Author: Alan Weissberger
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.
VSG LEADERBOARD : AT&T #1 in Fiber Lit Buildings- Year end 2020
Vertical Systems Group’s 2020 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD results are as follows (in rank order by number of on-net fiber lit buildings): AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, Lumen, Comcast, Cox, Crown Castle Fiber, Atlantic Broadband, Frontier, Zayo and Altice USA. These eleven retail and wholesale fiber providers qualify for this benchmark with 15,000 or more on-net U.S. fiber lit commercial buildings as of year-end 2020.
Additionally, fourteen companies qualify for the 2020 Challenge Tier as follows (in alphabetical order): Cincinnati Bell, Cleareon, Cogent, Consolidated Communications, Conterra, DQE Communications, Everstream, FirstLight, IFN, Logix Fiber Networks, Segra, Unite Private Networks, Uniti Fiber and Windstream. These fiber providers each qualify for the 2020 Challenge Tier with between 2,000 and 14,999 U.S. fiber lit commercial buildings.
“The base of fiber lit buildings in the U.S. expanded in 2020, although the pace of new installations was hampered by the pandemic. Challenges for fiber providers ranged from impeded installations due to commercial building closures and business shutdowns to supply chain disruptions,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “As the economy rebounds in 2021, fiber providers have opportunities to monetize the millions of small and medium U.S. commercial buildings without fiber, as well as larger multi-tenant buildings with only a single fiber provider. However it remains uncertain how changes in U.S. regulatory policies and federal funding could alter fiber investments and deployment plans in the next several years.”
2020 Fiber Provider Research Highlights:
- AT&T retains the top rank on the U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD for the fifth consecutive year.
- The threshold for a rank position on the 2020 Fiber LEADERBOARD is 15,000 fiber lit buildings, up from 10,000 buildings previously.
- Atlantic Broadband advanced to eighth position on the LEADERBOARD, up from eleventh in the previous year.
- Windstream and Consolidated Communications move into the Challenge Tier from the LEADERBOARD.
- Vertical Systems Group’s 2020 U.S. fiber research analysis for five building sizes shows that fiber availability varies significantly based on number of employees. The Fiber 20+ segment, which covers four building sizes with twenty or more employees, has a 69.2% fiber lit availability rate. This compares to 14.1% availability for the Fiber <20 segment, which covers buildings with fewer than twenty employees.
Market Players include all other fiber providers with fewer than 2,000 U.S. commercial fiber lit buildings. The 2020 Market Players tier includes more than two hundred metro, regional and other fiber providers, including the following companies (in alphabetical order): ACD.net, Armstrong Business Solutions, C Spire, Centracom, CTS Telecom, Douglas Fast Net, EnTouch Business, ExteNet Systems, Fatbeam, FiberLight, Fusion Connect, Google Fiber, GTT, Hunter Communications, LS Networks, Mediacom Business, MetroNet Business, Midco Business, Pilot Fiber, PS Lightwave, Shentel Business, Silver Star Telecom, Sonic Business, Syringa, TDS Telecom, TPX Communications, U.S. Signal, Veracity, Wave Broadband, WOW!Business, Ziply Fiber and others.
For this analysis, a fiber lit building is defined as a commercial site or data center that has on-net optical fiber connectivity to a network provider’s infrastructure, plus active service termination equipment onsite. Excluded from this analysis are standalone cell towers, small cells not located in fiber lit buildings, near net buildings, buildings classified as coiled at curb or coiled in building, HFC-connected buildings, carrier central offices, residential buildings, and private or dark fiber installations.
Cuba-Google agreement to speed up Internet access on the island
Google and ETECSA signed a memorandum of understanding to begin the negotiation of a so-called “peering agreement” that would create a cost-free and direct connection between their two networks. That would enable faster access to content hosted on the Google’s servers, which are not located on the island. Internet in Cuba has been notoriously sluggish and unreliable. In a country where information is tightly controlled, it remains to be seen how much Google’d information would be available in Cuba. That’s if and when a fast connection can be made between Cuba’s ETECSA controlled Internet and Google’s servers.
