What’s up with… Verizon, Samsung, Ericsson, Apple

• Verizon has now deployed 10,000 Samsung vRAN sites
• And now it has started using Ericsson cloud RAN technology
• Apple and Ericsson kiss and make up

In today’s industry news roundup: Verizon continues to roll out Samsung’s virtual radio access network (vRAN) gear; while also starting to deploy Ericsson’s cloud RAN systems; Apple and Ericsson have ended their patent spat; and more.

Verizon has now deployed more than 10,000 virtual radio access network (RAN) (vRAN) sites based on Samsung technology, taking it more than halfway to its target of 20,000 by 2025. “This extensive use of virtualisation allows Verizon to offer its customers new and innovative services and the ability to deliver those services quickly to their customers. Samsung’s vRAN enables Verizon to manage its network flexibly, scale more efficiently and save opex [operational expenditure] with intelligent automation,” notes Samsung in this blog. 

Samsung isn’t the only RAN vendor helping the US operator realise its virtualised RAN plans, though.. Verizon has deployed its first virtualised Ericsson cloud RAN site, noting the effort was made possible with help from Intel and Red Hat. Verizon noted the Ericsson Cloud RAN solution offers it “efficiency in network deployment and operational management transformation. Intel provided its 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor, Intel vRAN Dedicated Accelerator ACC100 and Intel Ethernet Network Adapter E810 to deliver the processing, acceleration and connectivity requirements. “Red Hat provided Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes to manage their fleet at scale in collaboration with Red Hat Consulting. As part of the solution, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management delivers cloud-scale manageability by configuring the 5G RAN using a distributed unit (DU) profile, which deploys real-time OS kernel optimisations to run vRAN and other cloud-native application workloads from a single console. Red Hat OpenShift also incorporates zero-touch provisioning to enable distributed deployment at scale required to operate a large-scale RAN,” added Verizon. Read more.

Ericsson and Apple have agreed to kiss and make up… The two companies have reached a multi-year, global patent licence agreement that includes a “cross-licence relating to patented cellular standard-essential technologies and grants certain other patent rights”. In addition, the duo has “mutually agreed to strengthen their technology and business collaboration, including in technology, interoperability and standards development. This settlement ends the lawsuits filed by both companies in several countries, including in the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Texas, as well as the complaints filed before the United States International Trade Commission (USITC),” noted Ericsson in this announcement. 

UK regulator Ofcom is not sure what to do with the upper 6GHz band, whether to assign it for 5G mobile services or Wi-Fi, reports ISPreview.  

It’s Friday, and time for another of our occasional but evidently endless series of stories showing that the technology world can be at least as mad as “Mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year’s Mr. Madman competition”. (Pace Blackadder III by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton). Yes, designers are coming up with clothes to wear in the metaverse. They’re not real of course, but then neither is the metaverse. What is real though is the price. You buy your emperor’s new clothes for real greenbacks, pounds, euros, yen etc, and they are not cheap. Buying virtual stuff for virtual environments is nothing new. For years now punters have been able to pay hard cash for jewels, swords and, for all I know, sandals, to kit themselves out to show off in interactive games but, we are told by aficionados, it is now de rigour in the virtual world to drape one’s avatar in fashionable non-existent clobber. It seems the idea is to be ‘experimental’ and ‘wildly creative’ and if you can’t be that yourselves, there are metaverse fashion stylists out there that’ll run you up a look that will ‘defy personal expectations' and 'societal standards' (it's a bottomless market). Prices typically come in at somewhere in the region of between US$50 and $100 per invisible garment, but some actually cost thousands of dollars. Everything is paid for in a cryptocurrency, natch. Please note: cryptocurrencies don’t exist either but the value of the investment you paid in real folding-stuff to be converted to crypto can go down as well as up, and lately they would have been crashing through the reinforced floors of an imaginary Fort Knox, had they any corporeal existence. Roblox, the online games platform and game creation system, has moved into the digital clothes space (and space is exactly what it is) and reports show that this year 11.5 million creators made 62 million items of clothing and accessories for it. Elsewhere, DressX, an “online digital fashion marketplace” set up in 2020, has raised $4.2m in investments and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is working with it to launch an avatar fashion marketplace for its virtual platform. I wonder if the virtual trousers will have legs even though the avatars themselves don’t? What’s more, there’s even a second-hand market in virtual clothing, some of which sells “used” for more than it cost to buy the imaginary schmutter “new”. To bowdlerise Danny Kaye: "Well, isn't it 'oh!' Isn't it rich? Look at the charm of every stitch! Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine! Look at the cut, the style, the line! The suit of clothes is all together, but all together it's all together the most remarkable suit of clothes that I have ever seen. These eyes of mine, at once determined, the sleeves are velvet, the cape is ermine. The hose are blue and the doublet is a lovely shade of green. [It’s] the most remarkable suit of clothes a tailor ever made. Now quickly, put it all together with gloves of leather and hat and feather, it’s all together the thing to wear in Saturday's parade.” I won't be seeing you there – and I rest my case.

UK communications technology development centre Digital Catapult, working in partnership with regulator Ofcom, has given nine companies the opportunity to accelerate the development of their Open RAN products by becoming part of the next phase of its SmartRAN Open Network Interoperability Centre (SONIC) Labs programme funded by the UK government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The companies, which come from beyond the British waters as well as from home turf, include VVDN (India), SOLiD (South Korea) and ASOCS (Israel), as well as six companies with “existing engagement in the UK market” – Accelleran, CableFree, Effnet, Phluido, Radisys and VMware. Read more. 
 

- The staff, TelecomTV