Networking

The company responsible for the National Broadband Network said on Thursday it would provide AU$5.2 million in the form of a “COVID-19 relief credit payment” to cover overage charges due to bandwidth spikes caused by lockdowns in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. NBN said the credit would cover July and be allocated on each retailers’ share of total national overage. It added it would waive charges for ISPs breaching CVC utilisation conditions for the final week of July. The company reiterated it was still introducing its Superfast Plus rebate to lower the price to get users onto 250Mbps and 1Gbps plans. After lockdowns were imposed in NSW and Victoria, NBN said it saw peak bandwidth of almost 20.4Tbps on the Saturday night of July 17, which represented an 8% increase on the week prior. On July 24, NBN said it saw bandwidth top out at 19.93Tbps. The company took the opportunity to also bat away ideas to reinstate the CVC holiday for retailers introduced last year. “NBN Co’s previous offer of additional capacity at no additional costs to internet retailers, which was in market from March 2020 and transitioned out by 31 January 2021, was originally intended as a short-term measure to assist retailers’ adjustment to the initial increase in customers’ data consumption at the onset of COVID restrictions,” NBN executive general manager for commercial Ken Walliss said. “It was the right thing to do at the time, but it came at a cost, some of which was borne by taxpayers. If this had continued, it would have potentially impacted NBN Co’s ability to invest in network upgrades to deliver faster speeds and additional capacity to meet the historical annual growth in data demand.” The company pointed to higher CVC inclusions, the ability to nationally pool CVC, and its current pricing and Special Access Undertaking processes as ways it was supporting the industry. Related Coverage More

Cisco Systems said it would roll out a hybrid working plan that has no mandates for how often employees go into the office. The networking giant said its employee base was familiar with working hybrid and remote and expects that less than a quarter of its workforce will want to be in an office three or more days a week going forward. Before the COVID-19 pandemic about half of Cisco’s employees, were in the office four to five days a week. Cisco said it would leave it up to teams to determine the best way to work and how often they go to the office. For Cisco, its hybrid approach to work is also a selling point. The company makes WebEx, a collaboration platform, as well as the infrastructure needed to power networks and enterprises. In addition, Cisco can use its hybrid approach to recruit talent. In a blog post, Fran Katsoudas, Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer of Cisco, said the purpose of physical space must change. Offices will be retooled to be centers of collaboration and purpose. Katsoudas added that the hybrid work approach would also help the company meet its sustainability goals.Todd Nightingale, general manager of Cisco’s enterprise networking and cloud business, said the company’s culture has revolved around hybrid work before COVID-19 and there are a few technology issues that need to be ironed out. For instance, Cisco has used its own WebEx as a collaboration suite and networking for secure access has to be in place. In addition, wireless connectivity will be key in the new normal at the office, which will revolve around meetings.

“Hybrid work changes the way you look at tooling because it has to account for home and office,” said Nightingale. Automation will also become key to agility for technology teams. Nightingale said, “technology groups are stretching for some more flexible version of work.” More

Boost Mobile will stay on the Telstra network in Australia for another 10 years, the company announced on Thursday. Saying it doubled its customer base in “recent years”, the virtual operator added the new deal would allow it to expand into postpaid mobile, mobile broadband, and NBN plans. “This is a major moment in Boost Mobile’s history as we further expand our longstanding relationship with Telstra,” Boost Mobile founder Peter Adderton said. “It has never been more important to have fighting brands like Boost Mobile in the industry, and today’s renewal and new benefits of this agreement will allow us to fight for the consumer on a whole new level. It will enable us to offer consumers more choice in more areas of the market than ever before.” In September last year, Boost Mobile killed off its international roaming option; it was one of the few virtual operators to offer that functionality. At the time, Boost said it was re-designing its roaming package, and would have a new product in the middle of 2021. However, given the continuing pandemic and delta surges leading to recent lockdowns across Australia, notwithstanding the nation’s borders not being open, Boost now has more time to ponder its changes. In November, Optus announced it was paying AU$250 million for Amaysim and its remaining mobile business, as well announcing it would launch its Singtel parent digital-only brand Gomo in Australia.

