Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Five years ago this week… Teleporting back to Cable Congress 2019, one message rang loud and clear: don’t underestimate the value of video technology teams in deploying network access equipment. A panel of experts discussing broadband distributed access architectures (DAA) in Berlin urged operators, “Please, please take the video guys onboard.” Five years on, that plea has largely fallen on deaf ears, with divisions between broadband and video departments only deepening at both operators and technology vendors. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————- Bitmovin Multiview dives into iOS and VisionOS Bitmovin has rolled out a public sample of its Multiview feature, designed for iOS and VisionOS, with integration into SwiftUI apps via an encapsulated Swift Package. Supporting up to five simultaneous players, the…
As expected, Trump has appointed Brendan Carr to be the next leader of the FCC. With current FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel confirming she will resign in January 2025, six months before the end of her term, changes will be coming much sooner than expected at the US government agency. Carr, a former aide to ex-Chair Ajit Pai, has been a vehement critic of net neutrality, big tech, TikTok, and—ironically for the new boss of the US communications regulator—regulation. The return of a deregulatory-leaning FCC is being celebrated by stakeholders in the US broadcast industry, namely those involved with ATSC 3.0, considering that the FCC’s ownership rules have been criticized for restricting the roll-out of the country’s hybrid NextGen TV revolution.…
Over the weekend, Netflix’s live boxing match sparked significant discussion on LinkedIn, fueled by widespread reports of buffering. Although we enjoyed the verbal online jousts, we are the only publication to put hard numbers on the table, to back our conclusions. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) later shared traffic statistics, revealing the network load generated by the event. Netflix announced a peak of 65 million viewers worldwide for the Tyson versus Paul match, across 60 million households, and an average minute audience (AMA) of 108 million live viewers globally. AMA reflects the average number of active viewers during any given minute, not households, showing here an average of 1.8 viewers per household. However, in some cases when using an AMA count,…
MHI RJ Aviation Group (MHIRJ) and Maeve Aerospace are collaborating on the Maeve M80, an 80-seat hybrid-electric regional aircraft designed for missions up to 1,200 nautical miles. MHIRJ, which supports the legacy Bombardier CRJ program acquired in 2019, provides engineering and advisory services for the M80. The hybrid-electric proposition is still alive for the moment, but Rethink doesn’t see a market opening that won’t first be filled up by hydrogen aviation. Not only will such a design have to deal with the high prices of SAF, but it will also have to navigate the complex business case of having to replace its battery packs once their capacity degrades below a certain level, meaning a second, ground-based second-life application will have…
India has narrowly become a net exporter of solar modules, with a little under $500 million imported and exported in Q2 2024. That’s according to a new publication from the Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The main context here is that the US and India have been the only two solar manufacturing reshoring efforts serious enough to eventually reshore the entire supply chain. The second Trump Administration’s inevitable weakening of support for renewables, to include the IRA’s manufacturing incentives, presents a major opportunity for Indian manufacturers. Even before President Trump’s re-election, India’s solar manufacturing was liable to do better than the US efforts, particularly in the ingot-wafer segments. India is a low-cost country in the same vein…
M&A, IP, Patents Shareholders of US fiber broadband network operator Frontier Communications have approved the sale of the company to Verizon for $20 billion in cash. Some 63% of stockholders voted ‘For’ the merger agreement proposal. Financials Deutsche Telekom’s Q3 adjusted net profit was up 3% to €2.3 billion and reported net profit came in at €3, up by more than 50%. Net revenue rose by 3.6% to €28.5 billion. As usual, growth is largely driven by T-Mobile in the US. In October, ratings agency Moody’s raised the long-term rating outlook of Deutsche Telekom to positive. The operator’s shares have now reached a 23-year high. AMD is cutting about 4% of its workforce, representing around 1,000 jobs. The news follows…
