5G also arrived or expanded in several countries worldwide. Among these headlines, Ericsson and wholesale telecom infrastructure company CETIN have signed a five-year contract to bring 5G to the Czech Republic. The deal makes Ericsson the supplier behind CETIN’s network modernization, which will see their existing legacy network transformed to establish fast, ultra-high capacity 5G. Ericsson has also been selected by WIND Hellas as its mobile core network vendor for standalone and non-standalone 5G, as well as its BSS partner. And TELUS has tapped Nokia as an infrastructure partner to strengthen and expand 5G service in Canada.

Innovation and
Digital Transformation News

Several industry alliances and partnerships were announced this month. Alaska Airlines and Microsoft have signed a partnership to reduce carbon emissions with flights powered by sustainable aviation fuel in key routes, especially those in heavy use for business travel. Orange Business Services and AWS will work together to deliver new solutions in the areas of modernization and migration, data analytics, innovation and security, resulting in new products and services to fast-track customers’ journeys to the cloud. Vodafone Group and Sumitomo Corporation have forged a strategic alliance to collaborate on international technology infrastructure and digital services projects, sharing knowledge and working together on new business opportunities in the 5G era. Nokia and A1 have joined forces to provide a private wireless network for Siemens’ microgrid, which is deployed at its Austrian headquarters in Vienna. Additionally, ADVA announced that it has joined the O-RAN ALLIANCE, a global ecosystem of mobile network operators and technology suppliers driving intelligent, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. Together, Vodafone and Ericsson have successfully tested safe sky corridors for drones using intelligent aspects of the mobile network.

In standards news, the ETSI group on Network Functions Virtualization (ETSI ISG NFV) unveiled its first specification enabling containerized VNFs to be managed in an NFV framework. The Broadband Forum’s Open Broadband – USP Agent project is bringing the reality of the connected home one step closer with support for MQTT and architectural improvements to better support open source software-based deployments.

Infinera landed a contract award with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) to build the optical substrate for its next-generation science network, ESnet6, interconnecting the DOE’s national laboratory system and experimental facilities with research and commercial networks around the globe.

Colt Technology Services has debuted its SD WAN 2.0, a move to create a more seamless user experience and enable enterprises’ digital transformation.

IoT News

IoT devices and smart home connections are continuing furious growth worldwide—a top trend of 2020 and beyond. A new study from Juniper Research has found that the global number of Industrial IoT connections will increase from 17.7 billion in 2020 to 36.8 billion in 2025, representing an overall growth rate of 107 percent. The research identified smart manufacturing as a key growth sector of the Industrial IoT market over the next five years, accounting for 22 billion connections by 2025.

Another report from Juniper Research predicted there will be almost 13.5 billion smart home devices in active use by 2025, compared to an expected 7.4 billion at year-end 2020. Smart entertainment devices take the bulk of revenue attributable to smart home devices, as over $230 billion in 2025.

News of innovation in IoT came in this month. Senet is partnering with GeoLinks to support low-cost LoRaWAN IoT sensor connectivity on a large scale in California. Cavli Wireless, a cellular IoT module manufacturer, is bundling IoT modules with LTE-M connectivity from Orange Business Services to provide the building blocks of the IoT value chain to its enterprise customers worldwide.

With the automotive, semiconductor and mobile communication sectors increasingly developing applications that require the E-band spectrum range, HUBER+SUHNER has announced its MXPM90 test solution for frequencies up to 90 GHz.

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