Elsewhere on Thursday, TPG announced it would be boosting the capacity of its PPC-1 Australia to Guam subsea cable to 12Tbps. The cable has two fibre pairs covering 7,000 kilometres with repeaters around 92 kilometres apart. “We are increasing the capacity of this vital international link by 50% to meet the growing data requirements of our customers, which is being driven by booming demand for cloud computing and video streaming,” TPG Telecom executive general manager for mobile and fixed networks Barry Kezik said. TPG will be using Infinera kit for the upgrade. Earlier in the week, Hawaiki announced it sold itself to Singapore-based BW Group. The sale price was not disclosed. “Three years after Hawaiki’s commercial launch, it is time to write a new chapter of the company’s history and we believe BW is an ideal shareholder for this fast-growing business,” executive chairman of Hawaiki Rémi Galasso said. More telco coverage More

Mobile chip giant Qualcomm this afternoon reported Q4 revenue and profit that topped analysts’ expectations, and an outlook for the current quarter that was higher as well. The report sent Qualcomm shares up 3% in late trading. CEO Cristiano Amon remarked that “in addition to leading the 5G transition,” Qualcomm is “on pace to deliver $10 billion of annual revenues across RF front-end, IoT and Automotive as our business continues to diversify.”Added Amon, “Our solutions are fueling the connected intelligent edge that is enabling the cloud economy, and we are seeing unprecedented demand for our technologies as the pace of digital transformation accelerates.”Qualcomm reaffirmed its existing view for the cellular market outlook: “For calendar 2021, we are maintaining our forecast for high single-digit-growth for global 3G/4G/5G handsets, with an upward bias to 5G forecast of 450 to 550 million 5G handset shipments.”During the conference call with analysts Wednesday evening, Amon was asked about the risk of Apple displacing Qualcomm’s modem chip with Apple’s in-house chip. Said Amon, “We’re very happy with a relationship with Apple. We’re just on their first phone. We have other phones to go, and we’re very happy with the way things are progressing.”Revenue in the three months ended in June rose 63%, year over year, to $7.99 billion, yielding a net profit of $1.92 a share, excluding some costs.

Analysts had been modeling $7.53 billion and $1.91 per share. The adjusted, non-GAAP revenue number excludes Qualcomm’s QSI, or “Qualcomm Strategic Initiatives,” segment, which the company plans to divest.Within the results, sales from Qualcomm’s chip business, “QCT,” rose 70%, year over year, to $6.47 billion, while revenue from the licensing division, “QTL,” rose by 43% to $1.5 billion. Qualcomm’s sales into handsets rose 57% to $3.86 billion. The company attributed the rise to “the adoption of our 5G products in premium and high-tier devcies across all major OEMs.”Sales of radio frequency “front-end” chips more than doubled to $957 million. Sales into the automotive market and sales into the IoT market both rose by 83%, to $253 million and $1.4 billion, respectively, The IoT revenue was $100 million higher than Qualcomm had forecast. On the IoT front, Qualcomm said sales benefitted from “demand across consumer, edge networking and industrial platforms,” including, on the consumer side, emerging products such as XR, meaning, “extended reality,” including VR, and consumer wearables. In addition, the buildout of edge networking, including mobile broadband contributed, said Qualcomm, including “Continued momentum driven by the enterprise transformation of the home and the second wave of enterprise demand driven by return to the workplace” and “a rapid adoption of Wi-Fi 6 and increased demand for both 4G and 5G mobile broadband devices.” Industrial uses of IoT, via 5G, is just getting underway, the company said. For the current quarter, the company sees revenue of $8.4 billion to $9.2 billion, and EPS in a range of $2.15 to $2.53. That compares to consensus for $8.46 billion and $2.03 profit per share.That includes $7 billion to $7.5 billion of QCT chip sales.  

