The government’s commitment to Open RAN has been growing steadily in recent years. The technology first appeared to come to their attention while the government was mulling whether to designate China’s Huawei a ‘high risk’ vendor and order its removal from UK networks back in early 2020. At the time, Prime Minister Boris Johnson notably called upon the telecoms industry to “tell us what the alternative is” and, since then, it appears that the answer has increasingly been ‘Open RAN&’…

The government’s commitment to Open RAN has been growing steadily in recent years. The technology first appeared to come to their attention while the government was mulling whether to designate China’s Huawei a ‘high risk’ vendor and order its removal from UK networks back in early 2020. At the time, Prime Minister Boris Johnson notably called upon the telecoms industry to “tell us what the alternative is” and, since then, it appears that the answer has increasingly been ‘Open RAN’.

By the end of 2020, the government had announced its 5G Diversification Strategy, aiming to expanding the UK’s telecoms equipment supply chain by removing barriers for entry while keeping security as a top priority. The initiative was backed by an initial £250 million investment. 

Just a year later, in December 2021, the government went on to announce a joint ambition with the nation’s operators, aiming to carry 35% of mobile traffic over Open RAN architecture by the end of 2030.

Now, it seems that the government is taking an even more proactive role in the country’s Open RAN development, announcing a new set of Open RAN principles that they hope will guide the technology’s evolution and deployment to “work in the interests of British citizens and business”.

“With so much momentum behind Open RAN, now is the right time to set these principles so industry and governments can take a common approach to developing and deploying this technology, so it delivers on its promise to disrupt the market and spark a wave of innovation and competition in telecoms,” said Minister for Digital Infrastructure Julia Lopez.

The document outlines four key principles for Open RAN’s development: 

1. Open disaggregation, allowing elements of the RAN to be sourced from different suppliers and implemented in new ways.

2. Standards-based compliance, allowing all suppliers to test solutions against standards in an open, neutral environment.

3. Demonstrated interoperability, ensuring disaggregated elements work together as a fully functional system — at a minimum matching the performance and security of current solutions.

4. Implementation neutrality, allowing suppliers to innovate and differentiate on the features and performance of their products.

The document also advises network operators and vendors to avoid fragmentation of specifications; prioritise optimisation of the requirements and priorities of mobile operators; create an open, transparent and inclusive approach, compliant with World Trade Organisation rules, to allow greater access to Open RAN technology once developed; create neutral testing environments for the technology; and ensure that the market remains transparent, particularly with respect to accessing relevant essential intellectual property.

Security, naturally, remains a major priority of expanding the ecosystem through a greater adoption of Open RAN technology. 

“Open RAN promises to make our networks more resilient and futureproof, but this market change must be managed carefully to deliver on that promise whilst maintaining security and performance levels. These Principles set a clear direction of travel for the industry to build secure and resilient networks for 5G and beyond,” said Ian Levy, Technical Director at the National Cyber Security Centre.

Despite the increasing support from the UK government, deployments of Open RAN technology in live networks are still few and far between, with most operators still conducting tests to ensure the technology’s interoperability. Vodafone is perhaps the leading proponent of the technology in the UK, having activated a small number of 4G Open RAN sites in 2021, as well as turning on the UK’s first 5G Open RAN site earlier this year. 
 

Today, Indian operator Bharti Airtel has announced it has collaborated with Apollo Hospitals and Cisco to demonstrate the potential of 5G-connected ambulances to support patient care during transit to medical facilities.
 
The 5G Connected Ambulance demonstration, which took place in Bengaluru, was specially built including various patient monitoring applications, medical equipment and other devices, aimed at relaying vital patient information back to the hospital in real-time over 5G. 
 
The set up also includes various onboard cameras and wearable cameras for the paramedics…

Today, Indian operator Bharti Airtel has announced it has collaborated with Apollo Hospitals and Cisco to demonstrate the potential of 5G-connected ambulances to support patient care during transit to medical facilities.

The 5G Connected Ambulance demonstration, which took place in Bengaluru, was specially built including various patient monitoring applications, medical equipment and other devices, aimed at relaying vital patient information back to the hospital in real-time over 5G. 

The set up also includes various onboard cameras and wearable cameras for the paramedics.

