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5G World: Mavenir EVP dishes on open RAN's technology advantage Sep 25, 2021

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Open RAN is a truly different network architecture and over the next five years, those RAN sites will be able to perform functions that traditional RAN won't be able to do, according to Mavenir's EVP and CMO, Stefano Cantarelli. He also talks about the deployment at Dish Network and the challenges of building completely new networks. Cantarelli said Dish's approach is a fresh one, especially its decision to use AWS and the public cloud as a core part of its strategy. He expects that even brownfield networks will be able to discover technology lessons from Dish as that operator starts turning on 5G services.

5G World: Vodafone takes on its telco legacy Sep 24, 2021

Show notes

Vodafone's chief network officer, Andrea Donà, said the way to the 5G future is to first make sure you radically simplify and take care of legacy networks and services. Donà says that telcos need to "try and expose some of those inherent inbuilt functions within the network and start exposing them in a standard API interface-able way so that we can create new revenue streams." He continued: "We need to try and bring technology together so that we stimulate that new innovation because just playing simple connectivity play is not going to be enough. For the future, we need to try and elevate our technology and our network in a way that creates and sparks new, innovative business cases, new revenue streams, so we can thrive in the future." This interview was recorded at the 5G World show in London.

The Leading Lights finalists: Part III Sep 24, 2021

Show notes

Light Reading's editors are in the middle of judging the 2021 Leading Lights Awards and this is the third and final episode in a three-part podcast series discussing the Leading Lights finalists. On this podcast, Light Reading's Kelsey Ziser, Fiona Graham and Iain Morris discuss trends they're seeing, what's happening in the awards categories that they're judging and what they've learned from the contest entries as they dig in and prepare to announce this year's winners. The categories covered in this podcast include: Company of the Year (Public) Outstanding Digital Enablement VendorOutstanding Test & Measurement VendorOutstanding Use Case: Service Provider AI/AutomationOutstanding Use Case: Service Provider IoT Person of the YearBest Deal Maker

5G World: Reasons to be upbeat about 5G and the telco cloud future Sep 23, 2021

Show notes

There are definitely reasons to be upbeat about the trajectory of 5G, according to Dario Talmesio, Omdia's research director for service provider strategy and regulation. This is especially true if you consider that "real" 5G – 5G standalone – doesn't exist yet in most places, yet service providers are still growing their topline with 5G services from their consumer businesses. A lot of service providers still seem behind the curve on finding business models to take full advantage of 5G, the analyst said. "I think we are very much in proof of concept, type of mode, we are in implementation mode. There are obviously important examples in the market. But in terms of how to commercialize it – or what commercial models are going to be – then it is probably too early," Talmesio said.

5G World: The 5G icon is starting to mean something Sep 23, 2021

Show notes

New, improved 5G radios and other products are starting to make a difference in service provider deployments, according to Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading principal analyst covering mobile network infrastructure and technologies. Brown cited the second generation of 5G networking products and the move to use more 5G spectrum in the mid and lower spectrum bands as reasons that 5G service is improving, both in speeds and coverage, compared to the first weeks of 5G rollouts in Europe. "Clearly, these new products are a lot better," Brown said. "So now as operators invest, they're getting a much more kind of material, capable, massive MIMO product for midband. So that's going to give them more confidence and it's going to be kind of steady build out." That steady buildout and improvement is starting to show up for consumers. "I would say, if you get a 5G icon, in general, you're going to get a very good service," Brown said.

The Leading Lights finalists: Part II Sep 23, 2021

Show notes

Light Reading's editors are in the middle of judging the 2021 Leading Lights Awards and this is the second in a three-part podcast series discussing the Leading Lights finalists. On this podcast, Light Reading's Phil Harvey, Jeff Baumgartner and Alan Breznick discuss trends they're seeing, what's happening in the awards categories that they're judging and what they've learned from the contest entries as they dig in and prepare to announce this year's winners. The categories covered in this podcast include: Best New Cable Tech Product or ServiceBest New Cloud Product or Service (Network Operator)Best New Video/Media Product or Service Most Innovative Service Provider Cloud StrategyOutstanding Use Case: Customer ExperienceOutstanding Use Case: Private Wireless Networks

Verizon's Shah on private networks, now and later Sep 22, 2021

Show notes

Anand Shah, director of Technology and Architecture for Verizon, joins the podcast to share insight into industry progress for deploying network slicing, private networks and Open RAN. "[Open RAN] increases your competition and definitely decreases costs for us, so we're all in there whenever we can save some on costs" says Shah. "The more vendors you include in any formula and the more equipment you include, the harder that equation gets to solve. And it's not that we can't solve it, we can solve it." In addition to the challenge of coordinating with multiple vendors and technologies for Open RAN, Shah explains how service providers also have to consider enterprise customer's needs for network slicing and private networks. He also addresses the debate around whether an enterprise using a private network also needs network slicing. While AR, VR and robotics applications generate the most buzz, Shah says many of those private network use cases are several years out. Currently, computer vision is one of the most widely used private network use cases, he explains. "Right now, it's pretty simple. One of the biggest use cases are getting their computer vision or camera uplink feeds into a local MEC or a cloud compute -- wherever it is, on-prem or off-prem, etc. Computer vision seems to be a big use case," says Shah.

Cisco siphons $20M into Rural Broadband Innovation Center Sep 21, 2021

Show notes

The goal of the Cisco Rural Broadband Innovation Center is to provide service providers of any size with access to testing the same level of technologies that support broadband access, says Robin Olds, a business development manager for Cisco's Americas Service Provider group, who joined in on the Light Reading podcast with Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst of ZK Research. The $20 million Center was launched in mid-June under the umbrella of Cisco's Country Digital Acceleration program and will focus on delivering high-speed Internet access to rural areas to lessen the digital divide.

Light Reading Recap: Week ending Sept. 17 Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

Last week's telecom news highlights included a look at the wild valuation ride of social media and messaging platform Discord as it recently rejected a $12 billion takeover bid and then a $500 million funding round. We also review the latest info on 3G network shutdown dates for the big US carriers.

The Divide: How Uprise Fiber seeks to solve what you hate about your ISP Sep 16, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we hear from Sam Sanders, founder CEO of Uprise Fiber. Uprise was launched two years ago on the West Coast by a group of telecom industry vets eager to use their expertise to provide communities with a new, better, and more affordable Internet option. We discuss how Uprise addresses typical problems people have with their ISPs, as well as the company's model of partnering with developers and leveraging existing fiber, and how Uprise seeks to build digital equity into broadband deployments.

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