On 4/27/24 17:49, Mel Beckman wrote:
Quite often I’m looking for OOBM at antenna sites or in remote DCs where there is no Plan B carrier. Cellular has always been the goto choice for this, but we keep getting pushed out of contracts by technology upgrades. 2g, then 3g, and next 4g LTE are being deprecated. The main reason for network shutdowns is that the carriers have limited spectrum available for expansion. To deliver faster, more cost effective data service to customers, carriers must re-use existing spectrum licenses with newer, more efficient cellular technology. Old 2G/3G infrastructure makes way for new networks, and older cellular devices must be retired. 4g may have a decade left before complete absence, but its footprint is already shrinking where 5G is available. I’ve seen this first hand with 4g cellular alarm circuits: suddenly they get less reliable or fail completely, and the reason always turns out to be degraded RSSI due to 5G deployment. So 5G is imperative for cellular OOBM, hence the hunt for COTS drop-in replacements that won’t break the bank. Upgrading, for example, 100 antenna sites is also a major truck roll cost, so we want to get it right the first time. Physical space and power limitations usually rule out 1U rackmount refurb Cisco terminal servers, which is why we need 0U gear. Yes, I can cobble together a raspberry pi and some hats and cables and dingles and dangles and make a science fair solution. But I need something that is commercially supported, won’t have me scratching my head later about what version of the Ubuntu is going to work, and won’t randomly fry its electronics during a power surge. It’s looking like that solution is firmly priced at ~$500 today.
Fair enough - if the bulk of your OoB use-case is remote (cell) sites, your typical options won't work or will be limited.
Oddly, in our parts, we find remote, non-city locations, tend to keep their 3G/4G status, or don't even get considered for 5G at all. But I guess this will vary by market the world over, so I could see a remote site in Norway, for example, having 5G vs. a remote site in, say, Egypt, doing the same.
I think what you probably want to consider for the long-term is decoupling the device from the network media. If you can attach a MiFi router via a USB port to a cheap device (like Mikrotik), this would help keep costs down as mobile operators deprecate GSM data technologies in the future. I like Mikrotik because in addition to being cheap and feature-rich for basic network access, the firmware is regularly upgradeable unlike typical consumer-style CPE's.
Mark.
