Displaying items by tag: Internet of Things

Indranil das, Head of Digital Services, Ericsson Middle East and Africa has outlined a comprehensive 5-step framework that is specifically designed to enable communication service providers to prosper in the ‘digital economy’.

The future is digital, and digital service providers will lead the way. From enhancing the way you engage with your customers to automating operations, service providers reach new levels of programmability, access and agility – levels that digital natives call home.What does it mean to become a digital service provider?

Here is a 5-step framework that can help service providers prosper in the digital economy:

Step 1: Build your Cloud Infrastructure:

Cloud infrastructure is the foundation for 5G & IoT. The scale and performance requirements of 5G and IoT demand a different approach to digital infrastructure. Increase speed, efficiency, and agility in offering new services while reducing risk and shortening lead time while you transform the network.

With an open and pre-integrated NFVI solution which can be deployed both at central and distributed sites and organizations will be better prepared to manage all workloads.

Step 2: Quick Time to Market with VoLTE:

Whether you are a service provider with millions of customers or just thousands of users, you have your own cloud datacenter, or you want a full-stack solution for VoLTE services, there is an industrialized solution that will suit your requirements.

The same is true if you are an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) or mission-critical service provider looking for an easy way to get both mobile broadband and voice services over LTE and Wi-Fi ready in your network in one step. You can deploy VoLTE in weeks now allowing a quicker time to market.

Step 3: Boost revenue with digital BSS:

Digital business support systems are critical to uncovering new revenue streams. Customer experience is vital for a successful transformation to a digital business, and digital business support systems are in the center of this change.

Businesses cannot deliver an agile digital customer experience with the transformation of the ‘front-end’ experience alone – it needs to be a complete business transition – to put in place the end to end tools and processes to make real the goal of delivering a truly digital, simple, ‘one-click’ business.

Customers experience simplicity and ease in administering their accounts through the ability to find information online, compare offerings, make online purchases, and get fast and automated deliveries. This results in real, measurable business improvements from simplification including much faster time-to-market and better customer experience.

Step 4: Explore new revenue streams via network slicing:

The IoT era has the potential to transform industry and society, and with 5G on the horizon, countless new business models become a possibility. IoT services come with their own complex connectivity and performance-related challenges.

As such, operators must invest in technologies to meet efficiency and flexibility demands of these new services – making an alternative approach necessary in order to maximize revenue generation. That’s where network slicing comes in – providing the capability to enable new business models across a broad industry spectrum.

Network slicing is a powerful virtualization capability and one of the key capabilities that will enable flexibility. This solution allows operators to segment the network to support particular services and deploy multiple logical networks for different service types over one common infrastructure.

Step 5: Embrace cloud native design principles:

In the next few years all telecom applications will be cloud natively designed so as to increase efficiency and utilization of the cloud infrastructure. Benefits include increased speed of software upgrades and releases plus improved granularity, and enhanced automation through already embedded features in the NFVi layer (Cloud infrastructure for NFV).

Adapted software architecture makes much better use of cloud data center resources. In the case of 5G, the new ETSI standardized 5G Core functions will be cloud native and container based. This is expected to start during 2019.

Ericsson’s digital services blueprint will equip organizations with the tools needed for today’s technological landscape. By finding the right blueprint for their businesses, they can reach new heights of agility, access and automation.

In advance of Mobile World Congress, Nokia today launched off-the-shelf Internet of Things (IoT) packages to help operators win new business in vertical IoT markets.

In addition to enabling operators to achieve a fast time to market, the packages simplify the set-up and operations of enterprise IoT services.

Built on the Nokia Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) infrastructure that provides the necessary global IoT connectivity and services support, the applications include IoT sensors, user applications and business models suited to specific sectors. Nokia WING's managed service approach also offers a pay-as-you-grow business model, giving operators the flexibility to quickly scale up IoT services as required.

The new market-ready solutions for WING eliminate the challenges facing operators developing their own IoT services.

These include the need for specialized expertise, the complexities of combining fragmented IoT connectivity infrastructure and the risk and effort of setting up and working with multiple service providers globally. Nokia works with best-in-class partners on Nokia WING vertical applications portfolio and continues to develop the IoT ecosystem.

