]