Author: Alan Weissberger
Tech Mahindra: India Needs to Begin 5G Spectrum Auction Now!
Manish Vyas, President of Communications Business and Chief Executive Officer of Network Services, of Tech Mahindra said the India Department of Telecom needs to commence the auction of 5G spectrum now. He noted that regulators in some countries have already formulated policies and initiated spectrum auctions for the 5G roll out in their respective nations.
Vyas said 4G is yet to touch all parts of India and that needs to happens on a massive scale. Yet there are some “definite green-shoots” of 5G trials.
More than technology, the bigger impediment could be the India regulatory body’s policy on 5G spectrum. The experimental license by DoT will need modifications, and till that happens, the sector is in for a “waiting game” he said.
“US, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and more (have started 5G spectrum auctions). Spectrum is the life blood of any wireless network. For 5G, globally regulators have been licensing mid-band (3.5GHz) and in some countries mmWave (millimeter Wave) spectrum bands as well.
For 5G to be rolled out in India, the first necessary step is for the regulator to auction the 5G spectrum. Everything else will be gated on spectrum,” he wrote in an email to the Economic Times of India.
Vodafone Idea recently said the auction of 5G spectrum should not be held before 2020 as the industry needs time to develop India-specific use cases for the next-generation technology.
A DoT official in December last year said the government expects to complete processes for 5G spectrum auction by August, 2019.
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Tech Mahindra established a strategic partnership with Intel on a wide range of topics spanning across Virtualization of RAN (radio access network) , Cloud native 5G Core and on Edge Computing, Vyas said.
“Intel brings best in class technology for 5G infrastructure and will form the foundation of 5G networks.
We are collaborating with Intel to maximise the benefits of their technology for 5G networks and we are also working on developing 5G use cases for specific industry verticals in the CoE,” he said.
A panel set up to recommend the scope of 5G trials in the country has submitted its report to the Department of Telecom (DoT), a source said.
The DoT-constituted committee chaired by IIT Kanpur Director Abhay Karandikar was tasked to give recommendations on the scope of trials, as well as size, quantum, pricing and other aspects for offering experimental/trial spectrum for 5G and other trials.
A DoT source privy to the development said that the report was submitted recently and is currently being examined, but did not divulge details.
Some industry representatives had earlier informed the committee, during the past deliberations, that the various stages involved in the process of experimentation and trials such as import and release of equipment, logistic clearance, installation and commission of equipment, network integration, interoperability checking, and testing of applications require longer duration and that the existing validity of three months is very short and needs to be increased.
The National Digital Communications Policy 2018 outlines a mission to ‘propel India’ by enabling next generation technologies and services through investments, innovation and IPR generation.
In this regard, it underlines the need to harness the power of emerging digital technologies, including 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Cloud and Big Data to enable provision of future-ready products and services.
Berg Insight: China driving global cellular IoT adoption via NB-IoT; 5G-IoT coming in late 2020
A new report from the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight estimates that the global number of cellular IoT (e.g. NB-IoT, LTE-M, LTE, 2G, 3G, etc) subscribers increased by 70 percent during 2018 to reach 1.2 billion. IoT growth was driven by “exceptional adoption” in China.
The market research firm forecasts that there will be 9 billion IoT devices connected to cellular networks worldwide by 2023.
China, which accounted for 63% of the global installed base in 2018, is expected to continue to be the key driver for IoT adoption, as the Chinese government is actively driving adoption as a tool for achieving domestic and economic policy goals.
“China is deploying cellular IoT technology at a monumental scale”, said Tobias Ryberg, principal analyst and author of the report.
According to data from the Chinese mobile operators, the installed base in the country increased by 124% year-on-year to reach 767 million at the end of 2018.
China has overtaken Europe and North America in penetration rate with 54.7 IoT connections per 100 inhabitants, Ryberg said.
He said the role of the government is the main explanation for why China is ahead of the rest of the world in the adoption of IoT.
“The most distinctive characteristic of the Chinese IoT market is however the way that the government is systematically using new technology to implement its vision for urban life in the 21st century,” Ryberg said.
“At the same time the private sector also implements IoT technology to improve efficiency and drive innovation.”
China has witnessed widespread adoption of connected cars, fleet management, smart metering, asset monitoring and as well as new consumer services like bike sharing.
The report also analyses the IoT business KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) released by mobile operators in different parts of the world and found significant regional differences.
While China has the world’s highest IoT penetration rate, Europe seems is doing better job in terms of monetizing the IoT business.
According to the report, the monthly ARPU for cellular IoT connectivity services in China was only €0.22 ($0.25), compared to € 0.70 in Europe.
Global revenues from cellular IoT connectivity services increased by 19% in 2018 to reach €6.7 billion. The ten largest players had a combined revenue share of around 80%.
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Editor’s Note: The most popular cellular IoT network in China is NB-IoT. China Telecom Offers NB–IoT Nationwide. ChinaTelecom has built the world’s largest NB–IoT network so far by upgrading 310,000 base stations acrossChina to support NB–IoT. … It is using the 800MHz spectrum band, which is being refarmed for 4G in China and enables good in-building penetration and very wide coverage.
A GSMA case study illustrates how China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom enable consumers and businesses to benefit from better services using NB-IoT, while opening up new business models for mobile operators and their partners.
Supporting extensive coverage and low power consumption, NB-IoT is making it feasible to securely remotely monitor and control very large volumes of everyday devices, appliance, machines and vehicles. Both consumers and businesses in China are now benefiting from greater convenience, better reliability, and improved safety and security.
Above image courtesy of GSMA
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In a separate report, Berg Insight says 5G will reach the IoT market in late 2020.
The first 5G cellular IoT modules will become available to developers this year, enabling early adopters to create the first IoT devices based on the standard. Based on the experience of previous introductions of new standards, 5G will however not be an instant hit. By 2023, Berg Insight forecasts that 5G will account for just under 3 percent of the total installed base of cellular IoT devices.
