0:00: Intro
6:01: Open RAN rundown with Vodafone
13:25: AT&T comments on Ericsson open RAN deal
18:25: Disruptive AI
21.01: Verizon on private networks
24:55: 5G 5 years from now – SK Telecom
33.01: Interview with Cedric Foray, Ernst & Young

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Manish Singh, Dell Technologies, Amir Kaiser, Amdocs, and Lilac Ilan, NVIDIA discuss how customer care for Billing inquiries and network automation are ripe for improvement, made possible by Dell’s AI Factory with NVIDIA and Amdocs Telco GenAI Agents (powered by amAIz).

The post Partner Discussion: Dell Technologies appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Cohen said the completion of a deal to acquire UK rival Inmarsat in May 2023 meant Viasat now has a global fleet of L-Band and K-Band satellites.

On the consumer front, Viasat last month demonstrated direct-to-device (D2D) satellite connectivity for the first time in India through a partnership with operator BSNL.  

The demonstration at India Mobile World Congress showcased satellite messaging and a SOS feature directly to an Android phone, for use in areas with no terrestrial connectivity or during outages.

Cohen said the company’s birds are also being used to provision satellite SOS messaging across the US on Google Pixel 9 devices along with wholesale satellite service provider Skylo. The consumer L-Band service is based on the 3GPP’s Release-17.

“With 3GPP Release-17, basically it starts with the chipset manufacturers like Qualcomm, MediaTek, Sony,” he said. “They have to build the chipset that has the capabilities of the new spectrum that’s being added to the standard.”

While much of the focus for D2D services is on areas with little-to-no mobile service, Cohen said it would fill in coverage gaps in suburban and urban areas, or be used for emergencies.

“We started in the US and we’re expanding, probably starting with some of the more developed markets, whether it’s Europe, Japan, Australia, but we’ll grow from there.”

The more developed world markets typically have premium handset models which are ideal for D2D services.

“It’s going to take a while for the lower-cost phones to have this feature adopted,” Cohen said.

NB-IoT
Viasat is also bullish on providing satellite connectivity across verticals including maritime, aviation, automotive and government sectors.

Enterprise IoT services previously required specific devices which “cost a lot of money” and large reoccurring fees.

“With the 3GPP standard release and what is now called NB-IoT, or narrowband IoT standard, we can basically turn those satellites into cell phone towers from space,” he explained.

Cohen noted D2D services and a standards-based approach mean there are now IoT devices which can switch between satellite and mobile connectivity as needed.

“All of the applications for IoT can now be monetised and will improve the lives of many people, whether it’s water metering, agriculture, or cattle tracking.”

“There’s so many different IoT applications that now get unlocked, either for critical infrastructure when communication systems go down, or for areas outside of cellular connectivity.”

Watch a replay of the full keynote here.

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During his keynote discussing the next five years of 5G, he highlighted a current industry focus on improving uplink capabilities partly to meet demand for improved real time interactive applications.

He noted a lot of the early 5G speed improvements were on the downlink side and “if you look at uplink the improvement in terms of data has only been moderate” with this now a specific focus.

“We believe enterprise use cases, FWA use cases, AI in the device, and real time interactive use cases will need better uplink connectivity,” the expert added.

For industry, Holma (pictured, left) pointed to demand for video surveillance or video monitoring applications among other applications. In terms of improving FWA he noted wireless was “clearly behind fixed” when it comes to uplink capability.

For AI, he added there was “some processing in the device, but also some happening in the cloud” so when performing image editing, for example, “that will go from your device to the cloud and AI processing will be done there”.

“So AI in the device may be one of the drivers as to why better uplink will be needed”. 

Although highlighting the need for further evolution, Holma said the industry should be “proud of what has been happening in the last five years in technology evolution,” citing vast improvements on data rates in countries including India.

Other success highlighted by the expert in the first years of 5G include in providing fixed wireless access and facilitating various enterprise applications.

The post Nokia tech guru up on uplink for next 5G phase appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Sasha Twining interviewed Dr. Alexandros Kaloxylos, Executive Director, 6G-IA on the next 5 years of 5G.

