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Category: Telecom

Retail News Asia is committed to providing both local and global retailers with the latest Telecom & Telco news throughout the Asian market. This on a daily base.

  • Softbank, Line merger foretells the birth of a new tech powerhouse

    Softbank, Line merger foretells the birth of a new tech powerhouse

    The alliance between the two Japanese companies is estimated to be worth $30 billion and is expected to be concluded by October next year. The merger’s combined revenue could see it totaling $11 billion, easily surpassing its domestic competitor Rakuten.

    Tech analysts have lauded the merger, stating that this agreement would give Z Holdings and Line the opportunity to extend their reach towards a larger consumer base and increased negotiating power with its advertisers. Softbank and Naver, which owns Line, will each control 50% of the share in Z holdings.

    “We were driven by a sense of crisis about global competition and the pace of change in AI,” said Takeshi Idezawa, co-Chief Executive at Line. “The timing arrived for us to move on to the next phase [with this merger].”

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  • Telenor, Carousell merger will elevate the marketplace to the next level

    Telenor, Carousell merger will elevate the marketplace to the next level

    701Search owns leading general classifieds sites Mudah in Malaysia, Chotot in Vietnam and OneKyat in Myanmar. Johan Rostoft, Head of Online Classifieds at Telenor Group, said “We have built a profitable and high-growth marketplace business serving millions of users every single day. This transaction presents an attractive opportunity for us to take the next step in our marketplace journey, and it also simplifies Telenor’s portfolio. We believe that Carousell is the best partner for our online classifieds business in Southeast Asia.”

    “We are thrilled to partner with Telenor Group to cement our classifieds leadership across eight markets in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan,” shared Quek Siu Rui, Co-founder and CEO of Carousell, and continued, “With Telenor Group’s extensive experience in each local market, coupled with Carousell’s relentless focus to use technology to make selling and buying easy and frictionless, we are confident that together we will create an even more vibrant marketplace for the community across Malaysia, Myanmar and Vietnam. In the next few months, we look forward to working with our new teammates to learn about the dynamics of these local markets, create opportunities that are mutually beneficial for our community of users, and inspire even more people to start selling and buying.”

    Carousell is one of the most prominent start-ups in Southeast Asia, with dominant positions in Singapore and Hong Kong. The majority of its employees are based in Singapore. Following the merger, 701Search’s Singapore-based regional team will be fully integrated into Carousell. Mudah, Chotot and OneKyat will retain their individual brands and platforms, continuing operations in Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar respectively. The businesses will report into Carousell’s Group CEO Quek Siu Rui.

    The deal does not require regulatory approval and is closed immediately.

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  • Viettel, VinSmart get approval for factories in Hanoi

    Viettel, VinSmart get approval for factories in Hanoi

    The government has approved the construction of two new factories in Hanoi by state telecom giant Viettel and private smartphone producer VinSmart.

    Viettel will build a 9.1-hectare plant at the Hoa Lac High-Tech Park on the city’s outskirts to test and manufacture high-tech equipment and a 13.2-hectare research center for defense products, electronic and telecom equipment, network infrastructure, and 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

    Viettel will also coordinate with the park’s management board to trial applications for smart cities related to issues like environmental management, urban lighting and smart parking.

    VinSmart, the electronics arm of Vietnam’s biggest private conglomerate, Vingroup, will build a 4.8-ha smart electronics plant which is likely to have a capacity of 125 million devices a year in its first phase.

    Their completion dates are not known.

    Viettel and VinSmart’s plants are two of four new projects worth VND7.46 trillion ($320.42 million) that have been approved at the park, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

    The others are by two private companies to produce drugs and radiation-resistant plastics.

    Military-run Viettel in January became the first company in the country to receive permission to trial 5G services followed by MobiFone. It plans to launch in 2020, installed the first 5G station in Hanoi early this year and made the first 5G phone call in May.

    VinSmart was established by Vingroup in June, and produced its first smartphones within just six months. It has produced a total of eight models so far.

