fierce innovation awards

FIERCE INNOVATION AWARDSTelecom Edition 2020

INNOVATION REPORT

Fierce Innovation Report: Telecom Edition 2020 | 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 3

Thank you to our judges 4

Finalists 5

Spotlight: Spirent Communications 7

Spotlight: Nokia 8

Spotlight: AT&T 9

Spotlight: PacketFabric 10

Sponsored: Radisys 11

Spotlight: Upstream 12

Spotlight: Taoglas® & LvLogics 13

Spotlight: AFL 14

Spotlight: Pivotal Commware 16

Spotlight: DriveNets 17

Spotlight: Motorola Solutions 18

Spotlight: Rave Mobile Safety 19

Spotlight: KORE 20

Directory Listings 21


APPLICANTS WERE JUDGED IN THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIES:

Kevin GrayVice President, Fierce Telecom

and Fierce Wireless

Welcome to the Fierce Innovation Awards - Telecom Edition!2020 is a year that many of us will be glad to see in the rearview mirror, but the innovative companies profiled here have done more than their share to move our industry forward during these challenging times. Each company is a winner in their respective category, and each has contributed something significant to our industry.

Many of these companies will make positive impacts on millions of people through the technologies they’ve brought to market this year. These winners are reducing the cost and complexity of broadband deployments, cloud connections, network slicing, and fixed wireless access using millimeter wave. And they are proving real-life business cases for next-generation networks.

The internet of things is an important theme among this year’s winners. In addition to the IoT category winner, the Private Wireless and Security winners both impressed our judges with IoT solutions.

Other winners include software that helps identify those most at risk from COVID-19 and an innovative way to help operators and public health officials reach people who don’t have mobile data plans.

Each application was scored by two judges and was evaluated based on ease of use/ROI, technical innovation, competitive advantage, financial impact and last but not least true innovation - does it fit the definition of “game changer?”

NEW! AI/Analytics/Automation - Artificial intelligence and other automation software for networks, including database solutions and analytics systems.

Business Services - Solutions and gear for delivering or managing enterprise services. Includes SD-WAN, Ethernet-on-demand, VoIP, contact centers, and unified communications, including video and voice conferencing, speech recognition, e-mail and messaging.

BSS/OSS - Billing and operations support systems, including network management, customer experience management, service assurance, revenue management and other forward-thinking support and enablement.

Cloud Services - Cloud compute, storage and networking for private, public or hybrid clouds, as well as edge compute locations. Also includes vertical-specific cloud applications for business.

Customer Engagement - Partner management, Big Data analytics, customer service platforms, portal strategies, user-centric policy engines, self-provisioning, tools for leveraging and benchmarking social and companion apps, and more.

IoT - Solutions and technologies geared toward bringing connectivity to devices and infrastructure. Includes Smart Cities, vehicles, homes, wearables, buildings, and all industrial verticals including healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, energy, and more.

Network Test and Measurement - Portable or lab-based hardware and software or centralized solutions for testing, management and maintenance of telecommunications networks. Includes security monitoring, troubleshooting, system monitoring and disaster recovery.

Next-Gen Deployment Wireless - Equipment and solutions used to segue from past wireless network buildouts to newer market models, including small cells, 5G SA NR, 5G SA Core, and other 5G development, Wi-Fi, backhaul and fronthaul, dynamic spectrum sharing, vRAN and O-RAN.

Next-Gen Deployment Wireline - Advances in broadband architectures for central offices, headends, data centers, backbones or the last mile, including fiber, Docsis 4.0, PON, Ethernet, Packet Optical, and distributed access architecture.

NEW! Private Wireless Networks - Hardware and software to deploy private wireless networks, spectrum access system (SAS) technology, and third-party spectrum solutions from carriers or other spectrum owners.

Public Safety Technology - Innovations that modernize public safety operations for police, fire and emergency medicine. Includes LTE network services with priority and preemption, infrastructure, DAS systems, deployable communication nodes, devices and applications.

Security - Software and hardware geared toward securing networks, devices and content.

Many thanks to our judges and to profile writer Martha DeGrasse.


Roger EntnerAnalyst and Founder

RECON ANALYTICS, INC.

Mattias B. FridströmVice President and Chief Evangelist

TELIA CARRIER AB

Iain GillottPresident

IGR

Mark LowensteinManaging Director

MOBILE ECOSYSTEM

Joe MaddenFounder

MOBILE EXPERTS, INC.

