Saturday, October 23, 2021

Friday, October 22, 2021

Verizon, Nissan connect for car safety using MEC

Verizon and Nissan North America’s Research and Advanced Engineering team completed a proof-of-concept showing how sensor data from vehicles and surrounding infrastructure could be processed at the edge of Verizon’s wireless network to help guide drivers in near real time.

Rogers CEO talks broadband roadmap as board spat rages

Rogers Communications CEO Joe Natale outlined the operator’s plan to fend off fiber broadband competition from rival Bell Canada, highlighting the rollout of a 1.5 Gbps service tier and node splits as key tools in its arsenal. His comments, however, were largely overshadowed by a high-profile dispute between members of the company’s board of directors.

Nokia and Orange deploy private network for Butachimie

Butachimie is a French chemical giant that makes adiponitrile and hexamethylenediamine, which in turn are used to make nylon 6.6, used in automotive manufacturing and performance fabrics. Both chemicals can be toxic to humans, and Butachimie prides itself on its safety record.

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Intel Misses Q3 Guidance, CFO to Retire

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger attempted to put a positive spin on the company’s third-quarter 2021 earnings call this week, despite the ongoing chip shortage and long-time CFO George Davis’ decision to leave the company.

5G specter still hangs over cable

Cable and mobile technologists view telco rollouts of 5G millimeter wave technology as potentially strong competition to cable broadband service, particularly in unserved and underserved areas.

Google pushes fiber in San Antonio, Atlanta, Des Moines, Austin

Google Fiber has been alternately loud and quiet about its ambitions to provide high-speed, fiber-optic broadband in the United States. But the company seems to be enthused about its work currently. According to a Google Fiber website, it is working in a number of cities to roll out its service. Those cities include Atlanta, Georgia; West Des Moines, Iowa; Charlotte, N.C.; Austin, Texas; and Salt Lake City, Utah, to name a few.

T-Mobile sweetens deal for switchers

T-Mobile is offering to pay off what consumers owe on their phone hardware in order to get them to come over to Magenta. T-Mobile will pay off “what you owe the carriers for your smartphone up to $1,000 when you switch.”

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Why XDR Makes CrowdStrike’s CTO Cringe

CrowdStrike has been on an extended detection and response (XDR) tear in recent months, scooping up Humio, partnering with Google Cloud and Zscaler, forming an XDR Alliance, and now extending its machine-learning based threat detection and response across third-party data to help prevent attacks.

AT&T Shrinks Back to Telecom Roots

The shrinking of AT&T formally commenced during the third quarter of 2021 upon the completion of its DirecTV spin-off, and it’s poised to get even smaller before summer 2022 when it expects to close a deal to spin off WarnerMedia and combine it with Discovery.

Verizon beats net add expectations in Q3

Verizon added 429,000 postpaid phone net subscribers in the third quarter, topping analyst consensus estimates and ending the quarter with 122 million total retail connections. Wireless service revenue was $17.1 billion, a 3.9% increase year over year. Retail postpaid phone churn was 0.74%. The company ended the third quarter 2021 with free cash flow of $17.3 billion. Verizon also said more than 25% of its consumer wireless phone customers now have 5G-capable devices.

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Ericsson preps for expanded enterprise push

The strong upswing of 5G deployments is likely to flatten out in coming years, according to Ericsson chief executive Börje Ekholm, who said the vendor plans to focus expanding more deeply into the enterprise space - a market it expects to drive extended network investment plus new opportunity.

Windstream looks to 400G pluggable future with II-VI partnership

Windstream Wholesale has partnered with II-VI Incorporated, which provides engineered materials and optoelectronic components, to co-develop next-generation transceivers that the companies said will streamline deployment of 400 gigabit services while significantly reducing costs, power consumption and network complexity.

Verizon rebuked for some 5G ad claims

The great pumpkin standoff was just the latest in a series of jabs T-Mobile has made about the size of its rivals’ 5G networks. T-Mobile brought a series of complaints before the BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD), whose rulings produced a mixed bag for the wireless carrier.

Virgin Media O2 chooses Samsung for 5G trials

The U.K.’s Virgin Media O2 has tapped Samsung Electronics to conduct 4G and 5G trials in its commercial network. The trials aim to assess the interoperability between Samsung’s newer technology with Virgin Media O2’s 2G and 3G legacy networks.

Monday, October 18, 2021

Ericsson Suffers $418M Sales Decline in China

Ericsson today reported earnings that underline key trends in the mobile network infrastructure market, including the impact of ongoing tensions between China and some Western countries, the supply chain crunch, and growing enthusiasm for enterprise 5G.

Can Immersion Cooling Curb Data Center Carbon Footprints?

Data center immersion cooling, or the process of submerging servers into a heat-absorbing mineral oil, exists in a very small portion of the market. But the adoption of immersion cooling is nearing its tipping point as thermal management becomes a growing concern within data centers, according to Dell’Oro Group analyst Lucas Beran.