  • Qualcomm’s anti-competitive business practices get support from the Trump administration

    Qualcomm’s anti-competitive business practices get support from the Trump administration

    Back in May, Judge Lucy Koh (of Apple v. Samsung fame) made a ruling that still might change the way Qualcomm sells its chips to phone manufacturers. The judge ruled in favor of the Federal Trade Commission and against the chipmaker after a 10-day non-jury trial was held at the beginning of the year. The FTC argued that Qualcomm’s “no license, no chips” policy is anti-competitive.
    Other Qualcomm policies attacked in court included the way royalty payments are calculated based on the entire price of a phone instead of the chip being used. And Qualcomm was also cited for not licensing its standards-essential patents (SEP). These are patents that must be licensed by rivals to guarantee that their products meet technical standards; as a result, they are supposed to be licensed on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory fashion (FRAND). In its defense, Qualcomm says that the argument of royalties is an issue of contract law that should not be heard in a forum designed for antitrust cases. And it also says that there is nothing wrong with getting compensated for the money it spends on R&D.
    In her decision, Koh said that Qualcomm needs to renegotiate its current contracts with phone manufacturers. In her written decision, Judge Koh said, “Qualcomm’s licensing practices have strangled competition in the CDMA and the premium LTE modem chip markets for years, and harmed rivals, OEMs, and end consumers in the process.” As you might expect, Qualcomm has appealed the decision and even managed to get the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a stay. This prevents Qualcomm from having to follow Koh’s orders until all of its legal options have been exhausted. The firm did have a compelling reason to request a stay; it would be a waste of time and energy to renegotiate all of its contracts only to win on appeal and reverse all of the changes made.
    And speaking of the appeal, the FTC is actually on the opposite side of the Trump administration. Before Judge Koh released her decision, Trump officials asked her to limit any penalties that she was planning to impose on the chipmaker. And now that the case is being heard in appeals court, the administration is concerned that a Qualcomm loss will negatively impact America’s global leadership in technology and national security. And the Justice Department, under the leadership of U.S. Attorney General William Barr, has contradicted the FTC by stating that there is nothing anti-competitive about Qualcomm’s business practices. That is unusual because the FTC and the DOJ both handle antitrust cases. The Justice Department is joined by the Defense Department and Energy Department which told the appeals court that a ruling against Qualcomm could affect the country’s military and its energy and nuclear infrastructure.
    But perhaps even more important to the Trump administration is the possibility that should Qualcomm lose on appeal, it will negatively impact the rollout of 5G in the states. The next generation of wireless connectivity will initially deliver download data speeds 10 times faster than 4G LTE and will lead to the creation of new businesses and industries. The nations that harness 5G first will have a big advantage in the global economy. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X50 and X55 modem chips allow smartphones to connect to 5G networks. The former is compatible with the super zippy ultra-high mmWave spectrum while the latter works with both mmWave and sub-6GHz  airwaves.
    But as far as the FTC is concerned, Qualcomm and the Justice Department have not shown how Judge Koh’s ruling “threatens national security in any way — or how those considerations could justify allowing Qualcomm to continue to violate” U.S. antitrust law. The 9th circuit appeals court, located in San Francisco, could start hearing arguments in February and issue a ruling sometime in 2020. For Qualcomm, there is plenty at stake.
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  • Huawei’s position looks promising with potential licenses underway for US companies

    Huawei’s position looks promising with potential licenses underway for US companies

    Trump has placed Huawei on the Commerce Department’s “entity list” for national security reasons. Huawei has repeatedly stated that the US claims are not based on any proven evidence. Entities on the list are prohibited from purchasing American software and components without being granted a U.S. government license. Trump has promised in June to provide some facilities to companies that deal with Huawei.

    Ross’s latest statements come shortly after Huawei announced its business results for the third quarter of 2019. During the first three quarters of this year, Huawei global revenues increased by 24.4% year-on-year, underlining that its business growth and technology development path was unaffected by the US ban.

    The company is committed to providing state-of-the-art innovations in new fields such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing, which will have a major impact in advancing the future development of many sectors and industries. This will also contribute the building of digital economies, smarter cities, and improving the efficiency of organizations in the future.