Ron MarquardtVice President of Advanced Technologies and

InnovationT-MOBILE

Monica PaoliniPrincipal

SENZA FILI

Scott RaynovichFounder and Chief Analyst

FUTURIOM

MEET THE JUDGES


ORCHESTRA NOKIA DIGITAL OPERATIONS CENTER CROSS-PROVISIONINGSPIRENT VELOCITY LAB AS A SERVICE INTELLZA T-MOBILE CELL CONGESTION

PREDICTION

AI/ANALYTICS/AUTOMATION CATEGORY

BUSINESS SERVICES CATEGORY CLOUD SERVICES CATEGORY

BSS OSS CATEGORY

FINALISTS

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT CATEGORY IOT CATEGORY

AT&T 5G COURTSIDE CAM

NETCRACKER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT THE INTEL® DEVCLOUD FOR THE EDGE

AT&T 5G HOLOVISION™ INTERVIEWS

ENGAGE VIDEO ASSISTANT MONARCH GO

UNITAS GLOBAL SAAS ON-RAMP

ZERO-D, BY UPSTREAM LVLOGICS AND TAOGLAS® EDGE

INSIGHTS™

AMDOCS MS360 PACKETFABRIC’S NETWORK-AS-A-

SERVICE CLOUD CONNECTIVITY SERVICE

VMWARE SD-WAN


ONECELL ENHANCEMENTS OOREDOO QATAR 5G PIVOTAL COMMWARE PIVOT 5G™FLEXSCAN TS100 OPTICAL

TROUBLESHOOTER SIMPLIFIES PON

ACTIVATION & TROUBLESHOOTING

E7515B UXM 5G WIRELESS TEST

PLATFORM

CELL ANALYTICS™

NETWORK TEST AND MEASUREMENT CATEGORY

NEXT-GEN DEPLOYMENT WIRELINE CATEGORY PUBLIC SAFETY TECHNOLOGY CATEGORY

NEXT-GEN DEPLOYMENT WIRELESS CATEGORY

FINALISTS

PRIVATE WIRELESS NETWORKS CATEGORY SECURITY CATEGORY

DRIVENETS NETWORK CLOUD

CELONA PLATFORM COMCAST SECURITYEDGE

AUTOMATED NETWORK SERVICE

DEPLOYMENT AND PROVISIONING

WITH PACKETFABRIC’S NETWORK-AS-A-

SERVICE PLATFORM

FEDERATED WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY-

AS-A-SERVICE

SECURITYPRO

CELESTA RIBBON OPTICAL FIBRE

CABLE - INTELLIGENTLY BONDED

RIBBON

MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS NITRO™

INTEGRATED WITH VIDEO SECURITY

SOLUTIONS

SECURE-D, BY UPSTREAM

THE QUALCOMM® SNAPDRAGON RIDE™

PLATFORM

RAVE MOBILE SAFETY’S CORONAVIRUS

RESPONSE SOLUTION

PUBLIC SAFETY BRANDED CALLING


CATEGORY: AI/ANALYTICS/AUTOMATION

WINNER: SPIRENT COMMUNICATIONS

PRODUCT/SERVICE: VELOCITY

WHY IT’S A WINNER:

Velocity is a lab automation solution that takes testing procedures and consolidates them into a single location accessible through a web interface. The solution aggregates geographically disparate labs, making infrastructure, turnkey tests and automated vendor-neutral testbeds available on-demand for network operators and their partners. Instead of coordinating resources, or waiting for lab availability, customers get immediate access to the testing and validation tools they need. This means new products and services can make it to market faster.

“We are delighted to be recognized by Fierce for the tremendous value we provide our customers. On average, Velocity customers experience at least a 100x gain in operational efficiency through consolidation of lab resources, dramatically reduced test setup time, and overall optimization of workflows,” said Doug Roberts, General Manager of Spirent Lifecycle Service Assurance.

Calix, a global provider of cloud and software platforms, shifted to Velocity when it realized that the deployment of NG-PON2 across enterprises, Wi-Fi 6, 5G fronthaul, IoT and consumer broadband would significantly increase the scale of testing required. The company consolidated all its regional labs into a single location, housed in Salt Lake City and built on Spirent’s Velocity platform.

Previously, it took Calix 50 man-hours to set up complex network lab tests. With the automation of the workflows, it now takes about 10 minutes. Calix has close to 1,200 topologies that it can instantiate with a common pool of equipment. “If you change the topology, the system and Velocity will instruct

all the technology that we have to reconnect on the fly and guarantee the result,” said Calix’s Chief Development Officer, Michel Langlois. “If you have some problem, you can leave your topology there with everything recorded at the time of that failure mode if you want. Four days after that you can replicate it exactly to start again at the same point.”

WHY IT’S SIGNIFICANT:

5G is the most complex generation of wireless technology to date and will involve a wide range of spectrum bands, radio and core vendors, and enterprise use cases. As such it requires carefully orchestrated testing and assurance, which can be greatly facilitated by automation. The automated test services provided by Velocity, accessible 24/7 through a “single pane of glass,” will expedite validation and deployment for operators and their partners and customers.