This will allow doctors back at the hospital to make remote diagnostic decisions and direct the paramedics to perform emergency procedures if required. It will also allow the hospital staff to be better prepared to for the patient’s arrival at the medical facility.

According to Airtel, in the years to come virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications will ultimately allow doctors to virtually guide the paramedics in delivering care.

Beyond transmitting patient data directly, Airtel suggests that the 5G network will also allow for more optimised callouts; the low latency connectivity will allow for more accurate geolocation for ambulances in the field, therefore allowing the nearest ambulance to respond to emergencies.

« Apollo Hospitals have been evangelists of connected ambulances and using these to reduce mortality and utilize the Golden Hour to the benefit of patients. The criticality of the ‘Golden hour’ is well known. It can mean the difference between life and death for seriously ill or trauma patients in an emergency,” explained Dr Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director at Apollo Hospitals Group. “The Golden hour is impacted by the facilities in an ambulance and the distance from the Hospital. Studies show that an increased journey distance to the Hospital is associated with an increased risk of mortality, with a 10-km increase in straight-line distance associated with around a 1% absolute increase in mortality. Studies also indicate that pre-hospital time management should become a management objective. These insights propelled us to collaborate with Airtel on the 5G connected ambulance project and use 5G in order to utilise the disruption-free, lag-free connectivity it provides.”

It is also worth remembering that India has yet to officially auction 5G spectrum, having seen numerous delays to the process caused by both the coronavirus pandemic and disagreements over pricing between the government and operators. This week, India’s telecommunications minister announced that the 5G auction process would go ahead in June, despite ongoing disputes. 

This ambulance trial, along with numerous others being carried out by the Indian operators, is being done using temporary licences granted by the government last year. 

Given the delay in rolling out 5G infrastructure across the country, it will be a long time before 5G coverage is ubiquitous enough to make 5G-connected ambulances a mainstay of Indian healthcare. Nonetheless, this is an important trial in showcasing the ways in which 5G can potentially improve patient care and provides much-needed exposure to the benefits of the technology to the sprawling Indian healthcare system, which often relies on largely outdated communications technologies.

T-Mobile has announced that Lucid Drone Technologies has chosen the Un-carrier to be the exclusive provider of IoT connectivity and management for their fleet of industrial spraying drones. Together, Lucid Drone Technologies and T-Mobile are collaborating to put maintenance teams and exterior cleaning companies out of harm’s way using drone technology for high-risk facilities maintenance work like exterior soft-wash cleaning and high-rise window washing. The companies also plan to leverage T-Mobile’s industry-leading 5G network in the future to fly drones beyond line…

T-Mobile has announced that Lucid Drone Technologies has chosen the Un-carrier to be the exclusive provider of IoT connectivity and management for their fleet of industrial spraying drones. Together, Lucid Drone Technologies and T-Mobile are collaborating to put maintenance teams and exterior cleaning companies out of harm’s way using drone technology for high-risk facilities maintenance work like exterior soft-wash cleaning and high-rise window washing. The companies also plan to leverage T-Mobile’s industry-leading 5G network in the future to fly drones beyond line-of-sight and power more data-intensive capabilities like video streaming.
 

A game changer for safety of maintenance teams

Commercial property management firms and developers make significant investments to keep maintenance teams safe. Expensive liability insurance premiums and equipment fees have facilities leaders looking for new and cost-effective solutions. Enter industrial spraying drone pioneer Lucid Drone Technologies and the Un-carrier to deliver a game changer — drones equipped to clean exterior building surfaces and windows.

The next generation of Lucid Drone Technologies industrial spraying drones, powered by T-Mobile for Business, can perform exterior washing for commercial building surfaces and windows, including outdoor stadiums and arenas, hotels, and university structures. That means maintenance teams can steer clear of some high-risk tasks, keeping them safer and focused on other mission critical work.
 

IoT driving the future of industrial spraying drone technology

T-Mobile’s network powers critical capabilities for Lucid Drone Technologies industrial spraying drones such as real-time sharing of flight data, battery utilization information, hardware diagnostics, and delivery of firmware and software updates. Additionally, T-Mobile Control Center will give Lucid Drone Technologies the ability to view and manage the connectivity of their industrial spraying drones. With the automation and provisioning capabilities of T-Mobile’s IoT platform, Lucid Drone Technologies can easily accelerate deployment of their growing fleet. Lucid Drone Technologies will have near real-time visibility to all their industrial spraying drones with the ability to monitor network conditions and device behavior with T-Mobile Control Center.