“5G still has some way to go before it can become a mainstream technology for cellular IoT”, says Tobias Ryberg, Principal Analyst and author of the report.
“Just like 4G when it was first introduced, the initial version of 5G is mostly about improving network performance and data capacity. This is only relevant for a smaller subset of high-bandwidth cellular IoT applications like connected cars, security cameras and industrial routers. The real commercial breakthrough will not happen until the massive machine type communication (mMTC) use case has been implemented in the standard.”
mMTC is intended as an evolution of the LTE-M/NB-IoT enhancements to the 4G standard. Since NB-IoT has only just started to appear in commercial products, there is no immediate demand for a successor. Over time, fifth generation mobile networks will however become necessary to cope with the expected exponential growth of IoT connections and data traffic. The report identifies homeland security as an area where 5G cellular IoT can have a major impact already in the early 2020s.
“5G enables the deployment of high-density networks of AI-supported security cameras to monitor anything form security-classified facilities to national borders or entire cities”, says Mr. Ryberg.
“How this technology is used and by whom is likely to become one of the most controversial issues in the next decade.”
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References:
http://www.berginsight.com/News.aspx?m_m=6&s_m=1
https://www.gsma.com/iot/nbiot-iot-commercial-case-study-china/
https://www.telecomasia.net/content/berg-insight-china-driving-global-cellular-iot-adoption
WDM-PON to Enable 5G+FTTH Converged Gigaband Access
SOURCE: ZTE
Introduction:
5G networks will be distinctly different then 4G-LTE networks, even though all so called “5G” pre-standard deployments use 3GPP Rel 15 5G-NR NSA (Non Stand Alone) for the data plane, with a heavy LTE anchor for: signaling, network management and mobile packet core (EVC). ITU-R will specify the radio related standards for 5G, while ITU-T will standardize the non radio aspects, as reported NUMEROUS times on this techblog website.
Several market research firms forecast that 5G base stations installed in China will be two to three times as many as 4G- LTE base stations. GSMA forecasts that from launch in 2020, Chinese 5G connections will scale rapidly over time, to reach 428 million by 2025. Beyond this date, further growth will be determined by incremental network rollout (and the ability of operators to earn ROI), and the price point at which 5G devices are available.
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Definitions: C-RAN, DUs, and AAUs:
The Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN) mode where the Distributed Units (DUs) for many Active Antenna Units (AAUs) are placed at a centralized location significantly increases the fronthaul distance between DUs and AAUs. If all DU-AAU connections are through fiber, the amount of fiber required will rise by 10-fold. That entails heavy civil works and enormous investments.
25Gbps WDM-PON is Ideal for 5G Fronthaul:
WDM-PON is a passive optical networking technology that can be used to address the fiber deployment challenges. A WDM-PON design can be used to separate optical-network units (ONUs) into several virtual point-to-point connections over the same physical infrastructure, a feature that enables efficient use of fiber compared to point-to-point direct fiber connection and offers lower latency than TDM-based technologies. A notable benefit of this technology is high bandwidth, low latency, and fiber savings. 5G fronthaul based on 25Gbps WDM-PON technology has the following technical advantages:
- Support for CPRI and eCPRI standards as well as 4G/5G hybrid networking.
- 25Gbps high bandwidth per wavelength, which can smoothly evolve to 50Gbps in the future.
- Up to 20 pairs of wavelengths on a single trunk fiber.
- Colorless ONU technology allows flexible wavelength allocation and wavelength routing.
- In the future, a colorless Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) ONU can be directly inserted into the AAU for easy installation.
- The Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG) incurs a power loss of about 5.5 dBm, which is lower than that of the optical splitter.
5G+FTTH Converged Gigaband Access Solution
WDM-PON is a key innovation that enables 5G+FTTH converged gigaband access. Compared with direct fiber connections between DU and AAU, the WDM-PON based fronthaul mode saves trunk fibers by more than 90 percent (shown as Figure 1). Another advantage of WDM- PON is that wavelengths can be flexibly allocated and resources can be remotely, centrally managed.
WDM PON enriches and perfects 5G fronthaul technology, giving operators more options by allowing for 5G+FTTH converged gigaband access in dense urban areas.
Based on the above principles, ZTE and China Telecom jointly launched the 5G+FTTH Converged Gigaband Access solution. The solution has unique advantages in trunk fiber, equipment space and power savings. Specifically, it:
- Cuts 95 percent trunk fiber by allowing up to 20 AAUs to share the same trunk fiber.
- Saves 10 percent power and shrinks space through OLT reuse.
- Reduces overall investments by 50 percent.
In addition to the high-density WDM-PON cards, the OLT also innovatively provides TDM-like channels to ensure a processing latency of less than 7µs in the OLT. If the distance between OLT and ONU is 5 kilometers, a transmission latency of 25µs will ensue over the fiber. Consequently, the total end-to-end latency is less than 32μs, which is 68 percent lower than the 5G URLLC requirements. The TDM-like channel handles traffic sent from 5G AAUs in real time without the queuing, buffering, forwarding, routing and searching processes. The resulting low-latency forwarding meets the stringent latency requirements of 5G fronthaul for URLLC applications.
Industry’s First WDM-PON for 5G Fronthaul Validation:
In December 2018, ZTE and the Technology Innovation Department and Optical Access Research Department of China Telecom jointly completed the industry’s first validation of Nx25Gbps WDM-PON for 5G fronthaul on the live network of China Telecom Suzhou Branch. The validation demonstrated that 25Gbps WDM-PON could carry 5G fronthaul services stably and transparently, with the data rate and end-to-end latency equal to those in a point-to-point direct fiber connection.
Achievements in WDM-PON Standards and Technologies:
ZTE and China Telecom collaborate to actively participate in the standardization of WDM-PON. The collaboration has produced numerous achievements including:
- Editor of “ITU-T G.Sup66 : 5G wireless fronthaul requirements in a passive optical network context” in October 2018.
- Submitted five proposals to the ITU-T, applied for 23 patents and released two papers.