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: BSS/OSS

WINNER: NOKIA

PRODUCT/SERVICE: NOKIA DIGITAL OPERATIONS CENTER

WHY IT’S A WINNER:

With its Digital Operations Center, Nokia is helping operators make the vision of 5G network slicing a reality. Part of Nokia’s OSS portfolio, the Digital Operations Center is a cloud-native platform that provides a round-trip, closed-loop and fully automated process to design, deploy and operate network and digital and slice-based services at scale, across multiple vendors, multiple domains and multiple technologies. The platform includes orchestration and assurance, and is built on the Nokia Common Software Foundation Platform. The Digital Operations Center spans all domains from radio and fixed access to transport, core and cloud. It also abstracts the technical complexity of these underlying domains to provide the northbound interface to business processes to enable intent-based automated service operations.

Singtel, one of several service providers using the Digital Operations Center, is planning to offer customers secure network slices within minutes in order to support specific business use cases. “When an order is received, the Digital Operations Center decomposes the request and automates the deployment of the slice across the network, with policy enforcement,” explained Brian McCann, Chief Product Officer, Nokia Software. “A closed loop action (under the policy definition) triggers a change in deployment or scaling of the network slice in runtime. In the case of Singtel, the network-as-a-service platform provides greater control and visibility of services across the network while addressing specific 5G needs of enterprises with speed, efficiency, and flexibility.”

McCann also noted that the Digital Operations Center enables transport networks to dynamically accommodate bandwidth requirements. “This is typically executed with the software-defined network (SDN) controller, based on the transport slice requested from Digital Operations Center,” he said. “SDN enables centrally controlled programming of network routing through software applications using open APIs. By opening traditionally closed network platforms and implementing a common SDN control layer, operators can manage the network and its devices consistently, even if the underlying technology is complex.”

WHY IT’S SIGNIFICANT

Service providers are eager to monetize their investments in 5G through partnerships with vertical industries. They want to enable specific use cases for these partners by deploying infrastructure, bandwidth and applications when and where companies need them. 5G’s ability to support this “network slicing” is a big part of the value proposition for carriers, and Nokia’s Digital Operations Center gives them a way to realize this potential.

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: BUSINESS SERVICES

WINNER: AT&T

PRODUCT/SERVICE: AT&T 5G COURTSIDE CAM

WHY IT’S A WINNER

The 5G Courtside Cam isn’t a traditional camera – it’s a smartphone. By enabling a standard 5G smartphone as a tool for live broadcast footage, AT&T opens up future opportunities for media companies and proves a business case for 5G networks.

The company demonstrated the technology at the AT&T NBA Slam Dunk Contest, part of the 69th NBA All-Star Game on February 16, 2020. Shaquille O’Neal, now TNT’s Inside the NBA analyst, used a 5G smartphone to shoot from various angles as he narrated the event. AT&T’s edge computing platform and the LiveView streaming solution were used to integrate the video stream with the live broadcast.

“It can be supported on any of our 5G networks, but the amplification and ability to get up to the higher quality bitrates of video will be best supported by the 5G millimeter wave network,” said Glenn Couper, AVP, Mobility Strategy and Marketing, 5G, AT&T.


The 5G Courtside Cam is a real-life example of a 5G business case, one that the company thinks has applications beyond professional sports. “We’ve seen a great reaction to this integration, further proving that this is a viable asset and has many use cases, regardless of industry,” Couper said.

He said the ability to turn a smartphone into a high-end camera that can livestream is valuable not only because of the device’s ubiquity, but also because the small form factor offers an easy way to capture innovative camera angles.

AT&T is uniquely positioned to develop this technology because of its 5G network, edge compute capability, sponsorships, and media partners in which to test and perfect 5G live streaming.

“We’ve seen that this bundle works and provides viewers a premium content experience,” Couper said. “Our 5G technology will certainly be the backbone of more innovative ideas in the future.”

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: CLOUD SERVICES

COMPANY: PACKETFABRIC

PRODUCT/SERVICE: PACKETFABRIC’S NETWORK-AS-A-SERVICE CLOUD

CONNECTIVITY SERVICE

WHY IT’S A WINNER

PacketFabric gives companies a way to create their own networks as business needs arise. Network-as-a-service seems like a logical next step for the increasingly software-driven telecom industry. As service providers embrace the concept, they may find themselves playing catch-up with PacketFabric, a startup founded to develop carrier-neutral network-as-a-service.

“The notion of a cloud-managed, real-time on-demand network-as-a-service with a cloud consumption model is what we do,” said PacketFabric CEO Dave Ward. Ward is a recent recruit from Cisco who highlighted his current mission to disrupt carrier business models by showing up for our Zoom interview in full camouflage gear. “We’re fundamentally disrupting the internet architecture,” he said. “We are a carrier-neutral company that not only provides onramps, collab clouds, security clouds; we also provide long haul transport services that are carrier-neutral and so we can connect entire enterprise IT networks and their enterprise WANs onto our secure, private internet fabric …. without having to create point-to-multipoint VPNs.”