Telcos were among interested parties at an event called DCD>Connect earlier this month, focused on the impact of AI on data center design and capacity. Discussions revolved around emerging applications of Generative AI, how these would be served and the impact they would have. For many telcos it has been unclear exactly what difference GenAI makes with the shift towards image, video and textual content creation rather than prediction and data convergence. This is partly because GenAI in telecoms will be shaded towards automation and personalization, to some extent pushing further on the envelope of existing capabilities rather than eliciting radically new ones. It is about further evolution rather than revolution, although with a strong desire for more tangible gains…
Broadcom has added new AI-based features into the venerable VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN platform, launching a new offering called VeloRAIN. It comes after expansion wins at Deutsche Telekom and Telia, clearly signaling Broadcom’s intent to use the telco sector to drive growth. For the telco sector, the impact of Broadcom’s aggressive overhaul of the VMware business model is still being digested. AT&T recently said that it had received a quote from Broadcom that increased its pricing by 1,050%. Litigation is ongoing between these two, but many large VMware users are essentially held over a barrel, as the costs (both in dollars and in efforts) are enormous if they want to migrate out of the VMware environment. But Broadcom is plugging away…
The commercial appeal of Open RAN requires advanced testing of RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) platforms and the xApps and rApps that run on them. A key element is the way that these apps interact and mitigation of conflicting instructions. At the recent FYUZ event in Dublin, Wireless Watch spoke with Chris Murphy, Regional CTO of EMEA at Viavi Solutions, to discuss Viavi’s role in testing recent Open RAN research projects. The first such project, led by the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) was called Accelerating RAN Intelligence in 5G (ARI-5G), and included Accelleran, Amdocs, AttoCore, BT, and VIAVI, with some funding from the UK government. The goal was to test and demonstrate four apps on a RIC platform provided by Accelleran…
The US Department of Defense (DoD) has issued a strategy document setting out requirements for private 5G at military installations that may have some impact for enterprises more generally. The two key points are that both Open RAN and use of public macro 5G networks are strongly favored which could set the tone for further such deployments for US enterprises. Such reasons not surprisingly revolve around security for highly sensitive and classified applications, where dedicated private 5G might be preferred, although even then public networks should be in the frame. The relationship between security and Open RAN is more nuanced, with pros and cons on either side. Cost and flexibility are the driving factors behind the preference for public networks…
It was refreshing to hear a tone of honesty from Abdel Bagegni, the ORAN / vRAN Solution Architect and Program Manager at the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), while speaking at TIP’s FYUZ event in Dublin. At a time when TIP is restructuring its own Open RAN research groups, Bagegni shared his views on the meaningful areas of development in Open RAN. “At first Open RAN was oversold to the industry, which is why there was some frustration post-Covid about the deployment rates,” said Bagegni. “Now we live in a reality of how Open RAN can realistically be deployed.” From Bagegni’s perspective, as might be expected from a TIP official, an entity which Ericsson has recently (and quietly) joined, the 2023…
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has released the fourth update for TeraFlowSDN – a software-defined network (SDN) controller that is developed by the Software Development Group TFS (TeraFlowSDN). While still early days for the standard, it appears that there has been little progress on commercial deployments, despite the interest in the SDN field. Unsurprisingly, this is a very technical announcement. The deluge of TLAs includes a new suite of features to support Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), as well as new network automation and monitoring, which have been aligned with the ETSI Zero-touch network and Service Management (ZSM) architecture. The QKD elements sound very hype-y, but this GLOMO judge can tell you that there is a lot of interest and…
In response to Ericsson’s suspicious operator-API joint venture, Nokia has acquired the technology and R&D unit from Rapid, a startup that once held a billion-dollar unicorn valuation. Formerly known as RapidAPI, the firm runs an API marketplace. No price is being given, but it is likely under $100 million – as Nokia would have to report a transaction above this threshold to its shareholders. Nokia will use the assets to “strengthen development of network API solutions and ecosystem.” Nokia will also be able to enable its operator customers to more easily interact with the continuing Rapid API marketplace, which Rapid says is used by over 4 million developers, with over 40,000 APIs, and generating over 5 billion API calls per…
