As higher-speed broadband coverage increases in coverage, specifications and scope, the actual logistics of managing connectivity becomes more complicated. For instance, interference in between network cells often results in degraded signal quality, frequent handoffs and a generally poorer network experience.

Cloud Radio, one of ZTE’s (SHE: 000063) entries to the GSMA’s Global Mobile Awards at this year’s Mobile World Congress, addresses this by enabling dynamic collaboration across cells based on the real-time location of users, so that there will be no performance degradation when crossing cluster borders.

“Especially for customers located on the border areas between cells, and where wireless performance is weaker especially for LTE, Cloud Radio will lead to a more uniform, consistent and predictable user experience across the overall network, increasing customer loyalty,” says ZTE in its entry.

Higher bandwidth, higher requirements

According to the company, 4G networks require 10 times more bandwidth than 3G networks, and LTE is deployed in high spectrum bands, so sites are dense in order to ensure signal quality. This causes greater interference compared with GSM and WCDMA. Also, OFDMA-based LTE (a modulation technology used in LTE and WiMax networks) does not have an inter-cell interference-suppression mechanism.

Cloud Radio was actually launched at MWC two years ago, with the promise of reducing the effects of interference between cells. The technology uses two mechanisms: a cloud scheduler and a cloud coordinator.

The central scheduler collects real-time information about interference, load, user distribution and interference location, and will determine the optimal resource allocation. Base stations then schedule their transmissions at a per-user level upon receiving these instructions. “This makes the bandwidth requirements constant regardless of the amount of sites that are simultaneously coordinated, making the performance across the network much more stable and consistent.”

The cloud coordinator dynamically measures the backhauling characteristics for each combination of eNodeBs — the hardware connected to the mobile phone network that communicates directly with mobile handsets — intelligently determining the best set of technologies to use. It essentially turns harmful interference into useful signal via inter-site coordinated multi-point reception and transmission (CoMP). The aim is to ensure latencies at most 4 ms, which is otherwise easily achievable with conventional IP RAN and Ethernet Microwaves.

The technology improves performance in cell border areas (which is 30% of all cases, says ZTE), up to 90% in downlink and 115% in uplink throughput.

ZTE Cloud Radio provices a cheaper alternative

According to ZTE, the most significant benefit of this technology is that it does not require network operators to invest in additional hardware expansion in the eNodeB. Existing IP transmission networks can meet the requirements of Cloud Radio without modification, so operators can make inter-site coordination possible with the lowest cost. In addition, Cloud Radio can be fulfilled on existing R8/R9 terminals. Given these, Cloud Radio helps in future-proofing network facilities, such as the transition from 4G to 5G.

To date, Cloud Radio is deployed across Chinese operators China Mobile and China Telecom, Hong Kong’s CSL, Wind Telecom in the Dominical Republic, and Cosmote in Romania, among others. ZTE says the technology is best suited for large urban cities, where population is dense and cells are close in between.

The technology was a finalist in the Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough category, which Airvana’s OneCell won.

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Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) reported their earnings for their fiscal fourth quarter of 2014, calendar Q3 2014 as well as the whole fiscal year of 2014 which ends in the calendar third quarter of every year. Qualcomm reported profits of $1.89 billion on $6.69 billion in revenue which boils down to an EPS of $1.11. Qualcomm’s revenues were up 3% year over year and down 2% from the last quarter, which worries some investors. Additionally, Qualcomm’s profit was up 26% year over year, but down 15% from the previous quarter.

However, Qualcomm’s quarterly figures missed on both revenue and non-GAAP EPS based on analysts’ expectations. Analysts had a consensus prediction of $1.31 EPS, which Qualcomm missed by $0.05 and they had a revenue target of $7.03 billion, and Qualcomm missed on that as well by $330 million.