The four new solutions announced today by Nokia include:

• Smart Agriculture as-a-Service: Sensors capture environmental, soil and crop data that is then analyzed to provide insights that help farmers manage crops more effectively, potentially saving costs on irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers.
• Livestock Management as-a-Service: Tracking devices and biosensors monitor animal health and welfare to provide ranchers with early alerts if abnormalities are detected, protecting valuable livestock and improving yields.
• Logistics as-a-Service: IoT sensors enable tracking of the global movement and condition of goods through the complete supply chain to help enterprises instantly identify incidents and even predict future events to optimize delivery and logistics process efficiency.
• Asset Management as-a-Service: Connecting products anywhere in the world enables their status and performance to be monitored centrally, helping enterprises provide a better service to their business and consumer customers.

Nokia is trialing Agriculture as-a-Service with an African operator and working with a leading services and consulting firm on Asset Management as-a-Service to help them offer more advanced services.

Brian Partridge, Vice President, 451 Research, said: "Nokia addresses a wide spectrum of challenges through its WING IoT infrastructure-as-a-service so its early traction with customers isn't a surprise. Most telecom operators desire a more prominent role in the IoT value chain that builds upon secure and reliable domestic or global connectivity. Nokia's announced plans to offer end-to-end vertical applications on top of the WING global infrastructure is a logical next step. We believe that this approach benefits Nokia's WING telecom customers and the enterprises they serve in addition to vertical application partners who can benefit from WING's market scale and go-to market channels."

Ankur Bhan, Global Head of WING Business at Nokia, said: "The IoT is a growing opportunity for operators to win new enterprise customers and significant additional revenue in a diverse range of vertical markets. With minimal upfront investment, an operator can now quickly get a service to market and generate IoT revenues. We expect these vertical solutions to encourage more operators to connect to Nokia WING, expanding its global footprint and broadening the range of capabilities and services that will become available. We already have several more vertically-focused as-a-Service packages in the development pipeline."

AT&T and Nokia are teaming up to provide virtually seamless Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity around the world. The companies are using Nokia’s Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) to offer AT&T’s enterprise customers the benefits of Nokia’s global IoT ecosystem. These include core network, dedicated IoT operations, billing, security, data analytics, and more.

AT&T and Nokia will develop, test and launch the next generation of IoT services. They’ll cover a wide range of industries including transportation, health, manufacturing, retail, agriculture, utilities, consumer electronics and smart cities.

Commercial deployment starts later this year. WING’s core network assets are expected to be available in more than 20 countries across Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and the Middle East by the first quarter of 2020. The collaboration will help set the stage for the evolution to global 5G.

Together the companies can help enterprise customers:

• Bring more capabilities to more places with increased performance and flexibility, lower latency, and enhanced platform capabilities.
• Address specific business requirements through capabilities like 5G network slicing that allows a single network to be partitioned into multiple networks.
• Meet local regulatory requirements for IoT devices.

“Our work with Nokia WING will help clear away the complexity of large-scale IoT adoption so that our customers can unlock the potential of IoT worldwide,” said Chris Penrose, President, Internet of Things Solutions, AT&T. “Boosted by Nokia’s globally deployed ‘one-stop shop’ network technology, we can be more nimble and responsive to our customers’ needs.”

“This collaboration proves our commitment to the global IoT market, providing seamless connectivity across geographical borders and technologies,” said Sanjay Goel, President of Global Services at Nokia. “With AT&T’s leading position in IoT and proven experience meeting real customer needs, we have a winning combination to bolster our global IoT capabilities.”

AT&T offers global IoT solutions through a combination of owned and third party-provided capabilities that enable superior network performance in more than 200 countries and territories. Connected devices are deployed and controlled easily and quickly in multiple countries using a single, global SIM.

AT&T’s cloud-based Multi-Network Connect platform will simplify connectivity and platform capabilities for AT&T’s use of Nokia WING. Multi-Network Connect lets businesses manage IoT devices across multiple cellular and satellite networks, operators and regions through a single portal.