3) Co-led the formulation of the “Nx25Gbps WDM-PON for 5G Mobile Fronthaul” series standards of China Communications Standards Association (CCSA).
4) Formulated the industry’s first enterprise standard on Nx25Gbps WDM-PON management channels for China Telecom.
5) Proposed the concept of SFP ONUs, which has been accepted by CCSA and is being incorporated into its standards.
Besides the achievements in WDM-PON standards, ZTE has also made breakthroughs in key WDM-PON technologies, including:
1) Developed 25Gbps WDM-PON optical modules with low cost, low power consumption, and high transmission power.
2) Developed the technology of ultra-low latency forwarding of CPRI/eCPRI traffic based on cell switching.
Summary and Prospects:
25Gbps WDM-PON is ideal for 5G fronthaul. It is a key innovation to enable 5G+FTTH converged gigaband access in an economical way. ZTE is currently extending WDM-PON based fronthaul from outdoor AAUs to a 5G indoor distribution system. When indoor 5G fronthaul is combined with the Passive Optical LAN (POL), 5G+FTTO (Fiber To The Office) converged dual-gigabit rates can be achieved in industrial parks.
References:
https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/research/?file=67a750f6114580b86045a6a0f9587ea0&download
AT&T FirstNet Makes Great Progress; Deal with Mutualink increases Inter-operability
FirstNet is a dedicated LTE network for public safety users, which passed 600,000 “connections” earlier this month. It has been built by AT&T and has has engagements with more than 7,000 public safety agencies.
FirstNet is built in public-private partnership with the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority). This helps to ensure that the FirstNet communications platform and service offerings meet the short- and long-term needs of the public safety community.
FirstNet is improving communications to allow for improved response times and outcomes for first responders from coast-to-coast, in rural and urban areas, inland and on boarders – leading to safer, and more secure communities. It provides innovation and dedicated capacity so public safety can take advantage of advanced technologies, tools and services during emergencies, such as:
- Applications that allow first responders to reliably share videos, text messages, photos and other information during incidents in near real-time
- Devices configured to meet the focused needs of public safety
- Improved location services to help with mapping capabilities during rescue and recovery operations
- Deployables available for planned and unplanned emergency events
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Speaking this past week at the MoffettNathanson’s 6th Annual Media & Communications Summit in New York City, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer John Stephens discussed how the carrier’s deployment of FirstNet is progressing rapidly and laying the groundwork for 5G.
According to AT&T, FirstNet is 25% faster than any domestic commercial network. That claim is based on Ookla test data covering average download speeds in Q1 2019.
The FirstNet build-out is instrumental to AT&T 5G deployment plans, Stephens said. “The FirstNet contract, which is enabling us to go through a process from an LTE to evolve into a 5G network, is really working. We’re getting dramatic speed uptakes. If you look at the two fastest networks in the United States right now, they’re both ours…That’s what’s driving the business. That’ll drive innovation, that’ll drive opportunity.”
As AT&T upgrades its cell sites to deploy Band 14 [1] for FirstNet, crews are upgrading other equipment to support the 5G New Radio specification. Stephens said the operator is working toward “national coverage of 5G” by the “middle of the next year.”
Note 1. Band 14 is the spectrum licensed to the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) to create a nationwide public-safety wireless broadband network. Band 14represents 20 MHz of highly desirable spectrum in the 700 MHz band that provides good propagation in urban and rural areas and decent penetration into buildings.
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This week, AT&T announced it would resell Mutualink to enhance interoperable communications for public safety. This new relationship will allow AT&T to bring Mutualink’s Interoperable Response and Preparedness Platform (IRAPP) to first responders and supporting agencies using services provided over FirstNet public safety communications platform.
Mutualink states on their website: “This network is the largest nationwide network of public safety agencies, critical infrastructure, schools and private enterprise security. The IRAPP is transport agnostic, device agnostic and media agnostic. It leverages your current communications assets and incorporates new devices as needed. Connect to the IRAPP network via public or private LTE, satellite or terrestrial broadband.”
“FirstNet brings public safety one, nationwide platform for consistent, reliable communications across agencies and jurisdictions,” said Chris Sambar, senior vice president, FirstNet Program at AT&T. “As apps and mobile data increasingly become critical components of the public safety response, we want to help make sure the flow of information that FirstNet provides remains seamless. Our agreement with Mutualink aims to do just that, taking the interoperability that FirstNet provides to the next level.”
FirstNet already facilitates multi-agency communications to aid in incident response and resolution. The agreement with Mutualink builds upon this, expanding the reach, reliability and capability of FirstNet services today. FirstNet subscribers can use the Mutualink IRAPP solution to enhance their ability to easily and quickly communicate across systems and applications, sharing voice, data, video and more in a highly secure environment.
By bringing the Mutualink solution to the FirstNet platform, first responders using Mutualink’s IRAPP will be able to simultaneously take advantage of key FirstNet capabilities – like First Priority™, which enables priority and, for first responders, preemption.
“Adding Mutualink’s Interoperable Response and Preparedness Platform to the FirstNet communications platform will increase the level of interoperability for public safety, especially with respect to on-demand cross-agency interoperability. Our solution enables highly secure sharing of video and data across systems and integration with smart sensor and IoT systems,” Mark Hatten, chief executive officer and chairman, Mutualink. “This will help FirstNet subscribers scale up their access to emerging information as the situation unfolds, creating a common operating picture for all involved.”
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“FirstNet is helping first responders solve long-standing interoperability challenges and arming them with the information they need to coordinate action plans and make critical decisions. We’re pleased to see AT&T form innovative collaborations that will help foster a new era of situational awareness for public safety,” said FirstNet Authority Acting CEO Edward Parkinson.
