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”.
Category: IT/CT Convergence
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.
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.
Tech Insight: Converged IT/CT Service Placement
With the advent of Release 16 of 3GPP’s 5G technical specification and the introduction of SA (Standalone) 5G NR, operators can now explore the benefits of E2E network slicing. It will be critical in enabling dynamic placement of network functions across mobile network edge. But 5G is also about MEC which will converge the pipe with compute.
Industry Insight: Rakuten Rolls Out 5G
Rakuten recently launched their long-waited and highly-anticipated 5G network service. Despite a Covid-19 induced delay, Rakuten has managed to put up a 5G network in a very short time. The jury is out as to whether they have succeeded but one thing is for certain, Rakuten has proven that an industry outsider can put up a compelling offering with the help of new cloud-based and open technologies.
Tech Insight: 5G Edge Computing
Arguably, edge computing is nothing new. Depending on your domain, you are familiar with the idea of edge computing. You might say you have been doing it forever. But what makes edge computing different in the era of 5G? What is the industry getting excited about? What are the novel aspects of edge computing that will make 5G transformative.
The 5G Autonomous Edge: The Next Frontier of Digital Business Innovation
5G, AI, and the cloud are intersecting to unlock real-time autonomous capabilities at the edge. This evolution represents an inflection point for edge computing and a new frontier for business innovation and reinvention. Discover the potential of ubiquitous intelligence, edge cloud computing, and autonomous infrastructure to transform our world from the age of digital business to autonomous enterprise.
Industry Insight: Microsoft’s Flight to the Hyper-converged Edge Cloud
In the last three months, Microsoft has been on a tear building out its portfolio of 5G core and virtualized network service management technologies having acquired Affirmed Networks, and most recently, Metaswitch. The acquisition of these telecom tech companies by the leading enterprise IT technology company and cloud service provider may seem curious at first, but these transactions highlight the acceleration of a transformative trend that we at neXt Curve dubbed Under-the-Bottom (UTB) in our 2019 technology horizon study for Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s communications and media sector regulator.
Integrated Tools for the Hybrid Operation of the Evolving 5G Infrastructure
The evolution of 5G infrastructure will not be homogenous. Operators will be deploying islands of 5G across a sea of 4G and 3G. They will be faced with the challenges of developing, deploying and managing services across hybrid infrastructures that will be comprised of a fragmented mix of the old and the new. In order to accelerate returns on 5G investments operators will need a common, integrated toolchain that allows service providers to scale operations and services across a mixed portfolio of technologies and operating environments.