Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Broadband has been an essential utility for years now, but governments are still slowly cottoning onto the fact that they must treat it as one. After years of reports and reviews, the UK government is finally putting a small sum of money on the table to spark some action. Offering $5.5 million in R&D funding for projects that will aid the cause, the Fiber in Water initiative aims to kill two birds with one stone – furthering the UK’s broadband and mobile networks while also reducing leaks from water pipes. The hope is that telcos will be able to extend the country’s advanced broadband and mobile networks into remote and rural (‘hard-to-reach’) areas with existing pipe infrastructure from drinking water…
It speaks volumes of Synamedia’s dedication to prolonging its security legacy outside of pay TV that the company’s debut acquisition is a move for ContentArmor – a vendor synonymous with forensic watermarking. Late to the party or not, this deal could stir up severe complications for smaller piracy protectors, particularly in high-value content like UHD delivered OTT. Verimatrix was well ahead of the curve in offering watermarking systems, while Nagra jumped into the watermarking game when it acquired NexGuard in 2016, formerly Civolution which was originally spun out of Philips. Irdeto played catch-up a few years later, while pretty much everyone else – from Intertrust to Viaccess-Orca, and castLabs to Inside Secure (before acquiring Verimatrix and adopting the name) –…
Verizon has been a leader in developing technology, with various partners, for caching content close to the edge in order to improve quality of experience. A few years ago, it kicked off advanced trials of technologies to work with 5G video content and it has been steadily extending its strategy to cover its FiOS fiber network services and multi-network experiences. The recent additions of video delivery experts Ateme, Broadpeak and Varnish Software to the Streaming Video Alliance’s (SVA) Open Caching project has been embraced with open arms by high profile members, including Disney and Verizon, as the alliance continues to encourage outsiders to help plug gaps in the network technology initiative. In a recent webinar, the SVA welcomed Sanjay Mishra,…
The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has released a draft of its latest technical requirements document for OpenRAN and members have until the end of September to submit comments on the proposals. The OpenRAN Draft Release 2.0 Detailed Technical Requirements document has been put together in response to a set of requests laid out by the ‘Gang of Five’ European operators, which signed a memorandum of understanding to support Open RAN and a broad ecosystem, and recently published their first set of key technical requirements. By using that European document as its starting point, TIP shows how European-centric its activities often are despite the ongoing influence of its US founder, Facebook. Many of its biggest supporters are large European telcos. Vodafone…
Deployments of private enterprise wireless networks will surge over the next few years amid rising hype that has been stimulated by the course of the ongoing pandemic. However, the curve is steeper than looked likely, such that the rate of growth will peak within around five years before subsiding as saturation approaches. These are some of the findings of Rethink Technology Research’s latest report from its RAN Service, entitled ‘Private Networks Driving Opportunities in 5G and WiFi’. Taking 5G alone, annual network equipment sales are on course to peak in 2027 at $19.3bn in, before subsiding. There will be a similar, if smaller, boom in deployment of enterprise WiFi networks around the latest 6E standard, which will offer greater capacity…
Work that Nvidia and VMware are doing on acceleration for distributed computing could prove important in the bid to design off-the-shelf processors that are capable of supporting the demands of a distributed 5G macro vRAN. Along with other applications that require very high levels of processing power and very low latency, such as some AI workloads, or advanced security, the Layer 1 and 2 functions in a 5G vRAN put an enormous strain on processors. That has led to most RAN functions in early virtualized RANs remaining on the radio unit, or on a dedicated appliance. In the emerging architectures for vRAN and Open RAN, the distributed unit (DU) is designed to support Layer 2 and some Layer 1 functions,…
Marvell has been assembling a full 5G- and cloud-oriented portfolio for several years now, through development and acquisition, and offers solutions ranging from high end cloud processors capable of supporting virtualized RANs, to RAN acceleration platforms and small cell processors. That has placed it in the race with Intel, especially in the context of vRAN and Open RAN infrastructure, but its latest acquisition, of switch-chip vendor Innovium, also brings Broadcom into its sights. Broadcom does not play directly in the RAN processor field but it is hugely powerful in conventional and white box switching platforms. So the $1.1bn in stock that Marvell has paid for Innovium will fill a gap in its growing line-up and help it compete more effectively…
Germany’s new mobile operator, 1&1, which is owned by broadband operator Drillisch, is to deploy Europe’s first large-scale Open RAN, working with Rakuten. This will be a significant proof point for the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP), which is now the foundation of a new commercial business for Rakuten, called Symphony (see separate item). There is much at stake. For 1&1, the aim is to minimize the cost and time to deploy the network and become competitive with the three established operators – Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica O2 – as quickly as possible. That will entail deploying a cloud-based network that should enable a new player to be more agile and cost-efficient than its rivals, and so steal a march…