    By the end of Q3 2019, more than 700 cities, 228 Fortune Global 500 companies, and 58 Fortune Global 100 companies had selected Huawei as their partner for digital transformation.

  • Softbank, Line merger foretells the birth of a new tech powerhouse

    Softbank, Line merger foretells the birth of a new tech powerhouse

    The alliance between the two Japanese companies is estimated to be worth $30 billion and is expected to be concluded by October next year. The merger’s combined revenue could see it totalling $11 billion, easily surpassing its domestic competitor Rakuten.

    Tech analysts have lauded the merger, stating that this agreement would give Z Holdings and Line the opportunity to extend their reach towards a larger consumer base and increased negotiating power with its advertisers. Softbank and Naver, which owns Line, will each control 50% of the share in Z holdings.

    “We were driven by a sense of crisis about global competition and the pace of change in AI,” said Takeshi Idezawa, co-Chief Executive at Line. “The timing arrived for us to move on to the next phase [with this merger].”

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  • Nokia, Hitachi union will support local enterprises through 5G and private LTE solutions

    Nokia, Hitachi union will support local enterprises through 5G and private LTE solutions

    As part of the collaboration, the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud platform with its secure, reliable and low-latency connectivity will be used for applications including video analytics, AI, machine learning and IoT, as well as drones, group communication, and AR/VR. It will also enable autonomous transport vehicles, such as trucks, trains, forklifts and straddle carriers, to increase productivity at factories, utilities, airports and ports.

    The Japanese government is releasing 5G spectrum designated for individual companies and local governments (known in Japan as local 5G) at the end of 2019. This will enable enterprises, regional authorities and other organizations in Japan to deploy the next-generation of industrial-strength wireless connectivity based on LTE and 5G technologies to create local private, reliable networks.

    Nokia and Hitachi Kokusai Electric will collaborate to provide an eco-system of solutions to support the deployment of new digital automation services. Hitachi Kokusai Electric will share its expertise as a leader in driving the adoption of private LTE networks for industry use and disaster prevention in Japan. Nokia will lend its private LTE/4.9G and 5G wireless connectivity solutions, which have established a global marketplace footprint across energy, transportation, public sector, manufacturing and logistics.

    Kaichiro Sakuma, Representative Director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hitachi Kokusai Electric, commented, “Industrial grade private wireless networks will be very important for our industry customers, helping them to become more efficient, automating dangerous operations, and improving worker safety. Our collaboration with Nokia is helping to speed the delivery of these innovative capabilities to the Japanese market.”

    John Harrington, Head of Nokia Japan, said, “Partnerships such as this help us to better serve the increasing needs of local 5G and digitalization technology in Japan. Collaborating with partners with in-depth knowledge and expertise across industry segments is critical to the widespread adoption of digital automation and private wireless solutions in industrial settings. Thanks to our comprehensive end-to-end-portfolio, we are ideally placed to support Hitachi Kokusai Electric and its customers to benefit from secure, highly reliable, ultra-broadband wireless networking.”

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  • China’s 3 mobile carriers kickstart commercial 5G rollout to the public

    China’s 3 mobile carriers kickstart commercial 5G rollout to the public

    Recently, China Mobile released the results of centralized procurement of Phase I NFV network equipment in 2019. This broad range of procurement involves 31 provincial companies in eight regions of China, which undoubtedly indicates that the full commercial deployment of 5G led by China Mobile has begun.

    NFV network is the only way leading to 5G era

    As we know, the 5G core network defined by 3GPP is a comprehensive cloud-based network architecture in order to meet the deployment requirements of edge diversified services in the 5G usage scenario of uRLLC (Ultra-reliable low latency communication), eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband), and network slicing. 4G will coexist with 5G in foreseeable future. The smooth evolution of 4G core network to 5G requires moving 4G EPC to the cloud, which call for a new technology: Network Function Virtualization (NFV).

