Sequans Communications and multinational operator Telefónica have completed the first live LTE Cat M1 data call in Europe. The call was conducted at Telefónica´s Innovation Lab in Madrid, Spain and showed an IoT device, powered by Sequans’ Monarch LTE-M / NB-IoT chip, communicating with an LTE base station over-the-air.
“This first live LTE-M data call confirms that LTE for IoT in Europe will soon be a reality,” Sequans CEO Georges Karam said. “Telefonica is taking an early lead among operators in Europe and we are pleased to work with them in reaching this important milestone.”
Sequans in October achieved the first live Cat-M1 data call in the United States in collaboration with Verizon. More on that can be found here.
Nokia introduced a new mobile transport solution that allows operators to leverage existing passive optical networks used in Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments to gain the capacity and coverage 5G requires. Nokia said the solution converges business, residential, and mobile services on a single infrastructure, which will help operators reduce CapEx for mobile backhaul by as much as 50 percent.
The company indicated the mobile transport solution includes a number of new enhancements to its 7360 ISAM FX access node and 7368 ISAM ONT optical network termination devices to deliver multi-gigabit capacity that will be needed to support the massive throughput requirements and cell densification 5G requires. Nokia’s ISAM portfolio combines carrier-grade transport capabilities with synchronization support required in 3G, 4G, and 5G mobile transport networks.
The enhanced mobile transport solution is also being used as part of a Bell Labs proof-of-concept that demonstrates the flexibility of 10G symmetrical PON networks for low latency applications such as mobile fronthaul. By adding gateway functionality to a next-generation PON network, Nokia is able to convert mobile fronthaul CPRI signals to Ethernet. The proof of concept validates the readiness of PON for fronthaul and its Ethernet-based evolutions for the 5G era.
Qualcomm rolled out an end-to-end 802.11ax portfolio, which includes the IPQ8074 system-on-chip (SoC) for network infrastructure and QCA6290 solution for client devices. The company said the solutions bring elements of LTE to WiFi, offering up to four times greater capacity, four times faster throughput, and extended battery life for WiFi devices.
Qualcomm’s 802.11ax solutions support 12-streams (eight 5GHz and four 2.4GHz), 8×8 MU-MIMO, 80 MHz channels, and other features to maximize capacity and coverage. Additionally, the solutions feature cellular techniques, such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and traffic scheduling, which is designed to provide greater efficiency, higher user throughput, and a more consistent performance.
Qualcomm Technologies expects to sample the IPQ8074 and QCA6290 in the first half of 2017.
Filed Under: Infrastructure, IoT • IIoT • internet of things • Industry 4.0
