[HN Gopher] Europe's telcos want 'open' 5G networks
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Europe's telcos want 'open' 5G networks
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score : 213 points
Date : 2021-01-25 13:56 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| naringas wrote:
| when they don't stand to make a profit because they own the "IP"
| then they want openess
| shimonabi wrote:
| It's a protectionist scheme against foreign competition.
|
| Don't fall for the talk of "openness". Remember that the EU
| itself was established as a German-French cartel.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Banning Huawei is legitimate US security, but OpenStandards are
| EU protectionism. Got it.
| burtness wrote:
| *German-French-British
| acta_non_verba wrote:
| The UK was not a founding member of the European community.
| Charles de Gaulle saw to that.
| kitd wrote:
| They were however one of the main driving forces behind the
| Single Market, of which this is an expression.
| gostsamo wrote:
| The UK never bought the EU project, came late, left promptly.
| Know before talking.
| Lio wrote:
| The UK started efforts to join the EEC just 4 years after
| the Treaty of Rome.
|
| Its entry was personally blocked 3 times by Charles De
| Gaulle before finally being allowed to join in 1973.
|
| When the UK finally left in 2020 it had been a member for
| 47 years.
|
| I wouldn't describe that as coming late and leaving
| promptly.
|
| As for never buying the EU project, a 1975 referendum on
| EEC membership was won by a comfortable 34.4% majority.
|
| Where as the 2016 vote leave campaigns won with just a 3.7%
| majority, having broken the rules on spending.
|
| I would say that many of us in the UK buy the EU project
| and are unhappy about the leave result still.
|
| To this day the reports on foreign interference have not
| been compiled or fully published by the current
| Conservative government.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I was present on a talk about the EU given by an UK
| official back in 2014. At that time the person didn't
| even knew how many members the EU had (Croatia was just
| admitted) and they were pretty open that they are not
| really interested to know. When I've been to the UK, two
| years earlier, a bus driver that I talked to was afraid
| that eastern europeans will come and take his job. I
| perfectly well know the UK relationship with the EU, but
| trust me when I tell you that giving some numbers does
| not reflect reality. Maybe because the UK considered
| itself a winner in WWII and wasn't ruined from it like
| France and Germany, or maybe because of Soros and black
| Wednesday, or for whatever reason,but Brittan was never a
| cornerstone of the EU the way France and Germany are,
| which is the thing the GP was trying to imply and I
| definitely disagree.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Alternatively: Came late, when realised they were missing
| out, got special treatment,stayed for 30 years, made a
| mess, threatened to divorse, it's been 5 years and they
| still can't shut the door.
| shimonabi wrote:
| The Brits joined later because they were broke and had lost
| their empire.
| e2le wrote:
| And the Germans joined to cleanse themselves of genocide
| and apply for readmission to the human race. While the
| French only joined because they wanted to protect their
| inefficient farmers from commercial competition.
|
| The British joined to screw the French by splitting them
| off from the Germans that and of course their foreign
| policy objective for at least the last five hundred years
| which has being to create a disunited Europe.
| jpfr wrote:
| Fabrice Bellard, who is quite famous on HN for his open source
| work, has founded a company for his own 5G implementation. And
| they are EU-based. [1]
|
| I'm under the impression his work is closer to the "radio
| protocol" than the infrastructure management behind. Not sure if
| they are related to Open-RAN though...
|
| [1] https://www.amarisoft.com/about-us/
| technofiend wrote:
| From reading HN it seems like there needs to be open source
| radio hardware as well to break the dependency on qualcomm,
| broadcom and whomever else is supplying chips. At least if the
| idea is to have something auditable.
| user3939382 wrote:
| From what I understand (someone correct me if I'm wrong) part
| of the problem is that baseband hardware and firmware
| requires expensive FCC approvals that's more compatible with
| the profitability of closed-source intellectual property.