    NFV is an important enabling technology in 5G core network era, which can decouple the network functions of traditional vertically integrated dedicated NEs into software and deploy them on COTS servers and switching devices, so that services can be rapidly deployed and launched. Besides, with NFV, 5G networks become more flexible, so as to better support access to different vertical business and meet differentiated service quality requirements of users in different industries.

    At present, SDN/NFV-based network cloudification and network reconstruction have become the common idea of the industry. With the issuance of 5G commercial licenses in various countries, NFV has indeed ushered in large-scale commercial deployment worldwide. China’s three mobile carriers have successively released their network reconstruction plans focusing on SDN/NFV, which include NovoNet 2020 in China Mobile, CTNet 2025 in China Telecom and CUBE-Net 2.0 in China Unicom. In February 2019, Smart Communications, Inc., the Philippines’ leading wireless provider, officially announced the successful commercial use of the world’s first NFV/SDN collaboration all-cloud core network. The US Media reported that the commercial deployment of NFV by AT&T International, Inc., an US mobile carrier, is also entering the turning point.

    The arrival of 5G will undoubtedly accelerate the network virtualization process, and NFV is the only way leading to that Era.

    5G brings huge market opportunities to NFV

    According to the disclosed information, this procurement covers PS domain NEs (vMME, vSAE GW, vPCRF, and vDNS) and IMS domain NEs (vCSCF, vVoLTE AS, vSBC, and vENUM/DNS) from 31 provincial companies in eight regions of China, which almost involves all NEs in the core network. It not only means that China Mobile NFV network project will officially enter the stage of large-scale construction, but also be regarded as the beginning of the full deployment of China Mobile’s 5GC, which will certainly further accelerate the maturity and commercialization of the domestic NFV industry chain.

    At the “China SDN/NFV/AI Conference 2019,” Wei Leping, Executive Deputy Director of Communication Technologies Commission of MIIT, said, “Now the industrial process of NFV in our country is relatively slow. The three mobile carriers should use NFV without hesitation, especially by taking advantage of the opportunity of 5G.” According to the NFV industry report released by Global Market Insights, the NFV market will exceed $70 billion by 2024. About 79% professionals in telecom industry view NFV as a key strategic focus for the next five years’ development.

    NFV becomes the “New Promising Technology”, virtualization services providers embrace bright future

    As we know, all cloud-based telecom networks must be realized the decoupling of hardware and software, which poses challenges and higher requirements for traditional telecom equipment manufacturers. According to the centralized procurement results of China Mobile, traditional equipment manufacturers such as Huawei, Ericsson, and ZTE still occupy the favorable position, providing China Mobile with virtualized NEs, virtualization layers, distributed storage, MANO, and integration services. Take ZTE for example, it is reported that ZTE will construct Virtualized Network Elements (VNF) for 12 provinces, including regional control plane NEs and provincial user plane NEs (GW-U, SBC-U). The telecom cloud resource pool that bears the NFV network is built with servers provided by Inspur and ZTE. Therefore, domestic telecom equipment manufacturers already have the capability to build large-scale NFV networks, and their NFV solutions and products have also been widely used in both global operators’ and government/enterprises’ networks. In this tender, ZTE demonstrated its comprehensive strength in providing end-to-end NFV solutions and a full range of NFV products.

    China is racing ahead in 5G with the largest 5G market. According to a report, total spending on 5G in China will account for about one-fourth in the world. This procurement from China Mobile alone can provide services for hundred millions of users. This not only reflects the technical and service strength of the bid-winning enterprises, but also indicates that virtualization service providers will embrace bright future in the NFV field of 5G era.

    With NFV, 5G can realize low-cost, open, and flexible, and 5G commercial use promotes the maturity and development of NFV industry chain. So, the common progress of 5G and NFV provides broad space for telecom equipment manufacturers.

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  • Feature phones remain popular in Vietnam

    Feature phones remain popular in Vietnam

    Feature phones still account for nearly four out of every 10 mobile phones sold in Vietnam. Around 1.7 million phones were sold in September, of which over 600,000, or 37 percent, were feature phones, according to market research institute GfK.