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Mobile chip giant Qualcomm this afternoon reported Q4 revenue and profit that topped analysts’ expectations, and an outlook for the current quarter that was higher as well. The report sent Qualcomm shares up 3% in late trading. CEO Cristiano Amon remarked that “in addition to leading the 5G transition,” Qualcomm is “on pace to deliver $10 billion of annual revenues across RF front-end, IoT and Automotive as our business continues to diversify.”Added Amon, “Our solutions are fueling the connected intelligent edge that is enabling the cloud economy, and we are seeing unprecedented demand for our technologies as the pace of digital transformation accelerates.”Qualcomm reaffirmed its existing view for the cellular market outlook: “For calendar 2021, we are maintaining our forecast for high single-digit-growth for global 3G/4G/5G handsets, with an upward bias to 5G forecast of 450 to 550 million 5G handset shipments.”During the conference call with analysts Wednesday evening, Amon was asked about the risk of Apple displacing Qualcomm’s modem chip with Apple’s in-house chip. Said Amon, “We’re very happy with a relationship with Apple. We’re just on their first phone. We have other phones to go, and we’re very happy with the way things are progressing.”Revenue in the three months ended in June rose 63%, year over year, to $7.99 billion, yielding a net profit of $1.92 a share, excluding some costs.

Analysts had been modeling $7.53 billion and $1.91 per share. The adjusted, non-GAAP revenue number excludes Qualcomm’s QSI, or “Qualcomm Strategic Initiatives,” segment, which the company plans to divest.Within the results, sales from Qualcomm’s chip business, “QCT,” rose 70%, year over year, to $6.47 billion, while revenue from the licensing division, “QTL,” rose by 43% to $1.5 billion. Qualcomm’s sales into handsets rose 57% to $3.86 billion. The company attributed the rise to “the adoption of our 5G products in premium and high-tier devcies across all major OEMs.”Sales of radio frequency “front-end” chips more than doubled to $957 million. Sales into the automotive market and sales into the IoT market both rose by 83%, to $253 million and $1.4 billion, respectively, The IoT revenue was $100 million higher than Qualcomm had forecast. On the IoT front, Qualcomm said sales benefitted from “demand across consumer, edge networking and industrial platforms,” including, on the consumer side, emerging products such as XR, meaning, “extended reality,” including VR, and consumer wearables. In addition, the buildout of edge networking, including mobile broadband contributed, said Qualcomm, including “Continued momentum driven by the enterprise transformation of the home and the second wave of enterprise demand driven by return to the workplace” and “a rapid adoption of Wi-Fi 6 and increased demand for both 4G and 5G mobile broadband devices.” Industrial uses of IoT, via 5G, is just getting underway, the company said. For the current quarter, the company sees revenue of $8.4 billion to $9.2 billion, and EPS in a range of $2.15 to $2.53. That compares to consensus for $8.46 billion and $2.03 profit per share.That includes $7 billion to $7.5 billion of QCT chip sales.  

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When I started using computers, my computer was an IBM 360 mainframe, and I worked with it using a 3270 terminal. I was very lucky. My alternative was to do all my work with 80-column IBM Hollerith-style punch cards. Then, CP/ M, Apple, and IBM PCs starting in the late 70s and early 80s, changed everything. Computing power moved from distant DEC PDP-11 and VAX mini-computers IBM Big Iron to your desktop.  Forty years later, your IT work is moving more. This time, it’s moving from your PC to cloud-based Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offerings such as Windows 365 and Chrome OS.

