Connectivity Technology Blog

As 5G drives disaggregation of the RAN, it is vital that operators understand the new options that will emerge for their transport networks. Late last year, Omdia hosted a webinar looking at how optical, Ethernet, and routing technologies are evolving to support 5G. The participants included: Richard Webb, Director, Research and Analysis, Service Provider Technology, Omdia Daniel Gonzalez, Business Development Manager, Anritsu Joseph Mocerino, Principal Solutions Architect, Optical Networking, Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc. Tim Doiron, Sr. Director, Solution Marketing, Infinera Allen Tatara, Senior Manager, Webinar Events, Omdia (Moderator) The following were key topics of discussion Migrating to 5G X-haul architecture for Stand-alone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) deployments: requirements, challenges, and roadmaps Building a transport solutions toolkit that maximizes performance while lowering operation expense Evaluating Open RAN initiatives and potential impacts on transport H...

While we mostly focus on 5G protocols, architecture, NR, use cases, etc., we often tend to ignore the transport network that plays a critical role in 5G by providing the fronthaul, midhaul, and backhaul infrastructure – collectively known as “xhaul” – which is responsible for enabling the new use cases and applications economically and at scale. In a special, multi-sponsored Light Reading webinar, 5G experts from Ericsson, Fujitsu, Juniper, and VIAVI Solutions discuss exactly what operators need to do to architect, build, upgrade and maintain their xhaul transport networks to support massive 5G deployments -- including the roles of fiber, DWDM, microwave, switching/routing, and network testing. The video of the webinar is embedded below but you can get the slides, etc, from the original link here . Topics addressed in the webinar: Operator bandwidth requirements in fronthaul, midhaul, and backhaul segments and the impacts on the transport network Why and how should operato...