Huawei’s revenues plummet following global pressures

Huawei has reported its biggest-ever revenue drop as sanctions and other global pressures continue to weigh heavy on its business.

The Chinese giant has faced international sanctions over national security concerns in addition to the problems faced by its rivals, including the pandemic and global chip shortage.

As a result, Huawei’s revenues dropped 30 percent in H1 2021 compared to the same period last year. The company’s H1 2021 revenue was 320.4B yuan (£36B) so...

9 August 2021 | Legislation & Government

Verizon and AWS deploy MEC to cover 13 metropolitan areas

The addition of three new locations means that 13 metropolitan areas now support mobile edge computing (MEC) applications on Verizon’s network.

As of this week, developers and businesses can now build and deploy edge applications in: Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix. These locations join the ten existing areas of Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York City, Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington DC.

Sampath Sowmyanarayan, Chief...

6 August 2021 | IoT

RootMetrics: EE is the sole UK operator with 5G availability above 55% in any city

Independent tests from RootMetrics find that EE is the sole UK operator with 5G availability above 55 percent in any city.

In fact, the UK’s largest operator by mobile subscribers can boast everyday 5G availability above 55 percent in four major cities: Birmingham (64.6%), Nottingham (63.9%), Manchester (59.4%), Leicester (57.8%), and Cardiff (55.8%).

Compared to last year, EE managed to improve its 5G availability in 13 cities. Furthermore, the operator has the...

5 August 2021 | Networks

Ookla analysis finds Starlink faster than the UK’s fixed broadband

Ookla’s latest analysis finds that Starlink’s median download speed is much faster than the UK’s fixed broadband average.

The analysis uses Speedtest data from Q2 2021 and found the average Starlink download speed to be 108.30 Mbps, over double the UK’s fixed broadband average of 50.14 Mbps.

Starlink’s lead narrowed in upload speed where it posted an average of 15.64 Mbps, compared to the UK’s fixed broadband of 14.76 Mbps.

Unsurprisingly, Starlink...

4 August 2021 | Broadband

Nokia achieves the world’s first 5G SA carrier aggregation

Nokia can boast of another world-first as it successfully completes a carrier aggregation in a 5G standalone (SA) network environment.

The vendor partnered with Taiwan Mobile to combine spectrum in the 700MHz (n28) and 3500MHz (n78) bands in a New Radio Carrier Aggregation (NR CA) trial.

Tom Koh, SVP and CTO of the Technology Group at Taiwan Mobile, said:

“This trial is an important milestone as we execute our 5G strategy and deliver best-in-class 5G services...

3 August 2021 | 5G

Virgin Media will upgrade its entire UK network to full-fibre by 2028

Virgin Media has committed to upgrading its entire UK broadband network to full-fibre by 2028.

The operator’s network currently predominantly uses Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) technology but also some Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) via Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG). The network is currently being upgraded to support the DOCSIS 3.1 standard which is due to complete by the end of this year and should handle a peak theoretical download speed of up to 10Gbps and uploads of around...

29 July 2021 | Networks

Ookla reveals the world’s capitals with the fastest and slowest 5G speeds

Ookla has published a new report that reveals which of the world’s capitals are enjoying the fastest 5G download speeds, or suffering the slowest.

As the owners of the industry-standard Speedtest service, Ookla has a huge amount of real-world data of the speeds that users are receiving across both mobile and broadband networks.

Oslo, Norway boasts the fastest 5G of any world capital, clocking a median download speed of 526.74 Mbps. Seoul, South Korea had the second...

28 July 2021 | 5G

Broadband outages triple as almost 15M Brits suffer in the past year

Nearly 15 million Brits suffered a major broadband outage during a year when reliable connectivity has never proved to be so vital.

Video meetings, checking in with loved ones, purchasing essentials, awkward virtual quizzes, getting help when needed, and keeping updated on the latest advice and developments all required a dependable internet connection.

However, research from Uswitch found that broadband outages have tripled in the last year.

Ernest Doku,...

27 July 2021 | Broadband

Juniper Research: Users of 5G roaming services will surpass 200M by 2026

According to a study by Juniper Research, the number of 5G roamers is set to surpass 200 million by 2026.

While much of life slowed to a crawl during the pandemic, the 5G rollout continued at pace. With the worst of the pandemic hopefully behind us, operators are now ramping up their deployments even further.

Juniper’s analysts predict an increase in the global number of 5G roamers from 4.5 million in 2021 to 210 million in 2026. As international travel cautiously...

26 July 2021 | 5G

Vodafone will supply 5G for the UK’s largest electricity operator in world-first trial

Vodafone will supply UK Power Networks, the country’s largest electricity network operator, with 5G connectivity in a world-first trial.

In November last year, UK Power Networks launched its Constellation project that aims to transform how electricity networks operate. Constellation enables local substations to analyse millions of datapoints on how the network is running, meaning the network can safely reconfigure itself to enable higher volumes.

Ian Cameron, Head of...

23 July 2021 | 5G