Nokia WING offers a fully integrated, global managed service for IoT connectivity enablement for mobile network operators, providing innovative features, optimizing investments and reducing time to market. Working with WING, AT&T will speed the delivery of IoT services on a global scale and drive emerging IoT applications.

Australia’s largest telecom provider Telstra announced a major step forward in the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) in Australia with the successful deployment of Narrowband technology in its IoT Network.

Telstra now offers Narrowband coverage in major Australian cities and many regional towns. This is in addition to the around three million square km of Cat M1 IoT coverage Telstra turned on in 2017. Through the Telstra IoT Network, Telstra is the only carrier in Australia and one of the first carriers in the world to offer both Narrowband and Cat M1 IoT technologies.

Telstra Chief Operations Officer, Robyn Denholm, said Narrowband technology would accelerate IoT in Australia by opening up the opportunity to connect millions of new devices sending small volumes of data at very low power levels over Telstra’s mobile network.

“We already offer our customers Australia’s largest and fastest mobile network and with our IoT Network now we have added the ability to support millions of new devices like sensors, trackers and alarms operating at very low data rates that can sit inside machines and vehicles, reach deep inside buildings and have a battery life of years rather than hours and days,” said Ms Denholm.

“These devices will be the centre-piece of the Internet of Things, which involves enabling everyday objects to send and receive data and will transform the way we all live and work in the years ahead.

“We are already leading the emergence of IoT in Australia – we connect more than two million IoT devices today and offer connected lights, cameras and motion sensors on the Telstra Smart Home platform. We expect the new mobile network capabilities we have deployed will drive rapid growth and over the next five years we forecast we will be connecting four times more devices than we do today.

“This new capability has been delivered as part of our Networks for the Future program, which is a key pillar in the up to $3 billion capital investment Telstra is making over and above business as usual to transform the way we serve customers, digitize our operations, meet the growing demand for data and lay the groundwork for 5G and IoT,” said Ms Denholm.

Telstra has embraced both Cat M1 and Narrowband to give its customers, particularly enterprise customers in industries like transportation and logistics, mining, manufacturing and agriculture, the opportunity to choose which technology best suits their needs.

“Cat M1 is well suited to applications with data in the 100s of kilobits per second with extended range and long battery life, such as a personal health monitor or a device used to measure vehicle performance. Narrowband is better suited to applications sending even smaller amounts of data and operating with an even longer battery life, such as a moisture sensor or livestock tracking device,” Ms Denholm added.

The city of Dallas, Texas, has selected Ericsson to install and host an Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) based on Ericsson’s Connected Urban Transport solution. The city’s vision for the traffic system is an intuitive and easy-to-use interface that automates and facilitates system monitoring, management, maintenance, and performance monitoring across departments, as well as between cities and counties.

The Connected Urban Transport solution will give Dallas and adjacent cities the ability to aggregate and analyze diverse, real-time data from traffic sensors and cameras to dynamically control traffic lights, school flashers and message signs. The solution will allow Dallas to expand its knowledge about traffic issues and assist with operational decision-making to improve traffic flow.

“The smart way to becoming a Smart City is the intentional focus on making data actionable,” said William Finch, Chief Information Officer for the City of Dallas. “Ericsson’s solution offers a lot of potential through the modernization our traffic management technology. It is from this technology that we will derive more robust data that leads to greater business intelligence, which in turn enhances our application.”

The main features of the system include an ecosystem to share data and system services with other organizations in a controlled way – to increase collaboration and empowerment of other departments, travelers and transport service providers; and a dashboard to have one central overview, across agencies, of the status of all systems – for quick troubleshooting

The main features of the system also include key performance indicators (KPI’s), to monitor and track the city’s goals and suppliers’ performance – for performance and contract management; and automation, where one system can trigger or notify another system when thresholds are violated – for faster responses and reduced workload.

“The quality of a community’s transportation infrastructure is a major factor in business and industry investment decisions,” said Jeff Travers, Head of IoT, Ericsson. “The Dallas metroplex is one of the fastest growing areas in the country. Our Connect Urban Transport solution will enable the city to manage growing traffic and increase driver safety more efficiently and at lower cost.”

