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Coverage: Networks and Infrastructure

Dish To Run 5G Network on AWS Cloud

Last week, Dish Network announced a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) whereby AWS will become Dish’s preferred cloud provider. Dish is the fourth-largest MNO in the US cellular market and is building a greenfield open RAN-based 5G network across the country. Leveraging AWS’s cloud infrastructure and services – including AWS Outposts and AWS Local Zones – Dish claims that it can build a cloud-native 5G network for around $8bn to $10bn, a figure significantly less than its rivals.

Advantages for Dish

Teaming with AWS potentially has many advantages for Dish, particularly cost. By becoming a tenant of AWS, with its global economies of scale, Dish will be able to reduce its capital outlay dramatically. Clearly, using AWS to host virtual base stations on its network will be much cheaper than buying servers and hosting them on-site or in a private cloud. This could also allow it to reduce OPEX costs as it will be able to scale its computing needs up and down according to traffic demands. There are also other potential benefits, particularly with respect to enterprise customers, as it could leverage AWS’s expertise around analytics, AI and data management to introduce new features and functionalities for enterprises.

Implications for Dish’s Partners

Dish has already announced contracts with more than 30 vendors, including radio and chip vendors, tower operators, backhaul providers, network core software and security vendors. However, this deal with AWS has potential implications for some of of these vendors.

For instance, Dish has already formed partnerships with Altiostar and Mavenir as providers of Dish’s RAN software. Both companies have built their software on Intel’s x86-based FlexRAN platform.  However, Dish has announced that it intends to run some of the Distributed Unit (DU) elements of its baseband computing operations on AWS’ custom designed Graviton2 processors. Amazon claims that its ARM-based Graviton processor has a 40% better price performance over comparable current x86-based chips for a wide variety of workloads. Other DU operations will run on Intel’s FlexRAN platform, depending on the configuration of Dish’s network in a select location. Clearly, the use of the AWS processor implies less business for Altiostar and Mavenir as well as a smaller role for Intel.

From One Lock-in to Another?

Vendor diversity is a hot topic among MNOs as well as many governments in the US, UK and elsewhere with claims that open RAN can be used to decrease Huawei’s 5G dominance as well as break the Nordic stranglehold in markets where Huawei and compatriot ZTE are banned.

However, the ambitions of the big public cloud providers such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft go far beyond simply managing servers in massive centralised data centres. All three are extending their cloud service offerings to the edge, a territory that telcos once hoped to dominate. Telcos nowadays seem more interested  in partnering with the big three providers rather than focusing on developing an alternative telco-based solution. Verizon and Vodafone, for example, are key customers of AWS’ edge technology Wavelength. There are thus legitimate concerns about the dominance of the big three cloud providers. Barriers to entry in the sector are virtually insurmountable and customers attempting to move clouds typically face high switching costs as well as technical design challenges.

Dish looks like it will be the first network in the world to run its entire network from the public cloud and as such this is seen as a key test case.  It will be closely watched by all in the telecoms industry, and if successful, others will inevitably follow. However, there is a real risk here that MNOs could fall into a lock-in that is much worse than what they complain about today!

 

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T-Mobile Bets Big on its 5G Network Lead

T-Mobile unveiled its 2021 goals in its first analyst day in years and first with CEO Mike Sievert at the helm. Key goals for 2021 and beyond include leading in 5G for years to come, expanding into under-indexed markets, unlocking the synergies of its merger with Sprint, and delivering better financial results outside of winning the net add game.

