Mobile Internet

ICT in Agriculture: A Travel to Australia’s Outback Queensland

In October 2020, I went on a two-week tour into Queensland's Outback, traveling through various landscapes from pastoral and agricultural lands to savanna and the desert. Leaving Brisbane, past Toowoomba, you enter the Darling Downs. This is one of the richest agricultural areas in Australia. British Botanist Alan Cunningham first explored it in 1827. However, only after the penal colony of Moreton Bay (now Brisbane) was closed, free settlers were allowed in the area.

SpaceX Starlink Is on a Roll

The last two months have seen a flurry of Starlink activity, including the following: Bill Gates has a history of interest in satellite Internet and in September, Microsoft announced their Azure Obrital ground station service, which enables satellite access to its Azure cloud services. SES, Viasat, and Intelsat were announced as initial partners and SpaceX just signed up. Starlink+Azure Orbital will compete with Amazon's satellite constellation and its ground-station service...

Apple Buys Into 5G

Apple is coming out with a full range of new 5G iPhones. The phones have been designed to use the full range of new frequencies that the various cellular companies are touting as 5G, up to and including the millimeter wave spectrum offered in center cities by Verizon. In addition to 5G, the phones have new features like a better camera, better ease at using wireless charging, and a lidar scanner.

Smart Cities Want to Co-Design Change With Telcos

With 5G earmarked as a game-changer for cities, wireless technologies are already widely deployed by leading smart cities, including those here in Australia. However, cities do not want to be locked into proprietary technology solutions, rather seeing themselves as a platform on which many organisations can build infrastructure, applications, and services to benefit all citizens and all local businesses.

5G First in China’s Key Industrial Investment

Four Chinese ministries issued the policy document in September, called "Guiding Opinions on Expanding Investment in Strategic Emerging Industries and Cultivating Strengthened New Growth Points and Growth Poles." As you can see below, in this document, 5G was the top recommendation. The National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Finance came together to suggest priorities for the 14th Five-Year Plan.

A New Chinese Broadband Satellite Constellation

In an earlier post, I described three Chinese low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations that seemed to be oriented toward broadband communication... None of those companies seem to be pursuing the global consumer market that SpaceX and OneWeb hope to serve, but a new Chinese company code-named GW seems to plan on doing so.

5G/F5G Cloud Announcements: NFV Game-Changing Confirmations

Over the past few days, Microsoft made two major announcements. One was a "playbook [for] providing a carrier-grade platform for edge and cloud computing to help network operators realize the full potential of 5G technology" using its it Azure cloud data centres. The second announcement was a new platform that enables satellite-based access to those same cloud data centres designated Azure Orbital. Coupled with these announcements was another one by Samsung...

Update on the 5G Race in the US

It's been a while since I checked in to see how the U.S. is doing in the 5G race. I haven't been following the issue since before the pandemic when the U.S. government was tossing around the idea of buying a controlling interest in Nokia or Ericsson. That idea went nowhere but led to a lot of articles in the business press. I decided to look anew after seeing recently that the FCC is estimating that it would cost U.S. carriers about $1.8 billion to replace Huawei and ZTE gear in U.S.

Bill Gates Has Not Forgotten Teledesic – Might We See Another Broadband LEO Constellation?

Teledesic was the first company to plan to offer broadband connectivity using a constellation of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. Craig McCaw, who had sold McCaw Cellular to AT&T, founded Teledesic in 1990 and it got a big visibility and credibility boost when Bill Gates made a small ($5 million) investment in the company. McCaw and Gates were able to attract capital - $200 million from a Saudi Prince, $750 million from Motorola, and $100 million from Boeing, which signed on as the prime contractor.

An Update on LEO Satellites

A lot of rural America continues to hope that low orbit satellite (LEO) service will provide a broadband alternative. It's been a while since I've covered the status of the companies proposing to deploy constellations of satellites for providing broadband. In March, OneWeb filed for Chapter 11 restructuring when it was clear that the company could not raise enough cash to continue the research and development of the satellite product.