Initially, T-Mobile for Business will deliver 4G LTE connectivity to Lucid Drone Technologies industrial spraying drones, providing a reliable connection nationwide. Lucid Drone Technologies expects to utilize the Un-carrier’s 5G network in the near future for advanced use cases such as network operations center access, live streaming video and remote piloting. As Americas largest and fastest 5G network, T-Mobile is poised to push IoT to its full potential and catapult adoption — paving the way for new drone applications that rely on low-latency, high-speed data, and real-time location and proximity-based services.

« At Lucid Drone Technologies, we are committed to providing robotic solutions that allow our customers to complete jobs that were once dull, dirty, and dangerous in a safer, faster, and smarter way,” said Andrew Ashur, CEO, Lucid Drone Technologies. “T-Mobile not only allows us to provide our customers with the highest quality of real-time support and connectivity today, but they also have impressive 5G capabilities that allow us to push the frontier limits of responsible robotics. »

“Lucid Drone Technologies is a great example of a customer using originality and new technology to solve complicated problems,” said Callie Field, President, T-Mobile Business Group. “It’s not very often that you get to collaborate with these kinds of thinkers, and we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to offer our technology to help bring their vision to life.”
 

Also in the news:

Located along the southeast coast of China, Fujian Province sits along the coastline of over 3000 kilometers. Generations of Fujian people live in peace and contentment with its unique marine resources. With the continuous evolution of 5G technologies, ZTE and China Mobile Fujian Branch have recently jointly built a TDD+FDD two-layer three-dimensional continuous coverage network to help the marine economy set sail. All-round Marine Communication Driven by Three-dimensional Coverage
ZTE has proposed the « three-network-in-one » three-dimensional coverage solution, that is, the combination of inshore network, ocean network, and ship network. This solution can meet the communication requirements of the entire sea area through technologies such as uplink and downlink carrier aggregation…

Located along the southeast coast of China, Fujian Province sits along the coastline of over 3000 kilometers. Generations of Fujian people live in peace and contentment with its unique marine resources. With the continuous evolution of 5G technologies, ZTE and China Mobile Fujian Branch have recently jointly built a TDD+FDD two-layer three-dimensional continuous coverage network to help the marine economy set sail.

All-round Marine Communication Driven by Three-dimensional Coverage
ZTE has proposed the « three-network-in-one » three-dimensional coverage solution, that is, the combination of inshore network, ocean network, and ship network. This solution can meet the communication requirements of the entire sea area through technologies such as uplink and downlink carrier aggregation, ultra-far coverage, and 5G satellite integration.

The 5G network built in coastal area of 0~10 km is defined as the « inshore network. » In addition to the normal 2C services, more services based on smart ports and fishing farming will be considered. These services have capacity and latency requirements for network coverage. Therefore, the 5G network should provide 100Mbps downlink and 5Mbps uplink to guarantee excellent experience. In addition, TDD 2.6GHz can be used to build a private industrial network, and 4.9GHz can be used to supplement the capacity, so as to realize coordination among land, sea and port.

The coastline extends outwards, and all services take place on the sea. Therefore, this area is defined as the « ocean network ». Depending on distance and service type, the « ocean network » is divided into offshore area (10~30 km) and far-sea area (30~50 km). In offshore area, most services still have high requirements for uplink and downlink rates, such as boat-shore coordination, sea tourism and smart wind and electricity. High/low frequency networking can be used for dual-layer network coverage by providing 100Mbps at the downlink edge, and 3Mbps at the uplink edge to ensure network signal and experience stability. For far-sea area, 1Mbps at the uplink edge is provided to ensure video backhaul and other services.

For the ship network with an offshore distance of more than 50 km, the main scenario is the international route for ships of 10,000 tons. Besides the best-effort network coverage provided by the 5G network, this type of ship is usually equipped with satellite communication equipment. Intelligent switching between two networks can be achieved through the ship-mounted 5G+ satellite integration gateway, thus reducing the user cost and further releasing the valuable bandwidth resources of the satellite.

5G at Sea Enabling Communication
In the past, before Fujian people went to sea, they prayed for the blessings of Mazu and other gods, because the ocean is generous but full of danger. Before the ship reached the shore, families of those fishermen were always worried. Now, with 5G, people on ships are able to contact their families 100 kilometers away via 5G VoNR technology in video.

