GSA report tracks 311 private mobile network deployments

The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) today identified 40 countries/territories with private network deployments based on LTE or 5G or LTE or 5G-suitable private network spectrum licence. Thhis includes 311 private mobile network deployments being deployed all around the world.

“The private mobile networks market is home to a wide range of service providers, including equipment/technology vendors, mobile network operators, systems integrators and the private network end-users, some of whom also take responsibility for installing or operating their own infrastructure,” commented Joe Barrett, President of the Global mobile Suppliers Association. “GSA has counted 38 equipment vendors that have been involved in the supply of equipment for private mobile networks based on LTE or 5G. In addition, we have identified 63 public network operators which between them are known to be involved with 106 projects. This broad ecosystem of vendors, operators and vertical markets is one that the GSA is continuing to track and report on for its Members and the wider industry.”

GSA data suggests that manufacturing is an early adopter of local area private mobile networks with 67 identified companies holding suitable licences or involved in known pilots or deployments of LANs of probable LANs (up from 51 at the start of 2021). Mining follows second, with ports also actively trialling/deploying local area private mobile networks.  Within the manufacturing sector, the automotive subsector is an early leader in terms of private network investment and adoption. Automotive companies account for over a quarter (26.9%) of the 67 identified manufacturing companies holding suitable licences or involved in known pilots or deployments.

The latest GSA report Private mobile networks – market status update (May 2021) includes data on the countries/territories with identified private network deployments (pilot and commercial), 

https://gsacom.com/paper/private-mobile-networks-executive-summary-may-2021/

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NASA to test geosynchronous satellite laser at 1.2 Gbps

NASA is preparing to conduct a Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) that will launch on STPSat-6, the primary spacecraft of the third Space Test Program (STP-3) mission for the Department of Defense. STP-3 is scheduled to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 rocket Wednesday, June 23, from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration will use microwave-oven-size optical modules will send and receive data over infrared lasers at 1.2 Gbps from geosynchronous orbit to Earth. The test will beam data between LCRD and optical ground stations located in Table Mountain, California, and Haleakalā, Hawaii. 

Later in its mission, LCRD will conduct optical communications relay services with a future terminal on the International Space Station, which is expected to launch on a commercial resupply services mission in 2022. These operations could prove the viability of using laser communications in future crewed missions to the Moon and Mars.

The LCRD mission is led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Partners include NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. LCRD is funded through NASA's Technology Demonstration Missions program, part of the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate, and the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program within the agency's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.  

https://www.nasa.gov/lasercomms 

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25 billion Arm-based chips shipped in 2020

Arm confirmed that the shipment of a record 7.3 billion Arm-based chips by its silicon partners in the last calendar quarter of 2020, up 22% y-o-y. Arm partners also shipped a total of 25 billion Arm-based chips in 2020 (up 13% y-o-y), bringing the total deployment of Arm-based chips to-date to more than 190 billion units.

Additionally, with more than eight billion GPUs shipped cumulatively, and more than one billion GPUs reported shipped in 2020, Arm Mali™ graphics processors remain the world’s number one shipping GPU.

The Arm ecosystem continues to expand, with 162 licenses signed in FY20 by 104 different customers. More than half of the licenses were taken by first-time Arm partners. Recent customer wins include SEMIFIVE and Telechips. Additionally, there are now 90 active Arm Flexible Access partners benefitting from easier access to a broad range of world-leading Arm IP, tools and support.

Rene Haas, President, IP Products Group, Arm, said: “We expect demand for Arm-based solutions across all markets to continue, and to accelerate following the introduction of the Armv9 architecture. Armv9 is enabling our partners to offer greater performance and security in the products they are creating for 5G networks, more efficient data centers, and a huge range of endpoint- and automotive-based computing. This growth underlines our expectation that 100 percent of the world’s shared data will soon be processed on Arm; either at the endpoint, in the data networks or the cloud – forming a seamless compute thread throughout.”

https://www.arm.com/

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Australia's Optus activates first mmWave sites

Optus activated its first six 5G mmWave commercial sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.  Optus currently has more than 1200 5G sites, including the six newly activated mmWave sites.

