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On Thursday Mark Zuckerberg revealed his plans regarding AI to Meta employees during an all-hands meeting. An aggressive push forwards is based, he says, on “really incredible breakthroughs – qualitative breakthroughs – on generative AI” and in a statement to news platform Axios revealed that this gave the opportunity to “take that technology, push it forward, and build it into every single one of our products,”

In reality, this means that generative AI text, image and video generators will be integrated into existing products including Facebook and Instagram, as well as being included in new products such as the inhouse Metamate – a productivity assistant that takes information from internal company systems to answer queries and perform tasks.

For the consumer this could mean AI tools such as ChatGPT-style chatbots for Messenger and WhatsApp and an Instagram feature that could use text prompts to modify user photos.

As recently as last month, head of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan had admitted that despite high-profile investments in AI research Meta had “significant gap in our tooling, workflows and processes when it comes to developing for AI.” And went on to say that supporting AI needed Meta to “fundamentally shift our physical infrastructure design, our software systems, and our approach to providing a stable platform”.

According to The Verge, during the meeting, Zuckerberg also commented on his vision for headsets. He explained that he didn’t envisage a person sitting on a couch by themself, as per Apple demos, but instead saw a more social vision for the metaverse and presence that was “about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer”.

How can telco companies use the metaverse? Join David Palmer – Vodafone Business, Elmar Arunov – Deutsche Telekom, Cristina Bueti – International Telecommunication Union and Masarra Mohamed – IDC at this years Total Telecom Congress. FIND OUT MORE

VIEWPOINT

The Chinese service providers have accelerated their journey towards 5.5G. A case in point is the recent launch of the Dual 10 Gigabit City project by China Mobile Hangzhou and Huawei on the occasion of the 55th World Telecommunications Day. The project is designed to use 5G-Advanced or 5.5G technology to build the next-generation infrastructure to boost Hangzhou’s digital economy.

“From the mobile Internet capital to a city of innovation and vitality, Hangzhou has always been a pioneer and stayed ahead of the pack in digital and intelligent development. It was the first city in China to deploy 4G and 5G, the first to have both 5G and F5G, and the first to deploy ubiquitous gigabit networks. Today, we are launching the campaign themed ‘building a dual 10 gigabit city to enjoy smart Asian Games’. This is another journey we just started to make Hangzhou a better place in the new era with our dedicated efforts,” said Wang Wensheng, General Manager of China Mobile Hangzhou, at the launch of the Dual 10 Gigabit City project.

Turning The Vision of Dual 10 Gigabit City Into Reality

As part of this prestigious project, China Mobile Hangzhou will work with industry partners, like Huawei, to fast-track industry application incubation and large-scale commercial use. Furthermore, China Mobile Hangzhou and its partners will promote the evolution toward glasses-free 3D. Besides, they will create Asian Games application benchmarks for the electric power and logistics industries, enabling intelligent connectivity of everything. Lastly, China Mobile Hangzhou will advance the development of the IoV industry by building a demo route of integrated communications and sensing for the Asian Games.

The 5.5G technology is the next stage in the 5G development and significantly improves its capabilities. It improves 5G network capabilities by 10 times and enables 10 Gbit/s rates, deterministic experience, all-scenario IoT, and integrated sensing and communications. Chinese service providers have taken the lead in developing the 5.5G ecosystem.

Hangzhou was the first city in China to achieve ubiquitous 5G coverage and today, 5G traffic accounts for over 65% of all mobile traffic, ranking first in China. China Mobile Hangzhou continues to lead in new 5G development models in terms of networks, operations, applications, technologies, and ecosystem. Hangzhou has ensured the complete coverage of F5G-enabled gigabit optical access city-wide and large-scale OXC applications. In addition, Hangzhou has built a private optical transmission network (OTN) for Asian Games broadcast and video streaming.

On the other hand, China Mobile Zhejiang recently completed the verification of four key technologies of 5.5G: ultra-large uplink, real-time broadband interaction, integrated sensing and communications, and passive IoT, in Hangzhou in 2022.