I know some of you hate this idea. Too bad. With Microsoft and Google both backing their own distinct takes on DaaS, tomorrow’s desktop will be living mostly on the cloud and not on top of your desk. That said, the idea never really went away. After company, such as Sun and Oracle with the Sun Ray, company after company tried to keep remote desktops alive while  Lantronix, Aten, and Raritan are all still producing keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) over IP that enables you to run multiple remote machines from your desktop. Other approaches, such as thin-client computing, which runs off a central server’s resources, still live on. For example, Dell will still happily sell you Wyse Thin Client hardware. Heck, you can still even buy dumb terminals, such as the ADM-3A, Televideo 922, and my beloved DEC VT-102, if you look for one hard enough. Why? Because much as you may love your PC, many managers still love the idea of central control. Rather than trust you with a $1000 PC on your desk, which at any moment you may infect with malware or waste your day on playing Fortnite, they’d rather you spent your time securely working on your spreadsheet. You know, if we’re honest, they have a point. And so it is that from terminals to Windows 365, the DaaS lives on. Now, let’s take a closer look at how this has, is now, and will play on in the future.YesterdayBack when I sunk my teeth into computing, dumb terminals were all we had. And, compared to flipping switches and feeding cards into an IBM 1442 card reader and hole punch, they were much better. Even my TI-Silent 700, a dumb terminal that used a built-in dot matrix printer and heat-sensitive paper for its “interface”, was an improvement over cards. Today dumb terminals live in businesses and agencies that will never, ever pay their technical debt. The IRS, for example, still uses, when I last checked, some dumb terminals for its antique COBOL programs running on equally old IBM mainframes. 

Good news, though! The IRS hopes to have modernized its systems by 2026. And, you wonder why your tax refunds are late! But, except for dinosaurs like the IRS, we’re never going back to dumb terminals.With the rise of fat graphical desktop operating systems such as Windows and OS/2, you might have thought that remote computing would have shrunk to almost nothing. You’d be wrong.As early as 1989, former IBM operating system guru Ed Iacobucci decided it would be possible even with networks limited to 10Mbps to run Windows remotely. So he founded Citrix to see if he could make this idea pay. He did.Rather than fight with Microsoft, Iacobucci partnered with the guys from Redmond to make sure its remote desktop take on MS-DOS and Windows would work. And, he also wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be overwhelmed by Microsoft in a legal battle. It worked. In 1992, Iacobucci persuaded Microsoft to license Citrix technology for Windows NT Server 4.0. This led to Microsoft’s first remote desktop product: Windows Terminal Server Edition.Unlike many companies, which tried to partner with Microsoft, Citrix was and still is successful. Today, with products such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and Citrix Managed Desktops, Citrix is still profiting from its approach to remote Windows desktops to the tune of several billion dollars a year.While Citrix was winning by partnering with Microsoft, Oracle took a very different approach, thin-client computing. This would fail for Oracle, but the concept of thin-client computing lives on. In 1993, Tim Negris, then Oracle’s VP of Server Marketing, and Larry Ellison, Oracle’s God-King CEO, came up with the term “thin client” to described dedicated terminals with more local smarts than a dumb terminal, but which still relied on a server for their real computing power. Such systems, which were also called network computers. Thin clients still live on in call centers, single-task worker offices, and highly security-conscious businesses. Companies including IGEL, ClearCube, and Teradici still offer thin-client systems to niche and vertical businesses. Oracle finally gave up on thin-client hardware. They found there simply wasn’t a big enough market for terminals, which did nothing but talk to Oracle DBMSs. Traces of this Oracle initiative lives on in Oracle’s Instant Client software line.  TodayAs first local area networks and then Internet speeds grew faster, interest developed in a variety of other remote desktop approaches. Instead of running programs on a server, these offered a hybrid approach of server and client-based computing resources. These remote desktop programs enable you to see and control a network-connected PC as if you were sitting in front of it. While remote desktop software has specialized uses, such as real-time collaborative work, technical support, and demonstrations, you can also use them to use remote software on your local PC. Remote desktops are both specialized programs for running desktops remotely and protocols and built-in operating system functionality for the same purpose. For the former, there are such programs as TeamViewer, Splashtop, and VNC Connect. There are also specialized remote desktop programs. These include GoToAssist, LogMeIn Rescue, and FixMe.IT. As their names suggest, they’re all about technical support. Then, there are the operating systems, such as Windows with the often renamed  Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection and Linux with a variety of programs. The Linux remote desktop programs include Remmina, TigerVNC, and Vinagre. Windows uses its proprietary Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to run virtual Windows sessions. While RDP-based programs only work on Windows, RDP clients enable you to run remote Windows sessions from almost any operating system. RDP is the descendent of Citrix and Microsoft’s Terminal Server. Today, Citrix supports both RDP and its own more network-efficient protocol, HDX. Citrix’s current family of applications, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, all use HDX. As for Linux, Unix, and macOS remote desktops, they almost all use the open-source Virtual Network Computing (VNC) protocol and its related programs. This is a graphical desktop sharing system. It uses the Remote Frame Buffer (RFB) protocol to transfer the desktop from a server to a PC or thin-client computer. So, what’s the difference between these two main approaches? Well, let’s start with what they have in common:Both enable you to access computers remotely.   Both require client-side and server-side software to work. And with both, the server must be configured to facilitate access and to deal with credentials. Both rely on peer-to-peer communication. Both support security protocols and provide user administration tools.But then they separate their courses.  Besides the obvious, RDP is proprietary, and VNC is open-source; their differences include:You and other users are logged into the server with RDP, whether it’s a Windows 10 PC, Windows Server 2019 server, or an Azure operating system instance. VNC, on the other hand, captures the desktop rendered on a remote desktop. The VNC client, or viewer, allows you to share the VNC server’s virtual desktop screen, mouse, and keyboard. In short,  VNC is a screen-sharing tool.RDP typically is faster, while VNC is more secure. Since both performance and security vary depending on your configuration, this is only a rough rule of thumb. Today/TomorrowAll the approaches above have several core problems. The first is they’re all bandwidth hungry. Users eternally complain about how much slower their remote desktops are than their local PCs. The second is that while the client-side can get so thin that there’s such a thing as zero-client desktops where there’s no local storage at all, it still requires specialized software or firmware to make it work. It may look like when, for example, you use Windows 10 Remote Desktop Connection to help a buddy fix his Windows 10 PC that there’s nothing to it; there’s actually a lot going on under the hood to make this work. 

