Tag: network transformation

Digis Squared Open RAN projects and capabilities

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Digis Squared Open RAN projects and capabilities  |  Mohamed Hamdy shares details of Digis Squared’s Open RAN capabilities and describes the types of projects the team are currently working on.

This is the second in a series of blogs focussing on Open RAN, where Mohamed Hamdy, Chief Commercial Officer at Digis Squared, and AbdelRahman Fady, CTO, share their insights.

“The Digis Squared team believe that 100% of mobile operators and CSPs will move to Open RAN models sooner or later. Each MNO will deploy Open RAN according to their strategy, either in rural areas or in urban areas, and that’s why we’re giving strategic and operational focus to this.”

Mohamed Hamdy, CCO at Digis Squared

Digis Squared’s Open RAN expertise, solutions & capabilities

Mohamed, what insights can you share with us on the Open RAN work being undertaken at Digis Squared?

“The Digis Squared team believe that 100% of mobile operators and CSPs will move to Open RAN models sooner or later. Each MNO will deploy Open RAN according to their strategy, either in rural areas or in urban areas, and that’s why we’re giving strategic and operational focus to this.

The Digis Squared team started very early to build their competencies, expertise, tools and portfolio for Open RAN, as well as building a dedicated service portfolio to help MNOs to adapt their network architecture to the Open RAN model. Today, we provide insight-led multi-system and multi-vendor expertise across the entire network lifecycle.”


Digis Squared OpenRAN expertise, solutions and capabilities

“Our work tries to address five key challenges we frequently see when working with clients,

  • Lack of confidence in OpenRAN solutions
  • Sub-optimal performance with a limited vendor feature set
  • Delayed operator & vendor deployment
  • Duplicated operator & vendor interoperability testing for HW & SW
  • Lack of SI expertise for successful deployment

To address these issues we,

  • Provide independent, interoperability and performance benchmarking, for example, by working with EANTC
  • Undertake advanced E2E troubleshooting
  • Deliver extensive system release validation
  • Provide direct access to Open RAN expertise and experience in design, integration and deployment

And thereby deliver,

  • Minimised deployment costs
  • Accelerated time to value
  • Richer vendor feature set through roadmap alignment
  • High performing Open RAN solutions
  • And, successful Open RAN deployments.”

In conversation with Mohamed Hamdy, Digis Squared Chief Commercial Officer.

How can Digis Squared help you with Open RAN?

The Digis Squared team are here to help, and can provide their experience, AI-led tools, and capabilities to help operators and CSPs with all aspects of Open RAN strategy, testing and deployment optimisation.

  • We provide the industry with a range of OpenRAN related services including integration, performance benchmarking and systemisation.
  • Collaborate with operators, vendors, system integrators and research institutes to promote and accelerate OpenRAN ecosystem development, focused on,
    • System Integration
    • Interoperability between vendor components
    • Release validation
    • End to end performance benchmarking
    • Trials and PoCs.
  • Showcase and promote OpenRAN within the industry (TIP, O-RAN, GSMA)
    • Capacity solutions, cost-effective rural coverage, 5G solutions.

This Digis Squared Open RAN blog reveals some of the capabilities we have, and if you or your team would like to discover more about our OpenRAN capability, or other elements of the work we do, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .

Read AbdelRahman Fady’s blog, CTO insights into Open RAN features and vendor flexibility.

Keep up to speed with company updates, product launches and our quarterly newsletter, sign up here.

Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.

Abbreviations

  • CSP Communications Service Provider (ComSP)
  • SI System Integration

Image credit, Digis Squared social media and blog banner image: Charlotte Harrison

5G ◦ Why is it so complex to deploy?

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In conversation with Digis Squared CTO AbdulRahman Fady, we explore some of the complexities and opportunities.

5G is a hot topic, with new handsets coming to market, and networks expanding globally. Abdulrahman Fady, CTO at Digis Squared, has worked in the technology sector for more than 20 years, and in this blog post he shares his views on how the deployment of this latest generation of telecom technologies will bring new problems to solve, and new opportunities to grasp.

