INTERVIEW Craig McMillan - Ciena
“With FWA you can get the fibre so far and use 5G to get that last bit right into the house or office, or premise .”
Craig McMillan, Director of EMEA Sales Engineering
Playing the waiting game
Although 5G is upon us, from all four networks, according to Ciena’s Director of EMEA Sales Engineering Craig
McMillan, businesses must wait to see the use cases develop
In case you missed it, earlier
this month O2 launched
their 5G network, marking
the 17th October as the rst
time all four networks were
supplying the faster signals in
one form or another.
With potentially the most
to lose from a bad rollout,
especially on the B2B mobile
side, O2 need to make the
most of 5G despite it’s poor
coverage. But, according to
Cienna Director of EMEA Sales
Engineering Craig McMillan,
the opportunity for operators
and businesses comes away from
mobile.
“ e user experience isn’t
always mobile phones, we
can also look into how we use
network slicing to make sure the
user has a reliable service and if
you cut out the network slice, is
the mobile network providing
the same reliability?
ose are the kinds of use
cases we are seeing, some of the
use cases around connectivity is
a big one.
In healthcare, we’ve talked
previously a little bit about
remote surgeries, making sure
that you are able to transmit
things like MRI scans across
your network using that very
high capacity for that very high
bandwidth requirement.
Education as well with AI,
VR and augmented reality.
What can those types of
applications be used for? All of
them need massive amounts
of data, but also, with VR, the
latency is key because if you have
any kind of serious latency you
can get quite disorientated.”
Ciena has recently completed
work on Vodafone’s Red Stream
network that serves as the back
bone from which the 4G and 5G
service runs.
McMillan said that he thinks
that the networks are reluctant
to move into new areas of
innovation when it comes to 5G
as they need to prioritise making
money from it.
“5G is going to be rolled
out in a certain way, not really
changing all the wireline
infrastructure underneath it. I
think they are waiting to see the
take up on those 5G services
and then when they get traction
they’ll grow their wireline
infrastructure and push out the
bre right to the edge.
Operators need a certain
amount of people or businesses
to get on board with 5G to really
drive it forward. Especially when
talking about the end customers
and what services we will be
using.
You can see what they’re
trying to do around the
holographic events, they have to
get the excitement going. Day
one, the appeal will be around
playing the new, latest, greatest
game on your mobile phone for
example, utilising that capacity
and latency. ose are the things
that they need to drive forward,
to make sure that they’re looking
at their wireline network and
achieve the services that they
o er to the end customer.”
One solution that McMillan
does see as a realistic use of 5G
in the short term is xed wireless
access (FWA).
“ at’s a great one and it
answers the question of how do
you bring the rural population
online as well.
From that perspective, that’s
where 5G can change to get into
the rural part of the country,
then you need to extend your
bre footprint to make sure that
you have a quality service
out there.
at’s why xed
wireless access can really
play its part. You can get
those great download
speeds without the
heavy investment and
infrastructure to get
bre to the premises.
With FWA you can
get the bre so far and
use 5G to get that last
bit right into the house
or o ce, or premise .”
Craig McMillan, Director of EMEA
Sales Engineering – Ciena
52 | Comms Business Magazine | November 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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