    While there have been predictions that feature phones will lose popularity with the advent of cheap smartphones, their sales remain steady at 620,000-700,000 a month, the institute said.

    In terms of market share, feature phones even saw a slight increase from 34 percent in July to 36 percent in August.

    Nokia remains the leading brand in this segment with a market share of 55-57 percent in recent months, with the Finnish brand accounting for over half of the 20 top selling feature phones in September.

    The second most popular feature phone was local brand Masstel with a market share of 14-15 percent. Other brands sold include Itel, Mobell, Fmobile and Coolpad each with a market share of below 10 percent.

    Nguyen Duy, an employee at a mobile phone supermarket in Hanoi’s Gia Lam District, said: “The main buyers [of feature phones] are usually ordinary workers, students, older people, and businesses buying phones for internal communication needs.”

    “A significant portion of them are first-time users who want a device that could make and receive phone calls so they could keep in touch, especially one that’s easy to use.”

    Besides, many people buy Nokia’s new products such as the 3310, 230 and 105 to use as backup for their smartphones, he said.

    Nguyen Tuan Anh, an experienced mobile phone seller, is confident that feature phones would perform well for at least a few more years.

    Since their customers often prioritize low price over brand, phones from China and nameless brands would continue to sell well if they meet buyers’ needs, he said.

    But revenues from feature phone sales remain low. According to GfK, 70 percent of them cost below VND500,000 ($21.5).

    The best-selling device in this segment is the Nokia 105 with a price tag of VND350,000 ($15). Itel, the third largest brand, has products costing below VND200,000 ($8.6) such as Value 100 and IT2161.

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  • Nokia is trying to recover from a really bad decision it made about 5G chipsets

    Nokia is trying to recover from a really bad decision it made about 5G chipsets

    Last year when Nokia started planning its 5G networking equipment, it made a decision that came back to bite the company in the, uh, chipset. For Nokia’s line of “ReefShark” chips, used for its 5G radio, baseband and massive MIMO antennas, it decided to go with field-programmable gate array (FPGA) silicon. This type of chip can be programmed by the customer, thus giving Nokia an advantage in getting its 5G gear into the marketplace before the competition. But Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri had to admit that producing FPGA chips cost Nokia more money which reduced its profit margin for the component. As reported by FierceWireless, after reporting its Q3 numbers last week, Nokia lowered its full-year guidance

    Nokia wants to resume production of custom chipsets for its 5G products and to this end, it has hired 350 new employees in Finland to help it develop custom chips. Such development can take two years to complete. Nokia’s global head of Mobile Networks Marketing, Sandro Tavares, said that the company has been working on these SoCs for some time and has started shipping products with the SoCs replacing the FPGAs.

    Tavaras notes that the reasons that Nokia chose the programmable chip is because it can “put together the efficiency characteristics of an SoC but with the flexibility of being able to program via firmware. But it has the flip side of cost and power consumption. FPGAs do cost more in unit price, and they do use more power.” Additionally, Nokia at the time was working to integrate Alcatel Lucent and using FPGA, as previously noted, seemed like the best way to get to market quickly. Tavaras also points out that one supplier let them down. Nokia CEO Suri said that the company is not only designing its own custom SoCs, it also is working with a number of chipmakers including Intel. But the executive says that all of these actions won’t lower Nokia’s cost of building its 5G products until 2021.

    One analyst says that Nokia’s problems run deeper than just having to migrate from FPGA. Stefan Pongratz, senior director at Dell’Oro Group, says that 5G build-out is happening faster than expected and that competition is fierce. Pongratz says that “Nokia also has to deal with the consolidation of multiple platforms following the Alcatel Lucent merger.”