Leveraging Winning Partnerships to Realize 5.5G Vision

Huawei is helping China Mobile Hangzhou accomplish its vision of building a Dual 10 gigabit city. China Mobile Hangzhou and Huawei successfully completed the first 5.5G to reach a peak rate of over 10Gbps, using 5G-Advanced ultra-large antenna arrays and 8-stream MIMO, in March earlier this year. The service provider followed this by working with Huawei and NARI Group to complete the world’s first 5G-enabled end-to-end commercial RedCap pilot for the power sector at State Grid Hangzhou Power Supply Company.

In addition, China Mobile Hangzhou, together with Huawei and other industry partners, showcased on-demand and live-streaming end-to-end glasses-free 3D applications for a wide range of glasses-free 3D devices, such as mobile phones, notebooks, and tablets. This is a crucial application and will allow the viewers to enjoy the upcoming Asian Games in the city of Hangzhou. The initiative also helped China Mobile Hangzhou emerge as the first service provider in the industry to build the entire glasses-free 3D application value chain across content, platforms, networks, and devices.

Another significant step is the completion of the world’s first 5G-Advanced premium demo line from the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Expo Center to the Asian Games Village in May 2023. Executed by China Mobile Hangzhou and Huawei, the line recorded a peak rate of 10 Gbit/s and an average rate of 5 Gbps on May 15.

In addition, China Mobile Hangzhou and Huawei have also tested and verified 50G PON. The test showed that the transmission rate of the 50G PON prototype was more than four times that of the current XG-PON, with the uplink latency down by more than 50%.

“Huawei and China Mobile Hangzhou will work with other industry partners to integrate 5G-Advanced and F5G-Advanced in these business scenarios. We are committed to making Hangzhou a dual 10 gigabit city to allow people to enjoy smart Asian Games. We will also continue to support China Mobile Hangzhou in improving its communications network capabilities and building next-generation infrastructure in order to facilitate the high-quality development of the digital economy,” said Chen Chuanfei, Chief Strategy Officer of Huawei Wireless Network Product Line at the launch of Dual 10 Gigabit Smart City.

China Mobile Shanghai Initiates Transition From Dual Gigabit to Double 10GbE

China Mobile Hangzhou is not the only service provider to advance towards 5.5G. China Mobile Shanghai and Huawei jointly released the first 5G-A intelligent 10GbE city, to enable Shanghai to move from Dual Gigabit to Double 10GbE era.

China Mobile Shanghai is a pioneer and started building dual gigabit networks way back in 2018, enabling it to take the lead in terms of the number of 5G base stations, coverage rate and gigabit broadband penetration rate. In addition, China Mobile Shanghai has accelerated the evolution from 5G to 5G-Advanced by opening the country’s first 160M 2.6GHz network in the main urban area with plans to expand the network in the entire city soon.

Wrapping Up

China Mobile Hangzhou and China Mobile Shanghai have set the benchmark of leveraging 5.5G technology to create relevant use cases that improve people’s lives. As the 5G ecosystem continues to grow, the service providers should take a cue from the Chinese telcos and fast-track the adoption of 5.5G so they can provide new and innovative use cases to their customers while growing their revenue.

More significant industry influence and exploration in 5.5G will be showcased by Telcos during the upcoming Mobile World Congress at Shanghai from June 28-30, 2023 at Shanghai New International Expo Center.

British registered OneWeb, which is part-owned by the UK government, and Eutelsat have demonstrated how fast the company’s new global constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based broadband satellites can operate when connected to one of Kymeta’s Hawk u8 user terminals, mounted on a 4×4 Land Rover Discovery. The company’s Proof of Concept (PoC) test, […]

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Reports suggest that private equity firm KKR could slightly increase its bid for TIM’s broadband network, while the CDP is unlikely to budge from its original offer

This week marks a major turning point Italy’s incumbent operator TIM, which will soon need to decide whether to move forward with the sale of its fibre network or else rethink its strategy.

