We made a tutorial some time back explaining how to calculate reliability and what is the difference between 5x9s in 3GPP Release-15 5G vs 6x9s in 3GPP Release-16. Slides and video below
I have discussed about the UK's Emergency Services Network (ESN) multiple times but I manged to hear about the progress first hand this week. Bryan Clark, ESN Programme Director, Home Office gave a keynote address at BAPCO on Day 2 and the title of his presentation was "2019: The year vision becomes reality"
British APCO or BAPCO Annual Conference and Exhibition 2019 was going to be a big launchpad for the ESN network. The ESN LinkedIn post said "Representatives from ESN and EE will be on hand to discuss coverage and ESN Assure. See an installation of the ESN Gateway solution within a police car, plus a live demonstration showing how ESN coverage can be extended from a vehicle into a building. We’ll also have a ‘Motorola Zone’ where you can watch demos of Kodiak and the ESN self-service portal – and a large touchscreen demo of the Samsung ESN Galaxy"
Bryan started by cracking a joke about people referring to 'ESN' as 'ES When' programme because it has been delayed multiple times. He said straight in the beginning that he going to talk about what the ESN programme is doing now and what comes next.
He started with this short video, embedded below but detailed info available on this LinkedIn post
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So here is a short summary of the talk:
There are roughly 350,000 customers of this service
There are 137 separate organizations that will take advantage of this new this new technology.
There are couple of vehicles in the display area (pic on the top and video below) and roughly 50,000 vehicles that need to have a kit
Over 100 aircraft need to have an air network access that currently isn't there.
There are nearly 30 direct suppliers to the program and that doesn't include the whole supply chain through each of those suppliers.
Looking at the coverage, there is a commitment to providing a signal along half a million (0.5 million) kilometers of roads in England, Scotland & Wales. It extends 12 nautical miles out to sea and 10,000 feet in the air right across England, Scotland & Wales.
In London alone there are over 400 kilometres of tunnels that were actually almost finished cabling out.
300 masts are being built as part of the ESN programme to extend services into remote areas.
EE has extended their network by adding 700 additional masts.
Thousands of special locations will need to have effective access to ESN network
ESN is a large programme so it's hardly surprising that it's very late. It's Bryan's job over the past 10 months to work out how to get it back on track.
People are going through quite a detailed review of where ESN has got to in terms of next steps.
The programme now has a very clear and approved plan to complete the technical element of the work, most of it should be done by late summer next year.
One of the first products, Assure, is a way of testing the effectiveness of the network in the field.
A demonstration of Push-To-Talk (PTT) on a 4G network will be demoed within 3 weeks.
This is the first generation end-to-end solution
Emergency services is critical national infrastructure so any new solution can only replace the legacy once we are absolutely confident that we've got an effective replacement
Even though the technical piece is quite challenging, when you compare it to the business change that follows, the technical part looks pretty simple.
To ensure that everything works effectively operationally, plans are in place but more detailed plans are going to follow in the coming three to four months.
Individual components are already being tested in the field
Programme deployment should start by the end of 2019 in terms of having basically completed laying the core components and a clear plan will be in place for how to test in an operational context.
The ESN programme is not only responsible for the replacement solution but also for operations to date based on the Airwave contract with Motorola currently
The number one priority is to provide critical voice communications of sufficient quality that people can rely on in the field and enable them to move away from the TETRA technology that served them so well. So we aren't going anywhere until we've got rock solid critical voice communications. It's our number one priority, simply because people's lives depend on it.
The following are various videos from the ESN demo area. The Gateway device (which is a mobile small cell) is supplied by Parallel Wireless*.
In case you missed BAPCO, Ken Rehbehn, a very well known Industry Analyst who works as a Principal Analyst at Critical Communications Insights and is also Montgomery County Firefighter/EMT, shared his observations and reflections from conference. Very grateful for his interview which is embedded below
The 3G4G Blog: EE's vision of Ultra-Reliable Emergency Network
The 3G4G Blog: Update from 3GPP on LTE & 5G Mission Critical Communications
*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Senior Director in Strategic Marketing. This blog is maintained in my personal capacity and expresses my own views, not the views of my employer or anyone else. Anyone who knows me well would know this.
