On this episode, ‘Ceragon Connects’ with Ulik Broida for the launch of the much anticipated, long-awaited IP-100E.
We're about to dig into every magnificent morsel of industry-first innovation the IP-100E brings to the table with Ceragon’s Chief Product Officer. Don't go anywhere - you're not going to want to miss this one!
Full Transcript Below:
On this episode, ‘Ceragon Connects’ with Ulik Broida for the launch of the much anticipated, long-awaited IP-100E.
We're about to dig into every magnificent morsel of industry-first innovation the IP-100E brings to the table with Ceragon’s Chief Product Officer. Don't go anywhere - you're not going to want to miss this one!
Ulik, welcome to Ceragon Connects.
Hi Jeremy, nice to be here.
Well, we know you're very busy and we appreciate your time. Thank you very much for that.
Before we unveil the IP-100E and all of the capacity and capability-first it brings to market, I want to take a quick look back at some of the historic firsts Ceragon pioneered in the wireless connectivity space over the past several years. It is my opinion that Ceragon has rightfully earned a reputation for innovation, pushing boundaries, really elevating the wireless connectivity space uh in its own unique way thanks to its hard work, dedication, risk-taking with some really cutting-edge solutions.
If you had to point to just a few, what would you look back at over the past couple decades and say that's it - those are the ones that really gave Ceragon that ‘Innovation Edge’?
So looking into the last maybe even 20 years we always try to really understand what our customers are looking for sometimes even without them knowing what they are needing, and to develop new technologies that really bring new values to these customers and better use cases for their needs.
So I would say maybe the best example is the 2 + 0 - two radios in one outdoor link, one outdoor radio in a box, 2 plus zero meaning one-click, double capacity, 2 plus zero means ‘pay as you grow’.
So when we introduced to the market the IP-20C, which we sold hundreds of thousands of links since then - it was the first product that had these two radios in a box - and since then, most of our competitors introduced a similar concept as well.
Beyond that, multiple advanced technologies like ASD, AFR all these technologies which we don't need to go into their meaning, they are all targeting to bring our customers better capacities, maybe better availability, better link distances for any given need or any given use case.
Well I think it's fair to say that Ceragon’s industry-firsts have consistently increased network capacity, they've boosted performance and efficiency and certainly enabled remarkable scalability and the key is that they've done all of that while reducing costs and complexity and spectrum usage - all allowing Ceragon to empower wireless connectivity customers to stay ahead in a technological landscape that is constantly shifting and evolving with and maybe most importantly an insatiable appetite for more capacity, and of course that has a lot to do with the IP-100E.
What would you say the role of Ceragon's inhouse chip development plays in maintaining our Innovation Edge for our customers, and wouldn't it just be easier, cheaper, faster to do what all of the other wireless vendors do and purchase chips from a third party vendor?
So even if I put aside the value of being independent, the value of controlling our technology and our components - we saw that in the last few years, when you had the Corona virus running around, we saw that components were difficult to obtain, shipments were very expensive. So, the fact that we control our technology is a value by itself. But even if we put this value aside, the fact that we can take multiple technologies and pack them into one piece of silicon, the networking side, the digital side, the analog side - all that – interfaces, memories, into one piece of silicon - this allows us and our customers of course, to enjoy smaller products with less components, meaning better availability, better MTBF, better lifespan, and with better performance - because we can really optimize these different aspects of technology and generate better capacity, power, lower cost, lower power consumption to our customers.
Okay. So Neptune, Ceragon's new ‘System on a Chip’ has some remarkable specs, all contributing to the IP-100E's ability to lead the industry in terms of capacity and distance and features, but I'm going to break some news here on Ceragon Connects.
I understand that the IP-100E is only one of five new E-band solutions that Ceragon will release over the next several months. In fact, I've heard you refer to 2025 as the year of E-band. Can you tell us more about why Ceragon is investing so heavily in E-band ‘e-nnovation’ and about some of the other E-band solutions you're adding to the portfolio?
So starting a bit after the middle of last year, and until the middle of this year, we are going to launch to the market 5 new, high-capacity E-band products - high capacity meaning 10GB per second and above. It's the IP-50X which was already launched, the IP-50X Premium, with higher capacity and additional features, IP-50EX Advanced, the Siklu-based 8020 product, and of course the IP-100E.
So why so many different high capacity products in the market? We believe and I think that external market research companies agree with that, we believe that in the next few years, more and more use cases that were traditionally microwave use cases by our customers, will move to E-band. Why? So since last year, Ceragon started to introduce new E-band technologies that really make all the difference in favor of microwave disappear. So with our new E-band product, you can really do distances, capacities, availabilities of links like microwave, but with lower cost, lower cost of the product and lower cost of the license - because in most countries, E-band is either license-free or very low cost to obtain from the regulator. So both CAPEX and OPEX are better with E-band than with microwave - but with the same performance or more.
So we really believe that we will see a shift from traditionally based, microwave-based use cases to E-band with our customers, and therefore we decided to introduce a portfolio of multiple products each addressing a bit different use cases with a bit different sweet spot so our customers can really get the best of the E-band technology.
Cost optimization, lower total cost of ownership, is something obviously that all of our customers are happy to hear about when we are releasing new solutions. The 5 new solutions I know that we're talking about, in terms of millimeter wave family, are the new 8020 which is the Siklu by Ceragon solution, the IP-50EX which is available now, the IP-50EXP and EXA which are coming soon and the IP-100E which we are launching today which is very very exciting!
Of those, the first one to be based on the new System on a Chip platform Neptune, is the IP-100E.
What benefits would you say the Neptune System on a Chip brings to our millimeter wave family of solutions moving forward?
