Mobile & Wireless Roundup #89

Welcome to the 89th edition of this newsletter. I am starting to get a bit nervous with the way the Tech companies discontinue their products, modify their features or break them, without an easy way to report. The most well known example of killing products by Big Tech is by Google. There are so many products discontinued, at such a frequent intervals, that there are dedicated pages to make people aware. ‘Killed by Google’ is one such site.

Earlier this month I ordered some clothes, one of the items went out of stock after my order. As a result my order is in Limbo. They can’t deliver it, so I can’t collect it and because I haven’t collected it in the seven days they allow collection, the order has been cancelled. The status can’t change though and I haven’t received a refund. Apparently this was never tested as it couldn’t happen ??.

I recently received a slightly damaged product from Amazon. I intend to use it but there is no way to let them know or just complain. The only option is to return and get a refund. Even if there was a way to complain, they would probably do nothing but at least I would feel good.

I used to follow smart homes technology and products closely but over the last few years, I get a feeling that smart homes will take far longer than anticipated. Gizmodo was complaining four years back about “The Never-Ending Death of Smart Home Gadgets” but it’s still the same. I feel The Verge summarised it nicely in this article, “The problem is, when it comes to connected devices, consumers are buying hardware that behaves like software. And unlike hardware, which fails in fairly predictable and established ways, software breaks in opaque and surprising ways. It’s hard to classify this disconnect. It can feel like you don’t really own your connected devices or you can’t rely on them. And if we want things to get better for consumers, we need both manufacturers and regulators to step up.

…Creating a legal obligation to share how long a device stays secure or how long a manufacturer is willing to invest in cloud services and engineering time to keep the device running as expected is an essential element missing from today’s connected device market. And this isn’t an issue that only harms consumers who buy smart products. It limits the market.”

If you have some interesting Smart Home story, would love to hear about it.

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: Presentations from 6GSymposium Spring 2024 (link)
• Rohde & Schwarz: Terahertz communication (link)
• Khaleej Times: UAE aims to roll out 6G before 2030, allowing people to transmit human senses (link) - Richard Haas on LinkedIn: "Not again... remote surgery is now a 6G use case? Have we learned nothing??" (link)
• New 6G logo approved by 3GPP (link)

? 5G

• Samsung and Qualcomm Achieve Innovative Industry-First Milestone With Advanced Modulation Technology (link)
• Light Reading: The quiet sunset of 5G dynamic spectrum sharing (link)
• Geoff Hollingworth on LinkedIn: Developer Problems with Network Slicing (link)
• Light Reading: Why 5G is failing to gain momentum in India (link)
• SCF’s 5G mmWave whitepaper identifies potential to fulfil greater network capacity (link)
• Benoist Sébire on LinkedIn: "You want an overview of the RAN features introduced for a new release? The Stage 2 is always a good starting point! …" (link)

? 4G/LTE

• Rudolf van der Berg on LinkedIn: "Australia may delay the 3G shutdown if emergency call problems over #VoLTE persist. Apparently some phones do 3G fallback for emergency calls even when they have functioning VoLTE! …” (link)

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

• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: 'Decoupled' SMO (link)
• Light Reading: Nokia plight shows need for Samsung (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: The Multifaceted Challenges of Multi-Vendor Open RAN Cloudification (link)
• MWC 2024 Panel Discussion Session: Is Open RAN Living up to its Interoperability Promise? (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Leveraging Linux Foundation Projects for O-RAN SMO Development (link)
• O-RAN ALLIANCE’s Certification and Badging Program Gains Momentum to Accelerate the Adoption of Open and Intelligent RAN (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - O-RAN Chat Bot: Pioneering Tools for Domain Mastery (link)
• Ibrahim Sayed on LinkedIn: Why we have two RICs in Open RAN? Isn't one RIC enough?!!! (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: O-RAN Next Generation Research Group (nGRG) Cross-Domain AI Research Report (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: O-RAN ALLIANCE WG1 SMO Intents-driven Management Technical Report (link)

? Spectrum

• NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal: Research of Electromagnetic Interference with Medical Devices in Hospitals for Mobile Phone and Smartphone Use (link)

? IoT / M2M / Smart Homes

• Presentation and Slides from '5G IoT Summit' at MWC24 Barcelona (link)