Source: T-Mobile

T-Mobile claims network lead, thinks competitors overpaid in C-band auction

  • The C-band auction is over and T-Mobile claims competitors overpaid. T-Mobile will rely on its 600MHz blanket coverage and 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum acquired from the Sprint deal. The carrier claims competitors’ C-Band spectrum will need 1.5x more cell sites than its 2.5GHz spectrum.
  • T-Mobile will see cost savings for years as it does not have to dramatically densify its 5G network and is also not needed to rely on dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) for 5G blanket coverage. Its mid-band 5G rollout will be very fast, as already over 125 million POPs are covered while 200 million will be covered by 2021-end. POP coverage is expected to hit 90% in 2023.
  • T-Mobile did buy some strategic C-Band spectrum in urban and suburban areas where its network is already dense. Very limited further densification will be needed before turning it on. These C-Band assets, when combined with its 2.5GHz base layer, will provide massive capacity, opening up new home broadband opportunities.
  • T-Mobile has smartphones in the market which support 5G carrier aggregation (CA) with 600MHz and 2.5GHz. It is the first carrier capable of supporting CA, which will extend its network reach and increase speeds.
  • T-Mobile has not spent a lot of time marketing its mmWave assets, but they are significant and only lack Verizon. Like Verizon and AT&T, there will be opportunities for private networks or other use cases where performance throughput and low latency are needed.

T-Mobile to expand into markets where it is under-indexed 

  • Since T-Mobile’s network was a year to 18 months behind Verizon during the transition to LTE, the operator was left out of many business segments including B2B, SMB, government and education. Even today, T-Mobile owns less than 10% of these markets while Verizon owns the majority and AT&T is also substantially ahead.
  • There are new business service plans being offered which will entice B2B and work-from-home households.
  • With its strong 5G footprint, T-Mobile can now move into small metros and rural markets where it is under-indexed. To help with the initiative, T-Mobile and Metro services will be available in over 2,000 Walmart and 1,000 Best Buy stores. The carrier expects to open about 500 Metro by T-Mobile prepaid stores. T-Mobile’s share is only in the low-teens in rural markets, whereas it owns about 30% market share nationally. The additional storefronts will help rural growth.
  • Fixed wireless access (FWA) service is another major new opportunity that is prime for T-Mobile now that its 5G network has tremendous reach and scale. The carrier is attacking FWA differently than Verizon and AT&T. Verizon and AT&T are focusing on urban areas, offering FWA with their mmWave spectrum assets. T-Mobile will be able to focus on underserved rural and suburban areas with broadband options.
  • T-Mobile believes the target of seven to eight million FWA subscribers over the next five years is attainable. Utilizing its 600MHz and 2.5Ghz spectrum assets, it can immediately start the rollout of its FWA services. T-Mobile believes it will have 500,000 households buying FWA services by 2021-end.

T-Mobile is benefitting from Sprint merger synergies

  • When the Sprint-T-Mobile merger was announced, T-Mobile believed there were $6 billion in synergies to be gained. More recently, T-Mobile has increased this to $7.5 billion. Combined marketing and store counts, network synergies/ability to decommission the Sprint network, improved customer service, and retail scale have all helped increase the outlook.
  • T-Mobile did a great job integrating MetroPCS, its highly successful prepaid channel. It is now ahead of schedule in the migration plan for Sprint, which is expected by the end of 2022.
  • T-Mobile now has postpaid churn on a par with Verizon and AT&T. It has done an admirable job reducing Sprint’s churn, which was over double the churn of Verizon.

During Legere’s reign as CEO, T-Mobile started winning the net additions race with dozens of ‘un-carrier’ promotional initiatives. It will benefit for years to come because of its lead in 5G rollouts and coverage, which are opening up new business opportunities.

For more on T-Mobile’s device sales, 5G network expansion and B2B initiatives, contact info@counterpoint.com

First O-RAN Private Network in Germany?

As the largest industrial market, Germany is leading the charge in advancing Industry 4.0 transformation in Europe. The German regulator BNetzA has awarded 88 spectrum licenses to local enterprises in the country to run private 5G networks since it opened applications for local licenses in the 3.7-3.8 GHz range. This is perhaps the most decisive regulatory shift for the telecoms industry for quite a while allowing enterprises to by-pass mobile operators.

Recently, the highly esteemed research institute Fraunhofer IIS announced that it is building a 5G private network based on the specifications of the O-RAN Alliance at its sites in Erlangen and Nuremburg. This will be a completely virtualized solution running on standard COTS servers and serve as an edge computing platform. The Fraunhofer network will be used as a test bed for industrial partners to test and simulate industrial grade private network applications under laboratory conditions.