Finally, remote desktops don’t tend to scale well. For example, when you use an RDP or VNC approach, you often run a virtual machine (VM) for every remote desktop instance. These eat up server resources, whether your servers are physical or cloud-based like an elephant does peanuts.The keyword here is “cloud.” Clouds are all about automating, adding and removing compute, storage, and network services to meet your workload demands. So, just over a decade ago, Google reasoned that since it already had multiple popular regular business Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings such as Google Docs and Gmail, why not create a Linux-based thin operating system, Chrome OS, to access them? So, it was that Chromebooks were born.But, there was another aspect to the birth of Chromebooks. Google also worked out that the web browser itself was enough of an interface that there was no need for a specialized remote desktop client. The browser itself, Chrome, was more than enough. Thus, Chromebooks have been slowly but at an ever-increasing pace, becoming a major “desktop” player. Sure, traditional Windows continues to rule the desktop, but have you looked at its numbers lately? In 2021’s first quarter, Windows dropped to 75% of the global PC market from more than 80% in 2020, by IDC’s count. Windows hasn’t had such a small share of the desktop market since the 1990s. On the other hand, Chromebook shipments soared by 276% year-over-year from 2020 to 2021. True, its 1st quarter 2021’s 12 million unit sales are still way behind Windows laptop and PC sales of 84 million units for the same quarter; it’s not insignificant either.True, the COVID-19 pandemic which forced schools to use Chromebooks relying on Chromebooks, had a major effect in making Chromebooks popular. But, while the Coronavirus may finally fade into the background, the change to a work-from-home and hybrid work business world isn’t going to go away. Chromebooks, which tend to be cheaper than their Windows counterparts, are proving very attractive to business users. They also have the advantage that if your Chromebook gets run over by a truck, you only need to buy a new one, and you’re back in business again without a word of lost work. Finally, since they’re built for security thanks to their built-in sandboxing, Chromebooks are also attractive to CISOs. They’re also easy to manage remotely. In short, Chromebooks continue to grow in both the education and business world. Will they challenge Windows 10 and 11? Not anytime soon, but like Macs, they’ll grow into a substantial share of the overall “desktop” market.TomorrowI have seen the future of the desktop, and its name is Windows 365. With apologies to Jon Landau and Bruce Springsteen.  This Microsoft DaaS move has been coming for years. Yes, Windows has had remote and virtual desktops for even longer, but this is different. 