At the start of 2022, TIM’s CEO Pietro Labriola outlined a new strategic plan to help the operator cut its roughly €30 billion in debt. Alongside various job cuts and other streamlining efforts, the plan included spinning off the company’s infrastructure into a separate NetCo to entice investment.

Interest in the would-be unit was immediate. US investment firm KKR – already a major stakeholder in the company’s ‘last mile’ network unit FiberCop – quickly presented TIM with a bid for the unit for an undisclosed sum. Shortly after, the state lender the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), one of TIM’s major investors, presented a counterbid in partnership with Macquarie Asset Management, prompting TIM to launch a formal auction for the NetCo.

KKR quickly increased its bid to €21 billion, eclipsing the CDP’s bid of €19.3 billion. Subsequent reports last month suggesting that the CDP would be unwilling to increase its own bid any further and could withdraw from the process altogether.

Now, the final deadline for bids for the unit is tomorrow, with insiders suggesting that the CDP’s bid remains broadly unchanged, while KKR may slightly increase.

But despite this bidding improvement, TIM is unlikely to be overjoyed at the prospect of a sale at this price. The operator’s key stakeholder Vivendi has strongly opposed the sale of the network unit under the current conditions, repeatedly suggesting that the company’s assets are being undervalued by up to €10 billion.

According to reports, TIM’s board is divided over whether to move forward with an offer or reject the bids in favour of re-evaluating their options.

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News

América Móvil’s rivals AT&T and Movistar have already said they will not participate in the auction if spectrum prices are not revised

According to local media reports, América Móvil’s Mexican subsidiary Telcel has confirmed its interest in bidding for 5G spectrum in Mexico’s upcoming spectrum auction.

“We already have 5G spectrum and we will always be evaluating the tenders called by the regulator,” América Móvil’s Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs Alejandro Cantu told El Economista.

If the company does want to take part in the auction, it could do so uncontested, with rivals AT&T and Movistar having both said that the prices set by the regulator are too high for them to participate.

The Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) first announced its intentions for its latest auction back in February 2022, saying that the tender process had been designed “to assign the greatest amount of spectrum possible and to enable new players in the mobile market to access this resource”.

The auction aims to allocate 70MHz of spectrum in the 600MHz band, a 50MHz block in the 3.5GHz band, and 90MHz in 1.5 GHz ‘L-band’. Additional spectrum in the 800MHz, 850MHz, 1.9GHz, 2.1GHz, and 2.5GHz bands could also be made available, according to the regulator.

However, the auction’s initial proposal was immediately lambasted by the local telcos, who argued that spectrum usage charges were too high to make purchasing the spectrum economically viable.

According to the IFT themselves, spectrum usage charges can be up to 186% higher in Mexico than the international average.

As a result of these high prices, both AT&T and Movistar – despite their scale and the depth of their pockets – have said that they will not take place in the upcoming auction.

The high prices also present a significant barrier to entry for new market players, despite this being the IFT’s stated goal.

An official date for the upcoming spectrum auction has yet to be announced, so operators will be hopeful that the regulator will lower the prices to make the auction more appealing.

That Telcel would be the only player willing to potentially take part in the spectrum tender process should not come as much of a surprise. The operator dominates the Mexican mobile market, with over 80 million subscribers and a market share approaching 70%.

The operator launched commercial 5G services in 18 major cities in February last year and has been expanding coverage ever since. These current services, however, make use of the company’s spectrum in the 2.5GHz band, which was previously used to deliver 4G LTE services.

That said, Telcel does already have 5G spectrum in the form of 100MHz in the 3.5GHz band, half of which it purchased from Axtel in 2020, while the other was transferred from América Móvil’s subsidiary Telmex the same year. Bolstering these holdings with additional spectrum should allow for broader 5G deployment and higher speeds for customers.

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Also in the news:
More than two-thirds of U.S. commercial sites have no optical fibre access
Viasat completes Inmarsat merger deal
EXATEL talks expansion into subsea connectivity sector

News

Reports suggest the European Commission is unsatisfied by the efforts being made by some countries to secure their 5G networks against perceived high-risk vendors

According to a report from the Financial Times, the EU could be considering a bloc-wide ban on network equipment vendors that are deemed to present a security threat, such as Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

Anonymous sources suggest that the European Commission is deeply concerned that some members states have taken too little action with regards to securing their 5G networks; in particular, some states are failing to follow the security guidelines published by the Commission and unanimously agreed by the bloc back in 2020.