Implementation began at the end of 2017 and the system will be fully operational by 2020, according to Ericsson.

Norway-based Telenor Group and Wireless Trondheim are joining forces to open a new IoT powerhouse to boost innovation, build competencies and promote Norwegian competitiveness. The IoT ProtoLab will be open to start-ups, developers and students looking to rapidly prototype and develop IoT products and services. 

Opening in early 2018, the IoT ProtoLab will be a centre for IoT research and innovation, specifically focusing on next generation Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technologies and applications. It will also enable the exchange of data, sharing of experiences and collaboration with ongoing projects at the Telenor-NTNU AI-Lab.

The lab was established as part of Telenor's initiative to prepare Norway for a digitised future, contribute to national competitiveness, increased innovation and new competencies.

“The people and companies shaping tomorrow's society are the ones that are able to utilize and apply data in new ways,” said Sigve Brekke, President and CEO of Telenor Group. “Telenor is committed to help build these capabilities in Norway. The IoT ProtoLab will be a place for students, entrepreneurs and startups to experiment and prototype solutions using next-generation IoT technologies.”

 The IoT ProtoLab will be located at FAKTRY, the new community for ambitious start-ups in hardware-centric disciplines at Sluppen in Trondheim, which opens in November 2017.

To support the piloting and testing of IoT services in Trondheim, Wireless Trondheim has enabled a city-wide IoT test-bed and connected to Telenor's non-commercial offering, Start IoT.  This provides access to IoT devices, a physical LPWA pilot network and a backend system, which enables prototyping and developing of IoT services at a relatively low cost. Wireless Trondheim will be responsible for the setup and the daily operation of the IoT ProtoLab.

“Our mission at Wireless Trondheim is to enable students, entrepreneurs and start-ups to experiment and prototype solutions using next-generation IoT technologies,” said Thomas Ulleberg, Manager of Wireless Trondheim. “By coupling our specialist competence with companies like Telenor, we can create real impact and help make new smart products and services for the future.”

In addition to its Start IoT offering, Telenor will also provide mentorship, support internships in the lab and will collaborate with key partners for student projects and hackathons. The first official IoT ProtoLab hackathon will be organised at FAKTRY in November by Telenor, Wireless Trondheim and Pycom.

The two day event aims to gather creative minds of the city's developer community, start-ups and students to identify and solve real-life critical business problems using next generation IoT technology, supported by experts, network access and devkits.

Nokia is to completely modernize the nationwide LTE network for Ukkoverkot, the Finnish private network operator offering wireless data communications services for infrastructure operators, the industrial IoT market, public safety authorities, the maritime industry and both residents and enterprises in remote areas.

The new network will be powered by Nokia's leading LTE solution, which provides superior network quality, capacity, security and reliability required for such specialized use cases.

"Ukkoverkot is totally focused on serving our customers, for whom connectivity means the world,” said Mikko Uusitalo, CEO of Ukkoverkot. “The agreement with Nokia enables us to roll out the most advanced public protection, IoT and campus network functions as they are available. The agreement with Finavia to develop their airport infrastructure on Nokia technology is clear testimony to the potential we have."

Founded in 2014, Ukkoverkot operates its own LTE-based mobile data network and a number of local private LTE networks, offering fast connections using the 450 MHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum bands.

Ukkoverkot's low-frequency nationwide network is largely reserved for the use of its industrial and public safety customers, which helps ensure exceptional network stability and reliability, while its high frequency network is reserved for private micro-operator networks. As a pure broadband operator, Ukkoverkot's network exclusively carries data services.

Starting in Q4 2017, Nokia will upgrade Ukkoverkot's older-generation network technology to Nokia's state-of-the-art LTE-based solution, which significantly improves network performance. This enables Ukkoverkot's customers in industrial IoT settings to capitalize on opportunities related to new Industry 4.0. applications, while critical communications and public safety operators can benefit from ultra-reliable, high-bandwidth services supporting all standardized public safety features.

