Israel 5G
Israel Seeks 5G Investment from U.S. Telcos via Incentives/Rebates; Intel’s 5G Role
Israel Ministry of Communications director general Netanel (Nati) Cohen will try to interest overseas telecommunications companies in taking part in fifth generation cellular trials in Israel. Cohen will also try to introduce American investors into the Israeli telecommunications market. Cohen is accompanying Minister of Communications Ayoob Kara, who is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s entourage for his visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly.
The ministry’s idea is to try to restore interest in the Israeli telecommunications market on the part of international companies, which have refrained from investment in Israel in recent years. The plan is to provide incentives in the form of rebates in exchange for acquiring frequencies and rolling out the network.
During his visit to New York, Mr. Cohen will reportedly meet with representatives of US telecoms giant Verizon and propose that the company should participate in 5G trials to be held at Bar Ilan University in conjunction with Israeli mobile carriers. Meetings will also be held with representatives of Lockheed Martin, with the aim of persuading the company to expand its investment in Israel.
The idea is also to conduct trials in IoT (Internet of Things), and to take advantage of the fact that there are many technology companies in Israel in areas of interest to the US companies, and to bring them into the initiative as well.
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Mobile carriers throughout the world have been cutting back on investment in new wireless infrastructure, because of the fierce competition in the industry and the erosion of revenue. At the same time, no solution has been found for the high fees that the carriers pay the state for frequencies, which result in them foregoing frequency allocations simply because they cannot meet the fee payments.
Israel government ministries have hired the services of InfoSight Consulting, which is working together with Beta Finance to formulate for the state a new frequency fee structure, as the high payments that the companies make for frequencies, around New Israeli Shekel (currency in Israel) 300 million annually, diminish their incentive to invest and represent a heavy tax on them.
The state will probably try to find a formula whereby carriers will pay more for “quality” frequencies, and much less for lower-quality high frequencies. In any event, the model will be determined before the fifth generation auction slated to take place this December. The new generation of networks will allow considerably faster data transfer.
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Intel Israel and 5G:
Elkana Ben Sinai, VP, Intel Israel said: “Intel wants to serve this market. Its vision is to be a data-centric company, dealing best with data through all its stages: collection, transmission, processing storage. It wants to make use of huge computing, storage, and its artificial intelligence and communication capabilities – very few companies have these combinations. And 5G is the leading technology to implement the ‘transmission’ part of this vision.”
For Intel, this means that its innovative products, already ubiquitous, will be even more so.
“New hardware will basically be in all aspects: data collection by new sensors (e.g. Mobileye), communication (e.g 5G), computing (e.g artificial intelligence),” Ben Sinai says. An ambitious move into the mobile phone market is also in the offing, as it is “certainly an ingredient” in Intel’s wider vision.
And Intel Israel, he says, is a “very important design center of Intel Corporation, leading some of its strategic developments in the area of computing, communication, security and more.”
Automotive and cybersecurity
Intel also has another edge. Last year, the company acquired the Jerusalem-based Mobileye, a developer of cutting-edge autonomous driving technologies, for a whopping $15.3 billion. Mobileye is considered a leader in advanced driver assistance systems – including pedestrian detection, collision warning – aimed to prevent road collisions.
The acquisition marked Intel’s entry into the vibrant automotive market, and the industry plays a central role in Intel’s vision for the future.
References:
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israel-courts-5g-investment-from-us-telcos-1001254633
http://nocamels.com/2018/07/intel-israel-5g-tech/
Video clip: 5G Technology Being Born In Israel – Jul. 12, 2018