So I think the main thing to talk about when we talk about the IP-100E and the Neptune component, the Neptune chip, is capacity - really this product is the most powerful from switching capacity and customer capacity in the market. So this model, this Neptune, can really digest the widest uh Spectrum the widest piece of spectrum in E-band if all the products you can find in the market today can work up to 2GHz or 2,000 MHz - the Neptune can work up to more than double that - 4 and more Gigabits per second, 4 and more GHz - and then our customer can get much higher capacity, up to 25 Gigabits per second in a box, with two radios, two radio chains, two radios in one modem in one box and by that the reduce the size of the solution, reduce the cost of the solution - the fact that you can really do 2 radios in a box brings the additional very nice capabilities like ‘1-click, double capacity’ in E-band.
Additional things you can do is operate each of these radios in lower modulation, and then even if the capacity need is 10 Gbps or 11 or 12 Gbps, maybe you don't need to go up to 25. Still the fact that you have two radios, you can operate each one of these radios in much lower modulation and by that get much higher system gain and much longer link distance.
Okay so let's get to it. I've heard some very impressive specs regarding capacity for the IP-100E. I've heard numbers thrown around like 25, 29 and 40. Can you give us a little bit of detail about what those numbers mean? Which scenario? Which application? What exactly is the IP-100E capable of?
So really the IP-100E increases or raises the bar of capacity that you can generate from one bo,x one E-band box. So one IP-100E can generate 25 Gbps - really the highest in the industry for a box. So this is two radio chains or one radio chain that is using the whole 4GHz channel, 25 Gbps capacity - you can actually connect two of them in a link and reach 40 Gbps. You can actually connect a microwave to this box and reach 29 Gbps of a multiband link. This multiband link can be an all-outdoor solution or a split-mount configuration using an indoor unit that you can purchase from Ceragon or anyone else.
So 25 Gbps in one box, 40 Gbps using two boxes, 29 Gbps in a multiband link - all these are very high numbers!
There's something you mentioned earlier and I want to focus on it for a second. Oftentimes when I'm telling folks about the IP-100E and the 25 Gbps capacity, they'll look at me with this look on their face of well - how many applications, how many scenarios are there where you really need 25 Gbps? What would you say to that? What would your answer be?
So I would say, looking into the history, when Ceragon introduced the IP-50C with 224 MHz in microwave, some customers told us - why do you need such high capacities - up to 4 and 8 Gbps in a microwave link? And we told our customers, let's wait and see. And really a couple of years later, this high capacity came in handy. So we believe with IP-100E the story is similar. We call it future radio or future-protected.
So you can start with the IP-100E with a lower capacity. You can actually operate one radio out of the two. We say ‘1-Click, Double Capacity’ - so one, two, three years later when additional capacity is needed because of the use case, you can from your network Operation Center with one click, without any truck roll, double the capacity. So this is one advantage even if on day one you don't need this high capacity.
Another advantage is that if on day one, you don’t need this high capacity, you can reduce the modulation of each one of these radios. If you have a lower modulation, you have higher system gain and therefore better distances, longer distances per link. So this allows the whole concept, the whole economics of the use case to be much better when you need less length, less hops to reach even longer distances - and this is why I say 2025 is the year that E-band is the new microwave.
Okay. So we have this incredible balance of industry-leading capacity with flexibility and that makes the IP-100E far more than just powerful. It's really remarkably flexible. So if we are starting off the Neptune family - the new System on a Chip with the IP-100E, and we've got this again remarkably powerful, remarkably versatile solution - what follows the IP-100E? Can you give us some hints, some clues as to what's on the horizon for this new System on a Chip and the innovation that it will continue to bring to market?
So now that we have this very cool tool in our toolbox, we are thinking of a few other products - we had some discussions with customers about future bands – W-band which is almost 100 GHz, D-band, getting to around 150 GHz - all these new bands which are not really relevant today, there are in discussions with the regulators around the world - these new bands will have wider channels in the frequency range and that allows the customer to use better capacities and the modem, the new Neptune is really the best tool to use this very wide channel.
So all outdoor IP-100W, IP-100E, maybe even we are going to use this chip in a more powerful microwave product - maybe 4+0 in a box, in one chip, in the microwave space - we might call this product IP-100C, so we have additional thoughts about where to put this Neptune in future products.
All right. I'm going to get greedy and ask you one more question before we let you go. What is your opinion on multiband in a single box? Is that something that's worthwhile? Is there a discussion about that? What do you think?
Yes, there are discussions in the industry. Whether multi band in a box is a valuable product or not. Sometimes it seems very attractive, because you can really get all these products, all these links into one box. On the other side, most of the usage of multiband links we see in the market today are for E-band to use an existing microwave link - and by that the microwave should be an external box. We are looking into that, and we have now the technology to introduce such a product and we are looking that and we might do that. We had this discussion with some of our customers to see if this is really a value or just a gimmick.
Well there is certainly a lot to look forward to. Ulik, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you sharing it with us for the launch of the IP-100E today.
Thank you Jeremy, and you know Mobile World Congress is coming soon. We will be happy to see you there and have all these flexibility discussions in a face-to-face scenario.
That's right, and if you'd like to know more about the IP-100E or any of Ceragon’s new connectivity solutions, you can always find us online at ceragon.com - and if you happen to be in Barcelona March 3rd to March 6 for Mobile World Congress, make sure to stop by the Ceragon booth - Hall 5, Booth 5G51 - if you'd like to just ask us a couple quick questions we're always there to answer those, shake your hand, say hello face to face. If you've got some more in-depth questions you think you might want to have a little will sit down with us, get some consultation, make sure to book that meeting in advance. I know those spots are filling up fast.
Until next time, I'm Jeremy Ladner and this is Ceragon Connects.
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