Direct-to-phone satellite operator Lynk Global announced on Monday it has successfully tested its Sat2Phone technology in Argentina for the first time in collaboration with Telefónica.

Lynk Global said the test was conducted in Patagonia – said to be one of the most remote regions in the world – via Telefónica’s business units Telefónica Argentina and Telefónica Global Solutions (TGS).

Lynk said its Sat2Phone technology – which enables mobile users to connect to the network direct to its constellation of LEO satellites using standard mobile phones – could enable Telefónica to offer its subscribers enhanced geographic coverage, including extending rural coverage in areas where it is nearly impossible to deploy terrestrial telecommunications infrastructure, such as jungles or mountainous areas.

In addition, the Sat2Phone technology could be used as a back-up to ensure service resilience and provide always-on connectivity to IoT networks.

“[Patagonia] welcomes thousands of visitors every year and thanks to this collaboration, we can help them stay connected via Lynk’s satellite constellation using their existing Movistar subscription,” said Lynk’s chief commercial officer Daniel Dooley.

Gustavo Arditti, satellite business director of TGS, noted that Argentina is the second largest country in South America and the eighth largest in the world by land area, with a diverse geography including the Andes mountain range in the west.

“Given the vast expanse of Argentina, the use of Sat2Phone will ensure that people can stay connected using any unmodified phone, which is a cornerstone of our strategic roadmap,” he said.

Lynk currently has three LEOsats in orbit to support its Sat2Phone service, out of a planned constellation of 5,000. The company says it has regulatory approvals in at least 30 countries to offer the service, and has signed commercial agreements with 36 MNOs around the world. Lynk currently offers cell broadcast (emergency) alerts, and two-way SMS messaging, and intends to launch voice and mobile broadband services in the future.

Lynk has two more satellites scheduled for launch in the first quarter of this year via SpaceX. The company currently aims to have enough satellites for global coverage in 2025.

With MWC underway, a whole bunch of collaboration is being announced.  Here is one bit of consolidation and a series of technology partnerships from different parts of the globe to keep up with: … [visit site to read more]

Cloud-native network infrastructure vendor Mavenir announced on Friday it is in the advanced commercial phase of an Open RAN network pilot deployment for Indian telco Vodafone Idea (Vi) that will support its planned 5G rollout.

Mavenir said the project started in September 2023 and deployment is now underway. The Open RAN network pilot covers key launch sites and is currently carrying live commercial traffic ahead of a planned large-scale deployment.

Under the project, Mavenir is providing a complete, end-to-end cloud-native Open RAN system for Vodafone Idea. The solution includes a distributed unit (DU) solution based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and Mavenir’s OpenBeam Radios, centralized unit (CU), remote radio unit (RRU) and RAN software.

All of the software is running on Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat’s hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes, which Mavenir said is optimised for deployment in urban environments.

The pilot marks the first O-RAN-compliant deployment into Vodafone Idea’s network. While the official announcement doesn’t mention 5G, it does say the deployment is utilising the 3.5 GHz band, the 24.25-27.5 GHz millimetre-wave (mmWave) bands, as well as the 2100-MHz band, to support a nonstandalone (NSA) architecture.

Last month, according to ETTelecom, Vodafone Idea CEO Akshaya Moondra told investors during a third quarter earnings call that Vi is in discussions with various technology partners to finalise its 5G rollout in July or August, which includes implementing vRAN and Open RAN technologies.

Rival telcos Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have completed their 5G rollouts already, but neither has deployed Open RAN technologies to date, having said in the past that the Open RAN ecosystem isn’t mature enough or cost-effective enough yet.

Commenting on Friday’s announcement, Vodafone Idea CTO Jagbir Singh said the Open RAN deployment with Mavenir “is in sync with our technology transformation roadmap and enriched vendor ecosystem. Working in partnership with […] Mavenir, we see a major role ahead for Open RAN technology in delivering the network enhanced capabilities, better TCO and open interfaces that will push the industry forward in new ways.”

A new report from connectivity testing company MedUX has found that London’s 5G network speeds and performance fall significantly behind those of other major European capitals.

The 5G Quality of Experience benchmarking study reveals that in 2023, out of 10 cities tested, London ranked last across key metrics such as speed, reliability and overall user experience.