With Windows 365, you’ll be able to stream all your personalized applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across any device. And it means any, including Chromebooks, Macs, Linux PCs, Android devices, and even iPads.  No matter what you’re running, you’ll get the same Windows experience. Well. Maybe. Microsoft also says Windows 365 will run better when hosted on a Windows system. What exactly will that mean? Stay tuned, and we’ll find out. It also means, said Wangui McKelvey, Microsoft 365’s General Manager, “You can pick up right where you left off because the state of your Cloud PC remains the same, even when you switch devices.”Microsoft claims, of course, that this last feature is brand new. It’s not. You’ve been able to do that with Chrome OS since day one. But, it’s a major shift for Windows. It also shows that Microsoft is taking the threat of Chrome OS seriously and that the people from Redmond also believe that the future belongs to hybrid work. This is a killer feature when your staffers may be working from their kid’s Chromebook over the weekend, their Mac when they’re at the office on Monday through Wednesday, and their corporate Windows laptop when they’re on the road for a business trip.What’s different about Windows 365 from what has gone before is that it vastly simplifies the virtualisation process while it’s built on Azure Virtual Desktop. It will handle all the setup details for you. In other words, it’s going to act more like how you expect a cloud service to act. You ask for more resources or set it up, so more resources are made available automatically,  without worrying about the details.For instance, thanks to a Twitter screenshot, we know that a small business with up to 300 users can pay $31 per user per month for a 2vCPU, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage Windows 365 instance. This SKU also comes with Office apps, Outlook and OneDrive; Microsoft Teams; Visual Studio, Power BI, and Dynamics 365. The administrators can also scale the processing power as needed. Say it turns out that the programmer using Visual Studio needs more vCPUs; you can easily give them those extra CPU horses.  It also has tools to monitor the overall performance to make sure your users are getting the best experience.  As Microsoft puts it, “you can also upgrade them at the touch of a button, which is immediately applied without missing a beat. Our new Watchdog Service also continually runs diagnostics to help to keep connections up and running at all times. If a diagnostic check fails, we’ll alert you and even give suggestions for how to correct the issue.”All of this is much easier than the old-school ways of setting up virtual desktops and servers, with, of course, the exception of Chrome OS. Will this next generation of remote desktops put an end to PCs? No, there will be niches, such as gaming, video editing, and programming, where you’ll need all the power you can get on a local PC. But, just as many users have abandoned home PCs for their smartphones, many businesses will leave traditional PCs behind for their office workers. And, so we will have come full circle. We started with mainframes, and dumb terminals, then moved to PCs, and now, thanks to the combination of the cloud and the web, we’re heading back to a centralized managed computing paradigm. I, for one, am going to be very interested in seeing how this all works out. Brace yourselves people, I may still not have a clear idea how this will all work out, but I know for certain that major change is coming to the office desktop. Related Stories:

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Samsung Networks vice president and head of advanced system design lab Jeongho Park 
Image: Samsung
A Samsung executive has claimed the role of virtualised RAN (vRAN) technology in wireless networks will continue to grow even when telcos move onto 6G and beyond. The claim comes days after Verizon and Samsung announced the completion of a fully virtualised 5G data session over C-band spectrum, from 4GHz to 8GHz. Samsung is currently the network equipment provider for the US telcos’ 5G network deployment, having signed a $6.6 billion supply contract last year.”Samsung has been partners with Verizon for a long time,” Samsung Networks vice president and head of advanced system design lab Jeongho Park told ZDNet.”Some years ago, when vRAN was just beginning to gain traction, Verizon expressed their desire to shift to vRAN. When we received this request, we were already preparing to launch vRAN. We began making preparations to launch a virtualised distributed unit around 2018, having already developed a virtualised central unit prior to that for a full vRAN solution.” Samsung launched its first “fully” virtualised 5G RAN last year, which includes a virtualised distributed unit for its virtualised central unit that went into service a year prior in 2019. “vRAN requires technology, optimisation, and commercialisation experience. We believe Samsung is the only vendor that meets these three requirements, putting us ahead against other companies by 1.5 years in this space,” the Samsung lab head claimed.Samsung has been one of the more aggressive companies in rolling out vRAN solutions among the major 5G network equipment vendors. Networking powerhouse Ericsson, which calls its vRAN solution Cloud RAN, currently has plans to roll out the first stages of the service in the fourth quarter this year. Nokia, meanwhile, made its full vRAN solution commercially available last year and is trialling the technology with US telco AT&T. The company is also planning to roll out the solution with C-band support later this year. 