    Nokia has contracts with all four major U.S. carriers to deliver 5G networking equipment and the company was said to be responsible for Sprint’s delay in rolling out 5G service to four cities back in August. But this has been typical of the reputation that Nokia has when it comes to 5G. The company has been accused of lacking steady leadership and during a four-year period, it had three different people running the mobile networks division. That unit is now run by Tommi Uitto who earns nothing but praise from CEO Suri. “Tommi and his team have developed a comprehensive plan to ensure Nokia is competitive in 5G, and they are relentlessly executing against that plan,” Suri says. “Tommi is a strong leader, and he has my full support.” As for the 350 new employees being hired, Suri states, “We are repositioning our workforce to work on topics that are more critical for 5G development. We are hiring people in Finland and in other parts of the world and moving people from different programs to our 5G radio products.”

    Earlier this month, there was talk that the Trump administration had considered offering huge lines of credits to Nokia and its rival Ericsson. This would be done to help the two compete with the global leader in networking equipment, Huawei. The latter is considered a national security threat in the states and with funding from state-run Chinese banks, Huawei can offer generous financing terms to customers. Trump officials hoped to counter this advantage by arranging financing for Nokia and Ericsson, but outside of the initial rumors, there has been no word on whether the U.S. is still considering this option.

  • VinSmart to launch 5G smartphones next year

    VinSmart to launch 5G smartphones next year

    Smartphone maker VinSmart says it will launch its first 5G smartphone next July, and use its own 5G stations and equipment.

    “We have built a lab for researching and developing 5G smartphones and other 5G telecom equipment,” Ngo Hoang Anh, head of the company’s embedded software department, said at a forum Wednesday.

    The company is also partnering with U.S. tech giants Cisco and Intel to develop the 5G technology, Anh said. In June, VinSmart signed partnerships with Japan’s Fujitsu and the U.S.’s Qualcomm to develop its 5G smartphones.

    VinSmart has requested the Ministry of Information and Communications for bandwidth to test its 5G stations next August, he added.

    Tech expert Pham Hong Phuoc said that VinSmart developing 5G services is a rational move, as the local market is set to see more 5G smartphones this year and the next, and Vietnam aims to commercialize 5G next year.

    VinSmart’s announcement follows similar moves by telecom giant Viettel, which begun testing 5G broadcasting in September, and its competitor VNPT, which has announced plans to do so.

    No 5G smartphone has been manufactured or officially distributed in Vietnam so far, instead, they are hand-carried on overseas flights.

    Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung said last year that Vietnam should be one of the first countries in the world to launch 5G.

    5G is said to offer speeds 100 times faster than 4G, primarily used for smartphones and other similar devices. 5G is also expected to support new applications like remote medical procedures and autonomous driving.

  • Viettel Global posts $67 mln profit

    Viettel Global posts $67 mln profit

    Viettel Global has posted pre-tax profits of VND1.55 trillion ($67.1 million) this year, after seeing losses in Jan-Sept last year.

    The turnaround has happened thanks to strong revenues in Southeast Asia. Half of the telecom giant’s VND12.4 trillion ($537.3 million) revenue in the first nine months came from Southeast Asia, which went up 24 percent year on year, followed by Africa and Latin America, according to the company’s Q3 financial report.

    Its Metfone network in Cambodia saw after-tax profits go up 91 percent to VND672 billion ($29.1 million), while that of its Natcom network in Haiti rose 28 percent to VND261 billion ($11.3 million).

    The company’s VGI stock, listed on Vietnam’s Unlisted Public Companies Market (UPCoM), had risen 140 percent to VND32,400 ($1.4) from the beginning of the year as of Thursday, marking a market cap of over VND98.6 trillion ($4.27 billion).

    Viettel Global was established in 2006 to spread military-run Viettel Group’s presence in foreign markets. It currently operates in ten markets, namely Cambodia, Laos, Timor Leste, Mozambique, Burundi, Haiti, Peru, Cameroon, Tanzania and Myanmar.

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  • The Snapdragon 735 chipset could lead to lower prices for 5G phones

    The Snapdragon 735 chipset could lead to lower prices for 5G phones

    Everyone is awaiting Qualcomm’s introduction of its next-generation flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform. This could take place sometime next month. Meanwhile, you might recall that six months ago the chipmaker unveiled the Snapdragon 730 chipset and the Snapdragon 730G gaming-focused chip.