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References:
https://www.firstnet.gov/network
https://about.att.com/story/2019/att_and_mutualink.html
https://mutualink.net/our-solution/
http://mutualink.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/1-National-Vision-White-Paper-3-17-17.pdf
https://www.rcrwireless.com/20190516/5g/att-5g-national-coverage
2019 IoT World: T-Mobile is Changing the Game for Massive IoT via NB-IoT
Introduction:
T-Mobile USA was the first U.S. wireless carrier to provide nationwide NB-IoT coverage last July. The “uncarrier” is very proud to have 81 million cellular customers and a very low churn rate. The company has invested billions of dollars in the last five years to modernize and transform its wireless network. As of February 7, 2019, T-Mobile’s LTE network now covers 325 million people, according to a recent earning report..
During his May 14th 2019 IoT World keynote, Balaji Sridharan, VP of IoT & M2M at T-Mobile US, described the challenges to overcome to realize massive IoT at scale and T-Mobile’s wireless networks that might be used for three different classes of IoT connectivity. Balaji also enumerate key features and attributes of NB-IoT and showed an interesting comparison chart of LPWANs. He said its 600 MHz spectrum is deployed throughout the U.S. [1]
Note 1. During its April 2019 earnings call, CTO Neville Ray said: “we have over 1 million square miles of 600 megahertz LTE rolled out. It’s working in 44 states and Puerto Rico. And we have a 100 million covered PoPs on 600 megahertz LTE. So we’ve said that in 2020, we’ll have a nationwide footprint on 5G.
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IoT Classification and Characteristics [from Ericsson white paper]:
Massive IoT: Connecting billions of devices, small amounts of data volumes, (mostly) sent infrequently, low power required for long battery life (years not days, weeks or months).
Broadband IoT will need high throughput and/or low latency.; large data volumes.
Critical IoT will require ultra high reliability/availability and very low latency. Industrial automation (and robotic surgery) will require time sensitive information delivery and precise positioning of devices.
Industrial Automation is tailored for advanced industrial automation in conjunction with the other cellular IoT segments. It includes Radio Access Network (RAN) capabilities to facilitate the support of deterministic networks which, together with ethernet-based protocols and other industrial protocols, will enable many advanced industrial automation applications.
These applications have extremely demanding connectivity requirements and require very accurate indoor positioning and distinct architecture and security attributes. Industrial Automation IoT reinforced by Critical IoT connectivity is the key enabler for the full digitalization of Industry 4.0 for the world’s manufacturers, the Oil and Gas sectors as well as smart grid components for energy distribution companies.
Above chart courtesy of Ericsson.
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T-Mo has wireless networks to meet all of the above IoT market segmants. In particular, NB-IoT, 4G-LTE, and (soon) 5G.
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Challenges to overcome for Massive IoT:
- Support billions of devices at scale (that includes provisioning and (re) configuration).
- Long battery life (via low power consumption of devices/things)
- Coverage enhancements
- Global reach
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NB-IoT meets the requirements for Massive IoT:
Operates in guard bands of T-Mobile’s LTE network. [2]
Wide range of devices to be connected to the Internet using existing mobile networks (rather then new network infrastructure).
Key benefits include: better battery life (again via low power consumption for connectivity), cheaper device costs ($5 certified NB-IoT module is now available), optimized data usage, reduced IP header and ability to transmit/receive non-IP data (which results in 30% to 40% less data transmission than if traditional IP was used), enhanced security via GSMA standards, licensed spectrum (no interference),, SIM based, and encryption.
Balaji said: “Improved network coverage is achieved via repetitions, which are used to enhance coverage.” [3.]
Note 2. NB-IoT can also be implemented in “standalone” for deployments in dedicated spectrum.
Note 3. From an IEEE published paper titled: Enhancing Coverage in Narrow Band-IoT Using Machine Learning:
NB-IoT needs only a small portion of the existing available cellular spectrum to operate without interfering with it. Hence, NB-IoT provides more reliability and more quality of service (QoS) as it operates in regulated spectrum. Moreover, NB-IoT uses existing cellular network infrastructure, which reduces the deployment costs.
However, since repeating transmission data and control signals has been selected as a major solution to enhance coverage of NB-IoT systems, this leads to reducing the system throughput and thereby a spectral efficiency loss.
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Here’s a comparison chart showing: 2G, licensed spectrum NB-IoT vs unlicensed band Sigfox and LoRa (WAN):
Chart courtesy of T-Mobile USA
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Balaji highlighted several Massive IoT applications that could effectively use NB-IoT for connectivity. Those include: asset tracking, smart metering, smart lighting, equipment monitoring, smart packaging, and intelligent waste management.
In addition to the $5 NB-IoT modules now available Balaji revealed T-Mo has a $5/year NB-IoT service plan.
T-Mo hosted the U.S.’ first NB-IoT Hackathon to develop IoT applications that would leverage NB-IoT as a viable wireless network. Sensing the presene of forest fires was an example he provided.
T-Mo partnered with Twillio to get NB-IoT to market. They created a new development kit that allowed Hackathon participants to access the NB-IoT network. [4.]
Note 4. More than 100 new and seasoned developers descended on T-Mobile HQ to help shape the future of NB-IoT at the Hackathon. 20 creative and unique IoT concepts for prospective IoT solutions emerged that could leverage the low cost and power efficiency of NB-IoT and its reliability over long distances.
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U.S. Carrier Comparison for NB-IoT Deployments:
T-Mobile launched its NB-IoT network last July. AT&T’s NB-IoT network went live two weeks ago. Sprint said it is testing NB-IoT technology, but it plans to merge with T-Mobile in the not-too-distant future so may not roll out its own NB-IoT offering.
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NB-IoT Chipset Forecast:
Research & Markets predicts the NB-IoT chipset market is expected to grow from USD 272 million in 2019 to USD 2,002 million by 2024 at a CAGR of 49.1%.
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References:
https://www.t-mobile.com/news/americas-first-narrowband-iot-network
https://iot.t-mobile.com/narrowband/
https://www.gsma.com/iot/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/NB-IoT_Deployment_Guide_v2_5Apr2018.pdf
https://iot.t-mobile.com/hackathon/
2019 IoT World: Award Winners in 11 Categories; Senet for Connectivity Solution
Winners of the first-ever IoT World Awards were named May 15th at the 2019 Internet of Things World conference. The awards program highlighted exemplary IoT projects, products and people in 11 categories, with 51 entries named as finalists.