So please share with us Abdulrahman, why is 5G so complex to deploy?

“By 2025, 5G networks are likely to cover one-third of the world’s population.”

Source: GSMA [1]

5G rollout, complexity and issues

“Everyone is talking about 5G and how important it is for the ICT industry. Deploying 5G will change and benefit our societies, however, to deliver the real benefits of 5G a lot of challenges need to be addressed, starting with infrastructure and security, and expanding across all spheres into people culture and anthropology, and far from the expertise and competencies of the average ICT engineer.”

“I don’t think this will be an easy journey! It will be a really tough but exciting journey, where people have to learn how to implement adequate automation and AI techniques to make use of the data 5G delivers – it simply won’t be possible to assess the volume of data without AI. Technically, I believe there will be a strong competition between legacy RAN vendors and O-RAN vendors as they compete for market leadership – this will deliver benefits for operators and CSPs, and drive innovation and identification of new efficiencies.”

5G & IoT: “many of its technical capabilities have been designed with Industry 4.0 applications in mind:

  • Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) is vital for real-time communications between machines
  • Greater bandwidth and support for higher device density enables use cases that generate more data traffic and host a greater number of devices or sensors
  • Network slicing allows virtual separation of networks, enhancing security and reliability
  • Mobile Edge Computing allows critical network functionality to be retained at the edge, further enhancing resilience and operational continuity”
Source: GSMA [2]

“In the field of IIoT and C-IoT, I think there will be a lot of new ideas generated as nerds and ICT people get their hands on 5G tech. As these different approaches come together – the nerds exploring what the new tech and new devices can do, and ICT staff searching for solutions to address specific issues – they will bounce ideas of each other, and there will be real energy and dynamism as they race to bring new innovations to market.”

“5G will be a huge opportunity for the big cloud providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft to change the way MNOs work, delivering massive real-time analysis capability, new opportunities for collaborative international teams to work together, system resilience and efficiency.”

“However, it’s not all good news! I think 5G security will be a showstopper in many countries, limiting the deployment of all its functions in some places. These issues will in turn bring great opportunities for third parties and SIs to play a far bigger role in the ICT ecosystem.”

The biggest issue

“But do you want to know the biggest issue I see? The number one challenge limiting 5G spreading swiftly worldwide, and blocking the real benefits of 5G deployments, is the complexity of handsets, the UEs and terminals.”

MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) “MIMO has been used in wireless communications for a long time now — it’s common for both mobile devices and networks to have multiple antennas to enhance connectivity and offer better speeds and user experiences. MIMO algorithms come into play to control how data maps into antennas and where to focus energy in space. Both network and mobile devices need to have tight coordination among each other to make MIMO work.”

Source: Qualcomm [3]

5G uses Massive MIMO and expands on the existing MIMO systems, by adding a much higher number of antennas on the base station – this helps focus energy, which brings massive improvements in throughput and efficiency. As well as all the additional antennas, both the network and mobile devices implement more complex designs to coordinate MIMO operations.

  • 5G utilises different parts of the radio spectrum to deliver performance, capacity and coverage
  • mmWave spectrum: best for dense urban areas and crowded indoor environments. Doesn’t travel very far, so an array of antennas is used for beamforming, which concentrates the radio energy to extend the range.
  • sub-6 GHz spectrum: best for broad 5G coverage and capacity with faster, more uniform data rates both outdoors and indoors for more users, simultaneously.

“5G handsets are super-sophisticated: they need to support Massive MIMO techniques, along with beamforming, sub-6GHZ bands, and mmWave for mobile. Designing all of this to work together is putting real pressure on antenna and RF designs – and then the ultimate challenge, physically fitting all of this into a beautiful handset design!”

“And if that’s not complex enough, we all expect our mobile devices to have incredibly efficient batteries, and yet remain small and lightweight, and deliver performance enhancements across 4G, 3G and GSM. You need very strong modems and processors deployed inside 5G handsets – and all of this in addition to the complexity 5G adds to software, OS and Kernel layers. That’s why it is not an easy job to deliver high-end 5G handsets!”