The agreement creates a joint working group of engineers to figure out how to implement this peering arrangement, likely via an undersea cable. What’s needed first is the creation of a physical connection between Cuba’s network and a Google “point of presence,” the closest ones being in South Florida, Mexico and Colombia. Cuba currently has a single fiber-optic connection running under the Caribbean to Venezuela that has been unable to provide the island with sufficient capacity to support its relatively small but growing group of internet users, for reasons never disclosed by either country’s Communist government. Neither Cuban or Google officials provided any estimated timeframe for the island’s connection to a new undersea fiber-optic cable. That step could take years given the slow pace of Cuba’s bureaucracy and the obstacles thrown up by the U.S. trade embargo on the island.
“The implementation of this internet traffic exchange service is part of the strategy of ETECSA for the development and computerization of the country,” Google and ETECSA said in a joint news release, read out at a news conference in Havana.
“We are excited to have reached this memorandum for the benefit of internet users here in Cuba,” Brett Perlmutter, the head of Google Cuba, said before signing the deal.
References:
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-partners-etecsa-cuba-2019-3
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-cuba-google-island.html
FCC’s auction of 24 GHz spectrum attracts >$1.5B in bids after 26 rounds; IMT 2020 frequencies?
Bids in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) 24 GHz millimeter-wave spectrum auction 102 have passed $1.5 billion after 26 rounds. The figure is more than double the the $704 million collected during the recent sale of 28 GHz spectrum.
Bidding has been from AT&T, T-Mobile US, Verizon and Sprint (bidding as ATI Sub LLC); U.S. Cellular; Dish Network, bidding as Crestone Wireless; Starry Spectrum Holdings and Windstream Communications (which recently filed for bankruptcy protection in the wake of a court case). There are a total of 38 qualified bidders.
Auction 102 is the FCC’s second auction of Upper Microwave Flexible Use Service (UMFUS) licenses (see below for information on auction 1010). Auction 102 offers 2,909 licenses in the 24 GHz band. The lower segment of the 24 GHz band (24.25–24.45 GHz) will be licensed as two 100-megahertz blocks, and the upper segment (24.75–25.25 GHz) will be licensed as five 100-megahertz blocks. Those frequencies are being considered for the IMT 2020 5G radio aspects standard and will be determined at the ITU-R WRC-19 meeting this fall (details in Editor’s Note below).
Three rounds of bidding are being held each day at this point in the auction. The clock auction format begins with a “clock phase” (the current auction phase) which lets participants bid on generic blocks in each Partial Economic Area in successive bidding rounds, followed by an “assignment phase” that allows the winners of the generic blocks to bid for frequency-specific license assignments. The clock phase continues, with prices automatically increasing each round, until bidders’ demand for licenses at a certain price matches the supply — and at that point, the bidders who have indicated they are willing to pay the final clock price for a license will be considered winners and the assignment phase can begin.
The most hotly contested licenses are those covering New York City and Los Angeles, California. New York City metropolitan licenses are dominating the bidding: four bids for NYC licenses in the upper portion of the band are currently above $30 million. One of those is at $41.1 million, the largest bid of the auction thus far. The most expensive bid for a Los Angeles license, also in the upper portion of the band, is up to $31.6 million, with other bids on LA licenses as high as $28.7 million and $26.1 million.
Much of the auction process is secretive—there are anti-collusion rules and bidders can’t talk to one another, for example. The FCC isn’t releasing the names of the winners of the 28-GHz or 24-GHz auctions until both have been concluded.