A mix of editors, analysts, researchers, consultants and others participated in the judging process for the non-personal IoT World awards. The personal awards were chosen based on votes by nearly 5,000 industry professionals.
Here are the winners:
- Startup of the Year: Apana. Five-year-old Apana won in the startup category for its intelligent water management system, which helps to reduce water waste and optimize its use for industrial and commercial customers. Apana’s LoRa-based technology is installed as a retrofit kit and sends real-time water use data to the cloud. The service analyzes the data to identify patterns and sends information about water misuse to frontline workers, who could then take action to stop the waste.
- Enterprise IoT Deployment: Avis Budget Group. Avis Budget Group took home this prize in recognition of its multiyear program to connect its 600,000 vehicles to its IoT platform and mobile app. In 2018, partnerships with vehicle manufacturers such as Toyota and Ford, hardware companies such as ID Systems and technology providers such as Continental figured prominently in its plan to connect more than 100,00 vehicles. In Kansas City, it showcased connectivity of all 5,000 vehicles in its regional fleet there. Late last year, it announced its tech platform would be hosted on AWS Connected Vehicle Cloud. Avis Budget Group touts benefits of the program, both for the company and its customers. Internally, Avis has reduced operational costs and cut revenue loss from fuel and vehicle recovery. Externally, it says, customer satisfaction associated with the mobile app has increased in the double digits, measured by Net Promoter Scores.
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Achievements in IoT Integration: Siemens MindSphere integration efforts. According to the company, its integration differentiators fall into three categories:
- Connectivity. Siemens provides connectivity to a range of assets and systems, including industrial and enterprise systems, data historians, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), distributed control systems (DCS), manufacturing execution system (MES), manufacturing operations management (MOM), product lifecycle management (PLM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), quality management (QM) and supply chain management (SCM) systems and service platforms.
- Digital twin capability. Siemens said its digital twin platform integrates operational asset data; data from product, production and performance twins; and industrial IoT analytics.
- Ecosystem support. The company’s integration services encompass devices and systems (including on-premises and cloud-based systems) from Siemens as well as other manufacturers.
According to Siemens, its R&D team’s efforts related to integration focus on data lakes, data contextualization and data connectors for additional data integration within MindSphere. The company boasts of a benchmark it recently completed at an automotive company, with all integration and analytics work completed in two weeks — after two competitors spent five weeks without finishing either the integration or analytics work, it said.
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IoT Merger/Acquisition of the Year: IBM and Oniqua. IBM acquired Oniqua, a maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) company focused on the mining, oil and gas, utilities, process manufacturing, and transportation industries, in June 2018 and then folded it into the Global Business Services and Watson IoT business units. IBM intends to leverage Oniqua to enhance its software as a service (SaaS) offerings aimed at digital transformation of asset-intensive industries, giving clients the ability to monitor, manage and proactively maintain their assets; minimize operational downtime; and optimize inventory costs. According to IBM, Oniqua gives the company the ability to improve its asset optimization portfolio, which includes Maximo enterprise asset management, predictive maintenance and prescriptive repair.
IBM says that Oniqua provides an ROI of between 100% and 400% in the first year of deployment; 15% to 50% reduction in inventory; 30% to 50% reduction in stock-out risk; 15% to 40% reduction in maintenance budgets; and 20% to 25% improvement in supplier performance.
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Consumer IoT Solution: Phyn Plus Smart Water Assistant + Shutoff. According to the Phyn, the product gives homeowners an unprecedented understanding of their water use, toward the goal of avoiding leaks, conserving water and saving money. It monitors a home’s entire plumbing system from a single location on the water line, measuring changes in water pressure 240 times a second. It alerts homeowners immediately upon detection of a leak, diagnosing potential problems before they wreak havoc. The Phyn Plus Smart Water Assistant + Shutoff develops a “fingerprint” of each plumbing fixture in the home to be able to ID the source of a leak. If a home experiences a sudden large leak, the Phyn Plus can automatically turn off the water.
The product has a mobile app that allows remote monitoring of water usage, remote control of water use in up to six properties, and integration with Alexa for voice queries and commands.
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Edge Computing Solution: Dell Technologies’ “open edge” software stack. The “open edge” approach consists of commercially supported versions of the open source EdgeX Foundry framework. It runs on Photon OS, is managed by VMware’s Pulse IoT Center and has builds available for Dell Gateway hardware or other ARM reference boards. The company describes the stack as modular and open, able to work with any device, hardware, app or cloud service. It has integrated device management and pre-built software connectors (to sensors and devices as well as to the cloud) that help accelerate the implementation, deployment and operation of IoT projects. Its open architecture allows developers to quickly move between projects without having to learn custom code, and components can be reused in multiple projects.
Best Edge Computing Solution shortlisted entries: Dell Technologies, EdgeX Foundry, FogHorn, Itron Inc., Lantronix Inc. and Relayr.
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IoT Security Solution: AWS’ IoT Device Defender. This product audits device-related resources (such as X.509 certificates and client IDs) for compliance with best practices, such as the principle of least-privilege. It detects unusual behavior by continuously monitoring security metrics from the device and AWS IoT Core, and it reports devices that are out of compliance. It also facilitates mitigation steps, such as revoking permissions or rebooting a device.
The company cites customers across vertical markets, from industrial to consumer to enterprise.
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IoT Connectivity Solution: Senet’s Low Power Wide Area Virtual Network. Senet said it takes a “revolutionary approach to providing IoT connectivity.”
Senet connects all customer network and gateway deployments through its Low Power Wide Area Network Virtual Network (LVN), where participating connectivity providers have access to the largest global LoRaWAN network and benefit from a revenue share model based on the role they play in the larger network ecosystem.