| vaduz wrote:
| It's not so much that it is more aligned with profitability
| per se, but the fact that _each modification_ you put in
| the part of the device controlling the radio _also needs
| said approval before being used to transmit_ - and FCC has
| been tightening the enforcement of that. It has been on HN
| before [0]...
|
| Usual caveats about Part 15 vs Part 97 use apply.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11267443
| fit2rule wrote:
| We all need to be making RONJA a thing:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA
| frequent wrote:
| Amarisoft and Nexedi also launched a joint company called
| Rapid.Space last year. It combines cloud and 4G/5G
| infrastructure operation and is "HyperOpen" = using open-source
| software, open hardware and open service.
|
| Press release: https://handbook.rapid.space/RS-
| Hyper.Open.Converged.Cloud.D...
|
| More info on 5G technology:
| https://handbook.rapid.space/evangelist/RS-Presentation.For....
|
| (disclaimer: I work for Nexedi and help out on Rapid.Space)
| steeve wrote:
| I came exactly to promote this. Thank you.
| amelius wrote:
| Do we really need control over the radio hardware? Or can we
| treat them as dumb pipes, and use something like Tor to shield
| us from whoever can track who is using a radio channel?
| xorcist wrote:
| Tor can not prevent a denial of service.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > Amarisoft LTE and NR network software suit is a unique full
| software LTE and NR solution ... Our binary licenses can be
| fixed and bounded to a single hardware, floating on a USB
| dongle, or floating using a license server.
|
| I suppose it's possible that their product includes some Open
| Source Software, while still using node-locked licenses. But it
| doesn't sound like it.
|
| This press release [1] from 2020 makes it sound like Amarisoft
| is working on OpenRAN.
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-
| businesswire/56f3c23c33a...
| ferdek wrote:
| Recently Nokia strongly communicates its commitment to Open-
| RAN. They want to be like Tesla or Toyota (in case of hybrid-
| drives): so good that competition is unable to keep up even
| after opening their patents. Once telcos grasp the benfits of
| open-interfaces infrastructure (eCPRI and stuff), there is no
| coming back to closed ecosystems.
|
| The "radio protocol" is "open" since GSM, anyone can download
| standards from 3GPP and implement it accordingly. But the mere
| amount of knowledge and specialized hardware required to do
| this, even for single layer like L1, is tremendous. I think
| this is the real reason why we don't already have open-source
| implementation of the full stack.
|
| EDIT: an afterthought - maybe the O-RAN is really a chance for
| open-source here. In the future, once O-RAN is accepted and
| widely deployed, we could work on implementing the stack piece-
| by-piece, layer-by-layer, filling the gaps with commercial
| software/hardware as we go, instead of doing everything at
| once...
| [deleted]
| Railsify wrote:
| Came here to mention Nokia, I bought NOK last week, the stock
| is starting to move. Between existing revenue from 5G and
| future growth I have a price target of 15USD by Jan 2023. New
| leadership is in place as well and a mandate for each
| business unit to become profitable.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The 3GPP standard leaves a lot of implementation freedom in
| many areas and there is a huge number of patents on
| everything. So in practice licensing is a big issue and keeps
| new entrants at bay.
|
| Nokia thinks it is in good shape because without Huawei there
| is indeed not many threats. Starting from scratch is hugely
| costly and takes many years. In any case Nokia has no choice
| but to be "committed" to Open RAN since that's what telcos
| want.
|
| IMHO, Open RAN is a push by telcos to commoditize the
| infrastructure and to avoid being locked in because key
| interfaces are proprietary.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| WSB on reddit is pumping it now too. Makes sense.
| abledon wrote:
| this alongside WSB's recent interest in NOK... lets see what
| happens.
| crispycrafter2 wrote:
| Hahaha.. Force the hand of those who feed and we'll force the
| hand of the fed.
|
| The West has blocked Huawei from being used now they force the
| populis to demand open networks.
| u678u wrote:
| Telephone networks are a dead business. You look at European
| telecom stocks and they just keep going down year after year.
| Wont be long before they're all bankrupts and will get
| nationalized again.
| monopoledance wrote:
| Fingers crossed.
| fulafel wrote:
| Mature businesses tend to have lower margins. Doesn't follow
| that he businesses would fail, just that the owners extract
| lower rents from the public.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| and yet they have reliable, cheap, high speed, highly available
| networks.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Providing affordabke reliable service is bad for business?
