Mobile & Wireless Roundup #69

Welcome to the 69th edition of this newsletter. Some of you may know that I maintain a 6G blog, which may probably be the most popular blog on 6G ˉ\_(ツ)_/ˉ. As a part of that and even before, as part of Free 5G Training, I watch a lot of 5G/6G vision videos and adverts.

A lot of these 6G visions talk about how people in future will have more time on their hands to do the things they want to do. These visions don’t really talk about how one would get paid especially since many of the jobs will fall victim to AI and automation.

Take for instance a company or a factory needs to employ ten thousand people today. If the innovations in technology cut this down to a hundred, it may not be much of an issue. If nearly all of the industries and organisations start doing this then this will cause a massive unemployment. ?As you probably know, mass unemployment is always followed by rise in crime including thefts, murders, xenophobia and it leads to increase in depression, health issues, suicides, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against any of these future technologies and developments but I am not confident that any government is looking at the holistic picture of how to handle these scenarios in future. The Covid pandemic was a warning on how unprepared we all were. Surely there are a lot of lessons learned but I just hope that instead of thinking this was a one off event, we are better prepared to handle future challenges.

Finally, just so you know that I spend a lot of time watching ads and fun futuristic videos, here is a recent advert by Vodafone UK for Christmas 2023. As soon as I saw this, it reminded me of an advert by Telia Lithuania from Christmas 2020. Surely it’s just a coincidence but if you are involved in creating visions and adverts, you can avail of my services to glance at your creation and provide ?quick feedback.

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: RF Sampo Seminar on 'Future mobile radio frequency technologies and solutions' (link)

• Nokia's Presentation from NIST/IEEE Future Networks 6G Core Networks Workshop (link)
• ETSI Launches a New Group for Integrated Sensing and Communications, a Candidate Technology for 6G (link)
• Huawei Research Magazine - Special Issue on Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) (link)

? 5G

• Light Reading: China Mobile finally ready for 5G messaging (link)
• Boldyn: 5G densification versus 5G roll out - what’s the difference? (link)

? 2G/3G

• Commsupdate: Slovak Telekom waves goodbye to 3G (link)

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

• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: O-RAN RIC xApp Development Challenge (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: GPT-Generated RIC Use Cases and Their xApps/rApps (link)
• PR Newswire: Successful Deployment Validation of Open and Virtualized 5G RAN Equipment by Viettel and Qualcomm in Commercial Network (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: A Killer LLM Use case in O-RAN Energy Saving (link)
• SDX Central: NTT DoCoMo nabs Nokia for 5G open RAN (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - Revolutionizing Network Management: The Power of Automation in O-RAN (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Transforming O-RAN Test Documentation with Multi-modal LLM (link)

? Spectrum

• CommsUpdate: South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) opens applications for 28GHz spectrum (link)
• ITU World Radiocommunication Conference 2023 addresses future of space-, sea- and land-based radiocommunications (link)
• IEEE Comsoc Technology Blog: ITU World Radiocommunication Conference 2023 opens in Dubai, UAE (link)
• Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: "There's a new Ofcom update on shared access spectrum today (link in comments), with some proposed enhancements to its rules to make it easier to deploy #Private5G and local #FWA networks, as well as fixing one of the barriers to #NeutralHost for indoor use..." (link)

? Private Networks

• Light Reading: How private wireless might be used in LA for the 2028 Olympics (link)
• MWL: China Unicom doubles private 5G rollouts (link)
• RCR Wireless: Ooredoo claims MEA ‘first’ with private LTE deployment for offshore oil-and-gas (link)
• Network World: 8 top industries for private 5G (link)
• Pablo Tomasi on LinkedIn: "Boldyn Networks acquisition of EDZCOM from Cellnex Telecom says an awful lot about a #private5g market which more often than not gets misrepresented and confused…" (link)
• Private Networks Technology Blog: Enterprise Services with Private 5G - Key Enabler in Expanding Opportunities for Vertical Industries (link)

? Security & Privacy

• NCSC Annual Review 2023 (link)
• Silke Holtmanns on LinkedIn: "This is a very cool and efficient example how SMS spamers were caught. It required some smart thinking, analysis and a lot of cooperation, but it worked!..." (link)

? Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Huawei's RuralLink Solution Proposes to 'Connect the Unconnected' (link)
• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Thursday School : Back to Basics; Site Access/Rental (link)

? Smartphones, Devices, Wearables & Gadgets

• Light Reading: India's Jio preps launch of affordable cloud laptop – reports (link)

? AI, ML & Automation

• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: O-RAN AI/ML Use Cases (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: A Killer RAN AI/ML Use Case - Traffic Steering (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - The Future of Networking: AI-Enhanced Infrastructure Coding (link)

? Satellites, HAPS, Drones, UAVs & Space

• CommsUpdate: Philippines’ govt purchases broadband satellites (link)
• Via Satellite: Regulatory Experts Preview Key Issues for WRC-23 (link)
• Space News: Satellite industry at odds over proposed power limit review ahead of WRC-23 (link)
• MWL: Indian space authority clears Eutelsat OneWeb for ignition (link)

? Wi-Fi

• RCR Wireless: Reliability over throughput — a Wi-Fi 7 update (link)

? Sustainability

• Nokia whitepaper, 'Reducing energy use with 5G-Advanced: The essential guide to RAN energy savings in 3GPP Release 18 (link)

? Other News and Technology Stuff

• Al Jazeera - Keeping Gaza online: Telecom heroes risk life and limb under Israel’s bombs (link)
• Geoff Hollingworth on LinkedIn: Fellow Telecom people - what has actually changed in 25 years? (link)
• Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: "A growing theme in #telecoms is how to change from "telco to techco". It was prominent at this week's Total Telecom #TTCongress..." (link)
• Bloomberg: How Huawei’s Chipmaker Turned US Sanctions into a China Success Story (link)

? Picture of the week: Have you ever seen an undersea power cable? I haven’t for a long time. This is from a Twitter post by James Watson here. He says, “The POWER in my hand ??? This is a slice of Western Link sub sea cable. At 600kV DC and 2.25GW continuous rating, this segmented copper, paper / polypropylene HVDC cable is the highest voltage power cable in use IN THE WORLD and the highest power single cable IN THE WORLD…” – the comments are interesting as well.

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.