MWC Barcelona opens as an in-person event

 Mobile World Congress officially opened in Barcelona as both an in-person and virtual event with the theme of "Connected Impact".

Kicking off MWC Barcelona 2021 with a keynote address, Mats Granryd, Director General of GSMA, said: "We are excited to be back to business, back in Barcelona and back together. This year's theme, Connected Impact, puts front and centre the power of mobile technology to affect meaningful change. With arguably our strongest speaker line-up yet, innovative product launches, and the release of the GSMA Intelligence Global Mobile Economy Report 2021, we're celebrating the resilience and progress the industry has made despite a year of extraordinary challenges."

Highlights of the week are expected to include a keynote from Elon Musk and a performance by Jon Bon Jovi live from TelcoDR's booth.

Some notable items from the GSMA's newly published Global Mobile Economy Report 2021:

• By the end of 2025, 5G will account for just over a fifth of total mobile connections, and more than two in five people around the world will live within reach of a 5G network.
• In 2021, 5G networks have been launched for the first time in Indonesia, Kenya, and just this month, Tajikistan.
• Although 4G has significant headroom for growth; Globally, 4G is expected to peak at just under 60% by 2023 as 5G begins to gain traction in new markets. In leading 5G markets such as China, South Korea, and the US, 4G has peaked and, in some cases, begun to decline.

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NVIDIA Aerial 5G platform extends support for Arm

NVIDIA is extending support for Arm-based CPUs in the NVIDIA Aerial A100 AI-on-5G platform, bringing more choice to the 5G ecosystem. The idea is to enable leading OEMs to offer industry-standard servers running Arm-based CPUs and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software with Aerial 5G.

In April, NVIDIA announced partnerships with Fujitsu, Google Cloud, Mavenir, Radisys and Wind River to develop solutions for NVIDIA’s AI-on-5G platform.

These NVIDIA-Certified Systems will create a simplified path to building and deploying self-hosted vRAN that converges AI and 5G capabilities across private enterprises, network equipment companies, software makers and telecommunications services providers.

The NVIDIA Aerial A100 AI-on-5G computing platform uses the NVIDIA Aerial software development kit and will incorporate 16 Arm Cortex-A78 processors into the NVIDIA BlueField-3 A100 DPUs. 

“We’re bringing together two worlds — AI of computing and 5G of telecommunications — to create a software-defined platform for AI on 5G,” said Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of Telecom at NVIDIA. “Now supporting Arm, our growing Aerial platform is accelerating AI-on-5G everywhere.”

“This convergence of edge AI and 5G technology is driving the need for more diverse compute than ever before,” said Chris Bergey, senior vice president and general manager of the Infrastructure Line of Business at Arm. “BlueField-3 expands the Arm ecosystem by offering a combination of NVIDIA accelerated computing and Arm performance to enable network providers more choice in how they create and deploy 5G systems.”

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Momentum for 5G mmWave ecosystem

At Mobile World Congress, a contingent of mobile communications operators and vendors announced their collective support for 5G mmWave technology globally. 5G mmWave uses abundant spectrum resources in frequencies above 24 GHz to complement sub-6 GHz rollouts.

Major global mobile industry leaders advancing current 5G mmWave momentum include Airtel, AT&T, Casa Systems, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Electronics Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Elisa, Ericsson, Fastweb, Fibocom, Gongjing Electronic, HMD Global, HONOR, Infomark Co., Ltd, Innowireless Co., Ltd., KDDI CORPORATION, Kyocera, MeiG, Motorola, NBN Co, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, OPPO, Optus, Orange, Partron Co., Ltd., Quectel, Rakuten Mobile, Samsung Electronics, Singtel, SoftBank Corp, Sunsea AIoT, TCL Communication, Telia Finland, Telstra, TIM, True Corporation Plc., UScellular, vivo, Vodafone, Xiaomi, and ZTE. 

“The global deployment of 5G mmWave is now inevitable. It is essential to achieve the full potential of 5G and those embracing 5G mmWave will find themselves with a competitive advantage,” said Cristiano Amon, president and chief executive officer-elect, Qualcomm Incorporated. “Support from companies across the ecosystem further demonstrates the global scale and maturity of 5G mmWave. We are proud of our industry leadership in the development, standardization and commercialization of 5G mmWave and honored to work with major mobile industry leaders to accelerate its deployment worldwide.”

