The government has given itself until 2030 to build out reliable 5G phone coverage across the UK's railway network. However, it is exploring the use of low-earth-orbit satellites to enhance Wi-Fi services inside trains in rural areas where standard 5G coverage may be limited. In a written response to an enquiry from the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson, Clive Jones MP, the government's response was that their "ambition is for all populated areas to have higher quality standalone 5G by 2030." A full decision on how and where coverage will be boosted is expected by the end of next year, giving phone companies just four years to roll out coverage upgrades in the selected key locations.
EE claims to be the first mobile operator globally to use ARC in its distributed mobile network. It has been able to roll out inter-site 5G downlink carrier aggregation in its distributed RAN to combine spare capacity from multiple independent cell sites, and is said to have had the result of increasing downlink data performance by approximately 20% on average, more than doubling performance under ideal conditions.
It's not a shock to see research verifying the fact that Americans use a lot of data. Just how much is surprising, however. A new CTIA report said that, last year, 132 trillion megabytes (MB) of mobile data was consumed. Total growth was 32 trillion MB, which marked the biggest year-over-year increase ever and was the third consecutive year of approximately 35% growth.
The city of Oulu in Finland has received a further boost to its prestige in the field of mobile communications research, design and manufacturing, with Nokia's opening of what it calls the new home of radio, in the form of a research and development hub for the entire lifecycle of 5G and 6G radio innovation that will design, test and deliver next-generation networks built for artificial intelligence (AI).
Today there's finally official pricing for the US as well. Over there, the tablet will set you back $349 with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, Wi-Fi-only. Unfortunately, Samsung hasn't announced pricing for other variants yet. There's an 8/256GB combo as well, and both RAM/storage versions also get optional 5G connectivity, which should be more expensive still.
Over the past few days, the Stadium of Light in Sunderland has seen a raucous victorious return to the Premier League for the city's football team and the opening match of the Women's Rugby World Cup, both of which offered fans significantly enhanced 5G connectivity experiences though a connectivity-as-a-service (CaaS) infrastructure from Boldyn Networks, said to be the UK's first full neutral host RAN managed service in a high-density demand (HDD) venue.
The analyst's Private network deployment tracker contained three defining characteristics of a private network: dedicated resources, including network infrastructure, platform and/or spectrum which may not be physically dedicated but can be logically dedicated such as in network slicing; dedicated user groups/SIMs where access to the network is controlled and limited to a group of certain users who may have logically dedicated SIMs, which may be virtual; and customised KPIs where the network is designed and customised to meet use case requirements that can't be met by best-effort public networks.
The technology will enhance communications across all of MLGW's electric, gas and water services, aiming for improved data connectivity, resilience, and operational efficiency.
