23.12.2023 Newsletter
This week finds you with somewhat of a comeback from Nokia side, end of WRC and news sources to mingle with such as European Union reports. Happy new year everyone!
Summary 1: After AT&T OpenRAN news now Deutsche Telekom announce an OpenRAN collaboration.
Nokia to provide high-performance Open RAN compliant AirScale solution; Fujitsu will partner with Nokia in the deal with open-fronthaul compliant Radio Units.
Deal highlights the maturity and performance of Nokia’s O-RAN CU/DU; Confirms Nokia’s industry leadership through its anyRAN approach which offers mobile operators more choice in building 5G networks
Personal view:
Last week we had the news that AT & T is going OpenRAN with Ericsson, we did not understand what it means to go OpenRAN with a single vendor and we still do not know but time will tell.
This week extended this news on the Deutsche Telekom side.
Probably it is not a surprise that this press release comes directly after AT&T release to make up for the bad publicity of the previous deal.
The new specially highlights the OpenRAN compliant CU DU performance of Nokia platform.
Nokia is trying to attack Ericsson where it is weakest as it has provided no public demonstration of O-RAN capability.
It is interesting to see that both news sources quote Fujitsu as a radio unit vendor. One can conclude that Fujitsu is the real winner here.
One might even exaggerate to make the analogy of a shovel seller.
A quick check on the stock price of Fujitsu shows a 10% increase.
Ericsson stock enjoys a 20% increase while merging these two news Nokia has a 8 % decrease.
I personally think the market is a bit overreacting (NIA).
Summary 2: Nokia acquires Fenix Group
Acquisition of North American Fenix Group will allow Nokia to offer a more comprehensive suite of solutions to its defense customers.
Fenix Group is a system integrator focused on battlefield technologies.
Personal view
When I read these news my initial thought was:
There will be some auctions on military OpenRAN solutions in the U.S.
It is sure that “BUY AMERICAN ACT” plays a critical role here as it is public funding.
Nokai is trying to make sure it makes no mistake for BUY AMERICAN ACT.
However, it seems like Fenix Group is a system integrator. So let us read the details of BUY AMERICAN ACT. The act quotes
“Two conditions must be present for the Buy American Act to apply: (1) the procurement must be intended for public use within the United States; and (2) the items to be procured or the materials from which they are manufactured must be present in the United States in sufficient and reasonably available commercial quantities of a satisfactory quality.”
So it turns out that the “BUY AMERICAN ACT” does not apply to non-public use. After a quick search I see that military material counts as public use.
The second part reads as a requirement to have competition internally.
Ok it turns out the link I have below is for the initial “BUY AMERICAN ACT” of 1978.
So let us move to latest amendment in 2023
“Increase to the Domestic Content Threshold
Pursuant to the final rule, the cost of the domestic components in a manufactured end product delivered in 2023 must exceed 60% of the total component cost. This is an increase from the previous 55% domestic content threshold.”
Now the question is can a system integrator charge 60%. Probably yes.
Even though it seems a bit absurd, system integration for specific fields has specific rules applying. This mandates use of different testing systems and being aware of strict regulation that causes companies to maintain departments.
I worked in the avionics industry. The added value of wireless communication in avionics was simply making the CotS wireless equipment compatible to strict avionics regulations.
Finally please find the last source that quotes
“Congress would require the US Department of Defense (DoD) to install private wireless networks on US military bases”
Shall we add 2 to 2?
Source:
https://twitter.com/mikeddano/status/1735343572650438802?t=giSGJ4eWc7u2iNX5ai1EVA&s=19
https://www.gao.gov/products/105519
Summary 3: What is the meaning for OpenRAN now?
Personal view:
AT&T one of the leaders of OpenRAN has adopted OpenRAN in the most bizarre way
Article says that AT&T has used the deal to get the most meaningful price from Ericsson.
So the deal is a win for AT&T but not OpenRAN ecosystem.
The article highlights the inter-operability challenges of OpenRAN.
Time will tell how much this is a lock in by AT&T that is called OpenRAN.
Summary 4: 6-7 GHz band is allocated for IMT without dedicated priority
Personal view:
So this leaves a quite big co existence problem.
Each country can allocate the priorities as they wish.
The use of band of the same phone on different countries then would be a problem.
So the existence of other technologies in the band makes some kind of DSS mandatory.
Source: https://x.com/5Gto6G/status/1735264378637733986?t=yIOzGMQukukcOCq_iCxRJg&s=09
Summary 4: New fields for protection published in EUIPO report
• exploration: exploring the technology to ascertain whether it could be applied to protect, infringe
or enforce IP;
• conversion: converting the technology to enable it to achieve the identified goal;
• weaponisation: finalising the development of the application;
• monetisation: using the application to protect, infringe or enforce IP.
