Mobile & Wireless Roundup #78

Welcome to the 78th edition of this newsletter. This week I was attending a seminar in which we discussed the skills shortage and how to encourage younger people to come into telecoms and engineering, which is not seen as very sexy. I was hoping to add some additional points during discussion there but the panels were too short to have meaningful discussions and Q&A.

Last year at a conference I saw someone I knew from before (let’s call him Andy). Now Andy is a young man with a just few years of experience after finishing university. I was pleased to see Andy and suggested to him that he should come to these conferences more often. He wasn’t very pleased with that statement.

He told me that in the large corporation he works in, he and younger people like him do not have the opportunity to attend seminars and conferences. ‘It’s always the same old people’ (in his words) or a select few younger people who generally get to go to them. As Andy was keen to attend the conference and wasn’t officially allowed to, he took the day off to attend it.

I have surely mentioned in the past that it’s not just a challenge in getting people to come and join the industry, it’s also a challenge to keep them and continue to innovate and contribute as we keep moving forward. While I am sure a lot of companies are trying their best to do this, others are not. It’s best to wake up before it’s too late.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am a technologist with over 25 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

• ATIS and EU Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking Publish “Beyond 5G & 6G Roadmap” for EU-US Collaboration (link)
• RCR Wireless: SK Telecom develops key tech for 6G evolution with Intel (link) – TelecomTV’s take here.
• Light Reading: Huawei role in European 6G work risks new China-US clash (link)
• 6G Flagship: Finnish Universities Collaborate on a First Extensive 6G White Paper on Large Language Models (LLMs) (link)
• Free 6G Training: 6G Spectrum Discussions So Far... (link)

? 5G

• Developing Telecoms: China Unicom and Huawei test 5G-Advanced pilot network in Beijing (link)
• Reuters: Faced with slow 5G rollout, EU telcos single out Big Tech again (link) – LinkedIn post by Peter Curnow-Ford here and a good discussion in comments.
• EPS Fallback Mechanism in 5G Standalone Networks (link)

? 2G/3G

• Tommy Ljunggren on LinkedIn: "TechSverige and the operators are stepping up communication regarding the 2G and 3G SUNSETs in a new campaign together with many other organisations…" (link)
• Rudolf van der Berg on LinkedIn: "Sweden will be an interesting case to follow when it comes to shutdown of 2G! When the USA shutdown 2G foreign travellers found that voice roaming didn't work…" (link)
• Light Reading: Why Jio and Vodafone Idea want India to sunset 2G (link)

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

• Alok Tripathi on LinkedIn: Time is now for 3GPP's Complete Overhaul for Truly Interoperable Specifications in Disaggregated and Elastic Networks era (link)
• SDxCentral: Verizon finds rivals’ open RAN talk ‘entertaining’ (link)

? Spectrum

• RCR Wireless: Canada strengthens “use it or lose it” spectrum policy (link)
• Twitter discussion between Dean Bubley and Tim Farrar on the impact of EPFD (‘Equivalent Power Flux Density’ - background) rules & whether or not they change (Twitter thread)

? Private Networks

• Real-world use cases of private 5G in hospital and healthcare industries from Japan and Korea (link)
• Private Networks Technology Blog - FUDGE-5G: FUlly DisinteGrated private nEtworks for 5G verticals (link)

? Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• MWL: KDDI employs fibreglass base station columns (link)
• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Thursday School : In it For the Long Road (link)

? IoT / M2M / Smart Homes

• RCR Wireless: One million LoRaWAN meters – Connexin wins ‘largest UK water meter contract’ (link)

? Smartphones, Devices, Wearables & Gadgets

• Alexxxx on Twitter: "Working in the NYC subway on the go with Apple Vision Pro?! ????" (Tweet with video)

? AI, ML & Automation

• GSMA and IBM Collaborate to Accelerate AI Adoption and Skills for the Telecoms Sector with Launch of Generative AI Training Program and Industry Challenge (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - Revolutionizing AI Computing Acceleration: High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), Processing In Memory (PIM) Technologies (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Unpacking the LLM Inference Acceleration Stack (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Overcoming the Energy Drain of Memory-Bound LLM Inferencing (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - Graph Neural Network (GNN) AI : Pioneering Telco Network Planning AI (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - Tensor Networks: Quantum-Inspired GenAI Computing (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: AI Computing Everywhere (link)

• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Time-Series LLM for Telco Networks (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Telco Network Digital Twin (link)

? Security & Privacy

• UKTIN - 5G Testbeds and Trials: Security Insights (link)
• The Register: Windows 3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for 'driver updates' on German trains (link)
• Lockheed is now tracking phones and walkie-talkies from space, and the UAE military is allegedly a "strong" customer (link)
• Security Affairs: Hundreds of network operators’ credentials found circulating in Dark Web (link)
• Gaus Rajnovic on LinkedIn: UK Product Security and Telecommunication Infrastructure Act 2022 (link)
• Huawei: Data protection day 2024 - protect your data! (link)

? Satellites, HAPS, Drones, UAVs & Space

• Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: "…But there’s also another battle that’s occurring out of sight of most in the traditional telco space - the growing tensions between geostationary and low-earth orbit satellites…" (link)

? Wi-Fi

• Connectivity Technology Blog: The Evolution of Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE 802.11be EHT) to Wi-Fi 8 (IEEE 802.11bn UHR) (link)

? Metaverse & Extended Reality (XR)

• MWL: Metaverse weighs on Meta Platforms (link)
• Mpirical Telecoms Bytes: Understanding the Metaverse (video)

? Sustainability

• TelecomTV: Towercos and telcos embrace energy self-generation – Huawei (link)

? Other News and Technology Stuff

• IIAR: Informa offloads Omdia and merges it with Techtarget (link) – official press release from Informa here.
• Tech Brew – USA: Semiconductors, VR, 5G, AI led new patent grants last year. IBM, Samsung among companies that secured most AI patents (link)
• Total Telecom: Japanese government pledges $307m to NTT, Intel, and SK Hynix for chip project (link)
• Vodafone: Why telecoms matters for European competitiveness (link) – TelecomTV summary here.
• Blockchain News: Tencent Unveils Top Ten Tech Trends for 2024 (link)
• Luke Kehoe on LinkedIn: "The latest round of kite flying by Europe’s telcos on introducing legislation to compel big tech to prop up a flailing telco business model is the most extravagant to date…" (link)

? Picture of the week: Today we share pictures of animals helping transport telecoms equipment to the deployment site. In many parts of the world we are unable to use vehicles for last mile transportation and must rely on animals and in some cases humans to carry them to their final destination. Source: Elmar Ben Aoun on LinkedIn!

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.