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The FCC is making a total of 1.55 gigahertz of spectrum available through auctions 101 (which concluded in late January after raising $702 million) and 102. The agency plans to hold three more mmWave auctions during 2019, covering spectrum at 37 GHz, 39 GHz and 47 GHz. Although the FCC has usually makes winning bidders public shortly after the close of an auction, the winning bidders from Auction 101 will not be publicly named until after the close of Auction 102.
References:
https://auctiondata.fcc.gov/public/projects/auction102
https://www.rcrwireless.com/20190325/policy/24-ghz-auction-hits-1-4-billion
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Update on FCC Auction 103:
Analysis and results of FCC Auction 103 for 5G mmWave Spectrum
ITU-T SG13 Non Radio Hot Topics and Recommendations related to IMT 2020/5G
IMT 2020 Related Hot Topics for ITU-T SG13:
DISCLAIMER: A few of the referenced hyperlinks point to documents that can only be opened by users with an ITU TIES account. However, most of the hyperlinks point to public documents which can be downloaded free of charge.
SOURCE: ITU-T SG13 4-14 March 2019 meeting in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe with UPDATES from later 2019 SG13 meetings.
1. Intelligence for network automation, augmentation and amplification
- Identify the standardization needs for intelligence in 5G systems and the telecommunications sector.
- Automatic detection and resolution of anomalies and other incidents of inefficiency, as well as predictive maintenance will reduce the operational expenditure of network operators and service providers
- Address the architecture, interfaces, functional entities, service scenarios and protocols required for intelligence retrieval and actuation, and the performance bench marking and certification of AI techniques
Related Work items:
–>PLEASE SEE 20 AUG 2019 UPDATE BELOW |
2. Realizing 5G/ IMT-2020 vision
- Unified access-independent network management
- Standardization roadmap on IMT-2020
- ICN (Information Centric Networks) with scalability, mobility and security
- Open-source software and standards for 5G
- Software-based networking functions to optimize a per-session based performance
- Emerging fronthaul and midhaul technologies to support the 5G deployment
- Large-bandwidth backhaul and fronthaul solutions
- Concrete strategies for the migration from 4G to 5G systems.
- End-to-end network orchestration, control and management
- Service-based network architecture
- Open service management APIs for the Internet of Things
- Electromagnetic field (EMF) studies around 5G beam-forming capabilities
- Interoperability of services supporting public safety.
Related Work items:
- Y.NGNe-O-arch: Functional architecture of orchestration in NGNe
- Y.IMT2020-qos-fa: QoS functional architecture for IMT-2020 networks
- Y.IMT2020-qos-req: QoS functional requirements for IMT-2020 networks
- Y.qos-ml-arch: Architecture of machine learning based QoS assurance for IMT-2020 networks
- Y.IMT2020.qos-mon: IMT-2020 network QoS monitoring architectural framework
- Y.IMT2020-CEF: Network capability exposure function in IMT-2020 networks
- Y.3MO: Requirements and Architectural Framework of Multi-layer, Multi-Domain, Multi-Technology Orchestration
- Y.IMT2020-ADPP: Advanced Data Plane Programmability for IMT-2020 (renamed- see below)
- Y.NetSoft-SSSDN: High level architectural model of network slice support for IMT-2020 – Part: SDN (renamed- see below)
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IMT 2020 non radio recommendations developed by ITU-T SG13:
- Y.3112: Framework for the support of network slicing in the IMT-2020 network (Revised)
- Draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.IMT2020-NSAA-reqts: “Requirements for network slicing with AI-assisted analysis in IMT-2020 networks”
- Draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.IMT2020-CEF: “Network capability exposure function in the IMT-2020 networks”
- Draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.qos-ec-vr-req: ” QoS requirements and architecture for virtual reality delivery using edge computing in IMT-2020″
- Draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.3072 (formerly Y.ICN-ReqN): “Requirements and Capabilities of Name Mapping and Resolution for Information Centric Networking in IMT-2020”
- Draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.3151 (formerly Y.NetSoft-SSSDN): “High level architectural model of network slice support for IMT-2020 – part: SDN”
- Draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.3152(formerly Y.IMT2020-ADPP): “Advanced Data Plane Programmability for IMT-2020”
- Draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.3172 (formerly Y.IMT2020-ML-Arch): “Architectural framework for machine learning in future networks including IMT-2020
- Draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.3106 (formerly Y.IMT2020-qos-req): “QoS functional requirements for the IMT-2020 network”
Editor’s Note:
A summary of SG13 work program provides the timing of each work item, e.g. handbook, technical reports, supplements and recommendation.