After Avengers clip about Nick Fury paging Captain Marvel, I was asked by a few people about what, why and how of Pagers. Similar questions were asked when Tron: Legacy was released. It took me a while but finally managed to make a non-technical introduction on Pagers for people with very basic understanding of technology.
I made this video before MWC with the intention to educate the attendees about the various architecture options and 5G terminologies being discussed. As always, happy to get feedback on what can be done better. Slides followed by video below.
Prof. Andy Sutton delivered his annual IET talk last month which was held the 6th Annual 5G conference. You can watch the videos for that event here (not all have been uploaded at the time of writing this post). His talks have always been very popular on this blog with the last year talk being 2nd most popular while the one in 2017 was the most popular one. Thanks also to IET for hosting this annual event and IET Tv for making this videos available for free.
The slides and video is embedded below but for new starters, before jumping to this, you may want to check out about 5G Network Architecture options in our tutorial here.
A nice video by Peter Clarke on 5G NR throughput calculation for FDD. Right now it's only in the video form but will hopefully be available as a tool on his excellent website here. A tool for 4G throughput calculation is available here.
Another of the CW (Cambridge Wireless) Future Devices & Technologies (#CWFDT) event 'Robots: Assistance, Automation, Entertainment' happened a few weeks back. I had helped arrange the event and as always when a speaker dropped out at the last minute, I prepared a short talk on what role Robots play in the telecoms world. More later.
Robots have been part of human imagination for decades for example they feature heavily in popular culture and we typically have a favourite robot character. My favourite was 'Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot'. Even though it was made in 1967, I saw it only in 1986.
The anticipated future impact of Robots is widely discussed. Their potential use in military operations may well change the face of future warfare, whilst in civilian life, industrial and domestic, it is speculated how they will both be our assistants and our replacements.
The intention of the event was to reflect on the challenges of lives transformed by new human-robot relationships.
While we had interesting talks and I think we succeeded in achieving what we set out to, not all speakers shared their presentations but you can see the ones available here.
My talk along with the videos is embedded below. If you prefer to hear my talk as it was, it's on YouTube here.
In the Facebook TIP Summit last month, Roger Greene, Rural Access Lead, Connectivity Ecosystem Programs, Facebook talked to Juan Campillo, Internet Para Todos Lead, Telefónica & Omar Tupayachi, Founder & CEO, Mayutel about how they are connecting the unconnected. The discussion embedded below, starts with a very nice video about how connectivity is making a difference in Peru. In fact that video inspired me to do this post 😊.
Mayutel was described as Peru's first rural operator. It was founded in 2015 and works in over 150 areas. It has 25 employees.
During the discussion some interesting points were discussed like planning, the reason its important is that if you dont do proper planning and analytics, you can use small cells instead of macros and vice versa. Also, some solutions are worth trying in the field as its only when deployed, it can be tested in real-world scenarios.
Connectivity is very important for the rural people in Peru, like every other country. Approximately 4 million Peruvians have only got access to 2G technology. It would help if they have access to have 3G & 4G too. It not only helps connect the people on the move to their loved ones back home, it also helps small businesses who reply on messaging group communications to solve their issues and ask for help & advice.
Due to the Open RAN approach, the cost of deployment has reduced by 50-70%. Mayutel mentioned that they were able to deploy a site at 1/10th the cost it would normally take. This was all thanks to the open approach where their engineers can learn how to deploy the complete solution. It was vital to use local help not only in terms of knowledge but also in terms of manpower.
There were some good lessons and learning but in the end for this to scale more operators need to become part of the Telecom Infra Project and make this successfully happen.
Here is another video from Parallel Wireless on their deployments in Peru.