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/06/28/global-mobile-industry-leaders-commit-support-5g-mmwave

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Qualcomm intros 5G DU accelerator card

Qualcomm introduced its 5G DU X100 PCIe inline accelerator card with concurrent Sub-6 GHz and mmWave baseband support.

The accelerator card is designed to ease of deployment with O-RAN fronthaul and 5G NR layer 1 High (L1 High) processing. It plugs into standard Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) servers to offload CPUs from latency-sensitive and compute-intensive 5G baseband functions such as demodulation, beamforming, channel coding, and Massive MIMO computation needed for high-capacity deployments. For use in public or private networks, this accelerator card aims to give carriers the ability to increase overall network capacity and fully realize the transformative potential of 5G.

“Qualcomm Technologies, with its leadership in 5G, is uniquely positioned to drive the evolution of cellular networks and lead the industry towards 5G virtualized networks” said Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager, 5G, mobile broadband and infrastructure, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We are working closely with mobile operators, network equipment vendors, standards bodies, and other key stakeholders, to enable the deployment of innovative, high-performance, virtualized, and modular 5G networks at scale.”

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Marvell debuts OCTEON 10 DPU

Marvell introduced its new OCTEON 10 DPU for accelerating security, networking, and storage workloads required by demanding 5G, cloud, carrier and enterprise datacenter applications. 

The OCTEON 10 DPU is designed on a 5nm process and incorporates Arm Neoverse N2 cores, as well as the first inline artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) hardware acceleration, the first integrated 1 terabit switch and the first vector packet processing (VPP) hardware accelerators.

“To meet and exceed the growing data processing requirements for network, storage, and security workloads, Marvell focused on significant DPU innovations across compute, hardware accelerators, and high speed I/O,” said John Sakamoto, vice president of Marvell’s Infrastructure Processors Business Unit. “The OCTEON 10 brings compute leadership, supports networking and security workloads exceeding 400G, and incorporates leading edge I/O including DDR5 and PCIe 5.0.”

“A significant amount of compute is required to process the deluge of data generated from cloud to edge devices today,” said Chris Bergey, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “The combination of leading-edge 5nm technology, Neoverse N2 cores and OCTEON 10 will enable Marvell to take on complex workloads, and showcase its strengths in DPU computing.”

OCTEON 10 will be available in the second half of 2021, with additional product updates shortly thereafter.

https://www.marvell.com/products/data-processing-units.html

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Verizon to build 5G core on hybrid cloud with IBM and Red Hat

Verizon has chosen IBM and Red Hat to help build and deploy an open hybrid cloud platform with automated operations and service orchestration as the foundation of its 5G core.

IBM Global Business Services is also integrating Telco Network Cloud solutions into Verizon’s Service Orchestration Platform to automate and manage services much more efficiently. This integration is designed to improve the service quality, predictably and automation of virtual network functions and comply with Open Network Automation Platform interfaces.

Steve Canepa, Global GM & Managing Director, IBM Communications, states "Verizon is a great example of a communication services provider that is on the forefront of this transformation, by embracing an open hybrid cloud platform that enables a world-class operations environment, aligned to their next-gen vision of an intelligent, highly automated and efficient 5G network. With this transformation, they can scale and deploy new services across a variety of environments, speeding innovation that delivers new value to customers."

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Vodafone tests single 1T clear channel with Nokia

Vodafone Turkey has tested a 1T (terabit) clear-channel IP connection using Nokia's 7950 XRS routers with terabit interfaces powered by Nokia’s FP4 chipset. Nokia’s FP4 terabit linecard offers two 1T ports and demonstrated deployment readiness by carrying test traffic on Vodafone Turkey’s network. 

Nokia said the trial is part of an ongoing modernization effort to transform Vodafone Turkey’s IP network. Nokia is delivering a multi-access mobile transport architecture that will enable the operator to evolve its transport infrastructure in a changing industry. Nokia’s 7250 IXR interconnect router and FP4-based 7750 Service Router portfolios have already been deployed for the delivery of high capacity, low latency 5G services to Vodafone Turkey’s customers. Nokia’s platforms support the features and protocols that will enable SDN control automation and optimization of applications and use cases.