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ITU-T SG13/WP1 work related to IMT-2020:
| Question | (Co-) Rapporteur
(Associate Rapporteur) |
Title |
| Q6/13 | Taesang CHOI (Korea) | Quality of service (QoS) aspects including IMT-2020 networks |
| Guosheng ZHU (China) | ||
| Q20/13 | Nam Seok KO (Korea) | IMT-2020: Network requirements and functional architecture |
| Marco CARUGI (Huawei, China) | ||
| Q21/13 | Kazunori TANIKAWA (Japan)
Yushuang HU (China) |
Network softwarization including software-defined networking, network slicing and orchestration |
| Sangwoo KANG (Korea) | ||
| Q22/13 | Jiguang CAO (China)
Ved P. KAFLE (Japan) |
Upcoming network technologies for IMT-2020 and Future Networks |
| Q23/13 | Jeong Yun KIM (Korea)
Nauxiang Shi (China) |
Fixed-Mobile Convergence including IMT-2020 |
Question 21 of ITU-T SG13 is studying network softwarization including: network slicing, SDN, and orchestration which are highly expected to contribute to IMT-2020. Question 21/SG13 met from 4 to 14 March 2019 at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe under the chairmanship of co-Rapporteur Ms.Yushuang Hu (China Mobile, China) and Mr. Kazunori TANIKAWA (NEC, Japan). On March 14, 2019, ITU-T SG13 consented to two new Recommendations:
- ITU-T Y.IMT2020-ML-Arch “Architectural framework for machine learning in future networks including IMT-2020” (Ref. SG13-TD355/WP1)
- ITU-T Y.3115 (formerly Y.NetSoft-SSSDN). It describes SDN control interfaces for network slicing, which especially focuses on the control of front haul networks such as PON.
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20 August 2019 Update: New ITU standard has established a basis for the cost-effective integration of Machine Learning into 5G and future networks.
The standard – ITU Y.3172 – describes an architectural framework for networks to accommodate current as well as future use cases of Machine Learning. “Machine Learning will change the way we operate and optimize networks,” said Slawomir Stanczak, Chairman of the ITU-T Focus Group on ‘Machine Learning for Future Networks including 5G’. ITU Y.3172 is under the responsibility of the Focus Group’s parent group, ITU-T Study Group 13 (Future networks and cloud).
“Every company in the networking business is investigating the introduction of Machine Learning, with a view to optimizing network operations, increasing energy efficiency and curtailing the costs of operating a network. This ITU Y.3172 architectural framework provides a common point of reference to improve industry’s orientation when it comes to the introduction of Machine Learning into mobile networks.”
Machine Learning holds great promise to enhance network management and orchestration. Drawing insight from network-generated data, Machine Learning can yield predictions to support the optimization of network operations and maintenance. This optimization is becoming increasingly challenging, and increasingly important, as networks gain in complexity to support the coexistence of a diverse range of information and communication technology (ICT) services.
Network operators aim to fuel Machine Learning models with data correlated from multiple technologies and levels of the network. They are calling for deployment mechanisms able to ‘future-proof’ their investments in Machine Learning. And they are in need of interfaces to transfer data and trained Machine Learning models across Machine Learning functionalities at multiple levels of the network.
The ITU Y.3172 architectural framework is designed to meet these requirements. The standard includes a unique focus on the future.
