Mobile & Wireless Roundup #65

Welcome to the 65th edition of this newsletter. Today we dropped our part 2 of the ‘TechKnowledge Technology Stories’. In my younger days, I had to undergo a lot of challenges to learn about things, work and even life. While I try to simplify some of these for others, I know very well that’s not enough.

In a former company we started a mentoring programme. While some of the senior people had an experience of mentoring, I had to learn the whole process and structure. We spent around six months to talk to new starters and junior people who were keen to learn about how to navigate the work life balance and grow their career.

When I talked to some of my senior colleagues about getting involved they were either too busy or in their own words, “not cut-out for being a mentor”. I like how Wikipedia describes mentorship (emphasis mine):

“Mentorship is the patronage, influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the personal and professional growth of a mentee. Most traditional mentorships involve having senior employees mentor more junior employees, but mentors do not necessarily have to be more senior than the people they mentor. What matters is that mentors have experience that others can learn from.”

It was nice to see that the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is launching their new mentorship program. Please check out this LinkedIn post by Eugina Jordan for details.

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 advisor, 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: 6G and the Internet-of-Musical Things (IoMusT) (link)
• The 3G4G Blog - Mobile Network Architecture: How did we get here & where should we go? (link)
• Preview of ETSI Technology Radar (ETR) 2023 (link)

? 5G

• 5G Advanced — what does it mean for the 5G Core market? (link)
• Dean Bubley on Twitter: "Interesting that both Apple & SamsungMobile now have options to switch off 5G / limit is use in order to manage smartphone battery life" (Tweet with photos)

? 4G/LTE

• Small Data Transmission (SDT) in LTE and 5G NR (link)

? 2G/3G

• Luke Kehoe on LinkedIn: "Record mobile subscription growth in Ireland, driven by the rollout of a national network of smart meters for energy usage monitoring, belies the malaise pervading the wider domestic mobile market. Data traffic growth is slowing materially, revenue erosion continues to bite and core profitability is on the floor..." (link)

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

• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: The Power of O-RAN's Open Interfaces (link)
• Light Reading: The hunt begins for an 'MVP' in open RAN (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Self-Service RIC (link)
• Telco Titans: Vodafone urges top operators to shoulder responsibility on scaled open RAN adoption (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Navigating Challenges to Implement Plug-and-Play Open RAN (link)

? Spectrum

• Vodafone tests reveal 6GHz spectrum gains in last call to avoid a 5G capacity crunch (link) – Dean Bubley’s Tweet highlights “…no mention of uplink speeds, no mention of energy needed for mMIMO radios…”
• Article 19 - ITU: Why the World Radiocommunication Conference matters (link)

? Private Networks

• Private Networks Technology Blog: Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) Adopts Vodafone's 5G MPN (link)

• Financial Express, India: A year after rollout, private 5G struggles to find takers (link)

? Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: Telecom networks aren't pipes. They are infrastructure (link)
• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Thursday School : Repeat What Works, International Edition (link)
• 200 gigabits per second - Imec’s new SiGe BiCMOS optical receiver allows to process ever-increasing amounts of datacenter traffic (link)

? Virtualization, Cloud & Edge

• Telecom TV: Is platform engineering what the cloud-native telco is waiting for? (link)

? Security & Privacy

• 5G Security in practice and future by Rong Wu, Huawei from ETSI Security Conference 2023 (link)

• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: "Am I affected by $vulnerability ? The need for transparency and clarity in software components in Open RAN system has become paramount. This brings us to the foreground of a pivotal aspect of software management and security: the Software Bill of Materials or SBOM..." (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Security Implications of O-RAN RIC xApps and rApps (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: The Importance of O-RAN Security Specifications and Testing at O-RAN OTIC (link)

? AI, ML & Automation

• TMN: Orange faces network automation challenges with core vendors (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: The Power of O-RAN RIC's AI/ML Capabilities (link)

? Wi-Fi

• Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: "Some quick thoughts about last week's #WGCEMEA #NetworkX event in Paris..." (link)

? Sustainability

• Light Reading - ARCEP: User devices are the largest source of digital carbon emissions (link)

? Other News and Technology Stuff

• Light Reading - Telia Company CSO: Telco transformation requires upskilling at scale (link)
• Ookla - You Did It! Speedtest Reaches 50 Billion Tests! (link)

? Picture of the week: An LTE gas meter relay to transmit meter reading courtesy of @denpa893 on Twitter here. See the details of its working in the reply 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.