Connectivity Technology Blog

Back in 2019, Nokia and Verizon hosted Operation Convergent Response (OCR 2019), a three-day live demonstration for first responders and public safety professionals. In a simulated live-action crisis scenario, first responders re-enacted a recovery operation during a wildfire in a remote area, with no network available. That was until a small airplane carrying a Nokia LTE small cell solution appeared over the affected area, delivering critical communications to the firefighters on the ground below. You can watch the dramatic rescues in the video below. More on Operation Convergent Response 2019 and Scenarios are available here . Related Posts : Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Meshing for BYOC (Bring Your Own Coverage) Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Drones, More Drones & Droneway Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Flying Small Cells are here... The 3G4G Blog: An Introduction to Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) Telecoms Infrastructure Blog:  Nokia's AirScale indoor Radio ...

Paris Metro may not be the oldest in the world but it is still one of the world's oldest. Having first opened in 1900, it was last expanded in 2013. It it no doubt that this was the main motivation for the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens or RATP excitedly announced that 100% of Paris metro is now covered in 4G! [Service] Le réseau est désormais 100% couvert en 4G ! Ce service permet notamment un accès facilité à l’information voyageurs en station, dans les tunnels et à bord des trains (applications #RATP et Via Navigo, comptes Twitter de l'entreprise ...) ➡️ https://t.co/pwYYHBPrz6 pic.twitter.com/IZ1pcOfjzW — RATP Group (@RATPgroup) June 29, 2020 Mobile Europe reported : The network was a joint effort between France’s four mobile operators – Bouygues Telecom, Free Mobile, SFR and Orange.  The service works in the Metro's tunnels and on trains, according to Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), the authority that runs the city’s Metro and the...

You have read a lot about Loon on this blog and our sister blogs. The good news is that Loon is finally providing connectivity to Kenya. It's been nearly 3 years since they were first providing connectivity to flood affected Peru . In our last post on this topic on the blog, we looked at how Loon and Terrestrial LTE can co-exist , which is what is required for providing connectivity via Loon over rural areas. A blog post by Loon CEO provided more details. Here are some extracts: Balloons went from lasting hours to days to weeks to months to over half a year. Launching, once done by hand, is now done by twin, 90-foot tall automated machines that can send a balloon to 60,000 feet once every 30 minutes. Balloons that once floated freely around the world are now directed by machine-learning algorithms that have developed their own interesting and complex navigational maneuvers to achieve the mission of providing sustained service to users below. Communications equipment that c...

Back in March this year, NTT Docomo announced that they are switching off their NB-IoT network due to not enough demand but will continue to support LTE-M and Cat 1 . Good spot. An odd reason to give "in order to concentrate management resources". You wouldn't think it would take much resource. — Tom Rebbeck (@tomrebbeck) March 30, 2020 This news have started a lot of discussions, as you would expect, about the future of NB-IoT. From the standards point of view, IoT is going ahead full steam with both LTE-M and NB-IoT having been enhanced for 5G in Release-16 to support massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC). This slide from Qualcomm illustrates it well A recent article from Mobile World Live had a heading, " China Mobile migrates IoT connections off 2G ". While reading the article, you would get a feeling that China Mobile will stop supporting the 2G IoT (more like M2M ) devices. But again this might not be that straightforward as I explain i...

We have looked at Integrated Access and Backhaul, a.k.a. IAB in couple of posts earlier. The 3G4G Blog post late last year talked about what IAB is, what features will be available this year as part of Release-16 and what enhancements are planned as part of Release-17. We also looked at IAB from Ericsson Tech Review on the post here . 5G Americas released a whitepaper on  Innovations in 5G Backhaul Technologies last month. There are quite a few interesting things in there that I am going to cover on this blog in this and the next few posts. There is a nice detailed explanation of IAB that complements my earlier posts very well. It should be a good starting point for anyone willing to look at IAB in detail. One of the topic in the paper that caught my attention was IAB Resource Allocation Methodologies. If we think simplistically, then both the donor and the relay node can transmit simultaneously when transmitting in different frequencies (out-of-band). This...