“ITU Y.3172 provides for the declarative specification of Machine Learning applications, making it the first mechanism to meet industry’s need for a standard method of including future use cases,” says Vishnu Ram, the lead editor of the standard.
“This is the first time that a Study Group has approved a Focus Group deliverable as an ITU standard before the conclusion of the Focus Group’s lifetime,” says Leo Lehmann, Chairman of ITU-T Study Group 13. This represents an important achievement in ITU’s work to expedite the transition from exploratory studies to the agreement of new ITU standards.
ITU-T Focus Groups are open to all interested parties. These groups accelerate ITU studies in fields of growing strategic relevance to ITU membership, delivering base documents to inform related standardization work in membership-driven ITU-T Study Groups.
“I would like to commend the many experts participating in both the Focus Group and ITU-T Study Group 13,” says Lehmann. “This early approval required a considerable amount of planning and extremely close collaboration, which could only have been achieved with dual participation and common interest.”
The standard offers a common vocabulary and nomenclature for Machine Learning functionalities and their relationships with ICT networks, providing for ‘Machine Learning Overlays’ to underlying technology-specific networks such as 5G networks. It describes a ‘loosely coupled’ integration of Machine Learning and 5G functionalities, minimizing their interdependencies to account for their parallel evolution.
The components of the architectural framework include ‘Machine Learning Pipelines’ – sets of logical nodes combined to form a Machine Learning application – as well as a ‘Machine Learning Function Orchestrator’ to manage and orchestrate the nodes of these pipelines.
‘Machine Learning Sandboxes’ are another key component of the framework, offering isolated environments hosting separate Machine learning pipelines to train, test and evaluate Machine Learning applications before deploying them in a live network.
“This combination of an architectural framework for Machine Learning and this declarative language to specify new use cases will give network operators complete power over the extension of Machine Learning to new use cases, the deployment and management of Machine Learning in the network, and the correlation of data from sources at multiple levels of the network,” says Ram.
The ITU Y.3172 architectural framework is the first of a nascent series of ITU standards addressing Machine Learning’s contribution to networking.
“A range of ITU standards under development will complement and complete the architectural framework described by ITU Y.3172,” says Ram. “Collectively these standards will provide a full toolkit to build Machine Learning into our networks.”
Two draft ITU standards will propose mechanisms for data handling and specify the design of the ‘Machine Learning Function Orchestrator.’ “If data is the blood flowing through the heart that is Machine Learning, this function orchestrator can be considered the brain,” Ram added.
Another ITU standard will support the assessment of intelligence levels across different parts of the network.
“Different parts of the network will be supplied by different vendors,” says Ram. “We are developing a standard way for different parties to look the intelligence level of the network, helping operators to evaluate vendors and regulatory authorities to evaluate the network.”
The series of ITU standards will be completed by a standard supporting the interoperability of Machine Learning marketplaces, marketplaces hosting repositories of Machine Learning models.
“The standard would assist potential adopters both in selecting a Machine Learning model capable of addressing their specific needs and in integrating the model into the network,” says Ram.
NOTE: To join the group’s mailing list, request access to documents and sign-up to a working group on the homepage of the ITU Focus Group on Machine Learning for Future Networks including 5G.
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December 2019 update:
Y.3106 Quality of service functional requirements for the IMT-2020 network standard was posted on December 2019 at the ITU website and is available for free download here.
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Status and timing of SG13 work: https://www.itu.int/itu-t/workprog/wp_search.aspx?sg=13
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Related: The following ITU-T Technical Report was developed by ITU-T SG15:
Technical Report (GSTR-TN5G) on “Transport network support of IMT-2020/5G”
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Previous Techblog post on this topic:
New ITU-T Standards for IMT 2020 (5G) + 3GPP Core Network Systems Architecture
Forward Reference (April 2020 IEEE Techblog post):
New ITU-T SG13 Recommendations related to IMT 2020 and Quantum Key Distribution
AT&T tests 5G and network edge computing with Microsoft Azure; Partners with Vodafone Business for IoT
AT&T announced at MWC 2019 that it is working with Microsoft on a proof of concept to integrate network edge compute (NEC) capabilities with its 5G network and Microsoft Azure cloud services. The solution would be important for the industries and Internet of Things (IoT) use cases of retail, healthcare, public safety, entertainment, and manufacturing, AT&T said, as it would provide businesses with lower latency, access to high compute power, and network routing without needing on-premises hardware.
