Tag: Cellular

Avoid Costly Cellular Overages By Disabling this new iOS 15 Feature

With the latest iOS update, 15, there is a new option that allows you to let iCloud backups use your cellular data. Due to the amount of time these backups can take, it could cause you to quickly burn through your cellular data allotment. Even worse, this setting is enabled by default!

If you want to keep your iCloud Backups enabled, but avoid this possible risk, here is how to disable the setting over Cellular:

  1. Open your iPhone and go to Settings
  2. Select iCloud (click your name at the top), then iCloud -> iCloud Backup
  3. Refer to Back Up Over Cellular -> Set this to OFF by clicking the slider to the right
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New Possibilities in the 5G World

Most of the conversations and articles about 5G typically center around the possibilities of it replacing broadband Internet, or how we can combat the bandwidth limitations of the current LTE services. If you’re looking for some new content, check out the webcast Ericsson’s North America CEO, Niklas Heuveldop, did with the Washington Post recently. He’s joined by Carolyn Lee, who is from The Manufacturing Institute – this is the education and workforce partner of the National Association of Manufacturers, the nation’s largest industrial trade association. Together, they talk about the benefits to manufacturing processes, gaming using virtual cloud consoles (rather than buying new hardware every year), and artificial intelligence. You can also check out the transcript here. 

5G smartphones are increasingly available in the US, though for many the speed isn’t much faster than 4G connections. Only 75 cities have deployed the fastest 5G networks on the millimeter-wave bands. About 300 million people in the United States have access to low-band 5G, which has slower speeds, according to Ericsson’s figures. Heuveldop says, “The next 12 to 18 months is really when it’s going to take off. The build-out is underway…and full 5G deployment will be done by 2025.” Just this month, Verizon has expanded its fixed wireless home internet connections on 5G networks to at least parts of 57 US cities as an alternative to wired connections. You basically get a transceiver unit that establishes an over-the-air broadband link with speeds of up to 1Gbps.

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FCC Updates the US Cellular Coverage Map

It may be no surprise that not everyone that lives in the USA has access to high speed Internet. Some only have the option of cellular broadband service, which of course requires good cellular reception. Those of you who fall into this category will be interested to know that the President and the FCC are finally working in your favor! Congress could soon pass an infrastructure bill that allocates $65 billion to improving broadband access. This is just one step in their compliance with 2020’s Broadband DATA Act, which required them to update its data and maps.

Of course, there must be service made available by the cellular providers. At this time there are still large areas where there is very little to no cellular coverage. It’s also quite difficult to determine the performance of the cellular service in any location. To help with this problem, the FCC unveiled a new interactive map to show where the nation’s four largest cellular carriers are providing voice and data services – including all the gaps.

Currently, the map only is limited to outdoor access, but an “at-home” map is still in progress. 

See more on this topic, including the map at the FCC site.

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How the Military is Using 5G

In honor of our Independence Day this year, we want to focus on how 5G cellular technology and the military are working together to provide us a more autonomous world. 

Defense One posted an article a few weeks ago that highlights the Navy’s “5G Living Lab.” With the backing of companies like QualComm and Verizon, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Brandon Newell (director of the Navy’s SoCal Tech Bridge) was able to begin experimentation with 5G. The tests he and his team have been working on look at the benefits of using 5G cellular connectivity across a base. It could unlock new uses for self-driving vehicles, provide greater energy efficiency on base, and even better teaming between drones and ground robots. They quickly discovered a stronger cellular connection enables a lot more than video conferencing and reliable internet (go figure!). 

Newell spoke to Defense One as part of a special interview ahead of the 6th annual Defense One Tech Summit, taking place from June 21 to 25.  Here’s some of the quotes they received from him:

“We were able to learn what that self-driving unmanned future looked like, but also the key enablers to it,” he said.

