The significance of 6G

Henning Schulzrinne is known for speaking his mind.

A professor at the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, he previously expressed concern regarding what he saw as excessive hype surrounding 5G.

More recently, he has written about 6G, placing the emerging wireless standard in the broader context of societal needs.

"Research, particularly academic research, should be driven by the urgent needs of society, not just supplying patent-protected 'moats' against the competition, whether between companies or nations," he wrote in an introduction to the book, Shaping Future 6G Networks.

Schulzrinne stresses he is not working on 6G standards but has taken part in an early 6G flagship project at the University of Oulu, Finland.

"My expertise is not on the radio; it is system architecture," he says. "We have a lot of interest in my research group on issues such as automation and authentication, not specifically to 6G but to networks."

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Ciena offers enterprises vNF pick and choose

Ciena, working with partners, has developed a platform for service providers to offer enterprises network functions they can select and configure with the click of a button.

Dubbed Agility Matrix, the product enables enterprises to choose their IT and connectivity services using software running on servers. It also promises to benefit service providers' revenues, enabling more adventurous service offerings due to the flexibility and new business models the virtual network functions (vNFs) enable. Currently, managed services require specialist equipment and on-site engineering visits for their set-up and management, while the contracts tend to be lengthy and inflexible.

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