PacketFabric’s customers can buy bandwidth as they need it or pay by the month for committed capacity. The company has partnered with all the major hyperscalers, and says customers can connect to one cloud or several with an automated interface available through a web portal.

PacketFabric said its software-defined network is built on hundreds of premier colocation facilities across 26 global markets, and that it has 109+ cloud onramps. Customers

include Zoom, NBC Universal, GitHub, Pandora and The Los Angeles Times. The company says customers choose PacketFabric because they want to bypass the congestion and unreliability of the public internet, instantly connect to cloud providers in any colocation facility, and/or privately connect to multiple cloud providers from the same Ethernet port.


Cloud-connectivity has become imperative for more companies as they’ve distributed their workforces in response to COVID-19. Conversations about whether to move to the cloud have been supplanted by conversations about how fast it can happen.

“Everybody is moving there as fast as possible simply because they have to because of the pandemic,” said Ward. “Those companies that suddenly needed to get to cloud during the pandemic turned to network-as-a-service companies like PacketFabric because of the timescale of legacy telco to be able to deliver that bandwidth and those services.”

SPOTLIGHT


The Digital Engagement Era is Revolutionizing the Contact CenterBy Al Balasco, Head of Media, Core and Applications Business, Radisys

In the age of social distancing, contact centers and customer support services are being overloaded as people seek to navigate healthcare information, unemployment services, and shop for retail and grocery products online. Customers need to be able to get answers, not deal with endless wait times. The new category of self-service automation solutions like video call bots can enable digital customer interactions, while maintaining a human touch.

Radisys’ Engage Video Assistant (EVA) is the world’s most advanced AI-based customer care solution, enabling call centers and brand engagement teams to significantly differentiate from commoditized chatbot experiences by utilizing more “humanized” bots – featuring real people and personalities, intelligently programmed to answer questions efficiently and quickly.

Customers can now have a live video conversation experience with a video call bot, an AI-enabled system that answers verbal requests with live video responses by human – not computer-generated avatars! The humanized video call bots create a simple and personalized way to engage customers while maintaining a brand’s authentic tone, attitude, and visual style.

DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT – NO APP REQUIRED

EVA’s “app-less” technology means subscribers no longer need to download a customer support app. EVA provides a video-voice-text bot engagement experience with the existing phone numbers that brands use for customer service, sales, and marketing, and seamlessly integrates with existing CRM, IVR, and customer engagement platforms without additional infrastructure requirements or replacement.

EVA allows businesses to automatically connect to customers at an unprecedented scale. A single AI-enabled bot is capable of handling between hundreds and thousands of simultaneous calls at a time, solving a much bigger problem of automation and cost-effective engagement with users. From a customer support perspective, businesses can boost customer satisfaction, reduce support cost, and enhance agent productivity.

FLEXIBLE AND EASY TO USE

EVA is a white label solution that offers service providers a platform with flexible deployment options, either in-network or accessible from the cloud. It enables new revenue streams by providing Video Call Bot-as-a-Service for call centers, SMBs and large enterprise customers. EVA can also reduce contact centers’ costs by automating interactions – like how-to interactions or sophisticated troubleshooting – that are underserved by voice or text bots alone.

The app provides a complete set of AI-based tools for business users to plan the video content, record video

content, and create omni-channel bots. The built-in modules for authoring, editing, intent-matching, and bot invocation makes the video bot creation a simple four-step process to have a functional video bot ready. Business users can immediately publish EVA on their website, embed in customer loyalty applications, or integrate with their customer support phone numbers.

Radisys’ Engage Video Assistant is leading the digital engagement revolution, creating tailored video bot engagements to build trusting relationships that lead to more sales and greater customer satisfaction.

To learn more visit www.Radisys.com.

25% of customer service operations will use virtual

customer assistants and 30% of all B2B companies will

employ artificial intelligence (AI) to augment at least

one of their primary sales processes. *

SPONSORED

http://www.Radisys.com

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-02-19-gartner-says-25-percent-of-customer-service-operations-will-use-virtual-customer-assistants-by-2020


CATEGORY: CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

COMPANY: UPSTREAM

WINNER: ZERO-D

WHY IT’S A WINNER

For hundreds of millions of mobile users in emerging markets continuous access to mobile internet is not a given, due to the lack of fixed-line infrastructure and the high cost of mobile data. On average mobile users in the developing world are disconnected 50% of the time as they are unable to top up. As users remain disconnected, mobile operators lose out on customer engagement. And revenues.

Enter Zero-D, Upstream’s free mobile internet platform, which is funded by advertising and helps keep mobile users engaged and connected to the digital world even when they have run out of data. When subscribers reach the end of their data, the operator automatically redirects them to the portal to enjoy uninterrupted access to the internet. Inside the portal subscribers are also given the option of digitally topping up by either buying data bundles or interacting with ads.