Huawei, which is still the world’s largest 5G network equipment vendor despite US sanctions, has been the least active in promoting the technology. This is likely due to most carriers outside of China linking it with Open RAN, a term used loosely by different organisations and a concept that the Chinese giant has not been willing to embrace so far.’Flexibility is a big advantage of vRAN’The way vRAN operates is that it delivers network functions as software instead of hardware. Instead of using proprietary hardware-based baseband units and central units, which is what traditional RAN does, vRAN has virtualised distributed units and virtualised central units — software running on commercial off-the-shelf (COST) hardware. The core network also runs on software.  Through this software, vRAN offers the same network functions as its fully-hardware counterparts in traditional RAN, but virtually. Samsung has touted that this “full” vRAN solution, which means it offers the distributed unit, the central unit, and the core in software allows it to provide flexibility.”Before vRAN, mobile network operators received dedicated hardware from a specific vendor. In effect, operators would feel, in a way, dependent on the specific vendor. But in vRAN, operators can now use hardware from company A and software from company B as they wish like Legos. This flexibility for operators is the big advantage of vRAN,” the Samsung lab head said. According to Park, this gives operators two benefits: They can pool their network resources efficiently, which in turn, leads to lower costs.”In traditional RAN, a dedicated processor is used in the baseband unit to process the signals. But this processing power isn’t needed 24 hours a day. Some coverage areas may not need the full processing power. Processors installed on population-dense areas like Gangnam are usually made to handle the expected data traffic. But sometimes, one population-dense area may have intense data traffic while another similar area has almost no traffic. So this shows that you don’t need maximum specs for every processor. “In vRAN, software replaces the function of the processors. This software can determine when and where it wants to use its resources. We also offer an orchestrator solution that manages all the virtualised distributed units, which was previously done individually. This leads to an overall decrease in cost of ownership and operation cost,” he said. Samsung was a major part of South Korea’s 5G rollout in 2019 and has been attempting to emulate it outside of South Korea. Samsung and SK Telecom in 2019 developed a 5G SA switchboard prototype with a modular design where quantum security or high-pass filter modules could be added. 
Image: SK Telecom
A more ‘transparent’ network with O-RANThe purpose of vRAN, which is to give mobile operators more flexibility in choosing its vendors and managing networks, is also tied with O-RAN, Park claimed. O-RAN is a concept pushed forward by the telco industry and aimed at creating a multi-supplier RAN solution using hardware and software from different vendors that all use a common open interface. An O-RAN Alliance was formed by operators and equipment vendors in 2018 to develop this concept. The alliance sets the common specifications and standards for the concept. Chinese telcos and network equipment vendor ZTE are members, but Huawei is noticeably not part of the alliance.”Samsung’s vRAN solutions use open interface and O-RAN defined protocols. These are basically white boxes that guarantee transparency between blocks. Previously, in traditional RAN, when one specific vendor would provide its own software and hardware solution, the operator could not see what was going on inside them as the vendor would use its own protocol.”Operators believe this will increase their network security. They can now see the messages, that is the protocol, passing between the solutions provided by various vendors. So we believe vRAN’s use of O-RAN standards makes it quite attractive for operators,” the Samsung lab head said.Telcos around the world have so far shown various degrees of enthusiasm in adopting vRAN. Verizon and Rakuten Mobile in Japan have been some of the more vocal telcos that support the technology. Vodafone UK is also planning to deploy vRAN. Other telcos, meanwhile, have been more conservative in their attitude towards the technology. “Some operators believe vRAN is the right direction, while others are yet to adopt it. For now, vRAN is a very new and progressive space. I think it’s better to think of vRAN as one option among many that operators have for their network deployment, and Samsung has developed and is offering that option first compared to other companies,” Park said.At the same, the Samsung lab head said the company does expect more operators around the world to adopt vRAN.”There are operators in Asia that are showing interest in vRAN now. We feel that the overall attitude towards vRAN has turned positive over the past year. We believe that vRAN’s portion in the market will be much bigger five years down the road than it is now,” he said.vRAN present on x86, future could be GPUIt is also important to note that the global 5G network market is just beginning. In the US, though mmWave spectrum support has been deployed, telcos like Verizon are just now grouping it with C-band spectrum to expand coverage. In South Korea, telcos are yet to even deploy mmWave services. The increase in base stations and coverage will require  more computing power from networks going forward.Samsung’s vRAN solutions use x86 CPU on the COST servers, sometimes with accelerators. The Samsung lab head said while the processing needs would indeed increase for ultra-high spectrum from the wider bandwidth going forward, x86 CPU would be sufficient to handle this.”Bandwidth becomes wider and more complex as we move from C-band to mmWave. Networks will indeed need more computing power. But at Samsung, we believe CPU products launching up to next year can handle multiple times the workload of what they handle right now,””Many companies, including Samsung, are also considering applying GPU. But for now, our commercialization roadmap is drawn based on CPU. We are still looking at the pros and cons of GPU,” the Samsung lab head said.The evolution of cloud will also inevitably be tied with vRAN, Park noted. “Cloud groups processes into one place and is flexible. Its purpose corresponds with that of vRAN. We think in the future, there will be companies that offer vRAN in cloud form,” he added.RELATED COVERAGE More