The post 5G: The next 5 years: Interview with 6G-IA appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Justin Springham interviewed Dr. Sangmin Lee, Head of Access Network Development Team, SK Telecom on the next 5 years of 5G.

The post 5G: The next 5 years: Interview with SK Telecom appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Sasha Twining interviewed Harri Holma, Senior Advisor and Bell Labs Fellow, Technology Office, Nokia on the next 5 years of 5G.

The post 5G: The next 5 years: Interview with Nokia appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Justin Springham interviewed Pablo Iacopino, Head – Research & Commercial Content, GSMA Intelligence on the next 5 years of 5G.

The post 5G: The next 5 years: Market Overview with GSMA Intelligence appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Sasha Twining interviewed Kevin Cohen, Vice President of Direct-to-Device Strategy, Viasat on 5G from space.

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During our Digital Unwrapped week, Sasha Twining interviewed Marco Guadalupi, CTO, Sateliot on 5G from space.

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During our Digital Unwrapped week, Justin Springham interviewed Tarun Gupta, Co-Founder, Skylo Technologies on 5G from space.

The post 5G from Space: Interview with Skylo Technologies appeared first on Mobile World Live.

The operator issued a request for proposal in April covering all of its 170,000 radio network sites in those areas at the time (the exact number has since fallen with Vodafone’s divestment of assets in key European markets including Italy and Spain). That effort includes strategic partner e&, the UAE-based operator that is a large shareholder in Vodafone.

“We are in the last phases. It’s difficult to say now exactly if it’s going to be days or weeks, but certainly pretty soon we will know the outcome,” Pignatelli said.

He explained Vodafone Group runs a process every five or six years “to look at the modernisation of the network”.

“There are cycles for modernisation and upgrades, and this is one of them,” he said.

Former Vodafone network architecture director Yago Tenorio stated at an industry event in 2023 the company planned to employ open RAN across 30 per cent of its European sites by 2030.

Pignatelli declined to comment on whether the 30 per cent goal is still in play, but stated “we can confidently say that open RAN is going to be the technology of the future when it comes to radio”.

He noted open RAN is now broadly supported by virtually all the “big players” and that the initial assumptions “about cost benefits influencing the ecosystem and also innovation are materialising.”

“The good thing is that’s the destination. How we get there will be determined by obviously a number of factors, but that’s the future and future is here today.”

Watch a replay of the full keynote interview here.

The post Vodafone closes in on huge mobile tender appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Sasha Twining interviewed Geoff Hollingworth, CMO, Rakuten Symphony on how open 5G can go.

The post How open can 5G go? Interview with Rakuten Symphony appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Justin Springham interviewed Tim Hatt, Head of Research & Consulting, GSMA Intelligence on 5G from space.

The post 5G from space: Market Overview with GSMA Intelligence appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Justin Springham interviewed Yigal Elbaz, SVP, Network CTO, AT&T on how open 5G can go.

The post How open can 5G go? Interview with AT&T appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Justin Springham interviewed Francisco Martín Pignatelli, Head of Open RAN, Vodafone Group.

The post How open can 5G go? Interview with Vodafone appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Digital Unwrapped week, Sasha Twining interviewed Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence on how open 5G can go.

The post How open can 5G go? Market Overview with GSMA Intelligence appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During a session looking at the next five years of 5G, Lee argued the new key use cases for 6G are still unclear. “It does not seem there will be a large increase in new traffic. With this situation, it is difficult to find a reason to rush to 6G.”

For the same reasons, the operator is unlikely to move to nationwide coverage with 6G, he added. “It is very difficult.” It expects the technology to evolve into a mixed-generation network structure, which requires coexisting with 5G.

He noted from the air interface perspective, a multi-RAT set-up for 6G and 5G spectrum sharing is important.

He also called for operator collaboration on development of 6G. The operator already has R&D plans with Japan’s NTT Docomo and Asia player Singtel.

5G lessons
While SKT commercialised 5G early, he acknowledged there’s “no killer service and we still don’t have full network utilisation. We have no differentiation for 5G devices. That’s our lesson learned. We think 6G can be prepared more slowly and with more confidence.”