“In an emerging market, if 100 mobile users run out of data, only 5 will top up immediately,” explains Kostas Sourtis, Head of Zero-D. “We want to engage that 95%. Users engage with Zero-D and when they find something that they like and they try to access it, we pitch them to top up their data. With our zero-rated platform we bring data sales forward for that 95% of users.”

This translates to new revenues for the operators, as with Zero-D they are able to increase their data sales by 2% within a fiscal year, while generating millions of daily ad impressions that they can monetize. “Ad revenue is split between the MNO (40%), Upstream (40%), and the agent (20%) who sells the ad,” said Sourtis.

In South Africa, Vodacom has deployed a customer-branded version of Zero-D, called ConnectU. 65% of the operator’s subscriber base has been engaging with the platform, which generates 256 million monthly ad impressions. In the meantime, users have access to zero rated services, including access to job portals, certain government websites, educational resources such as e-school courses, as well as unrestricted access to the entire Wikipedia database and Facebook Flex, a low-data version of Facebook.


Zero-D keeps millions of mobile users in Latin America, Africa & Asia connected, users that would otherwise end up disconnected, as in many developing countries just checking the news may cost about 30% of an average weekly household income.

The need for uninterrupted connectivity has become even more critical during the pandemic, in order for people to not only access important health information, but also be informed and entertained while keeping social distances.

“The operators adopting Upstream’s connectivity solution, enhance their brand perception and reduce churn from users, who might even ditch their SIM for a free data bundle for new subscribers by other carriers,” concludes Sourtis.

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: IOT

WINNER: TAOGLAS AND LVLOGICS

PRODUCT/SERVICE: TAOGLAS® AND LVLOGICS EDGE INSIGHTS

WHY IT’S A WINNER

There are plenty of innovative tech companies working to break down silos, but Taoglas and LvLogics aren’t among them. Silos are big business for this year’s IoT winners. It’s estimated that there are 7.3 million silos worldwide, almost half of which are controlled by the world’s top feed suppliers. Typically, those feed suppliers promise to respond within 24 hours to calls requesting refills for grain or wood pellet silos, and typically those calls come from the people who physically inspect the silos. Sometimes farmers climb to the tops of the silos to look inside, but of course, this is dangerous. Other ways of measuring volumes in silos include load cells, radar, guided radar or capacitive measurement, which are expensive (€2.5k – €12K per silo.) Costs go down on both ends when agriculture integrators, biomass users, and distributors of animal feeds and wood pellet don’t have to check their silos, and suppliers have more time to prepare for refill requests.

“The LvLogics world-first smart sensor, combined with the Taoglas EDGE IoT hardware and software platform, automates the process of monitoring silos,” explained Adrian Burns, president of IoT at Taoglas. “Taoglas and LvLogics are honoured to be named a winner alongside great competition in the 2020 Fierce Innovation Awards.”

“LvLogics is a small Irish company and we’re absolutely thrilled to have won alongside such large, global IoT players in the US-based, 2020 Fierce Innovation Awards,” said Barry Finnegan, CEO and Co-Founder, LvLogics. “Traditional methods of monitoring feed usually cost 6-8 times more than the LvLogics solution and are difficult to install. Our silo-monitoring solution enables real-time, flexible, low-maintenance measurement

capabilities for users, with a very fast ROI and this is causing ripples throughout the industry. The requirement for this technology is global and the LvLogics solution is designed to be globally adaptable.”

A world-first smart sensor in the silo continuously measures the amount of stock remaining in the bin, as well as temperature and humidity. It has a proprietary enclosure that enables a low-cost laser sensor to be pointed directly at a target by means of a pivoting head, thus creating a focused beam angle on the lowest part of the material in a silo. The enclosure also provides blasts of compressed air to clean the glass lens of the sensor, greatly reducing maintenance costs.

Each silo monitoring customer has secure access to a unique platform (Taoglas EDGE Insights) that presents the data in an easy-to-understand format. Users can view the measurements from any device or receive an email alert when the level reaches a set threshold.


IoT at its best cuts costs and/or enhances safety without creating new complexities. LvLogics and Taoglas accomplish this by combining wireless connectivity, edge computing, and an innovative device design that solves the dust problem, which had limited previous solutions.

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: NETWORK TEST AND MEASUREMENT

COMPANY: AFL

PRODUCT: FLEXSCAN TS100 OPTICAL TROUBLESHOOTER

WHY IT’S A WINNER

AFL’s TS100 Optical Troubleshooters empower service technicians to activate, troubleshoot and maintain fiber-to-the-home connections even if they are not qualified to use the equipment traditionally needed for this job. Service provider technicians activating subscriber connections may be required to verify downstream signal levels at the subscriber’s location. When these signals are absent or too low, technicians may need to troubleshoot last-mile network connections. Fiber optic networks are often tested using an optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) – a complex and somewhat expensive test set requiring training to interpret results correctly. The TS100 provides an easier-to-use and easier-to-understand Live PON Power Meter and Fault Locator for technicians who are not equipped or not qualified to use an OTDR.

