TRENDS
ProLabs and the ‘new 5G backhaul economy’ As we navigate our way through the Covid-19 pandemic, we are finding that economic and social survival is tied to the ability to work and play at a distance. If ever there was a time for a revolutionary new internet technology to take hold, now would seem to be that time.
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o says Raymond Hagen, Americas Product Manager at ProLabs, a global leader in optical networking infrastructure. He notes in a recent blog entry that: “Visionaries may state that 5G will offer access to new applications like artificial intelligence and smart city infrastructure that could define the next industrial revolution. Companies and countries failing to act now will find themselves left behind global and regional powers that are indeed investing in 5G.” Hagen says, “The ‘New Backhaul Economy’ is poised to disrupt the traditional wireless backhaul ecosystem built for previous wireless generations.” To this, Marcel Fouché, networking and
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storage general manager at value-added distributor, Networks Unlimited Africa, which distributes ProLabs in sub-Saharan Africa, offers a clarification. Says Fouché, “5G is a revolutionary next-generation mobile network that is not just a technology implementation but shifts the entire network architecture paradigm. Wireless backhaul is the wireless communication and network infrastructure responsible for transporting communication data from end users or nodes to the central network or infrastructure and vice versa.” As Hagen notes, wholesale backhaul services in the 4G and earlier environments were simple and straightforward, and a backhaul provider
SECURITY FOCUS AFRICA FEBRUARY 2021
could be assured of the fibre capacity for current and future data needs. Today, however, as we look ahead to the widespread rollout of 5G enhanced mobile broadband, we can see that it is able to achieve significantly improved data rates, but it also requires the ‘pipes’ feeding the network to be super-sized. “Therefore,” continues Fouche, “significant changes in infrastructure are required to effect the functionality of the fifth-generation technology standard for cellular networks. This includes the transition from backhaul into x-Haul (including fronthaul, midhaul and backhaul), with implications for mobile operators, network wholesalers and transport providers from both the
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