In Fujian, ZTE uses ultra-far coverage technology to meet the 5G network coverage of special scenarios within 50km such as islands, fishing rafts, anchorages, and routes. TDD NR coverage currently supports a maximum cell radius of 59 km while FDD NR to 100 km.

5G at Sea Making Life Better
Fujian boasts a densely distributed coastal fishing boats. Hundreds of thousands of fishermen live and work here. From breeding monitoring, life entertainment, to live commerce, they all need the support of basic communication networks. The large bandwidth and low latency of 5G can meet the requirements of mobile signals on the sea, and help fishermen achieve a qualitative leap of life.

Based on the traditional 5G network coverage solution, ZTE has also innovatively proposed CampSite solution, which can effectively extend the 5G coverage range through signal relay. In higher-quality fishing and tourism integration scenarios such as aquaculture and ranching at sea, this solution can effectively meet users’ call, entertainment, video conferencing, and other requirements, and achieve local data distribution.

5G at Sea Booming Marine Digital Economy
Fujian is rich in offshore wind energy resources and vigorously develop wind power services. From the coast to sea of dozens of kilometers, numerous large-scale wind power equipment continuously supplies clean power.

In this scenario, on the one hand, ZTE deploys 5G stations high along the coast to achieve sea-surface 5G coverage by using innovative technologies such as ultra-far coverage and carrier aggregation to meet the basic communication requirements of O&M personnel in wind farm. On the other hand, ZTE deployed 5G equipment inside the wind power warehouse to realize the backhaul of wind power data and monitoring data, providing a network basis for new services such as AR remote operations. It further facilitates the automated management and large-scale deployment of wind farms.

With in-depth marine exploration, marine tourism, marine new energy, marine big data, and fishery digitization will usher in vigorous development. These are inseparable from the coverage of the network.

ZTE and China Mobile will make all efforts to build a high-quality 5G marine network to promote the intelligent development of the marine field and the improvement of economic benefits.

Ahead of Submarine Networks EMEA 2022 next month, Total Telecom sat down with Bertrand Clesca, Director of Client Solutions at Pioneer Consulting to hear his views on which technologies are shaping the submarine cable market and to learn about the projects that Pioneer Consulting is currently engaged with.
At Submarine Networks EMEA next month, you’ll be moderating a panel on “Innovations in subsea cable design.” In your view, what technologies are currently having the biggest impact on cable design? 
Clearly, increased fiber pair count has the biggest technical and commercial impacts on subsea cable design. For many years, the number of fiber pairs has been limited to eight in repeatered cable systems. Four years ago, we saw the advent of the first cable systems with 12 fiber pairs…

Ahead of Submarine Networks EMEA 2022 next month, Total Telecom sat down with Bertrand Clesca, Director of Client Solutions at Pioneer Consulting to hear his views on which technologies are shaping the submarine cable market and to learn about the projects that Pioneer Consulting is currently engaged with.

At Submarine Networks EMEA next month, you’ll be moderating a panel on “Innovations in subsea cable design.” In your view, what technologies are currently having the biggest impact on cable design? 

Clearly, increased fiber pair count has the biggest technical and commercial impacts on subsea cable design. For many years, the number of fiber pairs has been limited to eight in repeatered cable systems. Four years ago, we saw the advent of the first cable systems with 12 fiber pairs, quickly followed by 16 fiber-pair systems (such as the transatlantic Amitié and Grace Hopper cables planned to enter commercial service this year). Already announced is a new transatlantic 24-fiber-pair cable system to be manufactured by NEC. This system will offer 480 Tbit/s of capacity (almost half a petabit per second) in 2024, with current Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTE) technology. 20% more capacity could be offered in the midterm, but we will never experience a further 10-fold increase in cable capacity as enabled by the introduction of optical coherent technology 10 years ago, since we are getting closer and closer to the upper fundamental Shannon limit. 

On the commercial side, more fiber pairs provide more flexibility in fiber routing, enable more partners to join new construction projects, and make fiber pairs more affordable. With cable systems offering more than 16 fiber pairs, bandwidth granularity for big capacity users is increasing from a few 100 Gbit/s to the fiber pair level.