Senet’s LVN, Managed Network Services for IoT (MNSi) and public network are powered by its proprietary Network Operating System, which is built on a common cloud-based services architecture. The Senet operating system provides extremely efficient, scalable and secure options to connect and manage low-power, low-cost sensors at massive scale and simplifies historically complex operations related to application and device registration, message accounting and settlements.
The Low Power Wide Area Virtual Network allows device connectivity on any LoRaWAN network using Senet’s OSS and BSS platforms, which eliminates the need for roaming contracts and delivers low-cost connectivity. According to Senet, third parties can build IoT-related services on top of the Senet network. The company points to distribution partnerships with SenRa (India) and Inland Cellular (Northwest U.S.) and to deployments by New York City (LoRaWAN gateways on city-owned buildings in all five boroughs) and propane and oil tank monitoring company WESROC.
Best IoT Connectivity Solution shortlisted entries: Emnify, MediaTek, Nordic Semiconductor, PTC and Senet.
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Industrial IoT Solution: IBM Watson IoT Platform. This service (available across public or private cloud or in a hybrid cloud deployment model) aims to simplify the process for industrial shops in a variety of markets to capture and explore data from IoT devices, equipment and machines. The service comprises three components:
- IoT Platform Connection Service. This service helps to securely register and connect resources to IoT Platform.
- IoT Platform Analytics Service. This service focuses on visualizing and analyzing IoT data, enabling AI-driven predictions about the assets connected to IoT Platform.
- IoT Platform Blockchain Service. This service aims to validate transactions among IoT resources within IoT Platform, delivering the ability to track and trace assets as, for instance, they move through a supply chain.
IBM touts the impact of IoT Platform across a range of industrial verticals, including cosmetics manufacturing, mineral mining, home appliance manufacturing, the shipping industry, railways, energy supply companies and offshore drilling operations.
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Enterprise CxO of the Year: Joanna Sohovich. The CEO of access control and smart home integration company Chamberlain Group snagged this award based on her work on Chamberlain’s myQ technology, which enables users to control or monitor garage access via smartphone.
Lutz Beck, CIO at Daimler Trucks North America, took second place, and Arthur Orduna, CIO at Avis Budget Group, came in third.
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Solution Provider CxO of the Year: Kevin Brown. Kevin, senior vice president of innovation and CTO in the Secure Power Division at Schneider Electric, is known for creating high-impact strategies and teams to maximize revenue, profit and competitive advantage.
Anthony Bartolo, chief product officer at Tata Communications, took the silver medal, and Bask Iyer, CIO at VMware, claimed third-place honors.
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IoT World Awards Winners Announced
FCC: White spaces on hold till Microsoft and TV broadcasters have consensus
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will put aside its work freeing up TV white spaces until Microsoft and broadcasters reach an accord on sharing the spectrum for wireless broadband, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told the House Communications Subcommittee. He cited “tricky” technical and policy matters the agency needs to address even as Microsoft and TV stations try to find middle ground on the band’s use.
Pai was asked by Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) about the status of the white spaces “experiment,” who said that probably every part of his district has such white spaces. Pai said he had seen the promise of white spaces technology in places like South Boston, Va., a town in rural southern Virginia,
The chairman said there had been a lot of “tricky” technical issues and policy issues the commission had been hammering out (a number of them involving how to use that spectrum without interfering with licensed broadcast transmissions nearby).
The FCC in March resolved a number of petitions to reconsider the remote sensing database works, which is how unlicensed mobile devices can use the spectrum without–hopefully–interfering with TV station signals. So far broadcasters have questioned the efficacy of that process.
The FCC is permitting the use of white space devices (notably computers), both fixed and mobile, in unused channels, ch. 37, guard bands between broadcast and wireless spectrum and between uplink and downlink spectrum in the 600 MHz band–which they are sharing after the incentive auction.
It is part of the FCC’s focus on freeing up more spectrum for advanced wireless and closing the rural digital divide, which computer companies argue “white spaces” play a key role.
Pai praised Microsoft, the prime mover behind a white spaces rural broadband project, and the National Association of Broadcasters, who have agreed on a number of outstanding issues, though not on Microsoft’s desire to use adjacent channels, which NAB has argued is too close for comfort.
“If there is a consensus that allows us to move forward, we would like to do so,” he said, though he could not provide a timeline.
Will Reliance Jio overtake Bharti Airtel today to become India’s 2nd largest telecom operator?
By: Prachi Gupta– Published: May 6, 2019. Edited for clarity by Alan J Weissberger, IEEE Techblog Content Manager
The race to become India’s second largest telecom operator between Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio is still on. With Airtel’s Q4 results due on Monday, it will soon become clear if Mukesh Ambani’s Jio will actually climb the ladder and outshine Sunil Bharti Mittal’s company.
With 29 crore wireless subscribers towards the end of February 2019, Reliance Jio has emerged as a tough competitor to many telecom operators in India. Considering Jio’s growth trend in the previous few quarters, it may even leave behind Vodafone-Idea, dethroning it as the current largest telecom firm in India.
While other telecom operators have mostly maintained a ‘lose’ or ‘barely growing’ trend on the subscriber base, Reliance Jio has been the only telecom which maintained a ‘gain’ streak throughout the year 2018. For the QE Sep-Dec 18, Reliance Jio was the only private telco (along with PSU BSNL) to gain subscribers while both small and large players, including Vodafone-Idea, registered mostly negative growth. Jio had added close to 3 crore subscribers in that quarter, according to TRAI’s Indian Telecom Services Performance Report. In the year 2018, Reliance Jio has continued to add more than 2.5 crore subscribers every quarter.
Reliance Jio’s own reported user base tells a similar story. In its Jan-Mar 2019 quarterly results details, Reliance Jio reported over 30 crore subscribers at the end of March. Bharti Airtel is due to report its March-end user base today, along with its quarterly results.
NOTE: Crore is an Indian term that =ten million; or = 100 lakhs, especially of rupees, units of measurement, or people.
Reliance Jio vs Airtel vs Vodafone Idea: Who will emerge as India’s largest telecom operator?
