2nd Workshop on Enterprise/Private Cellular, December 1st, London

NEW: Disruptive Analysis & Rethink Research joint workshop on Enterprise Cellular Networks, London, December 1st, 2017

At the end of May, I co-ran a day-long workshop with Caroline Gabriel covering enterprise and private LTE, for industry verticals, neutral-hosts, indoors, government and other environments.

We had c20 people involved, with a mix of presentations, group discussions and exercises, and ample time for networking. The event was held under Chatham House rules, so people could talk confidentially without direct attribution of comments.

Six months later, we're repeating the workshop, on December 1st in Central London. A limited number of places are available.

New mobile devices/applications and the emergence of the Industrial IoT means that high-quality – often mission-critical – networks are required for new systems and applications. These can span both on-premise coverage (eg at a port, factory, office, wind-farm or hospital) and the wide-area (eg for smart cities or future rail networks). 

A lot has progressed in 2017, and I'm expecting 2018 to bring further developments:

• Regulators in some markets have actively looked to provide frequency ranges for public safety, large businesses and other uses.
• Every spectrum conference I've been to has had a session or two on shared bands, and is also taking unlicensed technologies more seriously.
• Rules on CBRS have solidified in the US, albeit with possible changes proposed to the FCC. Many industries and major companies (eg the oil sector) are seriously engaged.
• MulteFire is looking "real", with deployments (and devices) expected next year.
• Vendors including Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei have all indicated growing interest in private cellular, as well as host of smaller players, or WiFi specialists looking to add cellular radios.
• The 5G community is recognising that "verticals" may not always be best-addressed by traditional MNOs, and may require new models. Even most operators concede that they can't do everything - especially for industrial IoT connectivity or uses with heavy legal liability or certification requirements.
• Various large industrial and utility/rail players have shown a lot of interest in private LTE, alongside WiFi meshes, LPWAN and other vertical-oriented network technologies.
• Community, rural and emerging-market players have started to look at cellular in unlicensed/shared bands to reduce costs and improve coverage. 

Workshop structure & Coverage

The day will have a maximum of 30 attendees to ensure a high level of discussion and interaction. We expect a diverse mix of service providers, vendors, regulators and other interested parties such as enterprises, investors and developers. 

It will be suitable for C-level executives, strategists, product management, marketing functions, CTO office, market analysts and regulatory affairs specialists.  

It will be led by myself and Rethink Research’s Caroline Gabriel (link). We are both well-known industry figures, with many years of broad communications industry analysis – and outspoken views – between us.

 

Topics to be discussed include:

• Key market drivers: IoT, automation, mobile workers, vertical-specific operational and regulatory issues, indoor coverage, democratisation of wireless expertise
• Spectrum-sharing, including unlicensed, light/local-licensing and CBRS-type models. What bands are different countries' regulators looking at? 2.6GHz, 3.5GHz, 4GHz, 28GHz, others?
• Evolution of key enabling technologies such as MulteFire, 5G, NB-IoT, network-slicing, SDN, small cells, edge computing, and enterprise-grade IMS cores
• Regulatory/policy issues: spectrum allocation, competition, roaming, repeaters, national infrastructure strategies and broader “Industry 4.0” economic goals
• The shifting roles of MVNOs, MVNEs, neutral hosts and future “slice operators”
• Numbering and identity: eSIM, multi-IMSI, MNC codes
• How will voice & UC & push-to-talk work on private cellular networks?
• Commercial impacts, new business model opportunities & threats to incumbents
• Vendor dynamics: Existing network equipment vendors, enterprise solution providers, vertical wireless players, managed services companies, new industrial & Internet players (eg GE, Google), implications for BSS/OSS, impact of open-source

(I've covered various of these themes in previous posts and presentations. If you want more detail about some of my thinking, see links here and here and here. We will be going into a lot more depth in the workshop itself. And for a quick 20-minute “taster”, see the video of my presentation from the recent TADSummit event in Lisbon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7rQm1_Kv0c&t=8s )

The workshops will take place at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair, central London [link]. It will run from 9am-5pm, with plenty of time for networking and interactive discussion. Come prepared to think and talk, as well as listen – these are “lean-forward” days. Coffee and lunch are included.

The attendance fee is £699+VAT, with a discount for a second attendee. Payment can be made via credit card (see Paypal Buy Now button below), or purchase-order & invoice on request.  

Note: sometimes Paypal can be a bit awkward, especially with corporate cards or accounts. Drop me an email if you experience any problems or for further details: 
information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

Normal Price

1 Attendee (inc 20% VAT) £838.80 GBP 2 Attendees (inc 20% VAT) £1,500.00 GBP

Data-over-Sound: An interesting approach to connectivity

I cover three main areas in my research & advisory work:

• Communications networks & services - mobile network evolution, IoT connectivity, telco business models and policy, and so on
• Communications applications & technologies - voice, video, messaging, UC etc
• Communications futurism - the intersection of comms. with other domains such as AI, IoT, blockchain, VR/AR and so forth 

All are evolving at speed, sometimes linked and sometimes in orthogonal - or even opposite - directions. Sometimes the intersections of these various threads yield some surprising combinations and innovations, which are interesting to explore.

I've just written and published a white paper for a client (Chirp.io), on one such intersection - the use of audio signals for short-range communications, or Data-over-Sound. It can be downloaded here (link). The easiest way to think about it is as an alternative to NFC or QR-codes for certain applications - but usable by any device with a microphone/speaker, and with less need for physical proximity or cumbersome pairing like Bluetooth. It's applicable to both normal phones and PCs, and also a variety of IoT devices.

(As always when I write documents like this, I have a stringent set of rules about my editorial independence. Given my normal "spikiness" when I write, in practice it means I need to have broadly-aligned opinions in advance. I've turned down writing papers when I've known the client wouldn't like the views & conclusions in the final report).

The emerging Data-over-Sound sector is currently quite fragmented, and has a mix of new platform players and point-solutions, integrated into customised vertical applications. It's being used for mobile payments in India, device-pairing for UC meeting-room whiteboard applications, and even between robots. Other use-cases exist in retail, advertising/marketing, ticketing and other domains. It can use both audible and inaudible frequency ranges.

In some ways it's similar to technologies like WebRTC, in that it's a capability rather than a product/service in its own right. It still needs some expertise to integrate into an application - and indeed, enough people with "vision" (OK, OK, hearing & inner voice...) to recognise the possible use-cases.  Ideally, it could benefit from more standards, better interoperability, the emergence of extra tools and platforms - and also some ethical standards around things like privacy & security, especially where ultrasound is used covertly.

I don't think Data-over-Sound is going to revolutionise the entire world of connectivity - the same way I'm always skeptical when people claim blockchain is "a new Internet". But I think it should be an important addition to device-to-device communications (I've never viewed NFC positively), and should yield a range of beneficial applications as awareness grows, and applications/tools mature. (And hey, who doesn't like technologies that let your phone speak R2D2 - video link)

The download link, again, is here. The paper gives some background to the technology and use-cases, as well as discussing the emerging structure of the sector.