Due to better propagation characteristics, low-band spectrum can provide a larger coverage area than high-band spectrum, which makes Nokia's 450 MHz LTE network solution ideal for delivering services in sparsely populated areas such as the Nordic countries.

This agreement highlights Nokia's growing momentum around the delivery of critical communications networks for customers outside of the traditional communications service provider market. Large industrial and public sector organizations are seeking robust, reliable and highly resilient networks to support services on which - in some cases - lives depend, and Nokia's solutions are ideally suited to addressing this challenge.

"With their LTE network based on Nokia's wide portfolio of technologies, Ukkoverkot brings the benefits of broadband data to the reach of new customer segments such as the industrial IoT market and public safety authorities,” said Thorsten Robrecht, head of Advanced Mobile Network Solutions at Nokia. “We are proud to team up with Ukkoverkot in its network modernization to ensure these customers can benefit from first-class network quality, and to prepare them for the services enabled by future 5G networks."

At Mobile World Congress Americas, US telecom provider Sprint and Ericsson unveiled the results of the first US 2.5GHz Massive MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) field tests conducted in Seattle, Washington and Plano, Texas using Sprint’s spectrum and Ericsson’s 64T64R (64 transmit, 64 receive) radios.

Sprint and Ericsson are preparing for commercial deployment next year, with Massive MIMO capable of increasing Sprint’s network capacity up to ten times. Testing of Massive MIMO on the Sprint LTE Plus network in downtown Seattle showed a capacity increase of approximately four times compared to an 8T8R antenna.

To showcase this capacity, Sprint convened 100 people with Samsung Galaxy S7 phones and ran simultaneous file downloads on a timed-test on all networks. The testing showed a 100 percent success rate on the Massive MIMO-powered Sprint network, which was a significantly higher result compared to the other networks.

In Plano, Texas, Sprint and Ericsson also recently tested Ericsson’s 64T64R Massive MIMO radios reaching peak speeds of more than 300 Mbps using a single 20 MHz channel of 2.5 GHz spectrum.

For both field trials, Ericsson provided the radio network infrastructure and backhaul equipment. Sprint and Ericsson together developed the test cases and requirements, which included a variety of performance scenarios involving multi-user and non-stationary testing. 

The Radio Network infrastructure included Ericsson’s next-generation 5G-ready AIR6468 radio, and the backhaul equipment utilized the MINI-LINK 6352 R2 microwave radios which can provide up to 10 Gbps of backhaul, future proofing the network for 5G.

“Massive MIMO is a game changer for adding capacity to our network and taking LTE Plus to the next level,” said Dr. John Saw, Sprint CTO. “This technology is a tremendous competitive advantage for Sprint, enabling us to maximize our deep 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings. Massive MIMO will be key to meeting our customers’ growing demand for unlimited data, as well as offering Gigabit LTE and 5G services.”

The companies will use the field trial results in preparation for commercial deployment of Massive MIMO in the US beginning in 2018. In cities across the US, Sprint plans to deploy 64T64R Massive MIMO radios using its 2.5 GHz spectrum to increase capacity up to ten times.

The technology will become part of Sprint’s extended network toolbox as it works to densify and optimize the network, providing more capacity, better reliability, and overall improved performance for customers. In addition, Massive MIMO is slated to power Gigabit LTE services, and it will be a key element of Sprint’s 5G network.

“Ericsson and Sprint have been collaborating on new technologies and continually evolving Sprint’s LTE network, laying the foundation for 5G,” said Nishant Batra, Head of Network Infrastructure at Ericsson.

“Our next-generation 5G-ready TDD 64T64R Massive MIMO radio (AIR6468) will help maximize spectral efficiency of Sprint’s 2.5 GHz network,” Batra added. “It will also provide a cost-efficient way to support their customers’ growing appetite for increased capacity and high-speed data services. This will be the industry’s first live eCPRI installation, which allows for several deployment and performance advantages to operators in the 5G era.”

Massive MIMO is a differentiator for Sprint because it can be easily deployed on high-band spectrum such as Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum. Massive MIMO radios can support high-frequency bands with a small form factor, whereas the physics of lower-frequency spectrum bands would require radios far too large in size to manufacture and deploy on a broad scale.