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The veil on the Telstra monolith has been slightly lifted, with Telstra InfraCo announcing on Wednesday it would create a pair of carrier-neutral data centres in Sydney and Melbourne. While initially only available through Telstra Wholesale, the company said the centres would provide “greater flexibility for customers working with other carriers for their connectivity”. Depending on uptake of the offering, InfraCo could roll it out to another seven data centres, it added.”InfraCo data centres provide highly secure, reliable, and flexible environments for network operators and service providers, such as global carriers, internet service providers and over the top providers, to connect out to their business locations, facilities and other data centre operators,” said Telstra’s InfraCo Exchanges & Infrastructure executive Rachel Johnson-Kelly. “These Data Centres provide 100% power availability targets, which are backed by service levels and rebates. They use dual grid feeds with state-of-the-art equipment and support for high power densities, allowing customers to scale on request, without the need to re-configure powering requirements to deliver big data analytic services and peak workloads.” The company also said InfraCo would own or have renewable energy generation contracts equal to all the energy use used in its entire operations. Last year, Telstra as a whole was certified as carbon neutral, saying at the time it was difficult to purchase carbon offsets from local projects. See also: Blaming China is handy when trying to keep telco infrastructure away from Beijing

In November, Telstra announced it would be restructuring into fixed, tower, and service entities. The service entity would gain the bulk of Telstra, owning its retail business, active electronics and radio access network, spectrum, as well as offering services and products to customers. However, the existing Telstra corporate body and its debt would sit with InfraCo Fixed. It later said it would create an arm to hold its international assets. Telstra brought forward a AU$2.8 billion sale of part of its InfraCo Towers business last month after being approached by a consortium including the Future Fund, Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation, and Sunsuper. Once the deal is closed, which is expected to happen in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, InfraCo Towers will have no debt and a 15-year deal with extension options for Telstra to use its infrastructure. Earlier in the year, InfraCo opened up its dark fibre network, offering 250 pre-defined paths across six state capitals that connected to 68 metro data centres, 78 NBN points of interconnect, and two cable landing stations. The company recently confirmed it was approached by the Australian government to purchase Digicel Pacific, with the government set to stump up “significant funding” for any transaction. Related Coverage More