O-RAN Vendors

Key vendors involved in the network include US small cells company Airspan, Microsoft’s Metaswitch and German company Siticom, which develops and manages communications and campus network solutions for large enterprises in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Airspan is providing its 5G OpenRANGE solution, an end-to-end radio to cloud native software solution running on central and distributed units (CUs/DUs). Metaswitch will supply its Fusion Core solution, a fully automated, cloud native 5G SA core solution designed primarily for campus network requirements while Siticom will act as systems integrator. Beyond the Fraunhofer contract, both Airspan and Metaswitch have partnered with Sitcom to target other Industry 4.0 use cases.

Best O-RAN Target Markets

Counterpoint Research believes that small cells and private networks are the most suitable short-term applications for open RAN and this development supports this view. In particular, disaggregated RAN architectures inherently offer flexibility to suit a wide variety of deployment requirements. This is just one of many private network announcements in recent weeks and months targeting the Germany market. For instance, vRAN software provider Mavenir is also targeting the German market via its partnership with systems integrator Mugler.

However, open RAN new entrants will face stiff competition from incumbent vendors. Both Nokia and Ericsson are launching their own cloud RAN-based disaggregated solutions which will compete head-on with O-RAN based systems. Ericsson recently announced that the main target markets for its cloud RAN solutions will be private networks, indoor environments and venues such as sport stadiums, concert venues, etc.

Ecosystems and Partnerships Vital

In addition, both vendors are investing heavily in developing vertical-specific ecosystems as well as creating prominent partnerships with big-name service providers. For example, Ericsson has developed an extensive enterprise ecosystem encompassing Industry 4.0, IoT and the automotive sector, with more than 70 partners ranging from industrial conglomerates, device and hardware players to software developers and professional services companies.

Meanwhile Nokia has joined forces with Verizon to offer private 5G network solutions to enterprises across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region which will leverage Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud. Ericsson recently acquired US wireless WAN company Cradlepoint, which it will probably leverage to target the enterprise WAN market in Europe. The Swedish vendor also has a private networks partnership with Fraunhofer IPT, the sister institute of Fraunhofer IIS, to develop an industrial 5G research network in Europe. Known as 5G-Industry Campus Europe, it consists of outdoor and indoor private networks and will be used to test 5G and IoT applications based on Ericsson technology.

Related Posts

  1. LTE/5G Private Networks - Devices Availability Key to Growth in Unlicensed Spectrum
  2. Microsoft Gets Serious About Telco Cloud With Metaswitch Acquisition
  3. The Race to Open RAN Will Be A Marathon, Not A Sprint!

LTE/5G Private Networks – Devices Availability Key to Growth in Unlicensed Spectrum

Seoul, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Beijing, London, Buenos Aires, San Diego

November 27th, 2019

The availability of shared and unlicensed spectrum bands coupled with the emergence of standalone cellular technologies such as MulteFire is setting the stage for enterprise and industrial companies to invest in private LTE and later 5G networks.

In the past, enterprises were often forced to use bands reserved for specific verticals and for which only proprietary equipment was available. The ability to use LTE, a mature, standards-based technology, will enable many enterprises to reduce deployment and operational costs and avoid vendor lock-in in both infrastructure and devices. However, some users with very specific IoT/IIoT requirements will continue using proprietary equipment.

In the US, limited commercial services based on LTE private networks were launched in the 3.5 MHz Citizens Broadband Radio Services (CBRS) band in September 2019 and will enable a wide range of companies to build their own wireless networks without the involvement of the Big 4 operators.

Outside the US, the LTE-based MulteFire standard with its “Listen-Before-Talk” feature will be a critical enabler allowing enterprises to deploy LTE private networks without the involvement of an MNO in unlicensed regional and global spectrum bands around the world. These include the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz global bands and the 800/900 MHz and 1.9 MHz regional bands. With its standalone feature, MulteFire will open up unlicensed spectrum to a host of new players, including wireless ISPs, general enterprises, specialist verticals and even MNOs themselves. All could deploy MulteFire-based LTE private networks.