Opportunity

“There are many challenges, opportunities and battles to come as 5G rollout continues, and it will also create real opportunities and big returns if you have positioned yourself and your company right within the ecosystem.”

In conversation with Abdulrahman Fady, Digis Squared CTO

If you would like to learn more about how the Digis Squared team can help you with 5G strategy, deployment or optimisation, please use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com to arrange an informal chat.

Keep up to speed with company updates, product launches and our quarterly newsletter, sign up here.

Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.

Sources

  1. GSMA 5G deployments to date, this snapshot from 19th October 2020
  2. GSMA 5G for smart manufacturing. Insights on how 5G and IoT can transform industry, 16 April 2020
  3. Qualcomm, How 5G massive MIMO transforms your mobile experiences

Abbreviations

  • C-IoT: Consumer Internet of Things (typically, consumer devices and applications in the consumer electronics space such as smartwatches or smart thermostats)
  • CSP: Communications Service Providers
  • ICT: Information and communications technology
  • IIoT: Industrial Internet of Things (interconnected sensors, instruments, and other devices networked together with computers’ industrial applications, including manufacturing and energy management)
  • Massive MIMO: a set of multiple-input and multiple-output technologies for multipath wireless communication, in which multiple users or terminals, each radioing over one or more antennas, communicate with one another.
  • O-RAN: Open RAN – via standardised radio interfaces and interoperability, hardware and software components from multiple vendors operate over network interfaces that are “open and interoperable”
  • SIs: System Integrators
  • URLLC: Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication

Image credit: Denys Nevozhai

Regulators ◦ Now more than ever, use independent tools and expertise

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Is this the perfect storm of telecoms technical complexity?

As network deployments get more complex, capacity management more difficult to predict, and customer demands rise, how can Telecoms Regulators help deliver the best customer experience?

Globally, 5G deployments are picking up pace, and 2G and 3G networks starting to be retired – engineers at MNOs and CSPs* are knee-deep in complexity, managing technology sunset strategies, IoT connectivity migrations, and adding new layers of 5G components into the patchwork of systems from multiple vendors. This activity brings with it more new operational systems and alarms to integrate (and disentangle), and extra work to try to bring everything together into a cohesive system.

On top of that, the operational teams within MNOs and CSPs have been working hard this year to reconfigure networks to handle shifts in demand, as the pandemic forces huge numbers of people to suddenly work and study from home, and unpredictable demand patterns are addressed as best as possible.

Is this the perfect storm of telecoms technical complexity? How should Telecoms Regulators respond and ensure customer Quality of Experience and Quality of Service are maintained? With so many technical changes occurring in a short space of time, how can technical regulatory staff keep pace with technology, anticipate the future, and ensure their knowledge-base remains unbiased?

Digis Squared has over 50 industry experts with 10 or more years’ multinational mobile operator and vendor experience.

Use our expertise to work alongside your teams and augment their skills and capability,

  • Independent tools for QoE & QoS network benchmarking
  • Band & spectrum strategy consultation
  • Competence development to keep pace with new technologies.

“The Digis Squared team has a depth of experience and knowledge of implementations that you only acquire through years of working on difficult projects and tricky technology deployments. The team bring these insights to all their work, whether that’s with MNOs, CSPs or Regulators.“

Mohamed Hamdy, Digis Squared CCO

Independent tools for QoE & QoS network benchmarking

Regulatory coverage and performance concerns vary by market, but in general fall into 3 distinct areas,

  1. Many telecom network licenses have requirements to achieve specific KPIs: Geographical coverage, data throughput rates, QoS requirements.
  2. Legacy benchmarking solutions are often expensive, no longer supported by the vendor, and have a long and slow process to deliver the final report.
  3. When the report is eventually available, it is often a readout of dry statistics, with no clear recommendations on improvements. And with multiple solutions from multiple vendors implemented across the MNOs and CSPs in your territory, there is no standard process to rank and compare network operators.

