FWD: World nears 8 billion mobile subscriptions

The total number of mobile subscriptions worldwide reached 7.9 billion in Q1 2018, up by 94 million in the quarter, according to the Ericsson Mobility Report, which would equate to a 104% penetration rate. Of course, the figure reflects multiple mobile subscriptions held by many individuals, thus accounting for the fact that hundreds of millions of people do not have mobile service for economic, geographic, or other reasons. Ericsson estimates that there are 5.3 billion people will mobile phones, accounting for the 7.9 billion subscriptions.

Meanwhile, 7 years after the launch of the first 4G services, there are now 5.5 billion mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide. Mobile broadband is growing at 20 percent year-on-year, increasing by 200 million in Q1 2018, however, 4G remains only a part of the overall mobile broadband market. The number of LTE subscriptions increased by 210 million during the quarter to reach a total of 2.9 billion. The net addition for WCDMA/HSPA was around 10 million subscriptions. Over the same period, GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions declined by 90 million. Other technologies declined by around 32 million.

Subscriptions associated with smartphones now account for around 60 percent of all mobile phone subscriptions. The number of smartphones sold declined to around 340 million in Q1, representing around 85 percent of all mobile phones sold in the quarter.

The June 2018 edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report is essential reading for anyone tracking the telecoms arena.

https://www.ericsson.com/en/mobility-report/reports/june-2018

Read More

South Korea auctions 5G spectrum

South Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology concluded its auction of 5G spectrum.

Total winning bids amounted to 3,618.3 billion won (US$3.28 billion).

In the 3.5 GHz band, SKT and KT were allocated 100 MHz bandwidth, and LGU + was allocated 80 MHz bandwidth.

In the case of the 28 GHz band, SKT, KT, and LGU + were each allocated 800MHz bandwidth.

The auction used a first phase clock bidding method) for determining the frequency quantity in the 3.5 GHz and 28 GHz bands. A second phase of the auction used sealed bidding to determine the frequency position.

http://www.msit.go.kr/web/msipContents/contentsView.do?cateId=mssw311&artId=1386500

Read More

ASSIA envisions Terabit DSL

Dr. John Cioffi, Chairman and CEO of ASSIA and Professor Emeritus at Stanford, will present a vision for delivering terabit-class connectivity over twisted pair copper lines in the home.

This fiber-like speed could be enabled by leveraging previously-unexploited waveguide modes of current copper infrastructure coupled with ASSIA's vectored transmission capability.

In a presentation at this week's TNO Ultra-fast Broadband Seminar in The Netherlands, Dr. Cioffi will explore how vectored waveguide-mode use of copper phone lines is similar to 5G wireless's Massive MIMO use of millimeter-wave transmission.  He will also discuss how waveguide modes use frequencies above 100 GHz to enable extraordinary speeds.

When deployed, these extremely high-frequency millimeter and sub-millimeter waves hold the possibility of increasing single-line data rates to terabits/second at 100-meter lengths on ordinary twisted pair phone wire.  Speeds of 100 Gbps could be achieved at distances over 300 meters, and speeds of 10 Gbps could be achieved at distances over 500 meters.

During this presentation, Dr. Cioffi will explain how 5G wireless often runs at 28 GHz and 39 GHz, while commercial microwave gear can run at 70 GHz and 90 GHz.  Wireless transmission above 300 GHz (sub-millimeter wave) is being actively researched.  Cioffi explains, "Early designs suggest link latency of 50-100 microsec is readily achievable, which would easily allow even the most stringent 5G latency specifications of 1ms or less to be achieved with Terabit DSLs."

Today's fastest DSL (G.fast) uses only 200 MHz of bandwidth, while wireless uses 25 times as much spectrum. Dr. Cioffi notes, "by working with my ASSIA colleagues Dr. Chan Soo Hwang, Dr. Ken Kerpez, and Dr. Ioannis Kanellakopoulos, we found a solution that uses higher frequencies over wires."

https://www.assia-inc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TDSL-presentation.pdf

Read More

IDC: IoT spending to hit $1.2 trillion in 2022

Internet of Things (IoT) spending will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.6% over the 2017-2022 forecast period and reach $1.2 trillion in 2022, according to IDC's latest Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide (version 2H17).

"The IoT market is at a turning point – projects are moving from proof of concept into commercial deployments," said Carrie MacGillivray, group vice president, Internet of Things and Mobility. "Organizations are looking to extend their investment as they scale their projects, driving spending for the hardware, software, services, and connectivity required to enable IoT solutions."

The IDC IoT Spending Guide details end-user adoption and spending across multiple segmentations. "The latest IoT Spending Guide release fully aligns to IDC's Industry Taxonomy. IDC said the consumer sector will lead IoT spending growth with a worldwide CAGR of 19%, followed closely by the insurance and healthcare provider industries. From a total spending perspective, discrete manufacturing and transportation will each exceed $150 billion in spending in 2022, making these the two largest industries for IoT spending. From an enterprise use case perspective, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) solutions will experience the fastest spending growth (29% CAGR) over the forecast period, followed by traffic management and connected vehicle security.

The Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide forecasts IoT spending for 14 technologies across 20 vertical industries in nine regions and 53 countries through 100 use cases. Unlike any other research in the industry, this comprehensive spending guide was designed to help vendors clearly understand the industry-specific opportunity for IoT technologies today.