*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Senior Director in Strategic Marketing. This blog is maintained in my personal capacity and expresses my own views, not the views of my employer or anyone else. Anyone who knows me well would know this.
This updated presentation/video looks at 5G Network Architecture options that have been proposed by 3GPP for deployment of 5G. It covers the Standalone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) architecture. In the NSA architecture, EN-DC (E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity), NGEN-DC (NG-RAN E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity) and NE-DC (NR-E-UTRA Dual Connectivity) has been looked at. Finally, migration strategies proposed by vendors and operators (MNOs / SPs) have been discussed.
Nokia has also released a whitepaper on this topic that I only became aware of after my slides / video were done. More details in the tweet below.
I recently heard Iris Barcia, COO of Keima speak after nearly 6 years at Cambridge Wireless CWTEC 2018. The last time I heard her, it was part of CW Small Cells SIG, where I used to be a SIG (special interest group) champion. Over the last 6 years, the network planning needs have changed from planning for coverage to planning for capacity from the beginning. This particular point started a little debate that I will cover in another post, but you can sneak a peek here 😉.
Embedded below is the video and presentation. The slides can be downloaded from SlideShare.
Earlier, I wrote a detailed post on how Telefonica was on a mission to connect 100 Million Unconnected with their 'Internet para todos' initiative. This video below is a good advert of what Telefinica is trying to achieve in Latin America
I recently came across a LinkedIn post on how Telefónica uses AI / ML to connect the unconnected by Patrick Lopez, VP Networks Innovation @ Telefonica. It was no brainer that this needs to be shared.
To deliver internet in these environments in a sustainable manner, it is necessary to increase efficiency through systematic cost reduction, investment optimization and targeted deployments. Systematic optimization necessitates continuous measurement of the financial, operational, technological and organizational data sets. 1. Finding the unconnected
The first challenge the team had to tackle was to understand how many unconnected there are and where. The data set was scarce and incomplete, census was old and population had much mobility. In this case, the team used high definition satellite imagery at the scale of the country and used neural network models, coupled with census data as training. Implementing visual machine learning algorithms, the model literally counted each house and each settlement at the scale of the country. The model was then enriched with crossed reference coverage data from regulatory source, as well as Telefonica proprietary data set consisting of geolocalized data sessions and deployment maps. The result is a model with a visual representation, providing a map of the population dispersion, with superimposed coverage polygons, allowing to count and localize the unconnected populations with good accuracy (95% of the population with less than 3% false positive and less than 240 meters deviation in the location of antennas). 2. Optimizing transport
Transport networks are the most expensive part of deploying connectivity to remote areas. Optimizing transport route has a huge impact on the sustainability of a network. This is why the team selected this task as the next challenge to tackle. The team started with adding road and infrastructure data to the model form public sources, and used graph generation to cluster population settlements. Graph analysis (shortest path, Steiner tree) yielded population density-optimized transport routes. 3. AI to optimize network operations
To connect very remote zones, optimizing operations and minimizing maintenance and upgrade is key to a sustainable operational model. This line of work is probably the most ambitious for the team. When it can take 3 hours by plane and 4 days by boat to reach some locations, being able to make sure you can detect, or better, predict if / when you need to perform maintenance on your infrastructure. Equally important is how your devise your routes so that you are as efficient as possible. In this case, the team built a neural network trained with historical failure analysis and fed with network metrics to provide a model capable of supervising the network health in an automated manner, with prediction of possible failure and optimized maintenance route. I think that the type of data driven approach to complex problem solving demonstrated in this project is the key to network operators' sustainability in the future. It is not only a rural problem, it is necessary to increase efficiency and optimize deployment and operations to keep decreasing the costs.
Finally, its worth mentioning again that I am helping CW (Cambridge Wireless) organise their annual CW TEC conference on the topic 'The inevitable automation of Next Generation Networks'. There are some good speakers and we will have similar topics covered from different angles, using some other interesting approaches. The fees are very reasonable so please join if you can.
