Show Notes
The digital divide is a pervasive issue drawing a gap between those who have access to high-speed internet and those who don’t. This lack of connectivity is extremely prevalent in rural areas which often lag far behind urban and suburban areas when it comes to having internet access.
While the digital divide has always been an issue, it’s been greatly underscored by the COVID 19 pandemic, which has driven many jobs, schools, and even medical practices to operate online. Without this connection, many Americans are left without critical access in everyday life. Government funding is helping to improve coverage and affordability. The evolution and introduction of new technologies that address operator and rural market service requirements is supporting advancement as well.
A key example of expanding high-speed Internet coverage is Samsung’s work with t3 Broadband. Samsung and t3 are working together to help rural operators expand coverage across more remote areas across the US. The partnership pairs t3 Broadband’s expertise, including the ability to design and deploy powerful network solutions and services remotely, with Samsung’s CBRS massive MIMO portfolio and solution bandwidth, speed and cell edge performance. Together, these help rural operators deliver and enhance broadband connectivity in hard-to-reach locations.
Samsung and t3 both believe everyone should have access to stable, high-speed Internet service, regardless of location. Listen to this episode to understand how they, and other organizations, are working to bridge the digital divide for consumers across the Midwest and showing the way for other rural areas across the country.
More from Networks TechTalk with Samsung
Wireless networks are going through a paradigm shift with the emergence of Open RAN. This new approach to architecting a multi-vendor network fosters innovation, agility, and cost efficiency in deploying and operating 5G networks. More importantly, it serves users better and faster than ever. However, there are mixed opinions in the industry and varied approaches to materializing the vision of Open RAN.
Fixed Wireless Access, or FWA, has emerged as a powerful enabler in the mobile landscape and is one method being used to fulfill the growing user demand for data. FWA is another offering to provide high-speed internet access to homes, businesses, and remote areas without relying on traditional wired connections like fiber or cable lines for the ‘last mile’ of connectivity. The demand for FWA itself among broadband users is growing with analyst firms expecting FWA users to reach 14-18 million in 2027 in the United States.
With much of the world standing on the brink of mainstream 5G usage, operators are looking for ways to extract maximum value from their network investments – essentially trying to figure out how to monetize 5G. Operators have spent the past few years on things like spectrum, working to increase base stations needed for sufficient coverage and capacity, and implementing new software tools that allow for autonomous networks and faster delivery of services and upgrades. Providers are now starting to take advantage of the high-speed, low-latency, and connectivity capacities that 5G brings to the market.
5G is the first wireless technology designed to be energy efficient and sustainable with an industry target of 90% improvement in spectral efficiency compared to 4G. This improvement, in large part, also requires energy efficiency in the equipment. Operators and vendors have devised several features to accomplish this goal including increasing spectrum bands supported in a single radio and Massive MIMO antenna capacity, beamforming, and an increasing the use of high-band frequencies. Samsung works to ensure our product experience at every step contributes to a sustainable world with eco-conscious technology and innovation. Samsung is a pioneer in vRAN, being the first to bring vRAN to market with software driven network functions to make networks more flexible and reduce processing and transmit power. Samsung is also helping to address energy efficiency with Power Amplifiers equipped with a Bias Control, dynamic download MIMO transmit paths, and with its low power, energy saving system-on-a-chip (SoC). With global mobile data traffic rates continuing to rise and applications requiring low-latency proliferating, networks will continue to densify, and the number of cell sites grow exponentially. Despite this, telecommunications industry is committed to finding ways to bring down the amount of power used and lowering our carbon footprint to run our networks. We are all excited to see the power saving techniques and features we’ve discussed today continue to advance around the globe. Watch and listen to this Networks Tech Talk episode to learn more about how Samsung and the telecommunications industry are investing in energy saving innovations and technologies.
Virtual Radio Access Networks, or vRAN, are the future of the radio access side of mobile operators’ networks. vRAN is software that runs on off-the-shelf servers rather than the proprietary, dedicated hardware that mobile network providers have been running for decades.