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As of February 2019:
- Vodafone-Idea had over 40 crore users (wireline and wireless combined),
- Bharti Airtel had over 34 crore users.
- Reliance Jio was strong with a little less than 30 crore subscribers (TRAI figures). Vodafone-Idea leads in terms of market share for wireless subscribers with 34.58% share.
- Bharti Airtel’s market share is 28.75%, while Reliance Jio is inching closer with 25.11%.
In terms of wireline market share, BSNL leads with more than half the subscription hold, followed by Bharti Airtel at 18.95%. For broadband services, Reliance Jio topples all other telecom operators with a 54% share in the market.
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Update- May 21, 2019: Jio adds 9.4 million customers in March, Airtel, Vodafone-Idea lose
: Reliance Jio has added 9.4 million customers while India’s teledensity has declined 1.82% to 90.11%, from 91.86% in March 2019 with active wireless subscribers reaching 1,021.75 million, the sector regulator in a finding Tuesday said.
Jio has added 9.4 million users in March to take its user base to 307.7 million, while Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel lost 14.5 million and 15.1 million customers, respectively, to take their subscriber bases to 394.8 million and 325.2 million during the same period, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said.
Bharti Airtel had 27.99% subscriber market share, Vodafone Idea 33.98% and Jio had 26.40% market share as of March 2019.
Vodafone Idea’s active use base, or VLR, was 93.27% of its overall subscribers, while Reliance Jio was at 84.04%. The finding revealed that Bharti Airtel has the maximum proportion – of 100.82% – of active wireless subscribers in the month of March 2019.
In the broadband segment, Vodafone Idea had 19.57%, Bharti Airtel 20.35% and Reliance Jio had 54.45% market share as of March this year.
The monthly decline rates of urban and rural subscription stood at 0.90% and 2.98% respectively in March 2019, according to Trai.
The regulator added that in March, 5.30 million subscribers submitted their requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), and the cumulative porting requests have increased from 423.11 million in February to 428.40 million at the end of March 2019.
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References:
Reliance Jio Blankets India with Inexpensive 4G Service; Where are the Profits?
Samsung deploying small cells in large volumes for Reliance Jio in India
Analysts say monetizing 5G deployments will be very difficult in next few years
Several Wall Street and Market analysts weigh in with opinions on Monetizing 5G Technology (UPDATED November 1, 2019):
Many believe that if 5G is just “faster and more reliable service,” many consumers will wait to adopt. They need to see and understand the other products and benefits, like longer battery life or portability of a fast home broadband connection. Here’s a sample of recent opinions:
Investor interest in 5G remains high and there is general understanding that 5G can offer higher throughput and lower latency connections. However, Citi continues to receive questions on how carriers can monetize the new 5G platform given concerns regarding the current competitive landscape, limited evidence on the scalability of potential fixed wireless broadband services, and an absence of specific timing for new application development by enterprise firms.
Citigroup takes a relatively optimistic view of 5G and believes that carriers will first try to monetize new 5G deployments by charging more for greater speeds.
This author believes that Verizon is waiting for new 5G software releases and 3GPP Release 16 spec completion in the 2020 time frame to dynamically allocate 5G services to the spectrum it owns. Also, VZ is looking to differentiate with ultra-wideband mobile broadband using mmW spectrum in urban environments, but that requires many more small cells due to distance limitations of mmW spectrum. And that entails obtaining permits to mount the small cells in public structures (street lamps, traffic lights, buildings, etc).
Other U.S. carriers such as T-Mobile US, Sprint and AT&T may create marketing advantages if they can fill out their coverage maps with 5G before their competitors do. That will largely depend if the U.S. carriers use mmWave spectrum which is really on practicable for dense urban areas due to short range transmissions and need for many small cells. Some network experts remain enthusiastic that new antennas with beam forming can improve propagation for mid-band spectrum (2.0-6.0 GHz), similar to the PCS band (1.8 GHz).
In an earlier bearish report, S&P Global Ratings last year warned that AT&T, Verizon and other wireless firms planning 5G wireless services could wait five to 10 years for a payback on investments. Consumers may resist higher service fees on faster 5G wireless speeds for video streaming, S&P said.
Recent research on 5G consumer attitudes conducted by PwC shows that significant headwinds are ahead for 5G pricing. Indeed, fully two-thirds of consumers indicated that they would not be willing to pay anything additional for the increased speeds and capabilities delivered by 5G. When combined with those who would be willing to pay, the average premium barely approached $5 per month, less than half of the initial pricing recently announced.
“Based on recent checks, we believe this ‘5G hype’ may be a bit premature, and near-term fundamentals have been somewhat ‘so so’ at best in given some key (and somewhat unique) initiatives in our view going on at each of the respective US wireless carriers,” wrote the analysts at Wall Street research firm Wells Fargo Securities in a recent note to investors about the cell tower industry. “As a result, we believe the risk / reward for the sector at the present time is not an overly attractive one.”
“We tested Verizon’s newly launched 5G network in Chicago. If performance does not improve, investors will once again question whether Verizon will have to materially increase its capital investment in order to enable millimeter wave spectrum in more than just limited hotspot locations,” wrote Walter Piecyk, an analyst with Wall Street firm BTIG, in a recent blog post.
Warned BTIG’s Piecyk: “Verizon has insisted that it can use their existing cell site footprint to roll out 5G technology on millimeter-wave spectrum. That seems very hard to believe. In our limited testing, the 5G small cells provided coverage of just ~350 feet. In fact, 5G performance suffered from reduced reliability beyond 200 feet when faced with street obstructions. That’s not even close to the 800-2,000 feet radius that Verizon and their vendors have promised. Meanwhile, Verizon’s LTE network, using mid-band spectrum, was clocking speeds north of 250 Mbps, which is more than adequate for nearly all applications.”
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Will Hyperscale Cloud Companies (e.g. Google) Control the Internet’s Backbone?
