Tech Insight: Rakuten Communications Platform

In an exclusive one-on-one chat with Rakuten Mobile’s CTO, Tareq Amin, neXt Curve’s Leonard Lee received an update on the state of the much-touted Rakuten Cloud Platform (RCP). RCP was formally launched in October of 2020 with the goal of bringing the open RAN innovations, integrations and the inventions that make up Rakuten Mobile’s cloud-native infrastructure to the rest of the world.

Untethering the Live Music Experience with 5G

Despite the hype, 5G is a tremendously exciting technology that will change the way we think of connectivity, computing and how we architect systems. Over the next decade, it will bring about new wireless connectivity capabilities that can unshackle the live music industry from the legacy limitations and assumptions that have stifled wireless innovation and hamstrung artistic creativity.

Industry Insight: Will Blacklisting SMIC Slow China’s Advance toward Silicon Self-Reliance and 5G Leadership?

On December 18th, 2020, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Company), China’s largest foundry, was added to the Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS) Entity List. This was not a surprising move by the US Department of Commerce given the increasing stringency and aggressiveness of the Trump Administration’s tech trade policy toward China over the last couple of years, especially with the advent of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Besides, Secretary Wilbur Ross indicated in September that SMIC would likely join Huawei on the BIS’s Entity List. What are the implications on the semiconductor industry and the future of 5G?

Interdigital 6G Summit 2020: Key Takeaways

neXt Curve attended Interdigital’s first 6G Summit that was a two-day exploration of the technologies and the possibilities that will come after 5G. This event was a great opportunity to compare notes with some of the industry thought leaders and inventors who are ideating through the future of communications with the technology horizon research we did for Ofcom in 2019. Will 6G be a revolution on top of an expected revolution or just 5G cans kicked down the road?

Qualcomm Tech Summit 2020: Key Takeaways

neXt Curve attended Qualcomm’s premiere event which typically takes places in Maui, Hawaii. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, the event was virtual but we got the scoop on everything to get excited about the newest edition of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform. The new chip set continues to integrate best-in class 5G technologies with powerful mobile compute enhancements that will provide Android smartphone OEMs a wide palette of feature differentiation to pursue in 2021.

Huawei MBB Forum 2020: Key Takeaways

neXt Curve virtually attended the 11th annual Huawei Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF) 2020 which was held from November 12th to the 13th in Shanghai, China. The theme for this year’s event was “5G for Good and Innovate for New Value.” Now that we are approaching year two since the first commercial 5G deployments, Huawei is now focusing on accelerating operator value by making deployments easier and faster, and fostering new-breeds of applications that will enable digital transformation across industries. Even in these early days of 5G, Huawei is looking at what is coming next. Here is what neXt Curve found out.

Industry Insight: Placing 5G Bets in Innovation

What is 5G innovation? We hear about it all the time but 5G has yet to inspire innovation outside of the technology itself. Afterall, autonomous vehicles are nowhere near mainstream nor is robotic surgery. What are the practical areas that government and private enterprises prioritize and focus on first to bring the benefits of 5G to the public and consumers?

Tech Insight: The Myths & Realities of URLLC

It has been almost two years since the first commercial deployment of 5G and we have seen operators around the world embark on the deployment of the next-gen mobile wireless network. In these early days of 5G, use cases such as smart factories are touted as proving grounds for 5G’s disruptive potential, but we will need URLLC. neXt Curve is joined by renowned telco industry analyst, Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis to discuss the state of URLLC. What is real and what is hype today?

Industry Insight: Democratizing the Digital Twin – The Moab Foundation

The Digital Twin is considered by some the next big thing since network slicing. Rob Tiffany, renowned IoT pioneer established the non-profit Moab Foundation to bring the bigness of digital twins to do good in the world. The charter of the foundation aims to bring the benefits and enablement of IoT to bear in furthering the UN’s 17 SDG (Sustainable Development Goals).

Industry Insight: The Intersection of Space & Tech

The space industry is undergoing a great shift with some winners, some losers and significant change in the landscape. While billionaire-funded entrants like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Amazon, Virgin Galactic are shaking things up with the incumbent space industry leaders, there are many other advances being made by smaller angel and venture-funded space startups with promising potential.