EU Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton reportedly revealed last week that only a third of EU countries had moved to ban Huawei from critical parts of their 5G networks, a total he deemed “too few” and thereby a risk to the bloc’s collective security.

This news comes just weeks before the Commission is expected to formally report on member states’ implementation of security recommendations, doing so for the first time since July 2020.

The furore over Huawei and 5G network security dates back to 2019, when the US began to implement bans on the company’s technology over perceived threats to national security.

The US government claimed that Huawei had direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party and their 5G network technology could allow the company to spy on US citizens.

To this day, Huawei maintains that these fears are unfounded, noting that they have consistently followed global security standards and operate independently of the Chinese government.

Nonetheless, in 2020 the US undertook a major foreign policy drive to see Huawei equipment similarly banned from its allies’ 5G networks, both in Europe and the rest of the world. Over the following year, these efforts bore fruit, with Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the UK all implementing bans on Huawei technology and mandating the removal of the company’s equipment from their networks over the coming decade.

Elsewhere in Europe, however, the response was more mixed. While most countries implemented additional security measures of some description – typically in line with the EU’s security toolbox – the severity of these measures differed greatly from country to country. France, for example, issued what was known as the ‘5G law’ in August 2019, requiring the French National Cybersecurity Agency to approve additional 5G network equipment deployments; this practice, this broadly equates to a de facto ban on Huawei equipment for much of the country.

Germany, by contrast, has been reticent to make a direct decision on Huawei, with various reviews delaying the decision-making process to this day. As a result, the Germany operators are now deeply reliant on Huawei for their 5G network equipment, with reports suggesting that 59% of the country’s RAN equipment is provided by the Chinese vendor.

In many countries, the debate over Huawei’s role in their 5G networks remains ongoing. In recent weeks, Portugal – initially one of Huawei’s staunchest defenders in the EU – has announced a new security assessment that could see the implementation a national ban on Huawei technology. Elsewhere, Malaysia is considering whether to allow Huawei to help construct its government-run 5G network, with both the EU and US lobbying against the company’s inclusion.

It should come as no surprise, then, that a more unified approach for the EU would be appealing to the European Commission. It should be noted, however, that actually implementing an EU-wide ban would be no small feat. Such a decision would require the legal approval of the European Parliament and the various member states – approvals that would be very difficult to secure before the expiration of the current European Commission’s term in office in 2024.

Want to keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news from around the world? Click here to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter

Also in the news:
More than two-thirds of U.S. commercial sites have no optical fibre access
Viasat completes Inmarsat merger deal
EXATEL talks expansion into subsea connectivity sector

Reports indicated that the UK broadband and mobile giant, BT Group, will freeze the base pay of its CEO, Philip Jansen, at £1.1m – to be renewed on a rolling basis – until he leaves the company. Mr Jansen’s annual salary was fixed for 5 years when he joined, but this agreement was due to […]

Mobile operator EE (BT) has announced that they’ve deployed another 411 small cells (tiny base stations) on UK street furniture and buildings in order to boost the coverage and speed of their 4G based mobile broadband network (total of 611), which they claim allows customers to “take advantage of download speeds of up to 300Mbps.” […]

Abingdon-based alternative network and UK ISP Gigaclear, which has built a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 380,000 premises in rural areas, has today secured fresh equity investment from Equitix – worth “up to” £420m – and raised their target to cover “over” 1 million premises by 2027. Until today, the Infracapital-backed ISP […]

O2 (VMO2) has today confirmed that they will either build or upgrade a total of 30 masts in Jamie Stone MP’s constituency – Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross – over the “next few months“, which forms part of the £1bn industry-led Shared Rural Network (SRN) project to help boost 4G (mobile broadband) coverage. The SRN […]