Interview with Rakuten Symphony's Rahul Atri

Rahul Atri is managing director of Rakuten Symphony. He was interviewed by Fierce Wireless’ Editor Bevin Fletcher on September 28, 2021 at Fierce’s Network Automation Week virtual event. Atri talked about network slicing and automation

Mastering Monetization by Focusing on Experience

Mastering Monetization For consumers and businesses alike, there is no longer fixed or wireless, voice, data or video – only devices and applications.  Customers expect the applications they want to work on any device at any time. Network connectivity is now as ubiquitous as electricity and transportation. The challenge, then, for operators as they continue to invest in technology is how to become more than a large, face-less regulated utility. To escape that trap, operators are adopting powerful tools and strategies that alter business attitudes and operational processes to embrace a retail identity and customer-driven mindset. While the need for operators to invest in both network and IT infrastructure has not diminished, 5G and subsequent network evolutions are enabling these alternative strategies. Operators are now in a position to differentiate themselves by offering high quality, reliable and secure services that focus on the customer experience. For 70% of operators, developing new revenue models is a priority. For nearly 80%, content and B2B2x partnerships are being prioritized  and yet all the ads we see and read are about 5G bandwidth and capacity – speeds and feeds. While that certainly contributes to the customer experience, there’s much more to consider.Create Lasting Customer Experiences Improving and optimizing customer experience ranks at the top of every operator’s business goals. Recent global health events pushed customers and businesses to use digital channels for living and working, which makes understanding and upgrading the customer experience even more critical. Tele-health, entertainment streaming and remote work are here to stay and delivering a superior customer experience requires more than network performance, reliability and security. 5G enables operators to offer a wide variety of new services and business models that were difficult, if not impossible, to deliver just a few years ago. Operators now have the infrastructure to become the go-to provider for a wide variety of services. But it takes more than a new network. Operators need to explore and expand ecosystems that link customers to cloud, application and services partners. Customers expect performance, reliability and security but they are willing to pay extra for convenience, simplicity and personalized experiences. There is value in offering customized services, especially to business customers and, if done efficiently by engaging cloud and partner resources, more revenue can be realized by including value-added features, so customers have inclusive services that they don’t have to purchase separately.  For example, some landlords include services like electricity, water and trash collection in the rent charged to tenants. But what if there was a way for tenants to also select customized services like laundry, cleaning or dog walking that are then bundled into the monthly charge or available on-demand? Tenants are willing to pay extra for convenience and more likely to stay once they have experienced it. Operators have the ability to become providers of any type of desired digital service. Given their existing customer relationships and mountains of customer data, they have what they need to understand their customers and improve the experience. Now, it’s time to listen. Operators Can’t Do It Alone Operators can become the trusted source for any type of connected service a customer might want. To do that, however, operators have to restructure operations and establish or engage with partner platforms that accomplish rapid evaluation, certification, on-boarding, off-boarding and settlements. Customers, especially business customers, want a genuine service provider that removes the complexity, bundles the necessary elements into a service and bills accordingly. Operators fit this role perfectly because of their access to customers and commitments to reliability and security.  Operators cannot own every conceivable service or content asset. Instead, operators need to put themselves in a position to rapidly access a wide variety of partners that will come and go based on demand, economics, geography or other customer demographics. Beyond technology partners, operators need to work with digital services partners, content providers and even other operators. Marrying partner products to network services and rapidly delivering those to customers will find increased market penetration and monetization. Quality, selection and personalized service will become the foundation for differentiation and revenue generation. Operators must take a century of experience, harvest the important lessons, and use that hard-won knowledge to establish new business and operating strategies. The alternative is the utility model and while that might work for some, many are embracing new business and operational models that focus on the customer and their individual experiences. Join us for our upcoming Real Talk – Mastering monetization session on 26th of October to see how you can unlock business growth with #NoBoundaries. Hear from Duncan Wardle, former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney, Robbie Kellman Baxter, author of The Membership Economy, and other experts discuss how CSPs should re-evaluate their monetization approach to focus first on the customer experience.Register today.

Sunday, October 17, 2021

Sinclair hit by ransomware attack

Lisa Plaggemier with the National Cybersecurity Alliance says the attack on Sinclair is another wake-up call for the industry, and another reason for media companies to treat cybersecurity like any other risk to the business.

AT&T, DT, Dish Issue Lackluster 5G Grades

AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile US, and Dish Network executives gave wildly divergent grades to current 5G deployments, though they all seem to agree that more needs to be done in order to support next-generation use cases.

Deutsche Telekom Tests ONF’s Specialized Open RAN Framework

Deutsche Telekom started a live trial in Berlin to put the Open Networking Foundation’s (ONF) SD-RAN open radio access network (RAN) project to the test. ONF embarked on the open RAN space to better integrate and create interoperability across xApps and fuel the development of applications for the near real-time RAN intelligent controller (nRT-RIC).

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