Release-17 includes two new FR1 bands for NTN; n255 (a.k.a. NTN 1.6GHz) and n256 (a.k.a. NTN 2GHz). The picture is from a slide in Rohde & Schwarz presentation available here. Quoting from an article by Reiner Stuhlfauth, Technology Manager Wireless, Rohde & Schwarz: Currently, several frequency ranges are being discussed within 3GPP for NTN. Some are in the FR1 legacy spectrum, and some beyond 10 GHz and FR2. The current FR1 bands discussed for NTN are: The S-band frequencies from 1980 to 2010 MHz in uplink (UL) direction and from 2170 to 2200 MHz in downlink (DL) directio ..read more

I had been meaning to add this session to the blog for a while. Some security researchers may find these useful.  At RSA Conference 2022, Bret Jordan, CTO, Emerging Technologies, Broadcom and Kirsty Paine, Advisor - Technology & Innovation, EMEA, Splunk Inc. presented a talk covering what they described as the most important, interesting and impactful technical standards, hot off the press and so 2022. From the internet and all its things, to the latest cybersecurity defenses, including 5G updates and more acronyms than one can shake a stick at.  "10 Security Standards in 2022 ..read more

Private 5G networks have immense potential to transform industries by improving flexibility within the shop floor of the industries. Industrial 5G networks hold the promise to transform mission-critical industrial automation by using the built-in 5G features of higher bandwidth, lower latency, greater reliability, and improved security. Some of the ways in which Industrial 5G (I5G) networks will help transform mission-critical industrial networks using automation include: Enhanced Communication: I5G networks will offer faster and more reliable communication between machines, sensors, and oth ..read more

The ETSI Summit on Sustainability - How ICT developments and standards can enable sustainability and have a positive impact on society, took place on 30 March 2023 and focused on the key role of the ICT industry and related standardization activities to support Green initiatives. The event brought a large and global audience of over 220 stakeholders including operators, solution providers, policy makers and standards bodies or fora working on the topic. A multitude of presentations including two interactive panel sessions, rhythmed the day and succeeded to make it a highly interactive Summit ..read more

I wrote a blog post on this topic nearly three years back on the Operator Watch Blog here. That post is very handy as every few months someone or other asks me about this number. Here is a slightly updated number, though I am not confident on its accuracy.  Gabriel Brown, analyst at Heavy Reading shares this chart above in the annual online Open RAN Digital Symposium. Based on the chart above, there are 7 million physical sites and 10 million logical sites. As there are many sites hosting infrastructure from multiple operators, the number of logical sites are more than the numb ..read more

Yesterday, ATIS, one of the seven 3GPP Organizational Partner (OP), delivered on online webinar on 3GPP Release 18 Overview: The World of 5G-Advanced. A summary of the webinar according to ATIS as follows: As the first release of 5G-Advanced, Release 18 has been progressing well despite the challenges in fully resuming 3GPP face-to-face meetings in 2022. In this webinar, ATIS provides a high-level summary of 3GPP Release 18: the confirmed Rel-18 timeline, status for the ongoing study and work items, and the newly converted work items from the completed study items. We also give a brief introd ..read more

I hear in many presentations that half the world is still unconnected so we need a solution XYZ. In this post I will explore how many people are really unconnected and why. GSMA produces an annual report called "The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report". The latest issue from Nov 2022 explains the number of people that are still unconnected because of coverage gap or the usage gap. Quoting from the report: (click to expand the image) By the end of 2021, 4.3 billion people were using mobile internet, representing 55% of the world’s population, up from 31% in 2014 (see Figure 1). This t ..read more