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| Yes, if there is no future growth in the market. Companies
| need to figure out how to expand their total addressable
| market or enter new lines of business.
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| > and will get nationalized again
|
| IMO, this would be a bad move. Let them die. Voice and text
| over the internet is here to stay. In the last two years I
| didn't a single phone call thanks to WhatsApp, Signal and
| Instagram.
| tpmx wrote:
| Sort of like the airlines. The high level of competition is
| good for the consumers, of course.
| zoobab wrote:
| $ apt install 5g $ echo "Done"
| maeln wrote:
| Note: This is being pushed by the major telecom company in the EU
|
| > The Continent's "big four" telcos Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica,
| Vodafone and Orange on Wednesday published a joint "memorandum of
| understanding" pledging to prioritize the development of "Open
| RAN" technology
|
| They want to have more interoperabilities between equipment and
| more supplier basically :
|
| > Open RAN encompasses the idea of chopping up the 5G supply
| chain into smaller pieces and imposing standards on equipment and
| software firms so their products can work together
|
| This makes a lot of sense for telco since it would drastically
| lower the cost of their deployment and the maintenance of the 5G
| network.
|
| Right now, if you take your equipments from one supplier, you are
| basically locked-in with this supplier since they are not
| compatible with each-other. So if one equipment fail, you need to
| buy a replacement from the same supplier.
| tguvot wrote:
| >This makes a lot of sense for telco since it would drastically
| lower the cost of their deployment and the maintenance of the
| 5G network.
|
| Actually no. Integrated solutions are cheaper to make at scale
| (for how much it's sold it's a different question) Also
| integration of multiple vendors into one working solutions has
| additional costs both for deployment and maintenance/support
| later (instead of 1 piece of equipment you have 5 boxes with 5
| vendors pointing fingers at each other when something fails).
| Also more points of failure
| eivarv wrote:
| It'll probably never happen, but we should look into solving the
| technical debt in our communications infrastructure - even if
| breaking backward-compatibility . Huge issues and vulnerabilities
| wrt security and privacy that are probably solvable, but were
| never considered in the first place.
| g_p wrote:
| I think there's a growing acceptance that SS7 is a protocol
| from the past. It's based on a set of assumptions (around
| telecoms operators being trustworthy) that just never held
| true.
|
| The problem is that it continues to be the lowest common
| denominator for a lot of the world to stay connected from a
| telecoms perspective.
|
| Moving to newer protocols makes a lot of sense, but for much of
| the developing world I imagine they'll continue to rely on
| legacy technologies like SS7 for some time to come, as they
| have that hardware in place etc.
|
| The driver away from legacy equipment in the West will likely
| be the skills shortage as engineers retire and there's a need
| to move to newer equipment that can be maintained and
| understood. There's enough of a shortage of new talent, let
| alone new talent that understands the old telecoms world way of
| thinking.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Moving to newer protocols makes a lot of sense, but for
| much of the developing world I imagine they'll continue to
| rely on legacy technologies like SS7 for some time to come,
| as they have that hardware in place etc.
|
| SS7 is going to be here for a loooong time yet, just like
| email hasn't died.
|
| > The driver away from legacy equipment in the West
|
| Most of the cell towers that are install in the EU are
| Software defined. Its far cheaper and future proof to have
| them programmable.
|
| Most other legacy stuff has been ripped out years ago, its
| far cheaper to maintain one fibre link than 15 ATM lines.