Since the inception of Digis Squared the leadership team decided to invest and develop its own in-house, vendor-agnostic, multi-technology and scalable automated solutions, to ensure its staff and clients have access to vendor-independent assessment and testing of networks. Today, we are able to provide our clients with these tools to ensure they have an independent assessment of network capabilities. MNOs use our tools to help them accelerate network upgrades and network transformation, ensuring they are able to manage their network traffic growth and network complexity efficiently. Regulators use our tools to ensure they have the insights they need to assess KPIs independently.

INOS is the AI-led QoS and QoE benchmarking tool developed in-house at Digis Squared, using no network vendor tools.

  • Automated and efficient solution for fast and accurate reporting
  • Analysis and recommendations on improvements
  • Cross-check performance against the license to help regulators identify the gaps
  • Proven in the field with MNOs and Regulators
  • Interacts with all major vendors’ platforms, including Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia
  • Covid19 safe solution: our tools need just one person in the vehicle or building – no engineers are needed on-site, ensuring that they can do their work safely and together we can keep our communities connected.

When used by Telecoms Regulators, INOS delivers,

  • One independent, vendor and network agnostic solution
  • Fully automated reports, just 15 minutes after tests end
  • Failure insights: empowered by automation and analytics, we can deliver detailed insights into failure reason
  • INOS BM score – rank and benchmark all operators, by all services tested, across all network technologies and vendors
  • Independent and transparent scrutiny: Operators can access INOS platform, with limited and agreed privileges to review their log files and reports.

INOS KPIs include, but are not limited to,

  • Coverage & quality radio conditions
  • Field KPIs: CST, CSSR, HOSR, CDR
  • Throughput DL & UL: FTP, HTTP, HTTPs
  • Voice quality: POLQA
  • Video Quality: PEVQs
  • OTTs KPIs
  • Adopted optimisation strategy
  • Overlapping and needed neighbours’ optimisation
  • UE Happy Index

Get in touch to talk with us informally about how we can help your Regulatory teams with independent tools and expertise for network benchmarking, and discover INOS here.

Band & spectrum strategy consultation

The Digis Squared team have decades of experience working in telecoms operators and telecom equipment providers, with huge experience across many countries, implementations, technology deployments, and vendor solutions. We can work alongside your teams, or independently, to share our insights and assess innovative and commercial uses of your spectrum, to ensure optimum utilisation in your market.

  • Assess the utilisation of all existing bands
  • Evaluate service usage and importance with stakeholders
  • Policy & procedure updates
  • Spectrum audit and redeployment strategies: identify, complement, and refine all data on national spectrum use
  • Future policy: balancing the needs of end-users and spectrum-users are met to encourage investment
  • Emerging technologies: implementation scenarios and spectrum allocation recommendations for 5G, WLAN, LPWA and more.

Competence development & training

We recognise the difficulties in identifying the vendor-independent training necessary to ensure your teams are not unconsciously biased towards specific solutions.

Our team of experienced staff are well placed to deliver a broad range of technical and non-technical training.

Our approach for competence development utilises different methods to best suit the client, their culture and team needs, with an emphasis on on-job training as well as classroom training, delivered as active, participatory workshops and webinars by our technology experts. We can deliver training on-site, remotely via video link, or in your own time via online material.

Get in touch to arrange a no-obligation discussion with our team, or request a copy of our Technical Training Catalogue: sales@DigisSquared.com

“In my view, it’s more important than ever that Telecoms Regulators use independent expertise and tools in their assessments, to ensure they have a complete view of their ecosystem, and prepare for whatever storms are on the horizon.”

Mohamed Hamdy, Digis Squared CCO

Now more than ever, use independent tools and expertise in regulatory assessments.

To discuss how our independent tools and vendor-agnostic expertise can help your Regulatory Teams, please use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com to arrange a video call.

Keep up to speed with company updates, product launches and our quarterly newsletter, sign up here.

Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.

Abbreviations

  • CSP: Communications Service Providers
  • INOS: Intelligent Network Optimisation Solution, one of Digis Squared’s AI-led automated tools.
  • MNO: Mobile Network Operator
  • QoE: Quality of Experience
  • QoS: Quality of Service

Image credit: Michael D.