Category Archives: Wireless Networks

The AI-Telco Intersect Opportunity: A Dehype!

Artificial intelligence is in yet another hype cycle – the fourth since the 1960’s. What is different this time from past hype cycles is that it is driven by data from the bottom up as opposed a top-down approach in previous hype cycles. The pervasiveness of connectivity and the Internet make AI applicable in many industries, including telecom.… Read More »

Power Consumption: Bitcoin Mining vs. Mobile Base Stations

One of the criticisms of blockchain technology center on power consumption and the cost of mining. The electricity consumed in mining operations is high and continues to grow as mining difficulty increases in response to increasing processing power. Some think that blockchains is wasteful technology that is not compliant with a 21st century outlook for a green economy.… Read More »

Telcos vs. Cloud Players: Can Edge Computing Change the Competitive Dynamics?

Cloud players continue to set record revenues and profits while the telcos grapple with stalled revenues. The market cap of three to the top cloud players – Amazon, Google and Microsoft – stand at around $1.9 trillion while the top 4 US telcos – AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint, stand at under $500 billion. The telcos have lost… Read More »

The Impact of Performance Predictability on 5G Deployments

Performance predictability is fundamental to the operation of any service provider. It is the foundation on which processes are built. Processes drive efficiency. So when it comes to deploying wireless technologies on large scale, service providers look for the “cookie-cutter” approach. No matter what a technology is, it will get little if any market traction if it cannot… Read More »

A Perspective on 5G Developments

It has been a long time since I attended an ‘academic’ conference, focusing instead on industry and finance events. But this week, I had the chance to drop by at IEEE VTC Fall, one of the leading conferences on mobile technology to get the pulse on the state of R&D and keep tab on latest developments from the… Read More »

The Critical 5G mmWave Success Levers

Applications of millimeter wave (mmWave) technology in 5G fixed access are subject to a few important levers. To start, it’s important to understand that the cost of fixed access networks is directly proportional to the number of houses passed. This provides the advantage of growing the network selectively on geographic basis. But it also means that economies of… Read More »

The Five Myths of Edge Computing

Edge computing has been attracting a lot of interest lately. The reasons are many, not the least is the potential for service providers to create and monetize new services and applications. I recently chaired a panel on MEC at the Layer123 NFV Congress 2017 in San Jose. In speaking with different ecosystem players, I noted a few misconceptions… Read More »

How the Concept of Cloud RAN has Changed.

Cloud RAN has reached the peak of the hype cycle, but I don’t expect the buzz to fade soon. My recent discussions at MWC2017 with many solution architects, vendors and service providers convinced me that Cloud RAN is foggy! This is because marketeers intent on capitalizing on the ‘Cloud’ trend took over the Cloud RAN concept. What started… Read More »

The Value Proposition of mmWave 5G Networks

This year marked a coalescence* around the 28 GH band for 5G fixed access services. A year ago at MWC 2016**, different millimeter wave bands (mmWave) were still in play including the 70 GHz range. I recall discussing the performance of those solutions with exhibitors. They all claimed that mmWave access works in non-line-of-sight conditions. I even recall one the demos… Read More »

IoT Business and Technology Simulator

Multiple IoT technologies are competing for dominance with no one solution fits all applications. Rather, application requirements, regulatory, and deployment constraints will favor one technology solution over another. This makes it imperative for IoT service providers, vendors and investors to make sound and knowledgeable technology and business model choices. To help in strategic decision making, we at Xona have developed a… Read More »

Is There a Business Case for Network Slicing?

Network slicing is a focal feature of 5G networks – a savior for service providers that will enable greater control of the quality of service delivered to clients, especially the enterprise market.  But while the discussion address the technical aspects of network slicing, there are many business and financial issues that remain mysterious!

Is 550 million 5G subscribers in 2022 Too Many?

Will there be 550 million 5G subscribers in 2022 as Ericsson forecasts in its latest mobility report? I highly doubt it – here’s why. LTE is a very successful technology that commercially began to roll out in the US, Japan and Korea in 2010 timeframe. Today, it includes over 520 live networks and over 1.3 billion subscribers (1.7 b per Ericsson’s… Read More »

The Triumvirate Standoff and the New Telecom World Order

We are at a defining moment in the evolution of telecom. Forces are building across a fault line between service providers and Internet giants. Both sides appear to have reached a wall. It’s a matter of time before an earthquake reshapes the scene.  For service providers, the challenge lies in hard-to-scale rigid networks and a culture steeped in conservatism that… Read More »

The Future of 5G: Risking Disappointment?!

Monitoring the progress of 5G at the recent 5G Americas analyst summit, where carriers including AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint engaged industry analyst on many 5G topics, I noted few observations. For context, the industry remains fixated on capacity: how to scale to support 11 GB in 2019 from ~4 GB monthly usage? This is fuelling the drive towards millimeter… Read More »

Why Are Telecom Service Providers Interested in Open Source?

Open source in telecom networks is an emerging concept that could disrupt the telecom value chain. Hardware solutions make up the vast majority of today’s telecom network infrastructure. In recent years, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networks (SDN) solutions began to appear in networks – a trend that will accelerate in the future. While virtualization provides a leap in… Read More »