Mobile & Wireless Roundup No. 144

Welcome to the 144th edition of this newsletter. One of the boutique conferences I always look forward to attending is PortComms. It provides a rare opportunity to hear directly from port authorities, operators and vendors about their current initiatives and future plans for deploying private networks at ports.

While case studies and announcements do appear from time to time, there really is no substitute for hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth. Ports may not always be listed among the top verticals for private networks, but they represent a significant area of deployment with a wide variety of use cases.

One of my ongoing frustrations is that many seminar organisers do not make slides available, even to attendees. I am not sure how many people would go back and rewatch a session unless something specific catches their attention or reminds them of a point they wanted to revisit. If a speaker is willing to present publicly, I struggle to see why their slides cannot also be shared openly. It helps jog the memory and serves as a valuable resource.

Having access to the slides also gives us a way to look back in time and understand what the industry was focused on during a particular period, and when certain ideas or debates were taking place. In a fast-moving space like this, those snapshots can be incredibly useful.

As always, I hope you find this week’s insights thought-provoking. Thank you for reading, and do let me know what you think.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am a technologist with over 25 years’ experience in mobile wireless technology, currently working as an independent advisor, analyst, consultant and a trainer. This newsletter is a summary of my posts and other news that caught my attention since the last newsletter.

⦿ 6G

• Free 6G Training - e& UAE’s 6G Vision: Building the Foundation of a Digital Nation (link)

• Free 6G Training: ETSI 6G Monday Highlights Europe’s Strategic Push Towards 6G (link)

⦿ 5G

• A Beginner’s Guide to the 5G Air Interface (link)

⦿ 4G/LTE

• Dmitry Kurbatov on LinkedIn: "VoLTE and IMS: Vulnerabilities, Threats and Fixes - Recently we ran a live session on VoLTE, VoWiFi and IMS security gaps and why they slip through so frequently…" (link)

⦿ 2G/3G

• Orange: Shutdown of 2G and 3G technologies in France (link)

• DCD: Oman completes 3G network switch-off (link)

• MobileSyrup: Rogers, Fido customers furious as service cut off ahead of 3G shutdown (link)

⦿ Open & Disaggregated Networks (including Open RAN, vRAN, etc.)

• UKTIN: Digital Catapult – the UK’s first Open Testing & Integration Centre (OTIC) – a milestone in the UK’s advanced connectivity landscape (link)

⦿ Spectrum

• TelecomTV: SoftBank trials 7GHz coverage with 6G in mind (link)

• DSIT regulatory spectrum sandboxes: Spectrum sandbox reports 2024 to 2025 published by Queen Mary University of London, Durham University and Real Wireless (link)

• RCR Wireless: Hong Kong opens applications for 2.5/2.6 GHz spectrum (link)

⦿ Private Networks

• Private Networks Technology Blog: Swisscom Strengthens Private 5G Offering for Swiss Industry (link)

• Joe Madden on LinkedIn: The Private LTE/5G market is not one market. It's a collection of hundreds of applications and vertical markets, where each solution is slightly different than the others (link)

⦿ Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Thursday School: There but by the Gracechurch… (link)

• NGMN: Recommendations for Base Station Antennas (link)

• Connectivity Technology Blog: Understanding Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) for Seamless Indoor Connectivity (link)

⦿ Security & Privacy

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: Hacking OEM-specific Android: a useful guide to finding new security vulnerabilities in Android and how it's all related to cars (link)

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: $60,000 for a 2-bug chain to exploit the Autel MaxiCharger: RCE via Bluetooth plus authentication bypass (link)

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: EU streetlights are controlled by low-frequency radio signals - here’s how to turn that into an art installation (or a blackout) (link)

⦿ AI, ML & Automation

• AI RAN to Top $10 Billion by 2029, According to Dell’Oro Group (PR)

• Joe Madden on LinkedIn: "I've seen some recent hype about $10B or even higher revenue related to AI-RAN. Diving below the headlines, there is no substance to these estimates. In my AI-for-RAN investigation, I can only identify growth to about $600M in revenue for GPU servers, NIC cards/semiconductors, and software/training. If anybody has concrete examples of AI-on-RAN or AI-with-RAN revenue, I'm interested to see them…" (link)

⦿ Wi-Fi

• Ookla: Wi-Fi 7 Slow to Catch On in Canada (link)

⦿ Public Safety Networks

• Ericsson Blog: Journey to the next-gen smart grid supported by 5G MCN (link)

⦿ Quantum Networks & Technology

• Operator Watch Blog: China Mobile's PQC Strategy Advances BASIC6 and 6G Security Vision (link)

⦿ Other News and Technology Stuff

• KAIST's Li-Fi - Achieves 100 Times Faster Speed and Enhanced Security of Wi-Fi​ (PR)

• Yozzo: Thai MVNOs Killed by Incompetent Regulator (link) - Allan T. Rasmussen post on LinkedIn here.

• Telecoms.com: Virgin Media O2 data says UK workers are bunking off in the sun (link)

• Benedict Evans - AI Eats the World - SuperAI Singapore 2025 (video)

⦿ Picture of the week: This week’s photo shows a fake palm tree from Qatar, shared by PaoPao on X (f.k.a. Twitter). It seems there is some form of infrastructure or network sharing between Ooredoo and Vodafone. The antennas are colour-coded, with blue representing Ooredoo and green for Vodafone.

 Happy to hear your thoughts. Feel free let me know what worked, what didn’t, how I can make this better, etc. Get in touch over LinkedIn!

PDF version of this and previous newsletters are available here.