“With its Wi-Fi-like plug-and-play implementation, MulteFire will for the first time overcome many of the deficiencies of alternative wireless and wired standards whilst its “Listen-Before-Talk” feature will enable devices to share spectrum with Wi-Fi and other wireless standards” said Gareth Owen, Associate Director, Counterpoint Research.

For many IoT and IIoT enterprise and industrial applications, however, success will depend on the availability of devices. Vendor support from chipset, module and end user devices will be crucial for the success of both CBRS and MulteFire. Vendors will need to offer a wide range of LTE-based devices in multiple form factors, for example, for indoor and outdoor usage, high-density and rural environments, public and private networks, etc. These will include a range of IoT and IIoT devices as well as smartphones.

A number of modules, modems, routers and consumer premises equipment are already available including numerous smartphones such as the Apple iPhone 11s, Samsung Galaxy 10 series smartphones and devices from LG, Motorola and OnePlus. However, LTE devices and equipment need to be modified to work in the 3.5 GHz CBRS band and must be certified to meet the CBRS-specific requirements.

At present, MulteFire lags behind CBRS in respect of available commercial devices. However, with the MulteFire 1.1 specification complete since the summer, devices are expected to become available next year with the Japanese market likely to be the first market. For instance, the MulteFire Alliance recently announced German company DEKRA as its first product certification company for the 1.9 GHz band in Japan last month, which will ensure co-existence with DECT and PHS systems operating in the same band.

However, chipsets for the 5 GHz band are not expected to become available until the end of 2019 with devices expected to be launched in 1H 2020. The first devices are likely to be dongles, IoT devices, gateways and ruggedized tablets followed in time by smartphones. Chipsets for the 900 MHz and 2.4 MHz bands are expected to become available later.

“Devices designed for 3.5 GHz outside the US will not be able to access the US CBRS band as they do not satisfy the FCC requirements for shared usage with incumbent users in the band” said Peter Richardson, Research Director at Counterpoint Research. “In time, however, we think it is likely that dual-tech CBRS/MulteFire devices will be introduced which will enable the same devices to be used across US, Europe and Asia thus accelerating adoption of both CBRS and MulteFire” he added.

The 3GPP is working on adapting the 5G NR standard to be used in unlicensed spectrum by adding LBT to the NR specification which will become part of the 3GPP’s Release 16 specification due to be published in 2020. Similarly, the CBRS Alliance will add support for 5G In its upcoming third release, expected to be published in 4Q 2019. 5G shared spectrum services are expected to begin in the US around mid-2020.

This report is available for purchase on our Research Portal. Please feel free to reach out to us at press(at)counterpointresearch.com for further questions regarding our in-depth latest research, insights or press enquiries.

Background:

Counterpoint Technology Market Research is a global research firm specializing in Technology products in the TMT industry. It services major technology firms and financial firms with a mix of monthly reports, customized projects and detailed analysis of the mobile and technology markets. Its key analysts are experts in the industry with an average tenure of 13 years in the high-tech industry.

Analyst Contacts:

Gareth Owen

Counterpoint Research
press(at)counterpointresearch.com

Post Event Coverage: ET Telecom the 5G Congress: Deploying Network Architecture to Make a 5G Call

Our Research Director, Neil Shah moderated a panel on “Deploying Network Architecture to Make a 5G Call” at the 5G Congress held by ET Telecom.

It was a great pleasure and fun to moderate the hottest topic on the potential, deployment strategies, timeline and outlook for the cutting edge 5G tech in India, the second largest mobile & tech market in the world at The Economic Times.

The key 5G applications to revolutionize India, polling these panelists:

✔️Fixed Wireless Access (Wireless Broadband)
✔️Smart Healthcare
✔️Smart Real-Time Monitoring – Transportation, Infrastructure
✔️ Smart Education
✔️Smart Agriculture

Following is a video of the panel discussion:

Habana Labs – A Serious Alternative to NVIDIA for Training Neural Networks?

In June, Israeli start-up Habana Labs announced Gaudi, a 16nm training chip for neural networks. Gaudi represents Habana’s second attempt to break into the AI market following the commercial launch of its Goya inference chips in Q4 2018. Habana claims it has already shipped Goya to 20 select clients.