|
| Older kit eats power, which means for remote cell cites, more
| fuel. This costs money, so its cheaper to rip out and put
| newer power efficient kit in.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The problem is that it continues to be the lowest common
| denominator for a lot of the world to stay connected from a
| telecoms perspective.
|
| Not just the developing world. The amount of money needed to
| rebuild our current telco grids with modern, designed from
| scratch infrastructure is in the hundreds of billions of
| euros range - in a time where money is short in supply.
|
| Personally, I believe that even in 2030 there will still be
| widespread 2G networks as "last fallback" for generations-old
| IoT devices that simply can't do anything else...
| Rexxar wrote:
| Can we really say that money is in short supply when there
| are negative interest rates in lots of countries ?
| varispeed wrote:
| Do you think that bandwidth heavy apps and sites should
| chip in? If we didn't use so much bandwidth we could easily
| stay with 3G? So it seems like because companies built
| these video sites and now everyone wants to have access to
| them in their pocket, why should telecom companies invest
| in it?
| [deleted]
| jaywalk wrote:
| Telecom companies should invest in it because it's what
| their customers want. Your thinking is completely
| backwards.
| legulere wrote:
| Switzerland already phased out 2G and so did others:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G#Phase-out
|
| Some countries have the strategy of phasing out 3G instead.
| MrRadar wrote:
| In the US by 2030 both 2G and 3G will be a distant memory.
|
| AT&T shut down its 2G GSM network at the end of 2016 and
| intends to shut down its 3G network early next year.
|
| Verizon intended to shut down its 2G and 3G CDMA networks
| at the end of last year but delayed to the end of next
| year.
|
| T-Mobile US is operating its 2G GSM network entirely within
| the guard bands of its 3G UMTS service (which means the
| bandwidth available is extremely limited) and while they
| haven't specified a set date for shutting down their 2G and
| 3G service they are no longer investing in expanding it
| (see the difference between their 3G[1] and 4G[2] coverage
| maps) and I don't see it lasting significantly longer than
| AT&T's or Verizon's 2G/3G networks.
|
| Following the T-Mobile acquisition, the entire Sprint
| legacy network (2G, 3G, and 4G LTE) is going to be shut
| down by the end of this year with all customers being
| transferred to the T-Mobile network.
|
| Dish Wireless's new cellular network (which is being built
| out as part of the legal settlement that permitted the
| T-Mobile/Sprint merger) will be entirely 5G from the start
| with no 2G, 3G, or 4G service offered.
|
| [1] https://maps.t-mobile.com/pcc.html?map=mvno-noroam-34
|
| [2] https://maps.t-mobile.com/pcc.html?map=mvno-noroam-34l
| monadic3 wrote:
| Money is never in short supply. That's the entire point of
| fiat currency.
| waheoo wrote:
| Is this a follow on from the Belgian 5g deal with Nokia? [1]
|
| Pretty huge shift in the wholesale market dynamics if this is
| whats happening here.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/orange-nokia-
| security-5g/hua...
| est wrote:
| Yes! Make 5g v2x mesh happen, make devices cheap enough then we
| can have uncensorable Internet.
| zoobab wrote:
| Governments do not understand the economics behind internet
| connectivity, they are just treating it as a way to make money,
| for example selling spectrum licenses to the highest bidder.
| throw7 wrote:
| "U.S. Congress in November passed a bill approving $750 billion
| in public funding to develop Open RAN technologies."
|
| My jaw dropped here when reading... but it's million, not
| billion.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I see, I was wondering why you said that, indeed the linked
| article[0] says million, this article typod. Yeah nearly a
| trillion dollars for any technology invested on in one swoop
| would be quite jaw dropping (this comment may not age well if
| inflation makes trillion the new billion).
|
| [0]: https://www.rcrwireless.com/20201118/policy/house-
| unanimousl...