Chinese telecommunications conglomerate Huawei has launched a demo ‘smart city’ in Weifang, China. It’s part of an overall objective by the company to showcase and highlight its narrowband Internet of Things ‘smart city’ applications and Ocean-Connect IoT platform.

The Chinese smartphone maker made the announcement in relation to its new demo ‘smart city’ at the Huawei Connect conference which was held in Shanghai. It conveyed to those in attendance that Weifang will utilize Huawei’s city-level IoT platform to access, manage and collect data from sensory equipment that will be spread across the entire city in real-time.

Huawei has also publicly stated that it has enabled smart lighting applications across Weifang for a series of different objectives which range from monitoring the status of the street lights, its brightness and the applications can also detect faults. It has been claimed that the system has been specifically designed to save around 80% of traditional electricity usage and 90% of previous maintenance costs.

In addition to this, it has also been disclosed that Huawei has integrated eight services with its NB-IoT network which includes a remote-control system, Wi-Fi hotspots, video surveillance, environment monitoring and statistics. Huawei has outlined that its primary objective is to develop a ‘nervous system’ of smart cities with the Chinese multinational corporation already deploying its smart city solutions in over 100 cities across the globe.

Zheng Zhibin, Huawei Enterprise Business Group GM of Global Smart City Solution Department declared that Huawei’s vision is to improve connectivity services in urban areas all over the world – which is imperative in order to continue to drive the growth of the ‘digital economy’.

He said, “ICT advancement is accelerating the growth of the digital economy, which is a driving force of global economic development and transforming cities across many areas including governance, transport, living, social interactions, and employment, promoting the sustainable development of cities. The underlying connectivity in these smart cities will be critical to unlock the potential of the digital economy. Huawei is focused on improving connectivity capabilities within cities, and is creating the nervous system of better-connected cities through an IoT platform, achieving better awareness [and] connectivity among smart devices."

At Huawei Connect in Shanghai it was also formally announced that the telecommunications colossus and the Government of Weifang City had formed an Internet of Things Innovation R&D Centre and an IoT Industry Alliance.

Internet of Things (IoT) will generate estimated US$1.8 trillion revenue for mobile network operators by 2026, driven by the early deployment of commercial Power Wide Area Networks in licensed spectrum, according to GSMA, which highlighted new figures in the IoT Forecast Database Research published by analyst house Machina Research.

The new findings highlight the massive growth opportunities for mobile operators delivered through new mobile IoT applications and services. To date, 12 mobile operators have launched 15 commercial Mobile IoT services, including AT&T, Telstra and Verizon (LTE-M), as well as China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, LG Uplus, M1, Turkcell and Vodafone (NB-IoT).

According to the research, the Americas will account for an estimated US$534 billion, or approximately a third, of the total revenue.

GSMA CTO Alex Sinclair said “there is a real sense of momentum behind mobile IoT in licensed spectrum, with multiple commercial launches around the world, as well as the availability of hundreds of different applications and solutions.”

Sinclair added, “Many operators are already reaping the benefits of deploying Mobile IoT and we encourage others to act now to capitalize on this clear market opportunity and further accelerate the development of the Internet of Things.”

Mobile operators are enhancing their licensed cellular networks with NB-IoT and LTE-M technologies which utilize globally agreed 3GPP standards to scale the IoT, GSMA reported. Mobile IoT networks are expected to have 862 million active connections by 2022 or 56 percent of all LPWA connections.

These new mobile IoT networks are designed to support mass-market IoT applications across a wide variety of use cases, such as industrial asset tracking, safety monitoring, water and gas metering, smart grids, city parking, vending machines and city lighting, requiring solutions that are low cost, use low data rates, require long battery lives and can operate in remote locations.

According to the research, consumer demand for connected home (US$441 billion), consumer electronics (US$376 billion) and connected car technologies (US$273 billion) represent the biggest revenue opportunities for IoT.

However, other areas such as connected energy look set to reach US$128 billion by 2026 as a result of local governments and consumers seeking smarter ways to manage utilities. Similarly, revenues from connected cities are forecast to reach US$78 billion by 2026.