Mobile & Wireless Roundup #85

Welcome to the 85th edition of this newsletter. You might have heard the following saying in the tech industry: In the future there will be two types of jobs; ‘one in which people will order machines and other in which machines will order people’. The successful professionals will be the ones from former rather than the latter group.

The tech industry is changing at a very rapid pace. Apparently, our ancestors took some 2.4 million years to master fire for cooking, but it only took us humans 66 years from the first human flight to landing on the moon.

The tech industry’s rapid transformation is powered by a concept known as "accelerating change" where each technological advancement serves as a stepping stone for even more powerful innovations, propelling us forward at an accelerated pace.

It was funny to see someone on Twitter mentioning that “ChatGPT for basically everyone outside of my bubble is the only ai.” And another person quoting the same thing mentioning that, “there's a huge disconnect between the people in the ai bubble vs the average person. nobody i talk to knows the difference between gpt3.5 gpt4 and dont even start with gemini/claude/mistral (0 idea). they only know 1 thing: chatGPT (not even ai, just the word) and these aren't normies, they work on tech, high paying 6 fig salaries, very up to date with current events”

Despite witnessing this extraordinary period of rapid technological change, there will be many? people living their life happily, unaware of many technology advancements. ?As Copilot explained to me, "The tech industry’s velocity is akin to a rocket hurtling toward the future, fuelled by innovation and accelerating momentum. ????"

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 other news that caught my attention since the last newsletter.

? 6G

• Free 6G Training: 6G Terminal Vision Whitepaper by GSMA and HONOR (link)
• 6G World: Future 3GPP Releases Might Be Bridge to 6G, InterDigital VP Says (link)
• GSMA Intelligence Brief: What did the ET Telecom Congress tell us about 6G in India? (link)
• Varini Gupta on LinkedIn - 6G : Why and What! (link) – discussion in comments is good.
• Jürgen Hatheier on LinkedIn: "There’s a call for operators to be more actively involved in the development of #6G technologies to ensure 6G technologies deliver real commercial value for them…" (link)

? 5G

• Ericsson and du reach 16.7 Gbps download speed on 5G Standalone with 10 aggregated carriers (link)
• RCR Wireless - China to surpass 1 billion 5G connections this year: GSMA (link)
• A short summary of 5G Enhanced URLLC (eURLLC) (link)

? 4G/LTE

• GSA Regional Spotlight - 4G & 5G in LATAM (video)

? 2G/3G

• Peter Clarke on YouTube: The last bastions of Vodafone UK 3G (link)
• Peter Clarke on LinkedIn: "Something you don't see every day in our 4G and 5G world...High on the hills above Derry/Londonderry lies a rare live Vodafone UK Omnidirectional 2G only macro site…" (link)

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

• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - From Concept to Reality: AI-Driven Agents Powering O-RAN (link)
• The Korean Ministry of Science and ICT recently presented O-RAN Policy of Republic of Korea at UNESCAP Worksop (link)

• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: 3D Ray Tracing & AI in O-RAN RF Digital Twins (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - Unveiling the Toolbox: AI-Native O-RAN System Development (link)

? Spectrum

• GSMA Spectrum Policy Trends 2024 (link)

? Private Networks

• A short simple video from Firecell explaining how to setup an Open RAN Private 5G Standalone network in 15 minutes (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - Tailored RIC App Intelligence: Revolutionizing Smart Manufacturing with Private 5G O-RAN Networks (link)
• Light Reading: Tesla eyes private 5G networks (link)
• SoftBank Corp. Launches “Private 5G (Dedicated Type)” Service, Enabling Enterprises to Deploy High-speed, Closed 5G Networks (link)
• Private Networks Technology Blog: Private 5G Network Taking Shape at Finland’s Northernmost General Harbour, Port of Kemi (link)

? Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Helsinki Metro’s Cellular Network Pilot (link)

• David Rothbaum on LinkedIn: "The Future Railway Mobile Communications System is planned to replace the current GSM-R system and cover more than 200,000 km of railways. The industry needs a new type of antenna that can maximize the benefits of 5G radio technologies used for FRMCS while continuing to support GSM-R in the migration period…" (link)
• Adam Mackenzie on LinkedIn: "Omdia expects worldwide service revenue from FTTx to grow 8.5% annually from 2022 to 2028, reaching $246bn…" (link)
• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Friday Thoughts: It’s Greening up Nicely Out There! (link)

? IoT / M2M / Smart Homes

• LoRaWAN for Smart Industry Infographic (link)

? Smart Cities

• LoRa Alliance: Overcoming Adoption Challenges for Smart Cities Success (link)

? Virtualization, Cloud & Edge

• Dr. Jochen Papenbrock on LinkedIn: “See how SoftBank is building a new class of data centers for high-performance #AI and hashtag#5G RAN—powered by the Arm-based NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip. Watch the video” (link) – Paul Rhodes on this announcement here.

? Security & Privacy

• MWC 2024: What’s Keeping CISO’s Awake at Night? (link)

? Smartphones, Devices, Wearables & Gadgets

• Surgery International: The Future of Surgical Robotics featuring Prof. Shafi Ahmed (video)

? AI, ML & Automation

• Generative AI in a Nutshell - how to survive and thrive in the age of AI (video) – fantastic video for new beginners.
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - O-RAN GPT Running on Any Telco Edge Inferencing Server: Enhancing Network Intelligence (link)
• The Guardian: AI ‘apocalypse’ could take away almost 8m jobs in UK, says report (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - Building the Backbone: How AI Digital Twins (DT) Underpin O-RAN (link)
• Marketing Brew: Deepfakes are spreading, putting creator and brand safety at risk (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Deep Learning AI on Communication Systems (link)

? Wi-Fi

• The Telecom Infra Project Graduates Open AFC Software Group (link)

? Metaverse & Extended Reality (XR)

• MWL: Global XR headset shipments slump in 2023 (link)

? Sustainability

• MWL: Singtel refreshes sustainability strategy (link)

? Other News and Technology Stuff

• Min Choi on Twitter: "NVIDIA GTC 2024 just wrapped up with some amazing announcements. 9 incredible reveals you don't want to miss…" (link)
• Shiv Putcha on LinkedIn: Takeaways from Digital Transformation World (DTW) Mumbai 2024 (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - 5G APIs Decoded: Bridging Network APIs and Developers for Revolutionary Apps (link)
• IEEE TV - Using Diamond in Advanced Packaging: Current Developments and Status (video)
• The Guardian: Copernicus online portal offers terrifying view of climate emergency (link)
• RCR Wireless - #TBT: AT&T’s Project Angel; A mobile e-commerce gold rush; Telecom players pick tech sides … this week in 2000 (link)

? Picture of the week: This one from Twitter, translated from Japanese, “Osaka Station has millimeter waves from NTT Docomo, KDDI, Softbank, and Rakuten Mobile. It's really like a base station exhibition.”

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.