Another lesson was the limitations of the closed vendor ecosystem, with interoperability only with one company’s products, which increases network costs.

More than five years after launching in early 2019, 5G accounts for 70 per cent of mobile subscribers and “we are now reaching the 5G maturity stage”, he added.

Lee said SKT customers are very sensitive to data speeds and service quality, claiming it delivers three- to five-times higher data speed than other countries. Average speed tests by the government clocked 1Gb/s last year.

Its 5G roadmap includes moves to 5G-Advanced, open RAN and cloud RAN, and AI-popwered networks, both improving performance and delivering AI computing power.

SKT believe cloud RAN is not competitive enough in terms of capacity and power consumption, but it will be enhanced to the level of conventional purpose-built equipment within a few years, he said.

Replays of all Unwrapped interviews this week will be available at:

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During our Digital Unwrapped week, Sasha Twining interviewed Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence on AI – The art of the possible.

The post AI – the art of the possible: Market Overview with GSMA Intelligence appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Unwrapped Digital Event week, Justin Springham interviewed Alex Jinsung Choi, Chair, AI-RAN Alliance on AI – the art of the possible.

The post AI – the art of the possible: Interview with AI-RAN Alliance appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Unwrapped Digital Event week, Sasha Twining interviewed Montgomery Hong, Telco Business Strategy Lead, Microsoft on AI – the art of the possible.

The post AI – the art of the possible: Interview with Microsoft appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Unwrapped Digital Event week, Justin Springham interviewed Inanç Çakiroğlu, Chief Information Officer, VEON Group on AI – the art of the possible.

The post AI – the art of the possible: Interview with Veon appeared first on Mobile World Live.

On the partnership with Verizon, announced in August this year, Gupta said the US operator recognised it needed a complementary consumer service to its network mix, and it had now completed integration work to introduce a location-sharing and an emergency message offering.

“We’re doing our testing now and my understanding is they will be launching live in Q1 of next year with flagship phones that are launching, as well as those phones that are already in the market,” revealed Gupta.

Verizon said when striking the deal it would be the first operator in the world to commercially launch supplemental smartphone connectivity, using Skylo Technologies’ NTN and the first to launch a commercial direct-to-device (D2D) offering.

Gupta hinted that more deals are on the horizon, stating other tier-1 operators would be added to its roster of partners in the short-term.

On the wider D2D market, Gupta said more devices which are NTN compatible will launch imminently, allowing users to access mobile and satellite networks.

He also expects more partnerships on the ecosystem side.

“You’ll see us continue to expand in all directions,” Gupta stated.

The company has already struck chipset deals with Qualcomm and MediaTek, and Google for the Pixel 9 smartphone.

Competition
Addressing the company’s broader business model, Gupta said Skylo Technologies operates as a wholesale service provider to operators and it wants to be complementary to what is already on offer.

“We recognise that going directly to consumer is probably not what we want to do. We recognise that consumers have deep, long, lasting relationships with their mobile operator and we want to add an NTN plan to that.”

During the interview, Gupta also maintained there is still a lot of growth potential in satellite and NTN despite the vast competition that exists in the space, with Skylo Technologies competing with players including SpaceX, Lynk Global, AST SpaceMobile and more.

Interestingly, Skylo Technologies does not own or operate any of its own satellites and instead has opted to partner with established players in the space to launch (including satellite providers such as Viasat and Ligado Networks for spectrum).

“We recognised we could take advantage of existing infrastructure and existing expertise, which made a lot of sense.”

The post Skylo boss teases deals to add to Verizon tie up appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Vodafone Group’s head of open RAN Francisco Martin Pignatelli (pictured) and Geoff Hollingworth, CMO, Rakuten Symphony, agreed the primary challenge for moving to open RAN networks is not technical, but cultural.

“It’s a skill set development organisation process problem, and you can actually move much faster than feels comfortable,” Hollingworth said.

He stated the industry learned to accelerate innovation during the Covid-19 (coronavirus) crisis.