“We’re testing our ability to substantially reduce latency and improve user experience by deploying advanced cloud services in specific geographic locations closer to business sites. A fully-scaled deployment will give businesses access to compute power, lower latency and optimized network routing without the need for dedicated on-premises hardware.” These advantages will be important for the low-latency cloud and IoT solutions used by retail, healthcare, public safety, manufacturing and entertainment.
Last month, AT&T* announced its approach to 5G for businesses, laying out three key pillars: mobile, fixed and edge computing.
“Our collaboration will pave the way to enable Microsoft Azure cloud services to connect to more customers and devices across the US through AT&T’s nationwide wireless network,” Microsoft corporate VP of Azure Networking Yousef Khalidi said. “Our two companies are working together to achieve the low-latency connectivity needed for the explosion of devices and immense amount of data being created by computing at the edge,” he added.
AT&T is using drones to test the network edge compute capabilities with Azure, working with Israel-based startup Vorpal in its foundry in Plano, Texas. Vorpal’s VigilAir product detects and geo-locates drones in real-time, which could be used by law enforcement agencies and airports.
“By running their VigilAir application using Azure cloud services delivered through the Plano AT&T test environment, and connecting their drone-tracking sensors using AT&T LTE and 5G networks, Vorpal could achieve the low latency and compute scalability required,” the carrier said.
AT&T expects to share more details about NEC services with Microsoft Azure later this year. NEC is part of AT&T’s broader edge compute strategy that also includes AT&T Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC).
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Earlier at MWC 2019, AT&T announced it’s working with Vodafone Business on IoT applications for the automotive space, including safety, security, and entertainment.
“This alliance with Vodafone Business is a natural extension of our existing relationship,” said Chris Penrose, President, Internet of Things Solutions, AT&T. “We each have rich experience in connected vehicle technology. By working together, we can innovate faster and help our global customers bring connectivity, entertainment and telematics to more vehicles across our respective footprints.”
“Our work with AT&T will benefit automotive manufacturers and their customers around the world as we simplify processes and provide a consistent experience to accelerate IoT adoption in this fast-moving market,” said Stefano Gastaut, IoT Director, Vodafone Business. “As technology complexity increases, this is the right time to make technology adoption easier for the automotive industry to help them achieve their business outcomes. This is the goal of this alliance.”
The two companies said they would develop connected car solutions across 5G and autonomous vehicle technology; vehicle-to-everything (V2X) capabilities; in-vehicle entertainment; connected car applications and services; global service quality models; and the intersection of connected cars and smart cities.
The companies will prioritize projects to enhance safety, security and entertainment capabilities. Key areas of focus will be:
- 5G and autonomous vehicle technology
- V2X capabilities (vehicle-to-everything)
- In-vehicle entertainment
- Connected car applications and services
- Global service quality models
- Connected car/ smart cities intersection
AT&T and Vodafone Business each provide connected car services and products for the automotive, fleet and insurance industries. They integrate electronic and telematics systems into complex vehicles, both at the point of manufacture and beyond. Together, the companies bring more than 50 years of experience in the automotive industry. And they collectively work with nearly 50 global automotive brands and connect more than 43 million cars and trucks on the road today.
References:
https://about.att.com/story/2019/att_nec.html
https://www.zdnet.com/article/mwc-2019-at-t-tests-5g-and-edge-computing-with-microsoft-azure/