    The Snapdragon 735, while designed by Qualcomm, will apparently be manufactured by Samsung using its 7nm EUV LPP (Low Power Plus) process. The lower the process number, the higher the number of transistors that can fit inside an integrated circuit. By adding transistors, chips become more powerful and energy-efficient. By next year, both Samsung and rival TSMC should be rolling 5nm chips off of its assembly line (more on this later). The EUV stands for extreme-ultraviolet lithography, a technology that allows chip dies to be more precisely marked up for transistor placement; this will also allow more transistors to fit inside a chip. When you consider that Huawei’s Kirin 990 SoC with an embedded 5G modem contains about 10.3 billion transistors, you can understand how precise chip production must be.

    The Snapdragon 735 SoC is rumored to feature eight cores with a pair of Cortex-A76 cores to do the heavy lifting; the remaining six Cortex-A55 cores will be earmarked for general housekeeping. The latter will reportedly run at a clock speed of 1.73GHz, and the two high-performance cores at 2.26GHz and 2.32GHz. If the rumored specs are legit, the chipset will come with the Adreno 620 GPU and support up to 12GB of RAM and 4K video at 60fps. And there is good news for consumers; the Snapdragon 735 SoC is said to be 5G ready, which means that support for the next generation of wireless will be available on more mid-range (and less expensive) phones.

    It should be noted that Qualcomm has yet to introduce the component. The Snapdragon 735 SoC will replace the 730 which is produced using the 8nm process and ships with the Adreno 618 graphics processor. Some features of the current chip, such as support for the new Wi-Fi 6 standard and the multi-core Qualcomm AI Engine, will undoubtedly be found in the Snapdragon 735 chipset. Qualcomm said earlier this year that it would bring 5G support to its mid-range series 7xx and series 6xx Snapdragon chipsets.

    As for the eagerly awaited Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform, the other day Chinese luxury goods manufacturer, 8848 was the first to announce a phone that will be powered by Qualcomm’s new flagship chipset. The Titanium M6 5G will ship next year with the Snapdragon 865 SoC inside. While Qualcomm could introduce the chip next month, it won’t be found inside any consumer devices until next year.

    What we know about the Snapdragon 865 is that Samsung’s foundry unit will manufacture it using Samsung’s 7nm EUV process. The Snapdragon 855 and the overclocked Snapdragon 855+ chipsets were both produced by the world’s largest independent foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) using TSMC’s 7nm process. 2021’s Snapdragon 875 Mobile Platform will be produced by TSMC using its new 5nm process. At 5nm, integrated circuits are packed with as many as 171.3 million transistors per square millimeter.

    Both Samsung and TSMC have roadmaps taking production to 3nm. The latter is reportedly working on ways to keep increasing the number of transistors inside a chip to increase both power and energy consumption. Just to show you how far we’ve come, the Apple iPhone 4, released in 2010, featured Apple’s A4 SoC under the hood. That chip was designed by Apple, equipped with ARM’s Cortex-A8 CPU, and built by Samsung using its 45nm process.

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  • Mavenir extends alliance with Vodafone Idea to fortify presence in India

    Mavenir extends alliance with Vodafone Idea to fortify presence in India

    This partnership will focus on three thrust areas. First, building a universal secured Cloud capable of hosting multiple tenants and third-party applications. Second, building a fully automated platform that enables self-provisioning of various workloads. Third and most importantly, setting up a joint innovation lab and a team that will consistently innovate on Chipset, Operating System, and work at the Application level to offer unique APIs and enables new use cases and delightful experience to VIL customers.

    “Vodafone Idea has the largest Edge Cloud deployment in India. Our partnership with Mavenir will enable continued innovation in optimizing data path algorithms for VOLTE. We look forward to setting up a joint lab and an agile team that will enable onboarding third-party applications on our distributed cloud”, said Vishant Vora, CTO, Vodafone Idea Limited whose team is spearheading this initiative.