Read More

Hortonworks adds containerization, new Azure, Google Cloud capabilities

Hortonworks, which offers enterprise Apache Hadoop solutions, added new enterprise features including containerization for faster and easier deployment of applications, as well as new collaborations with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

The enhancements in the latest Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) 3.0, which is based on Apache Hadoop 3.1, include:

• Agile application deployment via containerization, which enables apps to be launched quickly, allowing users to save time and resources.
• Support for deep learning applications, allowing customers to run workloads such as machine learning and deep learning that require substantial – and expensive – GPU resources. This feature leverages pooling and isolation which enables data scientists to democratize and share GPU access.
• Real-time database, delivering improved query optimization to process more data at a faster rate by unifying the performance gap between low-latency and high-throughput workloads. Enabled via Apache Hive 3.0, HDP 3.0 offers the only unified SQL solution that can perform interactive query at scale – regardless of whether the data lives on-premises or in the cloud.
• Enhanced security and governance, promoting greater regulatory compliance, including GDPR, through full chain of custody of data as well as fine-grained auditing of events. These new features offer the unique ability to track the lineage of data from its origin to the data lake. It also enables auditors to view data without making changes, have time-based policies and audit events around third parties with encryption protection.

Hortonworks, is expanding its six-year partnership with Microsoft, to give enterprise customers greater agility and flexibility when moving big data workloads to the cloud. The collaboration now gives customers more choice as to where their analytic and Internet of Things data workloads run. Specifically, customers can deploy Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF) and Hortonworks DataPlane Service (DPS) products natively on Microsoft Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to extract value from data of all types. Additionally, customers can also use Microsoft Azure HDInsight, a fully managed service powered by Hortonworks Data Platform, which delivers Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark.

Hortonworks is also expanding its existing partnership with Google Cloud to deliver next-gen big data analytics for hybrid cloud deployments. Specifically, HDP now integrates with Google Cloud Storage, which offers consistent cloud storage for running big data workloads. On-demand analytics workloads can be spun up in minutes with no up-front cost and unlimited elastic scale. It also enables Apache Hive and Apache Spark can be leveraged for interactive query, machine learning and data analytics.

Read More

U.S. Senate's Defense Legislation hits ZTE

The U.S. Senate voted 85 to 10 to approve a $716 billion defense spending authorization bill that includes a provision extending the restriction on the export of U.S. technologies to ZTE. The provision is a rebuke to President Trump's decision to lift the ban against exports to ZTE.

The Senate version of the defense spending authorization bill must be reconciled with the House version, which prohibits the federal government from purchasing ZTE products, but not reimpose the export ban on the company.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is believed to be negotiating on Capitol Hill to ensure that the ban against ZTE does not become part of the final bill.

Read More

AT&T intros DIRECTV for Business video headend

AT&T introduceed its COM3000, its third generation DIRECTV for Business video headend. With it, businesses will get more channels than ever.

The COM3000 can deliver up to 138 HD channels, including 4K HDR programming. Business owners can add channels one at a time, including their own in-house and over-the-top (OTT) channels.

AT&T said the COM3000 is especially suited for hotels and institutions.

“We’re constantly improving the in-room entertainment experience at hotels, including many of the top chains,” said Eichler. “We’re a leader in driving premium content in this space – and have been for over a decade. COM3000 illustrates our innovation and our place on the edge of delivering the best technology solutions in the market.”

Read More

AWS DeepLens runs deep learning model on the device

Amazon Web Services announced commercial shipment of its DeepLens video camera.

AWS DeepLens runs deep learning models directly on the device, out in the field. It includes a 4 megapixel camera (1080P video), 2D microphone array, Intel Atom Processor, dual-band Wi-Fi, USB and micro HDMI ports, 8 GB of memory for models and code. The software stack includes Ubuntu 16.04, AWS Greengrass Core, device-optimized versions of MXNet and Intel clDNN library, support for other deep learning frameworks.

DeepLens now supports the TensorFlow and Caffe frameworks.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-deeplens-now-shipping-order-one-today/

Read More

Ruckus updates its WLAN controllers

Ruckus Networks, which is now part of ARRIS, introduced newly enhanced versions of its SmartZone WLAN controllers featuring the ability to use a single network element to control and manage both Ruckus access points (APs) and switches. The new SmartZone network controller family includes physical and virtual appliances designed for managed service providers, operators and medium to large enterprises.

Ruckus SmartZoneOS-powered controllers combine scalability, tiered multi-tenancy, architectural flexibility and extensive APIs into a single centrally-managed element. These capabilities enable managed service providers to implement complex, multi-tier and as-a-service business models using their own management applications.

The SmartZone network controllers simplify network management by:

• Eliminating provisioning errors through use of an automated discovery process for access points (APs) and switches;
• Reducing configuration and deployment duration when compared to a multi-console approach;
• Reducing network software and hypervisor license fees, server expense, utility expense and training costs;
• Enabling a single network controller cluster to scale to 450,000 clients.
• Enabling networking-as-a-service  

"Whether you're an operator, managed service provider or sophisticated enterprise IT organization, you need the ability to customize your network to meet specific business and technical requirements," said Greg Beach, vice president of wireless products, Ruckus Networks. "Ruckus has embraced simplification through an 'open' approach to networking that acknowledges our customers' and partners' desire to build their own best-in-class architectures and gives them the tools to do so with relative ease."

Read More