Continuing on the theme of Open Source from last week's post from Telefonica, lets look at the CORD by ONF.
The CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) platform leverages SDN, NFV and Cloud technologies to build agile datacenters for the network edge. Integrating multiple open source projects, CORD delivers a cloud-native, open, programmable, agile platform for network operators to create innovative services. CORD provides a complete integrated platform, integrating everything needed to create a complete operational edge datacenter with built-in service capabilities, all built on commodity hardware using the latest in cloud-native design principles.
The video above from MWC 2018 is a very short summary of what ONF and CORD is. The video below from OCP Telecom Workshop at the Big Communications Event (BCE) on May 14th, 2018 in Austin, Texas looks at CORD in detail.
Last month, just before the Easter break, I along with some other SIG champions of the Future Devices & Technologies group at CW (Cambridge Wireless) organised an event titled 'Smart Devices of 2025'. Technologies are moving at such an amazing speed that it is not easy to foresee anything beyond 6-8 years. Hence 2025, 7 years from now.
As this was the inaugural event for the revamped SIG, the slides above are my quick introduction to the SIG. We not only talked about the future but we had some nice futuristic devices too. The nuFood 3D Food Printer by Dovetailed printed out some fancy toppings that could go on cheesecake and on other food, making it more appetising. Here is the video on how it works.
All the talks were very informative and very well explained. Its amazing how all of them came together to form a complete picture. The talks are all available here (limited time for non-CW members)
The starting talk by David Wood (@dw2), chair of London Futurists was not only informative and relevant to the subject being discussed but equally entertaining, especially for those who have been in the mobile industry for a long time. He has kindly agreed for me to share his slides which are embedded below.
David talks about NBIC (slide 18) and how it could be combined with Social-tech and Planetary-tech in future to do a lot more than what we can do with it today. While David explains NBIC in his slides, I found this short video on this topic that I think is worth embedding.
It was also good to hear Dr Jenny Tillotson again after a long time. I blogged about smell transmission some 6 years back here. This is something that is still work in progress and probably will be ready by 2025. In the meantime 'Context-Driven Fragrances' can be used for variety of purposes from entertainment to health.
This year April Fools' Day wasn't as fun as the last one. Couple of reasons being that it was on a Sunday and it coincided with Easter Sunday. Here are some of the jokes that I found interesting.
Sprint's Magic Ball:
It was good to see that the US mobile operator joined the party this year. Their magicball (based on their highly successful Magic Box) advert was really good. Here is the video:
Good to see that they managed to squeeze in references to 5G and small cells
T-Mobile USA has consistently come up with the best tech pranks. Last year they had the OneSie with Human HotSpot and BingeOnUp the year before. This year the re-booted sidekicks was the joke of the day. The video is embedded below. As the description says, T-Mobile’s Sidekick gets a remake! Inspired by the past but stepping boldly into the future, it has revolutionary AI, headphones that double as chargers, personalized GPS guidance by John Legere, and more!
"A top-secret team of Chegg engineers from Zurich spent two years developing a new patent-pending revolutionary proprietary method of making memory foam using special blends of matcha and lavender. Thanks to their discoveries, Chegg’s memory foam actually improves your memory. Got a final exam tomorrow? Sleep on it. Got a lab report due? Sleep on it. Need to outline your entire thesis? Sleep on it."
"Tongueprinting technology analyzes thousands of tiny bumps called papillae, as well as factors such as shape, size, and temperature to accurately identify yourself by licking your phone. This technology will be the mouthpiece of Pindrop’s latest authentication and anti-fraud solutions." Video:
Roku Happy Streaming Socks: "Do messy snack hands keep you from using your Roku remote? Meet the new Roku Happy Streaming Socks with built-in motion sensors, plus toe-toasting and anti-loss technology."
The other jokes were, well, not very funny but here are some worth mentioning...