Qualcomm also reported their results for the whole fiscal 2014 year, which showed the company as reporting $26.49 billion in revenue and a non-GAAP EPS of $5.27 while shippin 861 million MSM chips globally, an absolutely crazy number of SoCs. And if you take into account that

The primary problems that Qualcomm has right now is that they have a very strong position in the mobile market and are the leading SoC and baseband vendor for almost all of the leading smartphone vendors. In many regions, this has made Qualcomm very profitable and helped them grow to the $26 billion a year company that they are. They also managed to generate $8 billion in profit over the course of the last year, which is up from $6.8 billion in the previous fiscal year, a pretty significant improvement by any measure.

However, Qualcomm’s situation in China appears to be worsening rather than improving. They have plenty of products and IP that Chinese OEMs wish to utilize in their products, but are having a hard time getting them to properly license those technologies and pay for/accurately report how many Qualcomm licensed devices they are shipping and for how much. Additionally, Qualcomm is being probed by the Chinese government for the very reason that they are not Chinese and they are very present in the Chinese market. This very likely has to do with the fact that many large western companies have been probed in China recently and is a mere political move by the Chinese government to get more foreign technological investment.

Qualcomm’s outlook for the fiscal year of 2015 is what really drove Qualcomm’s stock downward today on yesterday’s news, with the company expecting revenues of $26.8 billion to $28.8 billion and an EPS of $5.05 to $5.35 which is below the consensus estimates of $28.9B and $5.58. The stock fell a whopping 8.5% today in regular trading after losing 6% in after hours trading yesterday and continues to lose ground into after hours trading, slipping an additional 2%. At the time of publication, Qualcomm’s stock is at $69.19 which is significantly lower than the $77 it was trading at before earnings were announced yesterday. As we learned in the case of Samsung, and now Qualcomm, nobody is invincible.

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According to Glenn Greenwald, who seemingly quotes himself in his own titles, the NSA has routinely been intercepting US-based networking hardware bound for countries abroad. While Glenn Greenwald doesn’t specifically implicate any networking companies, it would be safe to assume that companies like Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, Dell, HP and many more. This is in the face of the fact that the US government had been criticizing the use of Huawei networking hardware due to the beliefs that the Chinese would be presenting a security risk to the US. They essentially claimed that Huawei was bugging their networking equipment for the Chinese government and that their routers weren’t safe, meanwhile the NSA was doing exactly what the US was accusing the Chinese of doing.

Glenn Greenwald states that this is among many other revelations in his new book due out tomorrow, called No Place to Hide which chronicles Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State. It is a bit curious that he would release such news from Edward Snowden a day before his book’s release and alluding to the fact that there would be more details buried within his book. A lot of people are going to look at this as an obvious money grab and are going to question his motives and whether he’s doing all of this to personally enrich himself. While he doesn’t address this in his interview with GQ directly, he clearly has a lot to say about a multitude of topics, including Edward Snowden himself. This is in addition to having left The Guardian, the publication that had originally helped him run all of the Snowden documents and gain worldwide attention to the US’ vast surveillance apparatus to start The Intercept.

So, How does the NSA do it? Well, according to a 2010 NSA document obtained by Glenn Greenwald, they would receive (intercept) routers, servers and other computer networking devices planned on being exported from the US before they were to be delivered to their final international destination. The NSA’s secret division would then implant backdoor surveillance tools and repackage the hardware with a factory seal and send them on their way. The NSA would then be able to gain access to those companies’ networks and all of their users and possibly data through these backdoors. He even states that the NSA document gleefully states that, “SIGINT tradecraft … is very hands-on (literally!),” clearly alluding to their physical tampering with hardware. Eventually, the bugged hardware connects back to the NSA and provides them with the data they want. The report continues, “In one recent case, after several months a beacon implanted through supply-chain interdiction called back to the NSA covert infrastructure. This call back provided us access to further exploit the device and survey the network.”

Clearly, the NSA has a very detailed and well-established structure for these activities and likely has been doing so for quite some time. The NSA are probably much more careful about how they do things nowadays with all of the attention drawn to them because of the Snowden disclosures, but it would be foolish to assume they’ve stopped.

If you’re interested in getting Glenn Greenwald’s book, I recommend you head over here.

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