? Private Networks

• Private Networks Technology Blog: Deutsche Telekom's "Campus network L" for EUROGATE's "Port-As-A-Service" (link)
• SDxCentral: Vendors dominate the private 5G space as telcos struggle for traction (link) – LinkedIn discussion by Ibrahim Sayed here.
• MWL: Vodafone hypes private 5G role in future factories (link)
• Private Networks on Twitter: "Attending "Advancing Digitalization and Sustainability for a Smarter and Greener Port" webinar organised by GSMA APAC" (Twitter thread with photos)

? Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: 'Connected Urban' - CU Phosco's 5G Smart Pole Streetlight Solution (link)
• NTT World's first: Successful experiment to branch and merge various types of optical fibers without communication interruption - Toward the realization of flexible optical networks that connect from anywhere (link)
• MWL: Feature: How radio signals can penetrate the heart of glass (link)
• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Thursday School: Telecoms Icons! (link) – Good discussions.

? Virtualization, Cloud & Edge

• Telecom TV: Hyperscale datacentre capacity doubling every four years – report (link)

? Security & Privacy

• ABC News: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure' before upgrade (link)
• Haaretz: Israel Tried to Keep Sensitive Spy Tech Under Wraps. It Leaked Abroad (link)
• Dark Reading - MITRE ATT&CKED: InfoSec's Most Trusted Name Falls to Ivanti Bugs (link)
• ENEA: Quantum of Malice (link) - Silke Holtmanns on LinkedIn: "Some new attack vectors to the core network. My personal favourite is the replacement of the UPF address in the base station to redirect the traffic to the attacker. Nicely done!" (link)

? Smartphones, Devices, Wearables & Gadgets

• Light Reading: Dumb phones start to get real dumb (link)
• Light Reading: Huawei primed for growth from new smartphone and HarmonyOS (link)
• Zahid Ghadialy on Twitter: “…Good to see the potential of eSIM, 46% of the smartphones sold worldwide in 2027 will have eSIM's…” (Tweet with image)

? Satellites, HAPS, Drones, UAVs & Space

• Tim Belfall on LinkedIn: "#Starlink has added a new "old" video to UK's Starlink homepage. Old because it's showing Gen 2 rather than the upcoming Gen 3 antenna…" (link)

? Wi-Fi

• Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: "I don't often participate in writing academic-type papers, but this one in Telecommunications Policy (by Elsevier via ScienceDirect) on #6G and #WiFi7 and future #WiFi8 was a huge opportunity and privilege…" (link)

? AI, ML & Automation

• RCR Wireless: ‘Every tech is hyped, but this is different’ – Siemens goes all-in on industrial AI (link)
• Zero-Touch Telecom - AI Models in Production: Remote Electrical Tilt (link)
• ArsTechnica: Tech brands are forcing AI into your gadgets—whether you asked for it or not (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn - The Future of Network Management: Autonomous Network Controllers (ANC) (link)
• MWL: Zuckerberg targets AI on everything, everywhere (link)
• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Monday Musings : Network Automation with 4 RAN Vendors! (link)
• Zahid Ghadialy on Twitter: "Mark Duesener from Swisscom provided a Case Study on Realising the 5G promise - a journey towards autonomous operations at FutureNet World #FutureNetWorld. His conclusion slide shows how 5G has helped them improve reliability and started a journey towards autonomous networks. One could argue that this is the power of Softwarization rather than 5G as such" (Tweet with photo)

? Other News and Technology Stuff

• Geoff Hollingworth on LinkedIn: "This is a shameless plug. If there is one thing to learn from Rakuten doing telecom it is not Open RAN, it is starting with changing the fundamental ways to plan and build the networks we run…" (link)
• Jinsung (Alex) Choi on LinkedIn: Telco Network AI Prism (link)
• Zahid Ghadialy on Twitter: "Catching-up on FutureNet World #FutureNetWorld talks - What is Network as a Service (NaaS)? NaaS is a Bigger Ecosystem Longer Term. Where to Start with NaaS? The Product API…" (Tweet with photos)

? Picture of the week: Yesterday was King's Day (Koningsdag) in the Netherlands. It is an orange-filled celebration held annually for the king's birthday on 27 April. It is renowned for being one of the biggest and most colourful festivities in the Netherlands, especially so in Amsterdam. Jeffrey from Antennekaart.nl posted on Twitter earlier this week, “Tomorrow is kingsday. That means it’s one of the busiest weeks of the year in terms for COW deployments. Here KPN and Odido are deploying temporary capacity. KPN even has a box next to the terrain where a permanent fiber connection is always ready for a COW in this location!” The replies has some more photos of temporary towers.

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.