5G & Beyond

The telecom industry undergoes constant evolutions in customer expectations. We live in an era of increasingly digitized experiences, digitalized services (including the cloud), vast multimedia consumption, and new experiences through technologies like AR/VR and artificial intelligence. To stay ahead of the curve and improve their network services, telecom operators want to harness the 5G and upcoming 6G network transformations to fulfill the capacity and low latency needs of their ever-increasing and multimedia-hungry customers. Operators want to interconnect the world and provide personalized experiences to users cost-effectively and sustainably.

Picture of a cell phone tower with a 5G base station and antennas.

A Costly Upgrade

Despite the benefits of upgrading to 5G and beyond, the profit margins for telecom operators keep getting smaller, and upgrading beyond comes at a price.

Challenges

  • While 5G standards are more energy-efficient per bit than 4G, the total power consumption will be much higher than 4G. Huawei expects that the maximum power consumption of one of its 5G base stations will be 68% higher than its 4G stations.
  • Many operator networks are fiber-limited and don’t have room for expansion unless the operator goes through the costly process of laying down more optical fiber.
  • Operators have often been forced into choosing between equipment performance and size/power consumption when deploying new network upgrades.
  • Installing technologies such as tunable transceivers require several time-consuming processes to install and maintain, and that time quickly turns into higher expenses.

Accessible Solutions For Your Network Upgrades

By leveraging our proprietary photonic and digital signal processing technologies, EFFECT Photonics can offer compact transceivers and light sources with seamless integration, cost efficiency, low power, and security of supply.

Key Solutions

  • Our optical System-on-Chip technology increases the integration of optical components, reducing device footprint, losses, and power consumption.
  • Our tunable transceivers with dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) allow operators to expand their transport network capacity without laying new fiber.
  • Our proprietary NarroWave technology allows for plug-and-play transceivers that minimize the network’s time-to-service and reduce the potential for human error.
  • By offering both narrowband and fullband tunable transceivers, operators can choose the option that best fits their budget and network needs.
EFFECT Photonics at INPHO Venture Summit 2020

Takeaways

To stay ahead of the curve and improve their network services, telecom operators want to harness the 5G and upcoming 6G network transformations. However, these network upgrades can be prohibitively expensive, requiring new optical fibers, thousands of person-hours and operating expenses, and complex trade-offs between power consumption, size, and performance. EFFECT Photonics’ technologies can allow more compact form factors with seamless integration, cost efficiency, low power, and security of supply.