the future of transportation. What do we mean by that? It is not to say that the car is the future of transportation, rather the future of the car will depend on how the broader transportation system digitally evolves. The digital transformation of transportation infrastructure will have profound influence on how and how quickly the digitalization of the car will play out as will the stitching between the intelligent car and the intelligent infrastructure – 5G connectivity.
Category: 5G Evolution & Vertical End Markets
Realizing IoT Project Success
I’ve always found the idea that so many IoT startups and established companies do POCs or Proof of Concepts strange. I also find it unfortunate that many enterprises start off with POCs. Why do so many IoT vendors lead into sales opportunities with POCs with prospective customers and why do so many enterprise end users seemingly entrap these poor little startups in some hellish cycle of pre-sales POC giveaways? More often than not, when you speak to the founders of these IoT startup firms, they are frustrated by the difficulty of getting customers or prospects to pay up. So how did we into this unusual situation as a “industry”? Wasn’t IoT supposed to be easy to sell? Didn’t every business want it? Evidently, the answer is not exactly yes.
The US-China Tech War: Technology and Digital Economic Leadership at the Crossroads
ast week, the US Senate passed the USICA (The United States Innovation and Competition Act) which includes the CHIPS for America Act. Despite what the title of the USICA and its sub articles might suggest, the policy is largely a manifesto for dealing with a rising and highly competitive China with particular concern for the Western rival’s ambition to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency and Huawei’s ascension as the leading 5G technology vendor. The Act presents several concrete policy measures to diminish China’s access to US semiconductor technologies and 52 billion USD in federal funding to build a more resilient semiconductor supply chain. But will these policies help the US achieve what the title of the USICA suggest; improve US semiconductor supply chain resiliency and competitiveness in 5G? Will it stop the technological advancement of China and its digital economy long enough for the West to tame it?
Fostering the 5G Innovation Economy for the European Auto Industry
5G is about vertical industries. It promises to connect things beyond the smartphone in new ways and at a scale that was not possible with previous generations of mobile wireless technology. The auto industry has long been considered one of the frontier industries ripe for 5G reinvention. On May 19th, France Brevets hosted a virtual conference to discuss the importance of incubating a healthy regional innovation economy. The goal? To foster technological leadership in transformative technologies such as 5G to help secure a competitive future for the European auto industry.
SXSW 2021: 5G Opportunities to Reimagine Live Music
The Pandemic changed everything. Musicians, artists around the world, big and small, who largely depend on live performances for their livelihood saw their primary medium of expression and monetization shutdown almost completely for months going on more than a year. Necessity has forced the industry to pivot hard to online channels but artists and audiences alike miss the vibe of live music events. neXt Curve attended SXSW 2021 to gain insights into how music artists and producers are looking to recreate the vibe virtually and remotely on top of the 5G networks of today and tomorrow.
Industry Insight: The Impartial Governance of 5G Technology
The spotlight continues to shine more brightly on 5G on the global geopolitical stage as it becomes increasingly apparent to the US and European nations that 5G technological leadership is of strategic economic importance. While the race to deploy 5G networks is a global competition, mobile wireless technologies of today have been a result of cooperation and collaboration across standard setting bodies, operators and technology companies across the globe. 3GPP, the engineering organization that sets the technical specifications that are the basis of mobile wireless technology standards, recently held their election for one of the more prominent of its Technical Specification Groups (TSGs), the RAN TSG. The election happens at time when 5G technology leadership is hotly contested and the merits of technological unity is increasingly challenged geopolitically.
Industry Insight: The CBRS Neutral Host Opportunity
When the FCC held the first auction of CBRS (Citizens Band Radio Service), it raised hopes that novel neutral host models will emerge that improve the economics of indoor cellular networks and bring some of the promise of 5G into venues of all sizes. What is the neutral host opportunity presented by CBRS and what are the economic considerations for the business of establishing and running a neutral host network.
Huawei Analyst Summit 2021
neXt Curve attended Huawei’s Analyst Day (HAS) 2021 which was hosted in-person and virtually from Shenzhen, China. This event shortly followed Huawei’s Annual Report which presented the state of their business during a difficult year for the company as it faced a wide range of sanctions by the US and the global Coronavirus pandemic. HAS 2021 gave us an holistic overview of the progress that Huawei has made in evolving and executing its “survival” strategy over the last two years since the company became the focus of deteriorating relations between the United States and China.
Technology Insight: NEOM
What if technology could not just make cities “smarter” but help us entirely reimagine the idea of a city of the future? NEOM is a visionary giga project that aspires to apply the most advanced in current and emerging technologies to realize a bold urban development concept called THE LINE, the revolutionary infrastructure concept that will bring about the world’s first “cognitive city”.
Huawei Annual Report 2020: A Year of Survival
neXt Curve was in Nice, France attending the premier global event for digital transformation in the telecommunications industry held from May 14th through May 16th and hosted by TM Forum. Leading vendors and operators converged to discuss what it will take help the telecom industry reinvent itself and aid telecom service providers in becoming digital service providers. Now that 5G has arrived in select markets around the globe, the pressure is on for telecom operators to transform their operating models to capture the value promised by the next generation network.