Peace on Hold on the LTE-U Front?

The road to coexistence between Wi-Fi and LTE players in the unlicensed 5GHz band seemed to be at hand. Most of last year was contentious, but peace had broken out around Thanksgiving as both sides realized that it was in their best interests to cooperate.

The issue is ensuring that LTE acts in a neighborly fashion in unlicensed spectrum. The two sides had spent the first half of the year working toward a test regimen. However, reports, including one at CIO.com, suggested that the workshop held last week between the parties did not go well. The site carried a statement attributed to Dean Brenner, Qualcomm’s senior vice president of Government Affairs:

“Qualcomm is disappointed with the continued delays in finalizing a LTE-U/Wi-Fi test plan with the Wi-Fi Alliance, as well as with the substance presented by the WFA staff at last week’s WFA workshop, which lacked technical merit and was a sharp departure from Wi-Fi Alliance staff past presentations and views and from the view of any other standards body or regulator around the world,” wrote Dean Brenner, senior vice president of government affairs, in a written statement on Monday.

Hacker Claims to Hold 9.3 Million Patient Records

A health care hack may have put the information of millions of people at risk, according to Computerworld.

A hacker known as thedarkoverlord says that he or she has control of patient records for 9.3 million people. The hacker is extorting the health care organization for $100,000, $205,000 and $411,000 for the first three databases of the supposedly hacked data.

Security researcher Dissent Doe said that the hacker is also demanding 750 bitcoins, worth almost $500,000, for the fourth database. The databases are said by the hacker to be from Farmington, Missouri; Georgia; and a large insurance health care organization in the United States.

Clinton Releases Telecom Positions

Hillary Clinton, or her staff, has given a lot of thought to telecom. This week, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president released a policy proposal that supports 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT) and spectrum initiatives, according to WirelessWeek.

The paper lauded the work done on 4G and said that it sets up its successor technology. WirelessWeek reports that the candidate is taking a holistic approach:

Specifically, Clinton said she plans to accelerate the reallocation and repurposing of spectrum for next generation uses by more quickly identifying underutilized bands – including those now used by the federal government. Additionally, Clinton said she will “focus on the full range of spectrum use policies—including new allocations for licensed mobile broadband, as well as unlicensed and shared spectrum approaches.”

Big Times for Small Cells

Things are looking good for the small cell sector; the category passed $1 billion in revenues for the first time last year. The momentum is expected to continue this year, according to a report by Mobile Experts that seemed to have nothing but good news, at RCR Wireless:

According to analyst firm Mobile Experts, carrier small cell deployments grew 140% in 2015, including both indoor and outdoor units; the growth rate “will be even bigger in 2016,” noted Joe Madden, principal analyst for Mobile Experts. The firm expects enterprise small cell shipments to double this year, with a 270% spike in sales growth, and estimates that enterprise small cell shipments will be worth $4 billion annually by 2020. Transparency Market Research, meanwhile, predicts the global femtocell market to be worth $4.7 billion by 2019.

The reasons for the great results include reduced equipment costs, “better aesthetics,” faster deployment capabilities due increased fiber infrastructure, smoother interoperability and testing, and better opportunities for monetization.

Scaling Higher on IoT, SDN

Avaya and Inocybe Technologies demonstrated the ability to support 168,000 connected IoT devices, according to Light Reading. They claim that this is the largest number of devices ever supported on a software-defined network (SDN) architecture.

The IoT architectures must scale up drastically while keeping security intact. The announcement suggests that the industry is moving in the right direction. Avaya contributed its SDN Fx architecture and Open Network Adapter to the test, while Inocybe offered its OpenDaylight-compliant SDN architecture.

Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at cweinsch@optonline.net and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk.