Cisco, Open VRAN Ecosystem and 5G RuralFirst at the TIP Summit in London

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is a collaborative telecom community. Launched in February 2016, TIP was started with the goal of accelerating the pace of innovation in the telecommunications industry.  This year Cisco is proud to be a Gold Sponsor at the upcoming TIP Summit – running on 16th and 17th October 2018 in London – next week as I write this.

There will be a number of Cisco teams present at the conference.  Our presence is led by the Cisco Americas Web team, responsible for all aspects of our work with Facebook (who founded TIP) and other web-scale providers. They have partnered with the TIP Summit team on Cisco’s presence in London next week.  Also present will be members of the Cisco Customer Experience team (the evolved Cisco Services organization) – including me (!) – and also our Service Provider Mobility Chief Technology Office (CTO) team.   Drop by or booth on the Exhibitor Floor, Booth G2, where we will be showcasing a diverse range of exciting initiatives.

Showcasing Key Cisco Initiatives

Cisco IOS-XR and Cisco NX-OS on Whitebox hardware

Facebook Open/R integrated with Cisco IOS-XR

The Open Compute Project’s Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) running on Cisco’s NX-OS.

The Cisco Open vRAN Ecosystem

The UK 5G RuralFirst Testbed and Trial project, a part UK government, part industry funded project led by Cisco.

I’m personally involved in the hugely exciting 5G RuralFirst project (illustrated in the short video below), where this Cisco-led consortium, together with our lead partner, the University of Strathclyde and 28 (!) other key partner organisations, is developing a 5G Testbed and Trial in rural Orkney, Shropshire and Somerset in the UK.  Cisco and our partners are happy, as one of the use cases, to provide a testbed opportunity to the TIP Open Cellular initiative – in particular employing the Acceleran disaggregated small-cell solution which is suitable for (literally) rural community deployment – reflecting Cisco’s commitment and efforts in partnering and working with Facebook to help connect the unconnected.  Also at our booth, you can also see a Dynamic Shared Spectrum demo by our lead partner in this initiative, the University of Strathclyde.

5G RuralFirst Panel Discussion

At 4:15pm on Tuesday 16th October, members of the 5G RuralFirst team, including myself, will take part in a panel discussion in  the Spotlight Theatre, moderated by Dr Robert Pepper, Head of Global Connectivity Policy and Planning at Facebook.  We’ll talk about the key use cases we are trialing in this exciting project, including several use cases from precision agriculture, dynamic shared spectrum, 5G network slicing across the Cisco 5G network cloud core, and give insights into the 5G business models that could help kick-start 5G deployments in rural areas.  Joining me on the panel are some of our key partners from 5G RuralFirst, including the University of Strathclyde, Agri-Epi Centre, and BT.  Also joining us is a representative from UK Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) who are co-funding six different 5G Testbed and Trial projects across the UK, including 5G RuralFirst, as part of their 5G Strategy for the UK.

Win Fabulous Bose Headphones!

Finally …. as if you need any additional incentive … Stop by our booth for a chance to win a set of Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones!  See you in London!

And feel free to connect with us on Twitter:

follow @StephenSatCisco
follow @5GRuralFirst