Optus’ mmWave sites are equipped with 800Mhz spectrum. The new mmWave sites include; four Sydney based locations, Kings Cross, Surry Hills, North Ryde and Optus Sydney Campus, as well as Huntingdale in Melbourne and Strathpine in Brisbane, with more to come over the coming weeks.

Optus also reported the milestone of reaching 1 million 5G capable devices on its network.

"What a fantastic day for Optus 5G as we mark not one, but two milestones on our world class network. The demand from our customers for 5G capable devices has surged in recent months, with eight out of 10 handsets that we sell today now 5G enabled. One million 5G devices is just the beginning for us and as we grow our 5G network and launch new capabilities we expect our 5G customer base to grow in parallel," said Matt Williams, Managing Director Marketing and Revenue Optus.

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Thailand's Ban Chang Smart City deploys Private 5G Network

Mavenir is working with National Telecom Public Company Limited (NT), a state-owned telecommunications company, 5GCT, a local partner specialized in delivering end-to-end 5G Smart Cities and Cisco Systems to launch the first 5G Open RAN Smart City in Ban Chang, Thailand.

The city of Ban Chang, is connected to a motorway linking Thailand’s two largest cities: Pattaya and Bangkok. The location is within close proximity to U-Tapao International Airport, Map Ta Phut Industrial Zone and the new master planned Ban Chang Smart City that are strategically important infrastructure for the Digital Economy in Thailand and the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). These characteristics make Ban Chang the perfect city to take advantage of 5G use cases across industrial robots, factory automation, remote telemedicine, aviation, logistics and agriculture. Industry leaders are terming the development the ‘Silicon Beach’ of Asia.

The Ban Chang Smart City 5G Private Network operates on Millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum, spectrum which is ideally suited for a network operating Internet of Thing (IoT) sensors, drones and smart poles, all applications which require fast data uplink to the core for realtime analysis and city management.

Mavenir provided a cloud-native, open architecture-based Private Network solution that enabled TOT1 to reach the promise of 5G. The software-based platform enabled the transformation of the mobile communication private network into a completely virtualized environment, where devices, applications, and services run on an automated network using open architecture, containers, and artificial intelligence (AI). Mavenir’s end-to-end 5G Open RAN, Millimeter wave (mmWave) radios and 5G Core with Open API technology standards, in-sync with the cloud-native solutions supporting private On-Premise applications delivers Smart City concepts such as real-time diagnostics of traffic, public safety, digital signage and sensitive environmental conditions.

TOT’s IP transport infrastructure vendor and a key Mavenir technology partner, Cisco, provided switching hardware and application services to enable the ‘smart’ components of the 5G solution.

Mavenir’s Aniruddho Basu, GM of its Emerging Business Unit, said “We are proud to be part of this ambitious 5G project which sees a whole city connected on a series of 5G applications running in parallel. Connectivity is at the heart of this deployment - connecting people, communities, government services, and private sector services through local government data combined with new data acquired through Internet of Things (IOT), sensors, drones, and external collected data, to fully analyze it for proper city management and citizen knowledge.”

https://mavenir.com/press-releases/mavenir-powering-the-first-smart-city-in-thailand-with-5g-open-ran-integration-across-mmwave-private-network/

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Snap to acquire Wave Optics for its AR waveguides

Snap Inc. will acquire WaveOptics, a start-up specializing in Augmented Reality lenses, for approximately $500 million.

WaveOptics, which is based in Oxfordshire, UK and has offices in Taipei and Beijing, develops AR lenses (also known as waveguides) and projectors which can be integrated into smart glasses, enabling users to see digital images overlaid on top of the real world. The waveguide technology transfers the light waves from the light source and projects them into the user’s eye. The technology produces a large eye-box, binocular viewing and a high field of view. WaveOptics previously announced $39 million in Series C funding, including investments from Octopus Ventures, IP Group plc, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, China’s Gobi Ventures, Goertek and new investor HostPlus.

https://snap.com/

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