RAN World Conference 2016, Germany

20160927_144104-sml27th September 2016 – Reporting from the RAN World conference in Dusseldorf, Germany where experts from the Industry have gathered to discuss emerging mobile technologies focusing on Radio Access Network (RAN), Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Centralised RAN (C-RAN) and more.

There were many guest speakers from around the world, including Mansoor Hanif from EE UK, Mikio Iwamura NTT Docomo Japan, Tero Kola, Nokia Finland, Eran Bello from ASOCS and many more.

The first presentation was on Radio Access Evolution – Bridges to 5G delivered by Tero Kola, Nokia. This focused on Nokia’s roadmap and evolution towards 5G. Tero talked about their new Airscale product which is aimed at bridging the gap between 4G and 5G. Discussing with Nokia technical experts afterwards they provided a live demonstration showing data speeds up to 1.2Gbps much faster than what we can achieve with our current 4G network.

There were many other presentations and discussions throughout the day with refresher breaks and lunch in between. During the breaks all the delegates got a chance to speak to vendors and suppliers who were show casing their products and solutions. It is a great opportunity to network and find out more about the future technologies that can shape communications world.

One very interesting presentation was from Eran Bello from ASOCS who explained that their company offers RAN Virtualisation architecture and solution today which can provide benefits offered by 5G and meet the needs of future 5G. Key to this solution is using cloud computing and replacing traditional base station equipment’s and processing more centrally where needed while maintaining certain computing at the edge of the network.

Overall it was a good first day of conference and looking forward to this evenings RAN Awards in which MBNL a UK joint venture company owned by EE and Three is short listed for two awards. Tomorrow’s conference has lined up many more guest speakers from the industry and already looking forward to attending.