Mobile & Wireless Roundup #37

Welcome to the 37th edition of this newsletter. A few weeks ago a friend reached out to ask me how or from where I get this endless amount of information from??Do I spend my entire day just searching for stuff? The answer is actually quite simple.

We all come across a lot of stuff on our e-journey every day. There is endless amount of information on our LinkedIn feed, on Twitter and Facebook. Most of the time we look at it briefly and move on. On LinkedIn and Facebook I find it challenging to find the same post I saw just an hour previously, unless I remember who posted it.

If we make a note of interesting and important links/details as we see them, we will have a lot more information to digest at later dates. In fact these make up for the bulk of information I drip feed on different channels. The next question my friend had was where to store it so it’s easily accessible.

I use a tool call Notepad++. It’s a free enhanced Notepad but can do far too many things, including working as a source code editor. By default it loads the files that were open in the editor when you closed it. This makes your high priority files easily accessible.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am a technologist with over 24 years’ experience in mobile wireless technology, currently working as an independent analyst, consultant and a trainer. This newsletter is a summary of my posts and others news that caught my attention since the last newsletter.

? 6G

• Free 6G Training: The European Space Agency (ESA) Explores the Role of Satellites for 5G & 6G (link)

• SCMP: China Unicom to introduce early 6G mobile applications by 2025 (link)
• Ericsson: 6G spectrum - enabling the future mobile life beyond 2030 (link)

? 5G

• To Infinity and Beyond with 5G-Advanced (link)

? 2G/3G

• Spark New Zealand to close its 3G network in late 2025 and make way for 5G in rural Aotearoa (link)

? Open & Disaggregated Networks (including Open RAN, vRAN, etc.)

• Telecoms.com: At whose expense will Open RAN thrive? (link)
• Mavenir Whitepaper: A Holistic Study of Power Consumption and Energy Savings Strategies for Open vRAN Systems (link)
• TMN: SONIC Open RAN lab opens in London (link)
• Press Release: Rakuten launches Open RAN Customer Experience Center in UK, heralding major step forward in Japan-UK tech partnership (link)
• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn: “Darwinism. For 35 years we've built BaseStations the same way. 1 vendor, all on site. Around the same time Games Consoles were the same, but now…” (link)

? Spectrum

• The DSA 2023 Global Summit! Presentations available on website here. Good Twitter thread by Dean Bubley here.
• Dean Bubley on Twitter: Good summary slide by @Qualcomm about the status of 6GHz in LatAm. Good traction for 1200MHz unlicensed option (Tweet with photo)

? Private Networks

• Economic Times India: DoT rejects Trai plan to reserve 5G bands for captive networks (link)

? IoT / M2M / Smart Homes

• The Verge: Amazon just opened up its Sidewalk network for anyone to build connected gadgets on (link)
• ]Press Release: KORE to Acquire Twilio's IoT Business Unit and Accelerate Progress Towards Building the World's First 'IoT Hyperscaler' (link)

? AI, ML & Automation

• The Guardian: More than 1,000 artificial intelligence experts urge delay until world can be confident ‘effects will be positive and risks manageable’ (link)

? Satellites, HAPS, Drones, UAVs & Space

• 5G NR-NTN Demos made a Debut at MWC 2023 (link)
• Africa News: Vodacom to Employ LEO Satellites to Bridge Africa’s Connectivity Gaps (link)
• Press Release: Successful launch of 36 OneWeb Satellites with ISRO/NSIL marks key milestone to enable global connectivity (link)
• Tim Farrar on Twitter: “What does AST’s Q4 press release not mention? The beamforming needed to actually operate a communications link. That was an incredibly complicated process even for GEO satellites like Terrestar and Ligado. It will be harder for a LEO with a non-rigid antenna array” (Tweet with picture)

? Wi-Fi

• Twitter thread by Dean Bubley from WiFi Now event (link)
• Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: Some quick thoughts and take-outs from Wi-Fi NOW in Rio de Janeiro this week (link)
• Dean Bubley on Twitter: “Now 3m APs live with 1500 companies & 100+ PoCs And *New announcement* - Tokyo Metropolian Govt muni free WiFi” (Tweet with photo)

? Metaverse

• MWL: Disney axes metaverse unit (link)
• Macau Business: Indonesia Metaverse Collaboration Initiative was launched at MWC 2023 Barcelona as a Step Forward in the Metaverse Industry (link)

? Sustainability

• Vodafone and Intel paper shows path to lower network energy bills, better environmental footprint (link)
• IEEE Spectrum: Gallium Nitride and Silicon Carbide Fight for Green Tech Domination (link)

? Other News and Technology Stuff

• 9to5Google: Vodafone is shutting off RCS messaging this week, pushes customers to Google Messages (link)
• The spend by big tech companies on R&D and Capex is astonishing. Add in content creation for further contrast & context vs telcos’ “fair share” myths. LinkedIn post by Dean Bubley (link)
• ITU-EBU workshop: Broadcasting in times of crisis (link)
• Rudolf van der Berg on LinkedIn: “Fernando Herrera González of Telefónica correctly states that telecom networks are a one sided market today. However, they don't want to be!” (link)

? Picture of the week: Most people living in developed areas receive mobile signal by default and we take it for granted. In rural and remote areas there are always challenges in bringing connectivity. In many African countries, bringing connectivity to some of rural and remote areas is such a challenge that many operators rely on NaaS providers to bring connectivity to these areas. The photo below shows one such NaaS provider, AMN, bringing connectivity to a rural community. The post shared by them here celebrates the heroes of AMN, across all of Africa and beyond.

A video of a villagers in Guinea celebrating after being connected to the rest of the world for the first time is also worth watching here.

Happy to hear your thoughts. Feel free let me know what worked, what didn’t, how I can make this better, etc. Get in touch over LinkedIn!

PDF version of this and previous newsletters are available here.