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Good catch.
|
| FYI, if anyone is wondering how the US Government spending fits
| in this puzzle, remember that when Motorola broke itself up,
| they sold their mobile infrastructure business to a
| Nokia/Siemens joint venture, which still has thousands of
| engineers working in the Chicago suburbs.
|
| Most, if not all, of this money is going to be spent in the USA
| within the American tech sector, even if the company name is
| European.
| ferdek wrote:
| In addition this article is also strongly opinionated, charged
| with emotions, feels like stitched together without second
| reading IMHO. Like:
|
| > It would allow operators to procure [...] with different
| players to piece together a 5G network, _breaking the market
| power of "end-to-end" vendors like Ericsson and Nokia_.
|
| And later: > the O-RAN Alliance. It's a standard-setting body
| that includes [...] leading vendors Ericsson and Nokia.
|
| First, it doesn't work like that. They will still offer end-to-
| end deals, even with ORAN, it's just that winning conditions
| change. Second, why would companies support standardization
| effort that is supposedly intended to "harm" them? :D
|
| > The operators, now barred by governments from using Huawei in
| several European markets, see Open RAN as a fix to what they
| consider a duopoly in the vendor market that allows Ericsson
| and Nokia to charge higher prices for 5G equipment.
|
| I LOL'ed. From what I know, Ericsson and Nokia does not charge
| higher prices for 5G equipment due to duopoly, because that
| would be called price collusion and the journalists don't have
| proof to back it up. Also, Ericsson and Nokia are fighting each
| other for every piece of market share, I don't see how pumping
| up the prices would help here.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| No one ever actually found any technical issues with Huawei kit
| did they?
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| Does it matter if they did? At this point, everyone has to
| assume the CCP has the ability to take complete control of any
| Chinese company it wants to (see Ant Group). I'm not sure why
| they even bother with the "monopoly" or "corruption" pretenses
| at this point.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| That's fine, but then you have to assume the same of the CIA
| and 101 other countries/agencies. So you have to design and
| build every part of all your systems nationally down to the
| copper wire pretty much and only after you've vetted all the
| people involved.
|
| Just so your 5G system can't be turned off?
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| While it's true that various US and foreign agencies can
| (and already are) tap into communication networks, that is
| a very different scenario than what you see in China, i.e.
| the state essentially taking control of private companies
| whenever they want.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I don't see why?
|
| We know the US used the NSA to gain an economic edge in
| negotiations with the EU. It even shared the information
| commercially didn't it?
|
| I don't think the US would hesitate to interfere for a
| moment if it wanted. The EU is already under US sanctions
| for building a gas pipeline with Russia. There is the
| Iran situation and the wider Middle East and North Africa
| messes and Turkey. Plenty of places for a disagreement to
| form...
|
| The EU has no major beef with China (I would prefer if
| they did, there is a lot to oppose about the PRC). China
| also has a much more isolationist/localist foreign policy
| so they're less likely to act and less likely to come
| into conflict with the EU.
|
| Edit:
|
| Source on spying:
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/30/world/europe/eu-
| nsa/index...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/business/us-snooping-
| on-c...
|
| On sanctions:
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-countries-protest-us-
| sanc...
| baskire wrote:
| Doesn't matter. See Australia. The CCP would gladly withhold
| teleco infra gear or back door in an update to suit their
| needs.
|
| Sure USA might do the same. But the USA is aligned closer
| culturally and values wise to the rest of the west
| knorker wrote:
| So I'll finally be able to run OpenGGSN in production?!
| afrojack123 wrote:
| doofus
| nickdothutton wrote:
| For those of you interested in a little of the history leading up
| to this point, particularly from a European perspective, you
| might find this of interest from me, written in 2019. A number of
| events lead up to our present dilemma.
| https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g/
| bhaavan wrote:
| Reliance Jio, a major player in India, is working on a OpenRAN
| based solution too [1]. Airtel, one of it's rivals is considering
| a similar approach , potentially joining in the efforts.
|
| [1] https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/for-home-
| grow...
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(page generated 2021-01-25 23:00 UTC)