Expect soon to see headline rates for Gigabit LTE, enabled by a combination of standard LTE aggregated by LAA. Commercial service will be launched before the year’s end. But what are the implications for backhaul bandwidth and is our infrastructure ready to take the strain.
Many will be taking a well deserved holiday summer break and perhaps catching up on some reading. My choice wasn’t the latest thriller but instead a book on 5G by William Webb. He provides some strongly argued reasoning to justify why we shouldn’t assume 5G will be a natural winner. I wonder if it could be a distraction from a more commercially sensible evolution?
Virtualisation has been a hot topic throughout the industry in recent years with questionable benefits to date. The latest initiatives look to virtualise the RAN but in practice this means choosing where to place certain network functions. But is there a risk of confusion from too many competing options? We consider what business benefits these are most likely to deliver?
I had the opportunity to witness what it’s like moving into a brand new tower block apartment in London recently where some relatives moved in. I was struck by the contrast between the high standard of basic services provision with the thoughtlessness of cellular service. The industry seems be getting distracted with 5G while simply ignoring the needs of its customers.
Hats off to TMN for highlighting this end-of-life product announcement from Cisco in April that had been generally overlooked by the media. We summarise the announcement, discuss some of the history/reasons behind it and comment on implications for the industry.
Cambridge Wireless Small Cell SIG ran a half-day event on rural and remote small cells, with expert speakers from EE, Nokia, Microsoft and Real Wireless. There is clearly both need and opportunity. Technical progress continues but the overall theme was that a change in operator mindset is needed on how best to deploy and support them using different processes from the traditional macrocell methods.
Steve Saunders, Founder and CEO of LightReading, published a provocative article about the current state of network virtualisation. He believes the industry has abandoned its proven standardisation process resulting in confusion rather than achieving their promised benefits. Will his approach solve the problem and get the industry back on track?
DAS and Small Cells have in past years been positioned as strong competitors rather than collaborators. New technical solutions, new opportunities and new thinking are radically reshaping that perception. We consider some of the recent product announcements and regulatory changes which affect that view.
This event has morphed and changed considerably over recent years and is now a stream within TECHXLR8. I picked out a handful of relevant talks where RAN planners shared their view on standards and commercial progress. It seems to me that the use cases, requirements and business case for 5G remain quite vague, with plenty of wishful thinking.
A significant number of users continue to report poor mobile coverage in their homes. There will always be areas which are uneconomic for mobile operator to reach. They range from rural areas
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The term Enterprise addresses any non-residential in-building including hotels, convention centres, transport hubs, offices, hospitals and retail outlets. It's not just intended for businesses to
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Urban small cells (sometimes also named metrocells) are compact and discrete mobile phone basestations, unobstrusively located in urban areas. They can be mounted on lampposts, positioned on the
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A rural small cell is a low power mobile phone base station designed to bring mobile phone service to small pockets of population in remote rural areas. These could be hamlets, small villages or
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