Fraunhofer FIT joins Facebook's Telecom Infra Project

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona in late February Facebook introduced the Telecom Infra Project (TIP). TIP aims to bring together operators, infrastructure providers, system integrators and other technology companies in order to improve the global telecom network infrastructures.

TIP's core objectives are innovative concepts for implementing new radio and fiber optics technologies as well as other network components, which will extend and enhance the traditional approaches to building and deploying telecom network infrastructure. TIP initially focuses on three core areas: Access, backhaul, core and management. The project groups within these areas will leverage the unique engineering and operating expertise of each member.

Fraunhofer FIT aims to share its renowned expertise and experience with »Wireless Backhaul« (WiBACK) to the project. WiBACK offers a cost-efficient way to deploy broadband Internet in sparsely populated rural areas that are unattractive for the classical network operators.

Based on secure protocols and self-organizing principles, WiBACK allows deployment and operation of a fail-safe radio network without requiring substantial technical expertise. WiBACK is the results of more than six years of research at Fraunhofer FOKUS. With a strong emphasis on enhancing its usability, Fraunhofer FIT took over the WiBACK development efforts in 2016.

“You can minimize acquisition costs (CAPEX) and in particular operating costs (OPEX) by combining energy-efficient and cost-efficient hardware, easy-to-use software and a network management system that follows the principles of self-organizing networks and is based on a Software-Defined Network (SDN) architecture.

WiBACK can thus complement or extend conventional operator network”, says Dr. Mathias Kretschmer, Head of Network Research group, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT.

The TIP Summit will be held at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park CA, November 1 – 2, 2016. Keynote speakers will be Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, CTO, SK Telecom, Jay Parikh, Head of Engineering and Infrastructure, Facebook and Dr. Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, CTO, Deutsche Telekom AG.

For additional Information visit https://tipsummit.splashthat.com/