“What you are seeing is that sensor suites with artificial intelligence and machine learning aggregate the data at the software level, at the user interface level,” he said. “You can actually expand to multiple threat vectors. So we’re showing ground perimeter, [and] drones. We’re showing maritime counter-intrusion. We were able to show how a single police officer can have that kind of local and regional look at the threat.”  

Check out more on this at Defense One!

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5G Increases Overall Data Usage

As cellular technologies grow, so does our need for content and therefore, our consumption of data. According to a recent report from Ericsson, average mobile data usage is over 10GB per month. Ericsson attributes this increase by only two factors. 

Mobile data is more readily available and since most users are on cell phones usage is higher than on fixed broadband services. 

The amount of mobile broadband routers have also risen. Think about all the people who had to start working from home. Those in more rural areas found a sudden need for a stable connection with high bandwidth, but no access to wired services. LTE Advanced and 5G technology have made this more possible. Sure, there are battery powered mobile hotspots, but they generally don’t have the power, nor the features to support everything a work-from-home employee requires.  

It’s easy to rack up data on your cellular connection using a mobile broadband router compared to your cell phone. No longer is it just you browsing the web or making video calls, but now everyone in your home or office is using the same connection. The report – Ericsson’s Mobility Report – shows mobile data usage hit 11GB per month in both the US and Western Europe.

Also something to note, according to a study by Pew Research, some 15% of US adults are now mobile-only internet users – meaning they don’t have a home broadband connection, but instead rely solely on their smartphone. Smartphone ownership has increased to 85%, up from 81% in 2019.

If this trend continues, the monthly global average usage per smartphone is forecast could reach 35GB by the end of 2026. Smartphones continue to be at the epicenter of this development as they generate most of the mobile data traffic – about 95 percent – today, a share that is projected to increase throughout the forecast period.

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How Does 5G Work?

5G is the fifth generation in cellular networks, but there are many layers to consider as we start to become immersed in this new technology. Using a different type of encoding than 4G LTE service, 5G is designed for much lower latency and greater flexibility. Its method for dispersing signals is almost spider web like in the way the infrastructure is set up. A system of cell sites are divided amongst different territories and send encoded data through radio waves. These cells are connected to the network backbone and can change size and shape as network capacity requires. This only adds to the complexity of maintaining LTE. 

As you may have seen just about anywhere, 5G coverage is not very expansive at this time. The industry is fixated on that, as well as increasing capacity (ideally by 4x over current networks). Accomplishing this will require leveraging new frequencies and antenna technologies. Believe it or not, but in addition to more coverage and capacity, there’s buzz about speeds up to 20Gbps and latency as low as 1ms! We’ll just wait and see.

Now with all the different names 5G has picked up over the last year, it’s important to know that not all 5G is created equal! There’s low band, middle band, and high band. If you’ve noticed different “Cat” versions of LTE modems, you’ve seen some support more frequencies than others (i.e. Cat 12 supports more than 6 and Cat 18 supports more than 12). 5G works similarly, and can run on the same bands as LTE, but as it is set on a range of airwaves – low, middle, and high. It’s also much like LTE band aggregation, which allows the cellular modem to connect to the cellular network using multiple frequency bands. The wider channels and range of frequencies 5G can operate over gives it the advantage. 

When it comes to low, middle, and high, it’s all about how many channels you can use when connecting, and the frequency at which they’re operating on. More channels won’t always mean more bandwidth in this case. Since 5G has the flexibility to work on any band, carriers can share those from 4G – this is known as dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS). This is how Verizon is able to say they have “nationwide” 5G. It’s just reusing some old LTE spectrum.

Low-band 5G operates in frequencies below 2GHz. While the coverage is great, the channels aren’t very wide and some are primarily for 4G, which makes this type slow.

Mid-band 5G is in the 2–10GHz range. These networks have decent range and because of that, it will likely be the one to carry the most traffic. T-Mobile’s “ultra capacity” 5G network runs on this mid-band, as well as low band at this time. AT&T and Verizon just bought into some spectrum here also, which they’ll likely start rolling out in late 2022.

