Mobile & Wireless Roundup No. 128

Welcome to the 128th edition of this newsletter. I often hear the phrase “horses for courses” in various presentations. As a non-native English speaker, I didn’t fully grasp its meaning for the first few years. In my simple brain, it now translates to: “the person/tool/gadget that might be suitable in one scenario may not be suitable or effective in another.”

I bring this up because, as 6G discussions progress, many people keep claiming that 5G has been a failure. While this may be true at a micro level in certain countries or situations, overall, many operators and consumers have experienced significant benefits from 5G.

For operators, 5G has helped alleviate capacity crunches in dense urban areas, making it easier to provide reasonable data rates during peak hours. For consumers, especially in developing countries, 5G has enabled better data rates where fibre connections are either unaffordable or unavailable. Many people use their phones as hotspots, allowing them to connect laptops, tablets, and TVs with speeds they couldn’t otherwise access.

The contrast between regions is stark. In countries like Japan and South Korea, where 4G coverage is already excellent outdoors and fibre penetration is high indoors, 5G has been underwhelming. However, in countries like India, where fibre is still not widespread, 5G delivers speeds over 300 Mbps, providing a vital alternative for reliable connectivity.

4G coverage in India is not bad either but due to the number of people using their mobile network to access internet, high data rates are unavailable in many areas. I suspect as more people adopt 5G, we may see the same pattern of congestion emerge, driving the demand for 6G.

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

• Summary of 3GPP's 6G Workshop (March 2025) (link)

• TelecomTV: Nvidia eyes 6G with AI-native telco stack (link)
• 6G SNS: Key Insights from the SNS JU Session at MWC25 (link)
• The 3G4G Blog - AI/ML in 3GPP: Progress, Challenges, and the Road to 6G (link)

⦿ 5G

• Ookla - 5G Standalone: Global Deployment Trends and Monetization Strategies (link)
• NTT Docomo Technical Journal: Overview of 5G Core Network Advanced Technologies in 3GPP Release 18 —System Architecture— (link)

⦿ 4G/LTE

• Mohamed Abbas on LinkedIn: Transition from 3G Core to 4G EPC then 5GC (link)

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

• Dell’Oro - MWC 2025: RAN, Open RAN, and AI RAN Highlights (link)
• Light Reading: Mavenir and NEC adjust to RAN realities (link)
• ODIN - YO-RAN at Mobile World Congress 2025: Pioneering Open RAN Innovation in Yorkshire (link)

• VMO2: Government-backed project successfully showcases O-RAN technology at the Allianz Stadium (PR)
• The Japan News - Japanese Telecom Giants Promote Open RAN Technology at Mobile World Congress; Aiming to Challenge European, Chinese Dominance (link)

⦿ Spectrum

• Slovenia has announced a public tender with a public auction for the allocation of radio frequencies in the 2300 MHz and 3600 MHz radio frequency bands for local use (link, documents in Slovenian) – only 30 MHz (20MHz, 10 MHz) of TDD spectrum in 2.3 GHz and 20 MHz in 3.6 GHz is being made available

⦿ Private Networks

• Private Networks Technology Blog: Revolutionising German Ports with 5G: Insights from COCUS at PortComms 2024 (link)

• RCR Wireless: Industry 4.0 lags in home of Industrie 4.0 – China and US pull clear of DACH countries, UK (link)

⦿ Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Wednesday Wonderings: All Stations Go! (link)
• Ookla: Fiber Brings Faster Fixed Broadband to North Africa with More Possibilities Ahead (link)
• Dell’Oro Group: Worldwide Telecom Equipment Down 11 Percent in 2024 (link)
• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Thursday School: Beauty is…. (link)
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Docomo's COW Setup at Peaceful Park 2024 (link)

⦿ IoT / M2M / Smart Homes

• IoT for all - Leveraging Satellites for Global Connectivity: The Future of NTN LoRaWAN IoT (link)

⦿ Virtualization, Cloud & Edge

• Jinsung Choi on LinkedIn: The Future of NFV – Evolving Towards an Intelligent, Cloud-Native Telco Infrastructure (link)
• EE Times: Why Edge Computing and 6G Intelligence Will Continue to Be ‘Aspirations’ by William Webb (link)

⦿ Security & Privacy

• Danish Centre for Cybersecurity: The cyber threat against the Danish telecommunication sector (link) – an article in The Record here.
• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: “Taking over the plant, one ICS at a time: 6 new attacks target the latest Siemens S7 secure protocol for industrial systems…” (link)

⦿ Connected And Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs)

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn - How to blind your car: A new attack on LiDAR can trick it into "not seeing" people or parked cars at 60 km/h from a distance of 110 meters. (link)

⦿ Smartphones, Devices, Wearables & Gadgets

• MWL: VMO2 shines light on unused tech goldmine (link)

⦿ AI, ML & Automation

• AI and Cloud-native networks: Essential for future of 6G Success - keynote from Brooklyn 6G Summit 2024 (link)
• Jinsung Choi on LinkedIn - The Year of AI-RAN: Transforming the Future of Telecom (link)
• Light Reading: Orange is working on an AI network 'brain' to run 5G (link)
• Jinsung Choi on LinkedIn: How 3GPP is Transforming Measurement & Data Collection (link)

• Fierce Network: AI is 'underhyped,' says Nvidia's telecom chief (link)
• Jinsung Choi on LinkedIn - NWDAF in 3GPP Release 17: Online Learning and Federated Learning (link)
• Fierce Network - Nvidia GTC: Top telco takeaways: AI-RAN, 6G, AI factories and cute robots (link)
• Jinsung Choi on LinkedIn - NWDAF in an AI-RAN Powered 5G System: Enabling Intelligent and Autonomous Networks (link)
• TMN: Nvidia forms 6G un-Alliance to expand mobile network presence (link)
• SoftBank Corp. Develops a Foundational Large Telecom Model (LTM) (link)
• Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: "Random thought for the day: If telco GPUs for AI-RAN or other purposes are genuinely suitable for running non-telco workloads, why aren’t they just mining Bitcoin for their own finance department & treasury function, with the spare capacity? …" (link)

⦿ Satellites, HAPS, Drones, UAVs & Space

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: Inside Apple's proprietary satellite communication protocol and the vulnerabilities that were found (link)

⦿ Wi-Fi

• Ookla - Checking In with Speed: Wi-Fi Performance in Luxury Hotels Across APAC’s Top Business Hubs (link)
• Ookla - Fiber-Rich, Wi-Fi Poor: Spain Exemplifies the Scourge of Outdated Wi-Fi (link)

⦿ Other News and Technology Stuff

• Connectivity Technology Blog: How Do Apple AirTags Work? (link)

• AppLogic Networks (formerly Sandvine): The 2025 Global Internet Phenomena Report (link)

⦿ Picture of the week: A picture from last year shared by PhoneMast on an X post showing how Vodafone has added 4G to a 1991 pitchfork antenna. The main reason being to increase the coverage footprint.

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.