September 2020 Candidates: Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, 3D Printing, Nanotech and Spatial Computing
May 2021 Candidates: (Internet of Things (IOT) and 5G/6G Mobile Networking
November 2021 Candidates: Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Cryptocurrency Investigative Forensic Tools
April 2022 Candidates: Quantum Computing
Image source is the below report.
Personal view:
Criticism: The report lacks a sources page.
They quote a deep dive report to be published in 2022. Not possible to access or find that.
After a google search I found it:
Deep dive report has quite some quite educative explanatory figures such as
I guess they needed to fill some page number. It is not easy to earn tax money through EU positions it seems.
I am wondering why no one is reading these reports. (That is to my visibility, maybe everyone is following these reports.). Then I see such stuff that really makes me doubt how much time I should invest in these reports.
What would be really nice to see is how much full time equivalent is spent on these reports. Probably not a too bad idea to say that in this public funded project this much hours are spent to produce this report.
Moreover, a list of all responsible people contributing to the report would also be appreciated.
I only see one person´s name
I do not know if I am in one of my cynic days but …
So the report is from EUIPO and there is this text from EUIPO website.
“The EUIPO's budget is not part of the EU budget. All its operations are financed through registration fees without imposing any burden on the EU or its taxpayers.”
I guess I have my answer.
Probably EU forces them to have a report but as they are independent in budget they are free to decide what to invest.
The more I read the more I am shocked the sword figure is included even twice in the report. They must have really liked the metaphor.
On the danger of AI for infringement the following are highlighted
Interesting problems:
Neural style transfer to create additional designs
My comment: Ok this is a really good and new problem that is not so easy to solve.
Some kind of similarity definition or something in that direction should be defined to make sure that when things are stolen or when some things are inspired.
Probably any definition can also be used to tweak the algorithms to avoid the infringement.
This makes this problem quite hard to deal with as it is also part of artistic work I would say to be inspired.
Using deepfake voice to steal information
My comment: Can be solved via sharing sensible information only in a present mode. Or using common sense to avoid weird requests.
Problems that are problems also today but will be easier for others to use
Using AI assisted targeting for phishing
My comment: Phishing is a threat irrespectively. General phishing avoidance can be used.
AI based internet activity
My comment: I think we were already in an era where we had bots and humans on the internet.
Many people argued hours with bots not knowing they are bots.
With the addition of AI now we enter in an era that the number of bots will incredibly increase. So bot detection will be more important.
Problems that they claim is a problem but are not
Using AI to fake application to register stolen designs
My comment: I see no reason to use a fake application, after the design is stolen. The application material can be given by OMD. Maybe to understand the claus one should better understand the registry process.
It is more likely that they were looking for a problem for blockchain. But they did not want to spend too much time on the problem.
Using deep learning voice to create content
My comment: I do not understand how creating content using deep learning is infringement.
They actually use the word deepfake but is there a clear definition or distinction of content created by deep learning and deep fake. So after how much resemblance it is a deep fake.
I think a strong regulation is needed here and probably it is similar to neural style problem.
https://www.euipo.europa.eu/en/the-office/about-us
Summary 5: Multicast in networks from British Telecom
Personal view: It is quite often motivated in research papers that multicast will decrease the network load.
This time British Telecom confirms this concern with an issue that happened while a match was being streamed and Call of Duty update was released at the same time.
Result was 30.1 Tera it's per second in the network.
Multicast Assisted Unicast Delivery
Qwilt provides caches in BT network.
That I think would receive data in a multicast fashion.
Then this data would be received as Unicast at the user side.
Expected 50% decrease during event times.
MAUD is a result of telco innovation. BT shows that it poured 850 M $ to R &D last year.
But I am wondering if there is no information leak then the telco should not be able to know what the user is watching.
Doing such improvements in the network without violating privacy to me seems impossible.
I wonder how can the article does not talk about privacy at all.
Summary 6: Disaster deployment from KDDI
200 vehicles
Backhaul on Starlink
Vehicle mounted with base stations
Disasters like earthquake will trigger the deployment of these 200 vehicles
Source: https://www.connectivity.technology/2023/12/kddi-prepares-for-disasters-with.html?m=1
Summary 7: Typing versus speaking
It takes 2.5 x more time to write a text then to speak it.
It takes 10x more time to solve a spoken misunderstanding versus a written misunderstanding. As people deploy different meaning to words.
https://twitter.com/Radisys/status/1735372879762428248?t=BMGNx1NkCYj2YSmFSrjit.https
Summary 8: Interesting sources
Seeing this nice report: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d77a592e-4f54-11ed-92ed-01aa75ed71a1/language-en
Made me think of how many publicly available reports are there from europe on telecommunications or more specifically on 5G. So I started looking. I did not find much yet. If someone knows better how to navigate through EU pages please share that would be highly appreciated. Only think I found was on EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office)
In order to do justice to the report in the above link I need more time. I may share this in a blog post or the next newsletter.
European reports:
https://op.europa.eu/en/web/general-publications/just-published