Thibaud Rerolle, CTO, at Vodafone Turkey, said: “As we ramp up our delivery of new services, we are committed to providing the best possible quality of experience to our customers. We continue to rely on Nokia to evolve our IP network with industry-leading router innovation and technology to address our needs today and for next generation services." 

Vach Kompella, Head of IP Networks Division, Nokia, said: “Today’s IP networks are expected to handle hundreds of new applications and services for millions of users. The 1T trial builds upon Nokia’s advanced routing technology and platforms to future-proof Vodafone Turkey’s IP network, which serves one of the world’s largest intercontinental markets. Together we have successfully validated Nokia’s FP4 based 1T clear channel interface across Asia and Europe.”

Nokia and Elisa test first 1 terabit clear-channel interface

Wednesday, January 27, 2021  Elisa, Finland, Nokia, Terabit  

Elisa, a network operator serving Finland and Estonia, has tested the first 1 Tbps clear-channel interface across its commercial infrastructure.Elisa upgraded some of its Nokia 7950 Extensible Routing System (XRS) nodes with 1T interfaces powered by Nokia’s FP4 chipset, the industry’s first terabit capable routing silicon. The new FP4 terabit linecard supports two 1T ports and demonstrated deployment readiness by carrying live traffic on Elisa’s...

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Brazil's Mercantil bank connects data centers with Padtec DWDM

Banco Mercantil do Brasil is increasing the transmission capacity of its DWDM networks in Belo Horizonte using a solution provided by Padtec.

Padtec supplied transponders and route protection systems to connect the bank's data centers in Belo Horizonte. The project’s technical highlight is the use of the family of 200 Gbps transponders developed by the company for the transport of multiple 16 Gb/s data channels, in a network protocol called Fiber Channel, which is suitable for interconnect applications between servers and data storage systems.

The partnership between the companies also includes the provision of services, by Padtec, for managing the operation and maintenance of the Mercantil do Brasil bank’s optical networks.

“Customer experience is one of the pillars of the digital transformation we are experiencing. And, in the world of finance, investing in high-capacity infrastructure is essential to remain competitive and continue to offer customers unique digital experiences”, says Robson Oliveira, Banco Mercantil do Brasil’s Infrastructure Coordinator. “In the case of financial institutions, this means looking for solutions that allow more effective use of transport networks and that provide a high level of security, availability, transmission and storage of data. In this regard, Padtec is an important ally. In addition to the technical quality of its equipment, the installation, operation and maintenance services offered by the company are a differential that favors the sustainable growth of our network infrastructure”, he adds.

https://www.padtec.com.br/en/padtec-provides-dwdm-solution-to-connect-mercantil-bank-data-centers-in-belo-horizonte/

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Telstra sets distance record for 5G SA -- 113km

 Telstra, in collaboration with Ericsson, completed a 5G Standalone (5G SA) data call of a record distance of 113 km.  The call connected to a Telstra commercial mobile site in Gippsland, Victoria using a commercially available smartphone.

Nikos Katinakis, Telstra Group Executive, Networks & IT, says: ”This achievement is another example of Telstra’s drive to innovate for the benefit of all of its customers, particularly those in regional areas. Australia’s geography and demography present challenges to any network provider, but it is Telstra’s commitment to meet those challenges and bring its technology to all its customers that fuels such innovation. And it is that innovation, in partnership with Ericsson, that puts Telstra in a leadership position globally when it comes to 5G.”

Emilio Romeo, Head of Ericsson, Australia and New Zealand, says: “This new world record of an extended 5G cell range of 113 km is a huge win for rural and regional Australia giving Telstra another coverage capability option. Whether it’s enabling remote learning, especially during times of lockdown, or even facilitating remote telehealth over 5G and more such applications, this announcement today demonstrates both Telstra and Ericsson’s dedication to empowering everyday Australians with faster speeds, greater convenience and superior connectivity.”

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