ABI Research Blog

I spent an eventful (and busy) four days at MWC this year, following up on security announcements, and observing some interesting demos. Many of last year’s security themes were still relevant, notably around IoT, automation, and AI & ML, and some faint, if important, messages around quantum security!

At MWC 2018, the African Telecommunications Union emphasized mobile telcos need to redouble efforts to provide communications services to the remaining 2 billion unconnected peoples. This is not just about providing mobile voice and messaging but also e-health, e-governance, e-education and mobile money.

5G was pervasive theme at many booths at MWC Barcelona 2018.

Digital transformation has had a rocky ride over the past 3 years. While AT&T and Verizon have been very bullish in their plans to re-architecture their networks for a digital services future, momentum on the ground for other tier 1 and tier 2 operators appeared more tepid in 2015 and 2016. 2017, however, has proved to be a gateway year for cloud and virtualization roll-outs. At MWC 2018, Amdocs, Ericsson, Netcracker and Nokia reported significant increases in digital transformation orders from telcos.

 Vasona Network had a pretty convincing demo for MEC-based gaming that could target the high-end gaming market typically occupied by Xbox and PlayStation.

Introduction

In January 2018, ABI Research authored a white paper examining the cost structures of two V2X technologies; IEEE 802.11p standard and 3GPP Release 14 C-V2X. In particular, this white paper considered two potential integrations of these technologies into an LTE TCU architecture featuring Wi-Fi (single band) connectivity. The white paper was highly focused in scope, considering the immediate opportunities for the integration of these two technologies to address a narrow, mission-critical application common to both technologies, with an accompanying functional safety requirement. ABI Research would like to take this opportunity to further educate the market and elaborate on the assumptions made in the white paper, how these assumptions informed architecture choices, and how these assumptions drove the cost difference between the 802.11p+LTE and C-V2X+LTE architectures considered in the report.

LTE-Advanced Pro was ratified in March 2016, making it possible to achieve gigabit download speed theoretically. Gigabit LTE with its three defining technologies of 4X4MIMO, 256QAM, and 3+ carrier aggregation (CA) with a minimum aggregated bandwidth of 60 MHz addresses many of the pressing issues facing mobile operators today. This is because, even though theoretical speeds are never realized in real-world conditions, peak speeds of 300 Mbps have been reported compared with the 10 Mbps on LTE networks today. Increased speeds alone ease network congestion. Add to that the spectral efficiency of MIMO technology and the software upgrade to 256 QAM, and operators can gain substantial improvement in usage of resources and managing network congestion. As consumers continue to use more mobile broadband data for a variety of services, such as live streaming of high-quality video or the use of augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) devices, upgrading the RAN to support these services will be essential. One of the main reasons that network congestion is a concern for operators is that competition is driving them to offer unlimited data plans in mature telco economies. In other regions, and especially in developing economies, few operators can offer unlimited data, although many are taking steps in this direction by increasing the current data caps.

The deployment of telco networks is a complex, expensive exercise that is governed by strict regulations once licenses are awarded. In the past, voice and data traffic growth has fueled—and justified—nationwide mobile or fixed network deployments, but it is not yet clear what new revenues 5G will bring. Given that managed services and network sharing are typical procedures in network deployment nowadays, are we about to experience the next evolution of telco network deployment? Will vendors play a larger role in next-generation networks? 

Only a couple of weeks have passed since Apple shipped its first iPhone X smartphone and already hackers have claimed to circumvent the device’s FaceID authentication system. Using a combination of 3D printed mask, color printouts, and a silicon nose mold, the group demonstrated that it could fake the iPhone X sensor into believing the mask was the trained user.