#1: 5G for Healthcare, IoT Deployments, 6G and Mission-Critical Power

This is the first edition of This Week in Telecoms - The Fast Mode's weekly LinkedIn newsletter which will be published every Friday. This week witnessed exciting advancements in IoT and healthcare connectivity (and a combination of both!), the conclusion of RSAC2023 and the first two-way space-based voice call with unmodified smartphones.

On Monday, Vodafone unveiled UK's first 5G Standalone Media Innovation Lab, in Coventry, in collaboration with Coventry University. This lab, which will be used by healthcare students to take AR / VR tours of the human body, will be a hub for media companies, broadcasters, and software developers to work with academics and Vodafone engineers to develop new 5G use cases (Read full article).

A similar development in 5G for healthcare is the partnership between M1 Limited and Fullerton Health that will introduce 5G-enabled telemedicine services for the maritime sector in Singapore. This marks the next phase of M1's 5G journey and their broader plans to provide ubiquitous 5G standalone offshore coverage for the Southern Coast of Singapore (Read full article).

On Wednesday, Telefónica Tech and 3M collaborated to launch an AI-based solution for optimizing the management and planning of Hospital Emergency Department (HED) resources and improving patient satisfaction in the Spanish market. The solution, currently for the Spanish market, includes Telefónica Tech's AI Suite tool and 3M's Visor 360 scorecard and offers a comprehensive view of HED operations for faster data-driven decision-making (Read full article).

On Tuesday, Bharti Airtel announced its partnership with Secure Meters to deploy NB-IoT services to power smart meter solutions in 1.3 million homes in Bihar, India. This technology will enable real-time connectivity and uninterrupted transfer of critical data, and has the potential to transform the way energy is consumed and monitored in homes across India (Read full article).

On the same day, Keysight Technologies made the first 6G connection at speeds greater than 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) over sub-terahertz frequencies in the UK, in collaboration with National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the University of Surrey (Read full article).

Early in the week, we also saw the introduction of several next-generation IoT devices by Qualcomm, which includes its QCS8550, QCM8550, QCS4490 and QCM4490 processors. The devices cater to high-performant industrial and commercial IoT applications (Read full article).

Yesterday, Rakuten Mobile and AST SpaceMobile completed the first-ever two-way voice call using a space-based cellular broadband network and regular unmodified smartphones. The calls were made using the BlueWalker 3 satellite, with the first call being made from Midland, Texas to Rakuten in Japan over AT&T spectrum (Read full article).

While AI has long been a topic of hype in the telecoms industry, the first unified AI / ML deployment and operations platform that is specifically tailored for telco edge networks was launched only yesterday by Wallaroo.AI, in collaboration with VMware (Read full article).

Lastly, early results indicate the success of a trial underway at an nbn fixed wireless site near Geelong. The trial is testing the use of wind power, via three micro wind turbines, to help extend the battery life of nbn's temporary network infrastructure, enabling communities and emergency services to stay connected during emergencies (Read full article).

Events

RSA Conference 2023 concluded yesterday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The 32nd edition of the event featured 650+ speakers, 25 tracks, 350+ sessions and 500+ exhibitors.

On another note, The Fast Mode is hosting a bite-sized webinar Traffic Visibility for IP Networks: Challenges of New Encryption Protocols. The webinar, in collaboration with ipoque, a Rohde and Schwarz company, is a must-attend for networking professionals who are working on network security, fraud, traffic management, SD-WAN, network analytics, performance monitoring, policy control, service assurance, and revenue assurance solutions.

The webinar will be have two sessions that will be held on LinkedIn Live:

• North America (31st May 2023, 2.00 PM Eastern Time) - Sign up here.
• Europe and APAC (31st May 2023, 10.00 AM CET) - Sign up here.

Additionally, 2 notable networking events that took place last week are: (we do not have an earlier edition so excuse us including these in this week's edition)

1. Mobile Video Industry Council's?(MOVIC) live cast, titled Video Shouldn’t Have to Cost the Earth, where ENEA and global operators debate the "fair share" of responsibility of OTT providers when it comes to the carriage of data services (Read full article).
2. MPLS SD & AI Net World 2023: The 24th edition of event was held at the Palais des Congrès de Paris and featured sponsors and exhibitors including Ciena, Cisco, Huawei, Juniper, Nokia, Elisa and Comarch.

Resources

We also have a few new resources to share with our readers:

• A white paper by ETSI on how autonomous networks will become one of the most important evolutions to enable digital transformation - it's ungated so grab your copy here
• An e-book by Commscope, Green Agenda for Outdoor Wireless Networks, that reveals the company's collaborative, four-pillar strategy to hit long-term sustainability targets - download it here

If you like this newsletter, do share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any comments or feedback, please reach out to [email protected], we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Enjoy your weekend and see you next week!