Both the TS100-60 and the TS100-70 devices test point-to-point networks and PONs and immediately display received power, link length, loss, ORL and faults to the splitter. The TS100-70 also measures the loss of the splitter to detect poor connections and/or macro-bends at the splitter.

“It is intended to be used by that lowest-level technician,” said Michael Scholten, Senior Product Line Manager at AFL. “It allows them to do some of the things that an OTDR would have allowed them to do without requiring them to have an in-depth knowledge of how to work an OTDR. Everything is automatic in terms of settings, and software interprets the results and presents them in a simpler manner that a less skilled worker can benefit from, enabling them to understand what the problem is and how to fix it.”

Both models include either a broadband power meter or a dual-wavelength PON power meter to verify downstream GPON/EPON at 1490 nm wavelength, and RF video at 1550 nm or XG/XGS/10GEPON at 1577 nm. For PONs with both GPON/EPON and RF video or XG/XGS/10GEPON present simultaneously, the dual-wavelength PON Power Meter is capable of measuring both signals independently.


The federal government’s $20 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund is awarding millions to both established telcos and non-traditional fiber service providers. These companies may be sending lower-level technicians out to install fiber, or they may contract out the installation and then require their own techs to maintain them. Either way, an easy-to-use test and measurement device will be an essential tool.

SPOTLIGHT

Can we please edit down- too long, need about 10 lines trimmed.

https://risk.lexisnexis.com/products/threatmetrix


CATEGORY: NEXT-GEN DEPLOYMENT WIRELESS

COMPANY: PIVOTAL COMMWARE

PRODUCT: PIVOT 5G™

WHY IT’S A WINNER

The Pivot 5G changes the economics of 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) deployments. Carriers can deploy fewer expensive base stations by extending their range with the Pivot 5G smart network repeater.

5G base stations, or gNodeBs, cannot transmit more than about 500 meters, and that distance falls sharply when signals face interference or obstructions. The Pivot 5G network repeater extends, redirects and shapes mmWave signals around obstacles such as buildings.

“At higher frequencies, when you use precision beam forming you can take advantage of the directivity, and narrow down the beam and carry the repeating function on a narrow spatial corridor,” explained Kent Lundgren, VP Marketing & Sales at Pivotal Commware. “Repeaters really thrive in that environment because they can take energy and focus it and direct it, without interfering with other elements in the network.”

Pivotal’s secret sauce is a patented Holographic Beam Forming® technology that enables it to extend 5G signals using small, inexpensive, 8-pound devices that use less than 30 watts of power. Pivot repeaters do not require fiber connections or power meters. The Pivot 5G extends service more than 1000 feet from the gNodeB and another 500+ feet to the device or to the next hop Pivot 5G.

The devices can be managed from the cloud via a desktop interface that enables technicians to control the hardware remotely. “It allows you to send a command all the way down to the antenna level and change the direction or shape of the beam,” said Lundgren.

Lundgren said carriers can best leverage the Pivot repeater’s capabilities when they combine it with Pivotal’s Echo 5G™ subscriber repeaters for in-building penetration, and its WaveScape™ radio planning software, which is optimized for precise mmWave and line of sight deployments. He said carriers can use the software to optimize both their gNodeB and repeater positions.


According to Nokia, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) is the top-ranked 5G use case among consumers. It will bring broadband Internet to many people for the first time. By making this use case more affordable, the Pivot 5G can accelerate and increase 5G fixed wireless deployments.

In addition, Pivot’s precise beam forming capabilities give operators a new way to position energy on subscribers, not just geographies. Subscriber-driven networks will help operators achieve greater differentiation and higher ROI.

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: NEXT-GENERATION WIRELINE

COMPANY: DRIVENETS

PRODUCT: NETWORK CLOUD

WHY IT’S A WINNER

DriveNets wins this award for the second year in a row for its Network Cloud whitebox routing solution. The software allows service providers to replace dozens of routing platforms with standard white box hardware running DriveNets software. Network Cloud is the first such platform deployed at scale by a Tier 1 operator.

In September 2020, AT&T said it had chosen DriveNets to provide the network software for its next generation IP/MPLS core. The carrier had previously submitted hardware specifications to the Open Compute Project as part of its Distributed Disaggregated Chassis submission. “It is a simple architecture based on two hardware building blocks – one for packet forwarding and one for fabric,” explained Inbar Lasser-Raab, CMO at DriveNets. “Clustering these two building blocks (up to 200 of them in a cluster) can create a network infrastructure of any size, up to 768Tbps. Such a cluster of white boxes acts as a shared physical resource supporting multiple software containers with different networks and services, substantially lowering network cost and number of physical ports required, and increasing network utilization.”