Gaudi builds on the same basic architecture as the Goya inference accelerator and uses eight Tensor Processor Cores (TPCs), each with dedicated on-die memory, a GEMM math engine and Gen 4 PCIe (Exhibit 1). While Goya focuses on integer computation, Gaudi supports floating-point formats required for training and integrates 32 GB High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) to enable large chip clusters. Additionally, it features the industry’s first on-die implementation of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) on an AI chip, which provides 10x100Gb or 20x50Gb communication links to enable scaling up to thousands of accelerators.

Software-wise, Gaudi comes with Habana’s AI software stack, known as SynapseAI, which comprises  a graph compiler, runtime, debugger, deep learning library and drivers. At present, Habana supports TensorFlow for building models but plans to add support for PyTorch and other machine learning frameworks as well.

Exhibit 1: High-Level Architecture of Habana Labs’ Gaudi Processor

High-Level Architecture of Habana Labs’ Gaudi Processor

Products:

Although Habana only offers a single Goya-based product, a PCIe accelerator card, it plans to offer three Gaudi form factors.

  • HL-200 – a 200-Watt PCIe card supporting eight ports of 100Gb Ethernet.
  • HL-205 – a 300-Watt mezzanine card compliant accelerator module with the OCP (Open Compute Project) Accelerator Module (OAM) specification, supporting 10 ports of 100Gb Ethernet or 20 ports of 50Gb Ethernet. Facebook originated this OCP module design, and several chip providers (but not NVIDIA) plan to support it.
  • Habana is also introducing an 8 Gaudi chip system called HLS-1, which includes eight HL-205 Mezzanine cards, with PCIe connectors for external host connectivity and 24 100Gbps Ethernet ports for connecting to off-the-shelf Ethernet switches accommodated in a standard 19-inch rack (Exhibit 2).

The company is testing first silicon and expects all three Gaudi products to sample by the end of 2019, with volume production expected to start in mid-2020.

Exhibit 2: Habana Labs HLS-1 System which combines eight Gaudi accelerator cards

Habana Labs HLS-1 System which combines eight Gaudi accelerator cards

Assessment:

NVIDIA’s GPUs have dominated the cloud data center AI training market for several years with many customers now regarding NVIDIA as having a vendor lock on them. Habana Labs is one of a small band of start-ups seeking to disrupt this market and claims that its Gaudi chip already offers better performance than NVIDIA’s Tesla V100.

For example, in the popular ResNet50 CNN image recognition test, Habana claims that Gaudi exceeds 1,650 images per second (IPS) with a batch size of 64 compared to 1,360 IPS with an unspecified batch size for NVIDIA’s Tesla V100. In addition, the company claims that Gaudi uses only 140 Watts of power when running the benchmark, around half that of the V100.

Aside from raw performance, an important characteristic of AI training processors is scalability. AI accelerators are used in their multiples in large training farms, with many devices collaborating on training the same neural network. Habana offers integrated standards-based Ethernet connectivity that it claims enables unlimited scaling. This frees customers from NVIDIA’s proprietary software and interfaces. Habana is also the first vendor to announce hardware for Facebook’s OCP form factor and Glow software.

The demand for more powerful AI capabilities is creating a highly competitive market where nimble execution is nearly as important as architectural design. NVIDIA has proved itself to be an agile innovator and a formidable competitor, and with its well-established CUDA software ecosystem, it is unlikely to cede its dominant market position any time soon.  Its Volta AI chip launched around two years ago, and the Volta’s successor will likely be announced later this year. As such, Habana’s performance advantage claim may be short-lived. Also, with Facebook working with several other accelerator chip start-ups, there is, of course, no guarantee that Habana will receive major orders from the social media giant.

Nevertheless, if its technology delivers as promised, Intel-backed Habana could emerge as one of the leading challengers to NVIDIA in the AI training market. With its freedom from proprietary software and interfaces – and probably a much lower price – it should appeal to cloud data center customers who currently buy expensive NVIDIA GPUs and are anxious to see alternative suppliers.

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