At the Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP’s) recent landmark event in Dublin, FYUZ, the tone was that of change. The newly appointed Chairperson, AT&T’s Rob Soni, and Ericsson’s Sibel Tombaz took the stage for one of the opening presentations, which set the tone for a primary role from these two firms. Ericsson is finding its place in the group, where it has joined as a member of the Telco AI project, and will focus its efforts on enabling operators “to utilize AI faster and at scale.” In short, the Swedish vendor aims to be present in the Open RAN community without ceding its role as a dominant vendor of its own flavor of proprietary equipment. TIP’s founding principle, to facilitate affordable, universal connectivity, seems less and less relevant…
AMC Networks has taken full control of BBC America, a decade after it acquired the first half of the venture. Paying just $42 million for the remaining 50.1% stake in BBC America, the deal pales in comparison to the $200 million paid by AMC Networks to acquire the initial 49.9% stake in the cable network in 2014. Back then of course, the TV landscape and cable veterans like AMC Networks were still riding the final waves of high ratings and high margins from the pay TV business, before the wheels truly came off. Since then, streaming competition has altered the market irreversibly, making cable channels like BBC America inherently less profitable, hence the dramatic fall in valuation. The deal is…
UK operator BT has been doing well to claw its way back to a profitable and streamlined enterprise, under the guidance of CEO Allison Kirkby. Earlier this year, Kirkby announced a restructuring that would cut operational costs and lead the company to a modest cash flow in 2025, changes which sent the share price up by 20% at one point in the year. This month however, the UK incumbent lowered its revenue outlook for the full year, and said its annual costs would increase by £100 million because of new tax payments. The news sent shares down more than 7% on the day of the news – not a dire indictment from the stock market, but the first sign of…
Speculating on how different the industry could be is something that Rethink Research is renowned for. In Wireless Watch, this tends to focus on what the market would look like if the largest MNOs were broken up, rather than dreaming of a new technology that might dethrone them. Should Wall Street decide that the spectrum holdings on the MNO books are not actually as valuable as the MNOs claim, we might see a major collapse, but this is unlikely. Within this framework, any new entrant is exciting, and so Helium’s entrance into the MVNO and CBRS market, with its decentralized wireless (DeWi) business model was of great interest – even though we knew it was very much an uphill battle.…
SK Telecom (SKT) is adding flesh to the bones of its ambitions to build enterprise AI infrastructure services across Asia, called its ‘AI Infrastructure Superhighway.’ There are early signs of revenue growth at SKT’s enterprise unit, though this can only be attributed to AI in a small part at this stage. At SKT’s recent AI Summit, CEO Ryu Young-sang presented the company’s detailed strategy for AI infrastructure services. The operator will launch its AI datacenter testbed in South Korea this December and a GPU-as-a-service offering within a year. It also plans to expand the reach of its portfolio of AI infrastructure services into other countries, via high-capacity subsea cables. The strategy also includes AI data centers (AIDCs) and what the…
Red Hat has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Neural Magic, an academic spin-out that specializes in optimizing GenAI inference workloads. No price is being given, but the IBM wing will be taking on all 45 staff, if all goes to plan. The very short-notice presentation saw Red Hat leadership expand on the problem and opportunity here. In short, Neural Magic is building on the open source vLLM project, which is an optimized library for Large Language Model (LLM) inferencing – the process through which the model ‘infers’ understand about its new question or material, based on the model’s underlying training. Cloud computing, and its edge extension, has a business model centered around efficiency. It must ensure that the…
Open RAN technology vendors are harvesting low hanging fruit among indoor enterprise networks before stretching towards more complex and challenging outdoor environments. US network infrastructure vendor CommScope is the latest to add weight to this view, over three years after AT&T first expressed similar sentiments as it embarked on its Open RAN journey. CommScope is motivated by the availability of its indoor Open RAN package, launched in February, coinciding with a significant rise in rate of indoor 5G deployment, according to its Vice President of Engineering Luigi Tarlazzi. Speaking at the Open RAN Global Forum a few weeks ago, Tarlazzi suggested that Open RAN was easier to justify and deploy indoors because it was often essentially a greenfield environment, insulated…