“A two-year project in Covid became a six-month project when we moved customer support,” Hollingworth explained. “We don’t have a problem when we have no choice. But if we have a choice, it feels safer, perhaps, to move slower. My argument would be that we have to move as quickly as possible.”

Pignatelli said mobile operators need to find the right partners for their open RAN journeys. Part of that process is motivating vendors to achieve specific KPI goals in a timely manner to avoid potential finger pointing.

Additionally, he said if multiple suppliers are working on rigid R&D cycle projects, they run the risk of falling behind if one of them is delayed.

“We have had to add on for some more flexibility than what we were using in the past, but that’s certainly happening,” he said.

Both executives said that as open RAN matures with deployments by large operators, there needs to be blueprints of best practices for smaller companies for network deployments that are still open, flexible and programmable.

“In the past, those operators would call a traditional supplier, and everything is done for them,” Pignatelli said. “But today in open RAN, who do you call? There are different models to do it. I think that’s what we need to nail in the next few months and make it easy for smaller operators.”

He continued: “Then when they join, we will be speeding up the adoption cycle.”

Replays of all Unwrapped interviews this week will be available at: https://www.mobileworldlive.com/unwrapped/the-5g-evolution/

The post Vodafone, Rakuten stress cultural shift as key for open RAN appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Unwrapped Digital Event week, Sasha Twining interviewed Patricia Díez Muñoz, Global Security Director for Networks & Systems, Telefonica

The post Securing advanced 5G services: Interview with Telefonica appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Unwrapped Digital Event week, Justin Springham interviewed Sam Kight, Head of Industry Security, GSMA on securing advanced 5G services.

The post Securing advanced 5G services: Interview with GSMA appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Unwrapped Digital Event week, Justin Springham interviewed Silvia Presello, Lead Analyst, GSMA Intelligence on securing advanced 5G services.

The post Securing advanced 5G services: Market Overview with GSMA Intelligence appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During our Unwrapped Digital Event week, Justin Springham interviewed Bertrand Rojat, Chief Technology and Information Officer, Orange Events and Paris Olympics 2024 on fuelling the private 5G opportunity.

The post Fuelling the private 5G opportunity: Interview with Orange Events appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Elbaz, SVP of Technology and Network Services, and Network CTO, explained the $14 billion agreement with Ericsson is progressing as expected, but noted there is more at work than simply two industry heavyweights teaming up.

Instead, Elbaz argued the duo’s work has been instrumental in proving open RAN is suitable for existing networks and not solely the domain of greenfield deployments.

He argues AT&T’s deal with Ericsson also helped to create the scale necessary to encourage other players to get involved with the open and disaggregated network push, convincing makers of radios, servers, compute platforms and more that there is a viable market to target.

Today, he said, the market is far more advanced in terms of tackling questions around integration of diverse network equipment, in developing common applications to handle specific functions and working together to test various components.

But Elbaz acknowledged there is a balance to be struck in terms of timing, telling MWL it is not a race and AT&T strives to “do the right thing at the right moment”.

I’m not looking at my watch every day saying ok, how many new vendors did we bring in.

Igal Elbaz – CTO, Networks AT&T

AT&T and Ericsson have focused on establishing a base from which to build a broader ecosystem: Elbaz explained the companies have worked on updating or swapping elements of its current network and remained on track to hit a goal of running 70 per cent of its traffic over open hardware by end-2026.

Along with building and swapping infrastructure, AT&T has continued to deploy mid-band spectrum, added capacity and simplified its cell sites.

There is also some more advanced functionality involving 3D imaging of all AT&T’s sites, which Elbaz said enables it to “create a true digital twin” which can inform its “AI-based network planning”.

Elbaz also discussed the role of governments and standards bodies in advancing open RAN, along with identifying the four pillars AT&T considers essential to the approach.

Click here for more:

https://www.mobileworldlive.com/unwrapped/the-5g-evolution/

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During our Unwrapped Digital Event week, Justin Springham interviewed Jennifer Artley, SVP for Verizon Business 5G Acceleration, Verizon, on fuelling the private 5G opportunity.

The post Fuelling the private 5G opportunity: Interview with Verizon appeared first on Mobile World Live.