The telecommunications (telco) market is undergoing a sweeping transformation that is being driven by fundamental changes in digital data distribution mechanisms and the skyrocketing demands of telco customers. Not too many years ago, the primary focus of the market was on providing connectivity to homes and enhancing mobile access. Today, consumers and commercial customers are engaged in broadband data transfer at an unprecedented scale and accelerating pace. Many factors underlie this usage growth: the spread of Internet of Things (IoT) technology giving rise to billions of connected objects, the sharp increase in streaming video use, emerging technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), smart city infrastructures, connected car implementations, and the popularity of online gaming.
As 5G networking transforms the telecommunications industry and next-generation 6G is close at hand, the need for increased bandwidth (BW) across wireless and wired infrastructure components has become obvious. This is compounded by the need for new architectures to support next-level mmWave frequencies (available with 5G), where cell structures disaggregated from the baseband unit (BBU) and the base station become a requirement. Keeping pace with the rising data demands and expanding signal usage across the frequency spectrum requires faster interconnects within the infrastructure as well as bridging conventional copper-based compute architectures with more efficient fiber-optic pathways and wireless 5G connectivity.