    The partnership has led to the contextualization of software algorithms, leading to unprecedented efficiencies. VIL and Mavenir partnership has been extended to include collaboration with chipset manufacturers and Operating System providers. The stack being deployed is all open sourced and benefits from consistent innovation led by global open community.

    “Next frontier in our partnership will be to extend the platforms deployed to host new applications serving IOT and CDN use cases. We plan to build platforms that can host varied OS and varied workloads. We aim to automate deployment and assurance and thereby extend self-provisioning capability for VIL customers. We are excited to set up a joint lab and team, consistently innovate and work with VIL and its customers in an agile manner to turn around new solutions fast,” said Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO Mavenir.

    Mavenir has partnered with VIL in IMS-VOLTE deployments. In future, the partnership aims to extend the platform being deployed for IMS-VOLTE applications to host other Captive and third-party workloads. Mavenir will partner with VIL to extend its distributed Network cloud as secured platform to multiple retail, SME users and start-ups.

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  • Indonesia’s Telkomsel commercially launches CloudAIR 2.0 solution with Huawei

    Indonesia’s Telkomsel commercially launches CloudAIR 2.0 solution with Huawei

    From the verification in Telkomsel’s live network, the solution increases the mobile broadband cell edge user experience significantly. The application of spectrum cloudification technology increases the LTE user downlink speed throughput by 116% from 50Mbps to 108Mbps. In addition, the implementation of channel cloudification technology improves the carrier aggregation coverage for outdoor areas by 21.4% as well as two to three times user experience improvement for indoor areas.

    As the number of Telkomsel 4G subscribers grows rapidly, many of 2G subscribers will migrate to 4G. At the same time, there are many of 2G subscribers who will be remaining for a long time, making this an obvious long-tail phenomenon. Therefore, it is a big challenge for Telkomsel to maximize the spectrum efficiency in a limited spectrum by scheduling the 2G and 4G resources based on demand.

    Furthermore, in order to meet the rapid development of 4G business, Telkomsel has deployed LTE technology in 2300MHz, 2100Mhz, 1800MHz and 900MHz at the same time. However, the high-frequency band uplink signal becomes a coverage bottleneck due to a high propagation, a high penetration loss and a limited transmitting power of the terminal. This situation results in poor user experience at the cell edge, especially in indoor areas. Consequently, it is also challenging for Telkomsel to fully use the spectrum resources in high frequency.

    In response to those issues, Telkomsel and Huawei conducted Joint Innovation Center and introduced the CloudAIR 2.0 solution, which successfully solved the problems through two technologies: spectrum cloudification (dynamic spectrum sharing) and channel cloudification.

    The spectrum cloudification technology realizes the deployment of different Radio Access Technologies (RAT) in the same spectrum. This solution can dynamically allocate and adjust spectrum resources according to the changes of traffic and avoid the legacy RAT to occupy the golden spectrum in the long term to maximize the spectrum efficiency.

    Meanwhile, the channel cloudification technology combines the advantage of larger downlink bandwidth of high band and better uplink coverage of low band. The high band is selected as the uplink at near point and midpoint for capacity, while the low band is selected as the uplink at cell edge to compensate the coverage limitation of high band. The coordination between LTE high band and low band channel cloudification can significantly improve the coverage of high band and improve the cell edge user experience, especially for LTE indoor coverage areas.

    Director of Planning and Transformation of Telkomsel Edward Ying said, “We have been committed to the technology innovation and build the mobile broadband network to provide ultimate user experience to our subscribers. The CloudAIR 2.0 solution has enabled us to achieve a convergence of the multi-band network that maximizes capacity and coverage requirements and enhances the user experience effectively. We will continue to carry out joint innovation projects with Huawei, hoping JIC3.0 to achieve greater success.”

    Dr. Peter Zhou, Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Wireless Solution said, “We are very delighted to provide an innovative solution for Telkomsel, the largest mobile network operator in Indonesia. Our focus is on improving the efficiency of air interface, enabling Telkomsel to deploy services more flexibly and, of course, enhancing the experience of Telkomsel’s millions subscribers.”