5G mobile provision offer many benefits over 4G including higher speeds and lower latency, a basic requirement for enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) services. Demands on mobile resources are forecast to significantly increase with the growth in massive machine type communications (mMTC) with applications including automated guided vehicles, remote surgery, and robotic factories.

Yet there are several barriers to the expansion of 5G services especially in suburban and rural areas. The highest speeds are achieved with small cells so requiring more base stations. And these must be served by high speed, low latency backhaul connections to the mobile operator’s core network, with optical fibre the obvious candidate.

It has been estimated that around 6 million small cell sites are required to cover 5G across the EU with around 12 million additional fibres needed to serve those cells.

With civil works contributing around 80% of the cost of fibre deployment, there is an economic case for sharing the infrastructure of operators that provide fibre to the home (FTTH) services. The use of the latest types of passive optical network such as XGS-PON, 25G PON or NG-PON2 makes this backhaul solution more viable.

So, it can be argued that the spread of 5G services is tied to the expansion of fibre broadband with co-operation between their providers being beneficial to both.

Want to learn more about mobile and FTTH service provision or have staff requiring upskilling: PTT courses such as “Next generation access networks”, “Introduction to mobile systems” and “Mobile radio communications” provide a proven, cost-effective solution.

The use of Voice over IP (VoIP) for both homes and businesses has become ubiquitous in recent years. With the old PSTN networks being retired in many countries, the use of a fully digital IP-based telephony system is now normal for both homes and businesses.

With the rise of homeworking that has accelerated since the Covid 19 pandemic, it is essential that businesses have a robust telephony system to keep a geographically diverse workforce connected. When a business has a well-designed system, most consumers contacting them would be unaware that their call is being transferred to multiple sites, with staff often answering calls using a VoIP app on their personal mobile device.

It is also essential that public telecommunications providers are delivering an effective service as they switch their consumers from the PSTN to a VoIP-based network. For their customers, a small minority of whom may still not have a broadband connection, the switch to a VoIP service will need to be painless even if it requires them to update some of the equipment in their homes.

PTT’s updated Voice over IP course is essential training for all those designing and maintaining private and public modern telephony networks. This comprehensive and up-to-date course describes the components, protocols and operation of telephony systems that operate over Internet Protocol (IP) networks with emphasis on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Services such as ultra high definition video streaming, cloud computing, and video gaming along with expectations for new services such as virtual reality are driving the requirements for ever higher data transfer rates for broadband connections.

The upload speeds provided by conventional broadband services are lower than that achievable downstream. But consumers and businesses are increasingly both content consumers and creators and so require equally high speeds in both directions.

Many broadband providers are meeting this challenge by adopting a newer generation of passive optical network (PON) for their FTTH services.

AT&T have recently announced that they have achieved symmetrical speeds of 20 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s) with a PON based on the recently formulated 25GS-PON standard. The two and a half times increase in network capacity compared with a network based on the earlier XGS-PON standard is achievable using existing installed optical fibre.

PTT’s online course “Next generation access networks” explains the role of the components, and the principles of operation, of passive optical networks and compares the various generations.