In the AT&T deployment, the hardware comes from Taiwan’s UfiSpace, the chipset is Broadcom’s Jericho2, and the software of course comes from DriveNets. AT&T is using the solution to replace its existing core backbone, replacing 40 different OEM platform types with the Network Cloud.

Now DriveNets says that its software is in various stages with more than ten Tier 1 telcos, while AT&T is the only customer announced so far.


By building networks like clouds, DriveNets has created a new way for operators to slash costs and scale their networks. It does so with three main capabilities; first – creating a shared physical infrastructure based on low-cost white boxes. Second, building networks like cloud software – running multiple network services in separate containers over that shared infrastructure of white boxes, increasing network utilization with any service on any port. And third, opening the network to any service, by simply deploying third-party service containers, just like a cloud marketplace.

Financial analysts have noted DriveNets’ technology and are evaluating its potential impact on the traditional router market. The team at BofA Securities recently described whitebox routing as “so disruptive, in our view, that it could potentially change the market in a way that VMware’s hypervisor disrupted the server ecosystem.”

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: PRIVATE WIRELESS

COMPANY: MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS

PRODUCT: NITRO INTEGRATED WITH VIDEO SECURITY

WHY IT’S A WINNER

This solution applies CBRS technology to a business use case that can be better served by a private broadband network than by traditional Wi-Fi or carrier broadband. The commercial availability of CBRS spectrum is opening up new opportunities for enterprises, and Motorola Solutions has created a valuable offering by integrating CBRS with video security and analytics.

Nitro™ is Motorola Solutions’ CBRS private network solution. It includes CBRS radios (CBSDs), modems, and handheld devices for users. The modems use Nitro SIM cards to connect to the CBSDs and Ethernet to connect to the internet, or to another Ethernet-enabled device. In this award-winning use case, the modems use Ethernet to connect to Motorola Solutions’ Avigilon security cameras.

Scott Schoepel, Vice President, Global Enterprise, at Motorola Solutions said the solution hits a sweet spot between the cost effectiveness of Wi-Fi and the secure reliability of broadband. He offered hospitals and school buildings as prime examples of users that would probably not be able to dig trenches for fiber in order to connect security cameras, but also might not want to rely on Wi-Fi for something so important. He said Nitro offers customers security and consistent low latency at a much lower price point than most fiber deployments.

Another strong use case is to enable utilities to protect critical infrastructure and streamline workflows. “With this solution, utilities can remotely monitor potential security or weather threats, such as rising flood levels or wildfires,” Schoepel said.

Customers can purchase the Nitro and Avigilon equipment, or lease them as services. “We’re pretty flexible on the models our customers can deploy depending on their unique situation, their financial requirements,” Schoepel said.

Schoepel said the next step will be to integrate the Nitro platform with the backend analytics capability of the Avigilon cameras. This would enable on-premise security officers carrying Motorola Solutions devices to receive alerts when the analytics software detected abnormal activity from the camera’s video feed.


CBRS and IoT currently have something of a chicken-and-egg problem. Vendors will be able to sell more CBRS network gear once the wireless devices used in various verticals include CBRS support. But the makers of those devices may not be motivated to include CBRS chipsets until they see their customers installing the equipment and asking for the connectivity. Solutions like this one integrate existing IoT devices with CBRS, proving use cases and offering real-world learning experiences for vendors, integrators and customers.

Profile written by Martha DeGrasse

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: PUBLIC SAFETY

COMPANY: RAVE MOBILE SAFETY

PRODUCT: RAVE MOBILE SAFETY’S CORONAVIRUS

RESPONSE SOLUTION

WHY IT’S A WINNER

Rave’s Coronavirus Response Solution empowers state and local governments, first responders, public institutions and private enterprises to protect their stakeholders from COVID-19.

When the virus hit, the 16-year-old company realized that it already had the pieces in place to create a solution that could save lives. Rave makes software-as-a-service that public and private customers use to collect and analyze safety-related information, and communicate with people based on their responses. This was exactly what local governments needed in 2020. Some of them were already using Rave’s software to communicate with community members, and in some cases they were already collecting demographic and health information. For example, when people sign up to receive emergency alerts they may be asked their age, location, and whether they have pre-existing health conditions. Having this information in a database was useful to city governments that wanted to identify the most vulnerable members of the population during the pandemic.

Shortly after the pandemic started, Rave pushed an automatic software update to its customers. The update was a database query containing the criteria the CDC uses to describe people who are likely to be at higher risk if they contract COVID-19. The next day, Rave’s customers could query their databases and see the locations and profiles of at-risk citizens.

Rave’s Coronavirus Response Solution helps government agencies combine this data with information that is even more specific to COVID-19, according to Matthew Serra, VP of Product Safety at Rave. He said local governments were able to text residents queries about their exposures, test results and quarantine status, and combine the responses with data about age, location and pre-existing conditions to identify highly vulnerable people.

“You can provide the entire community with general instructions about how to keep themselves safe, but then you can actually query down on people who meet a specific profile … for more targeted instructions and communications to those folks,” Serra said.

Serra said that during the early part of the pandemic PPE was in short supply in some communities, and first responders benefitted from access to information about community members with likely exposures to COVID-19. This information was available to them when those people called 911, so they were able to use their PPE on those calls.

In Louisiana, one city used Rave’s platform to communicate with individuals receiving assistance through the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Local officials were able to export data about who was enrolled in SNAP to the Rave platform, and then they could text people updates about how to access their benefits.


Targeted, accurate public communication is critical during a public health crisis, and Rave’s Coronavirus Solution enables this by empowering local governments with information. During the pandemic, the system has sent out more than 39 million alerts giving people information about available resources.

Private enterprises are using the solution to build surveys that ask people their health status and then allow or deny entry to campus based on their responses. According to Serra, the ability to communicate immediately with a survey respondent based on their answers is new functionality that customers started asking for because of the pandemic. He thinks this feature will have applications that outlast COVID-19.

SPOTLIGHT


CATEGORY: SECURITY

COMPANY: KORE

PRODUCT: SECURITYPRO

WHY IT’S A WINNER

SecurityPro is a flagship product within KORE’s suite of managed services and solutions, all of which are designed to break down barriers to IoT deployment. Companies routinely name security concerns as the primary barrier to IoT adoption, and this can be particularly true when considering SIM-based IoT solutions.

“Frankly, they feel like they instantly lose control the minute they put a device out there, because they lose visibility,” said KORE CEO, Romil Bahl. “We use metadata from the device to provide historically unknown levels of insight and control on these tens of thousands of devices that our customers have put out there.”

Built on KORE’s API-based, open-architecture, modular IoT platform, SecurityPro enables companies to get emails or dashboard alerts when a SIM card’s activity changes. When an IoT solution is deployed, the SecurityPro software monitors and analyzes the behavior of all the SIMs in order to learn the norms, and reports deviations within 30 seconds or less. Deviations can include removal from the host device, abnormally high data usage, or a change in IMEI number.

Biometric devices that monitor patients in their homes are currently one of the most prominent SecurityPro use cases. The SIM cards in these devices are in the hands of patients and caregivers who may accidentally or purposely misuse them, creating expensive data overages for medical monitoring companies. This is exactly the scenario that SecurityPro can prevent.


Targeted, accurate public communication is critical during a public health crisis, and Rave’s Coronavirus Solution enables this by empowering local governments with information. During the pandemic, the system has sent out more than 39 million alerts giving people information about available resources.

Lack of security is the biggest roadblock to IoT adoption. PwC’s 2019 IoT survey found that early adopters ranked trust issues as their number-one concern, ahead of technology challenges. A survey conducted by Bain and Company found that security concerns were by far the number one barrier to IoT adoption cited by respondents.

SecurityPro is an example of a platform that can jump start IoT ecosystems by making deployments less risky and returns more predictable. The solution is part of KORE’s larger strategy to facilitate IoT as an integrator and adviser for companies that would otherwise need to identify, evaluate, contract, and manage multiple network connectivity providers, equipment manufacturers, and professional services organizations. Through a series of acquisitions and partnerships, KORE has integrated its platform with 43 major carriers worldwide, with the goal of managing multinational IoT deployments for its customers.

SPOTLIGHT


LexisNexis Risk Solutions

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions harnesses the power of data and advanced analytics to provide insights that help businesses and governmental entities reduce risk and improve decisions to benefit people around the globe. We provide data and technology solutions for a wide range of industries including insurance, financial services, healthcare and government. Headquartered in metro Atlanta, Georgia, we have offices throughout the world and are part of RELX (LSE: REL/NYSE: RELX), a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.

Tarifica is the leading global provider of telecom plan, pricing, and device data. Our software solutions, state of the art data extraction techniques and experienced team of analysts enable clients to make smart decisions in real-time based on insightful, actionable information.

Our focus is on telecom plans. We work to cover all aspects of our chosen specialty, providing clients with large datasets, hard-to-find information, software solutions, in-depth analyses and meaningful advice. Our goal is to collaborate as partners with our clients to help them achieve important strategic and operational business goals.

Tarifica’s state-of-the-art global plan and pricing datasets, modeling capabilities, software solutions, and team of industry expert analysts provide clients with unparalleled opportunities to make data-driven decisions in real-time and achieve strategic and operational goals.

Tarifica … turning data into opportunity…

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