WCA September 2014

Wire & Cable ASIA –September/October 2014

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Telecom

news

‘Pushing the envelope’ on

5G, Sweden’s Ericsson

strives to position itself as

a leader in next-generation

technology

In late June, at its lab in Kista,

Sweden, the telecom infrastructure

vendor

Ericsson

demonstrated

what it calls its pre-standard 5G

network technology. Watched by

senior management from Japan’s

NTT DoCoMo and South Korea’s

SK Telecom, Ericsson showed live,

Published twice annually by Infonetics Research (Campbell, California,

USA), the ‘Global Telecom and Datacom Market Trends and Drivers’

report provides analysis of global and regional telecom market trends and

conditions. Excerpts from the June 2014 instalment include the following:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) anticipates that the world

economy will expand 3.6 per cent in 2014 (+0.06 per cent from 2013) amid

recoveries in Britain and Germany and slowing growth in Japan, Russia,

Brazil and South Africa

Mobile service revenue remains the main telecom/datacom growth

engine worldwide, led by the unabated rise of mobile broadband

To avoid falling into the role of pipe provider, many service providers are

deploying or weighing new architectural options such as caching/content

delivery networks, distributed BRAS/BNG, next-gen central offices,

distributed mini data centres, and video optimisation

Software-defined networks (SDNs) and network functions virtualisation

(NFV) have the attention of nearly all service providers, who are on the

long road to widespread deployments

Big data is becoming more manageable. Operators are leveraging

subscriber and network intelligence to support marketing and loyalty

strategies, churn management, and automation/optimisation of networks

using SDN and NFV

The cloud, mobility, BYOD and virtualisation are the top trends driving

enterprise networking and communication technology spending, with

North America leading the way

Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier

economics at Infonetics, said that the market research firm expects a

slowdown in this year’s capital expenditures in the Americas; but that, for a

change, Europe “will be in the telecom capex driver’s seat.”

“We’re forecasting global carrier capex to rise four per cent, with EMEA as

the growth engine despite unabated low-single-digit revenue declines all

across Europe,” wrote Mr Téral. “After waiting for so many years to upgrade

their networks, Europe’s ‘Big 5’ – Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia,

Telefónica and Vodafone – have decided it’s time to take the plunge.”

Matthias Machowinski, a co-author of the report released at midyear, said

that economic expansion in mature economies and falling unemployment

in Europe are “driving stronger growth in enterprise telecom and datacom

expenditures.” The Infonetics directing analyst for enterprise networks also

said that the researchers expect the network infrastructure segment to be

the main beneficiary of this year’s growing investments, followed by security.

Market research report: Europe will be ‘in the driver’s

seat’ for telecom capital expenditures this year

over-the-air 5G running at speeds

of 5Gb/s in a performance that

anticipated commercialisation by

some six years. Availability of 5G

– still in the early stages of being

defined, let alone standardised – is

not expected until 2020.

Asked by Richard Handford of

Mobile

World Live

July) whether there

was not a risk of exaggerating what

5G can achieve, Ericsson’s CTO

Ulf Ewaldsson acknowledged the

possibility. “There always is, I think, if

we go back through all the Gs apart

from the first one,” was his response.

“This hype of new Gs that came with

digital and 2G, then broadband with

3G, and real, true broadband access

with 4G – I think there has been a risk

of exaggerating what the technologies

can do.”

But Mr Ewaldsson said that his

company, which perceived a need

“to push the envelope strongly,” will

be able to deliver on expectations

with speeds exceeding those on

fixed networks. Hence the invitation

to the operators to witness the lab

demonstration.

For its part, Ericsson’s Chinese

rival Huawei announced its

election to the board of the

5G Infrastructure Association

in Europe during the General

Assembly held in Bologna on

June. Huawei, which has

said it intends to position itself

as a European vendor, will be

represented on the board by

David Soldani of the company’s

European research centre.

The 5G Infrastructure Association

represents the private portion

the

Infrastructure

Public-Private Partnership, (5G

PPP) between the European

ICT industry and the European

Commission. The $1.9 billion

project, jointly funded by the

public and private partners,

aimed

accelerating

and structuring 5G research

and development as Europe

seeks to gain an advantage

next-generation

wireless

technologies.

The inclusion of

Microsoft bolsters a

Qualcomm-based initiative

to set standards for the

Internet of Things

Microsoft, of the USA, has

joined the AllSeen Alliance, an

open-source project founded on

Qualcomm technology and aimed at

standardising interconnections in the

Internet of Things: essentially smart

devices working together. As noted

by Phil Goldstein of

FierceWireless

July), the software giant’s

participation in the group adds heft to

a membership which had been largely

dominated by consumer electronics

and home appliance makers.

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