High-band 5G, or millimeter-wave, is the newest and quite a bit faster than LTE. This is a range of spectrum that has never been used in the consumer market before. It’s very short range, but it can get to speeds over 3Gbps. This is what Verizon uses for their “ultra wideband” 5G network. AT&T and T-Mobile also have some high-band, but there hasn’t been much information about this.

For even more technical details about the differences in 5G, as well as application examples, check out the source article from PC Magazine.

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SD-WAN Branch Solutions by Peplink

5G is in our scope! Internet technologies are advancing. Security risks are increasing, along with the number of local and remote connections to manage. Many companies find themselves in a state of urgency to find the best solution, but run into confusion trying to understand what they need and how it will work for them. Not to mention having the adequate support when required. Together with Peplink, 5Gstore can assist your team at every level.

First, familiarize yourself with the terminology. For example…

  • SD-WAN means Software Defined Wide Area Network. This is a virtual Internet connection rather than a physical one coming from the cable or phone company. When you hear about Peplink’s SpeedFusion technology, this would be considered an SD-WAN. SpeedFusion creates one connection from many by establishing a VPN link between 2 or more sites – whether those be physical sites using a Peplink or Pepwave router, or a virtual site like Peplink’s FusionHub or SpeedFusion Cloud service.
  • SaaS stands for Software as a Service. If you’ve used our Remote Power IP Switches, or a security camera such as those from Nest or Amazon, think of the mobile application you use on your phone to access the Switch or Camera. In other words, this is a cloud based application rather than an application you might download onto your computer.
  • Bandwidth Bonding is part of Peplink’s SpeedFusion VPN technology. This can take any WAN connection (Wired, Cellular, or WiFi) and combine the bandwidth speeds, LESS a 19% overhead. For comparison, that’s only about 5% more than the commonly used IPSec VPN. Still, it’s important to note that high latency differences between connections can also affect the overall bonded speeds. Working with our Peplink certified sales and support engineers, we can help provide insight on factors to consider and configurations that could help combat the issues individual WAN connections may be experiencing.
  • Load Balancing, in comparison to bonding, still can utilize all your WAN connections simultaneously. However, it does not combine them together. Instead, it allows devices and types of applications/ traffic to be sent over a specific WAN connection or multiple. If your individual WAN connections are fast and stable enough for certain connections, this could save on cost.
  • Failover and the different types of failover is a good transition here as with load balancing, you do not have session persistence like you would with SpeedFusion Hot Failover. This feature can be used alongside bonding since it’s essentially the base for the other SpeedFusion features (i.e. WAN Smoothing and Bonding).

With all this in mind, even if your company only has a few users, it’s possible your bandwidth and/ or network availability needs will continue to grow with the industry. If you don’t grow with it, your legacy setup could compromise business. This doesn’t have quite as much to do with bandwidth (LTE is still more than enough for some), but more so with security, as hackers continue to find new ways into our devices.

We’ve listed some popular branch solutions as example hardware solutions for your reference below. When needed, contact the experts at 5Gstore and we’ll help guide you through the rest of the process!

Balance SDX

  • Deploy at headquarter or datacenter
  • SpeedFusion VPN provides reliable and fast access to the network resources
  • Modular design offers flexible choices of interchangeable connection interfaces, upgradeable to 5G

MAX HD4 MBX

  • Wireless SD-WAN router with up to 4 bonded LTE connections ensures high performance and 100% uptime in remote branches
  • Access corporate network resources with SpeedFusion VPN in minutes, rather than weeks with wired line

MAX HD2

  • Wireless SD-WAN router with 2 bonded LTE connections for smaller mobile branches
  • Access corporate network resources with SpeedFusion VPN in minutes

MAX Transit Duo

  • Lightweight wireless SD-WAN router with 2 LTE slots for unbreakable connectivity to HQ resources
  • Great for pop-up site or “office in a box” type setup
  • Affordable, easily scalable and manage
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