The report shows that Londoners suffer from both lower download and uplink speeds compared to their European counterparts. The city’s average download speed of 143 Mbps is 75% lower than best-in-class Lisbon at 528 Mbps, and considerably lower than that of its European peers with Porto at 446 Mbps and 326 Mbps for Barcelona. Munich in Germany, the second-worst city for 5G download speeds, had average download speed of 259 Mbps.

The company also adds that London has the second lowest reliability (service consistency) and accessibility (time-to-content) scores across Europe. This means that for 5G users in London, accessing websites will take longer than in Europe, watching movies on the go is more likely to result in lagging and drop outs and anyone gaming is more likely be frustrated by slow response times.

This is in stark contrast to Berlin, which has emerged as Europe’s 5G performance leader. Berlin’s success in 5G deployment is attributed to several factors, with the report giving the German capital an overall Quality of Experience (QoE) score of 4.69 out of 5.

MedUX says the city boasts the highest 5G coverage among European cities, with 89.6% of its population having access to 5G. This extensive coverage is complemented by Berlin’s network consistency and low latency. Its 5G infrastructure provides Europe’s best overall 5G streaming experience, with an average latency of less than 40 milliseconds.

MedUX Chief Marketing Officer Rafael Galarreta pointed to the UK’s decision to ban Chinese telecoms giant Huawei from its 5G infrastructure as a possible reason behind London’s lagging 5G network.

“This delayed deployment has likely affected overall coverage, availability, and user experience, particularly considering that the Huawei ban came after the initial rollout had already commenced,” Galarreta told CNBC.

UK telecoms operator BT Group estimated it would cost around £500 million over 5 years to remove existing Huawei gear and replace it with other vendors’ equipment. The lack of suitable vendors and the right equipment to replace Huawei gear has been a major issue. Such added capital costs and distractions for telecom operators like BT and Vodafone appear to have slowed London’s 5G rollout at a critical time. In contrast, Germany has based its decisions on which vendor to use in its networks on the equipment’s technological capabilities and internationally recognised security standards.

German operator Deutsche Telekom has also won the Mobile network test in Germany for the thirteenth time, with an outstanding rating. The annual test held by German magazine Connect, in partnership with Umlaut (an Accenture company) is regarded as one of the most important and widely recognised benchmarks in the industry. Deutsche Telekom led in all urban and rural regions in all categories bar one, hitting 99% and over in all categories.

More broadly across the continent, the EU has set up a program called the ‘2030 Digital Compass’, which sets out a vision for the EU to successfully achieve a digital transition by 2030. As part of the proposal, it stipulates that by 2030, “All European households will be covered by a Gigabit network, with all populated areas covered by 5G.”

The EU’s Digital Compass is an ambitious plan for digital transformation and inclusion. Faster data speeds, lower latency, and increased connectivity are essential to achieving almost every goal outlined in the plan. The mechanism for tracking the progress of this ambition is a system looks at “a structured, transparent and shared monitoring system based on the European Union’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) to measure progress towards each of the 2030 targets.”

However, using the EU’s own measure, on the DESI chart showing overall 5G coverage, the bottom 5 ranking countries are all countries which have placed some degree of restriction on Huawei.

Source: EU Commission, 2023. DESI 2023 dashboard for the Digital Decade. https://digital-decade-desi.digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/datasets/desi/charts

The 19th European 5G Observatory report, a website supported by the European Commission, which analyses the latest figures measuring achievements towards EU 5G targets, also shows these 5 countries at the bottom of their ranking table.

Fair Competition or Further Delay?

Restricting fair competition goes against the EU’s rules, whereas competition between companies benefits customers and spurs companies to innovate. The right for mobile operators to choose the equipment used in their networks, based on its technical capabilities and verified security standards is essential to ensure that they can offer customers the best quality of user experience, no matter where in Europe they are.

Ongoing Huawei restrictions continue to hold back the UK’s 5G roll-out with additional costs and delays looking likely. That leaves Londoners suffering the consequences, facing slow and unreliable service. So, whether it’s video calls with friends, online shopping, navigating with augmented reality maps, streaming content or gaming on the move, Londoners are getting a raw deal.

The report highlights the impact on users that politically motivated and overly restrictive regulation can produce. This goes a long way to explaining why many European commentators view London as cautionary tale for future 5G delivery.

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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]

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.”

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