Virgin Voyages Wa-Fi: "Here at Virgin Voyages we are excited to be bringing underwater WiFi, or as we call it “Wa-Fi” service, to all Virgin Voyages ships." Website: https://www.virginvoyages.com/wa-fi.html
Logitech BS Detection Software: "Today, I’m proud to announce that we are taking video calls to a whole new level with the introduction of Logitech Business Speak (BS) Detection software. Logitech BS Detection revolutionizes our meeting capabilities with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) that flags the…well…BS in business communications. "
Eager to eliminate the BS from your meetings? If so, be sure to check out Logitech's new Business Speak Detection software, which is now available on all @LogitechVC products. Learn more here: https://t.co/XuumeDrgme. pic.twitter.com/KP2ieuCXRi
INTRODUCING Jabra Speaker Sneaker - The world’s first stereo speakers included in footwear with voice assist. The detachable speakers ensure great sound and best of class battery life, allowing you to enjoy music all day long, wherever your feet take you. https://t.co/fO7TJp3KPppic.twitter.com/1vmul0unAA
Genetic Select by Lexus: Introducing Genetic Select by Lexus in partnership with 23andMe. The world’s first service that uses human genetics to match you with the car of your genes. http://www.lexus.com/geneticselect/
Google Maps is adding a Where’s Waldo? mini-game for the next week: Link.
This year at MWC, I took the time out to go and see as many companies as I can. My main focus was looking at connectivity solutions, infrastructure, devices, gadgets and anything else cool. I have to say that I wasn't too impressed. I found some of the things later on Twitter or YouTube but as it happens, one cannot see everything.
I have to be honest, haven't seen a WOW demo yet at #MWC18. While there are lots of interesting stuff, it's all the same, old and tired stuff.
I will be writing a blog on Small Cells, Infrastructure, etc. later on but here are some cool videos that I have found. As its a playlist, if I find any more, it will be added to the same playlist below.
The big vendors did not open up their stands for everyone (even I couldn't get in 😉) but the good news is that most of their demos is available online. Below are the name of the companies that had official MWC 2018 websites. Will add more when I find them.
Over the last year or so, I have heard quite a few discussions and read many articles around why QUIC is so good and why we will replace TCP with QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connection). One such article talking about QUIC benefits says:
QUIC was initially developed by Google as an alternative transport protocol to shorten the time it takes to set up a connection. Google wanted to take benefits of the work done with SPDY, another protocol developed by Google that became the basis for the HTTP/2 standard, into a transport protocol with faster connection setup time and built-in security. HTTP/2 over TCP multiplexes and pipelines requests over one connection but a single packet loss and retransmission packet causes Head-of-Line Blocking (HOLB) for the resources that were being downloaded in parallel. QUIC overcomes the shortcomings of multiplexed streams by removing HOLB. QUIC was created with HTTP/2 as the primary application protocol and optimizes HTTP/2 semantics.
What makes QUIC interesting is that it is built on top of UDP rather than TCP. As such, the time to get a secure connection running is shorter using QUIC because packet loss in a particular stream does not affect the other streams on the connection. This results in successfully retrieving multiple objects in parallel, even when some packets are lost on a different stream. Since QUIC is implemented in the userspace compared to TCP, which is implemented in the kernel, QUIC allows developers the flexibility of improving congestion control over time, since it can be optimized and better replaced compared to kernel upgrades (for example, apps and browsers update more often than OS updates).
Georg Mayer mentioned about QUIC in a recent discussion with Telecom TV. His interview is embedded below. Jump to 5:25 for QUIC part only
Prof. Andy Sutton, Principal Network Architect, Architecture & Strategy, TSO, BT, provided an update on 5G Network Architecture & Design last year which was also the most popular post of 2017 on 3G4G blog. This year again, he has delivered an update on the same topic at IET '5G - State of Play' conference. He has kindly shared the slides (embedded below) that are available to download from Slideshare.
There are many valuable insights in this talk and the other talks from this conference. All the videos from the IET conference are available here and they are worth your time.