Rob Powell reports that Google’s submarine cable empire now hooks up another corner of the world. The company’s 10,000km Curie submarine cable has officially come ashore in Valparaiso, Chile.
The Curie cable system now connects Chile with southern California. it’s a four-fiber-pair system that will add big bandwidth along the western coast of the Americas to Google’s inventory. Also part of the plans is a branching unit with potential connectivity to Panama at about the halfway point where they can potentially hook up to systems in the Caribbean.
Subcom’s CS Durable brought the cable ashore on the beach of Las Torpederas, about 100 km from Santiago. In Los Angeles the cable terminates at Equinix’s LA4 facility, while in Chile the company is using its own recently built data center in Quilicura, just outside of Santiago.
Google has a variety of other projects going on around the world as well, as the company continues to invest in its infrastructure. Google’s projects tend to happen quickly, as they don’t need to spend time finding investors to back their plans.
Curie is one of three submarine cable network projects Google unveiled in January 2018. (Source: Google)
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Powell also wrote that SoftBank’s HAPSMobile is investing $125M in Google’s Loon as the two partner for a common platform, and Loon gains an option to invest a similar sum in HAPSMobile later on.
Both companies envision automatic, unmanned, solar-powered devices in the sky above the range of commercial aircraft but not way up in orbit. From there they can reach places that fiber and towers don’t or can’t. HAPSMobile uses drones, and Loon uses balloons. The idea is to develop a ‘common gateway or ground station’ and the necessary automation to support both technologies.
It’s a natural partnership in some ways, and the two are putting real money behind it. But despite the high profile we haven’t really seen mobile operators chomping at the bit, since after all it’s more fun to cherry pick those tower-covered urban centers for 5G first and there’s plenty of work to do. And when they do get around to it, there’s the multiple near-earth-orbit satellite projects going on to compete with.
But the benefit both HAPSMobile and Loon have to their model is that they can, you know, reach it without rockets.
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AWS’s Backbone (explained by Sapphire):
An AWS Region is a particular geographic area where Amazon decided to deploy several data centers, just like that. The reason behind a chosen area is to be close to the users and also to have no restrictions. At the same time, every Region is also connected through private links with other Regions which means they have a dedicated link for their communications because for them is cheaper and they also have full capacity planing with lower latency.
What is inside a Region?
- Minimum 2 Availability Zones
- Separate transit centers (peering the connections out of the World)
How transit centers work?
AWS has private links to other AWS regions, but they also have private links for the feature AWS Direct Connect – a dedicated and private & encrypted (IPSEC tunnel) connection from the “xyz” company’s datacenters to their infrastructures in the Cloud, which works with the VLANs inside (IEEE 802.1Q) for accessing public and private resources with a lower latency like Glacier or S3 buckets and their VPC at the same time between <2ms and usually <1ms latency. Between Availability Zones (inter AZ zone) the data transit there’s a 25TB/sec average.
From AWS Multiple Region Multi-VPC Connectivity:
AWS Regions are connected to multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as well as to Amazon’s private global network backbone, which provides lower cost and more consistent cross-region network latency when compared with the public internet. Here is one illustrative example:
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From Facebook Building backbone network infrastructure:
We have strengthened the long-haul fiber networks that connect our data centers to one another and to the rest of the world.
As we bring more data centers online, we will continue to partner and invest in core backbone network infrastructure. We take a pragmatic approach to investing in network infrastructure and utilize whatever method is most efficient for the task at hand. Those options include leveraging long-established partnerships to access existing fiber-optic cable infrastructure; partnering on mutually beneficial investments in new infrastructure; or, in situations where we have a specific need, leading the investment in new fiber-optic cable routes.
In particular, we invest in new fiber routes that provide much-needed resiliency and scale. As a continuation of our previous investments, we are building two new routes that exemplify this approach. We will be investing in new long-haul fiber to allow direct connectivity between our data centers in Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina.
As with our previous builds, these new long-haul fiber routes will help us continue to provide fast, efficient access to the people using our products and services. We intend to allow third parties — including local and regional providers — to purchase excess capacity on our fiber. This capacity could provide additional network infrastructure to existing and emerging providers, helping them extend service to many parts of the country, and particularly in underserved rural areas near our long-haul fiber builds.
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Venture Beat Assessment of what it all means:
Google’s increasing investment in submarine cables fits into a broader trend of major technology companies investing in the infrastructure their services rely on.
Besides all the datacenters Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are investing in as part of their respective cloud services, we’ve seen Google plow cash into countless side projects, such as broadband infrastrucure in Africa and public Wi-Fi hotspots across Asia.
Elsewhere, Facebook — while not in the cloud services business itself — requires omnipresent internet connectivity to ensure access for its billions of users. The social network behemoth is also investing in numerous satellite internet projectsand had worked on an autonomous solar-powered drone project that was later canned. Earlier this year, Facebook revealed it was working with Viasat to deploy high-speed satellite-powered internet in rural areas of Mexico.
While satellites will likely play a pivotal role in powering internet in the future — particularly in hard-to-reach places — physical cables laid across ocean floors are capable of far more capacity and lower latency. This is vital for Facebook, as it continues to embrace live video and virtual reality. In addition to its subsea investments with Google, Facebook has also partnered with Microsoft for a 4,000-mile transatlantic internet cable, with Amazon and SoftBank for a 14,000 km transpacific cable connecting Asia with North America, and on myriad othercable investments around the world.
Needless to say, Google’s services — ranging from cloud computing and video-streaming to email and countless enterprise offerings — also depend on reliable infrastructure, for which subsea cables are key.
Curie’s completion this week represents not only a landmark moment for Google, but for the internet as a whole. There are currently more than 400 undersea cables in service around the world, constituting 1.1 million kilometers (700,000 miles). Google is now directly invested in around 100,000 kilometers of these cables (62,000 miles), which equates to nearly 10% of all subsea cables globally.
The full implications of “big tech” owning the internet’s backbone have yet to be realized, but as evidenced by their investments over the past few years, these companies’ grasp will only tighten going forward.