Rakuten has created a dedicated business, Rakuten Symphony, to house the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP), and provide a whole range of products and services for operators that want to deploy cloud-based mobile networks. As well as pre-integrated hardware and software and an Open RAN marketplace, Rakuten will offer network-as-a-service and software-as-a-service to save smaller and new operators, in particular, from the time and expense to integrate a multivendor virtualized network from scratch themselves. Symphony will have the RCP at its heart. The platform has its first public commercial customer, 1&1 Drillisch of Germany (see separate item), and claims commercial engagements with a long list of unnamed telcos and enterprise providers, and some that have offered public support (such as Etisalat…
Thousands of column inches have been devoted to Rakuten Mobile and its cloud-native 4G/5G network in recent years, but from a commercial point of view, being a new entrant in a mature market like Japan is very tough. The network may be the world’s most cloud-based and open large-scale deployment, but the MNO business results are far less spectacular. Rakuten Mobile has resorted to commercial tactics that are far more conventional than its architecture, notably price wars that are starting to impact on its rivals, notably Softbank (see below) – but without propelling Rakuten to hit its customer share targets. But the mobile business, if analyzed as a conventional MNO, has always been a red herring. The cellular network is…
US Wind has announced plans to develop a 1.2 GW offshore wind in Maryland, USA, called the Momentum Wind project. Orsted has completed the installation of the Western Trail Wind Farm, a 367 MW onshore wind project in Texas. Located in Wilbarger and Baylor counties, the wind farm is equipped with 130 wind turbines and is Orsted’s largest onshore wind project to date. Simply Blue Energy and Subsea 7 have signed a memorandum of understanding with ERM for the potential use of the ERM Dolphyn hydrogen technology at the 200 MW Salamander floating wind farm off Scotland. Finland’s Ilmatar Energy has reached a final investment decision for the 216 MW Alajarvi wind farm in its home market, which is set…
The underlying network that pools smart meters together should provide a standardized and transparent platform for smart charging technologies, according to the Data Communications Company in the UK. In conversation with Rethink Energy, Innovation Director Chris Barlow outlined that building the consumer confidence behind EV infrastructure will be dependent on a dynamic network similar to that used for smart metering technology in the UK. An offshoot of Capita, the DCC is currently responsible for aggregating the new generation of smart meters (SMETS2) within the UK, having connected a total of 13.5 million meters to its network. The company’s primary role within the energy system at the moment is smart billing, ensuring accurate and optimized power purchasing for consumers. However, with…
First Solar, the largest solar manufacturer outside China, has announced it will build a $684 million, 3.3 GW solar factory, which will be fully vertically integrated, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The facility should become operational in H2 2023. The company has stated that it plans to double its total manufacturing capacity to 16 GW by 2024. This is something the company has been considering for a while – back in October 2020, CEO Mark Widmar said that First Solar planned to expand its manufacturing, mentioning Germany and India as likely prospects, while downplaying a US expansion as it would have higher production costs. In the event, the next announcement was in the US after all. Less…
Last week a Swiss start-up around the concept of Hyperloops emerged from the research stage into testing mode, saying it eventually plans a transport system from Zurich to Geneva which would take 15 minutes – a journey of 139 miles. Short airplane rides or long distance train rides seem to be best suited to the Hyperloop concept of a hollow, low air pressure tube, having pods accelerated within them, to speeds approaching 500 miles an hour. So little power is required for one of these systems that painting solar around the tube would provide more than enough energy to ruin the system, which could be a net contributor to the grid – very different from today’s trains. Swisspod has announced…
An intriguing low-key acquisition last week saw Hong Kong-based set top maker EKT sell its Greece-based Advanced Media Group wing to Ocean Blue Software (OBS) for an undisclosed sum – bringing a wealth of OTT video software experience to the veteran broadcast outfit. Jumping on a video call with OBS CEO Paul Martin in the days that followed, Faultline was dumbfounded to learn that UK-based OBS is in fact one of the founding fathers of DTVKit – a community-driven pool of DVB software components that is facing up against the might of the Google Broadcast Stack, among others. There is no shying away from the fact that the arrival of DTVKit in 2013 transformed the fortunes of OBS in the…
If you weren’t aware that Madrid-based Mirada is a 170-person TV software provider pulling annual revenues of $13.2 million, then you weren’t alone. Faultline went into this week’s call with CEO José-Luis Vázquez equipped only with knowledge of a handful of back-end pay TV deals, which was not nearly enough to prepare us for Mirada’s almost 20-year journey. Mirada is a vendor typically put in the same bracket as Android TV UX specialists such as 3SS and Accedo, yet this is a company with ambitions of coming after the lunches of companies the size of MediaKind (around 900 employees). While not totally out of the question, this is more likely to happen through industry consolidation than racking up a few…
A regular feature at most ad tech panel discussions, Vizio has been a passionate proponent of the notion that OEMs are best placed to use their platforms to drag connected TV (CTV) advertising into the future, while also keeping viewers’ eyes hooked on first screens. Going public just a few months ago, following a failed attempt in 2015, has no doubt steadied this hubris, and this week’s debut set of results show that the platform is indeed where it is at. First, the bad news. Device revenue is down 9% year on year (YoY) to $336 million, while gross profits in the hardware segment are down 20% YoY to $32 million. Diminishing hardware revenues for any tech company are nothing…
Sometimes, Faultline puts its foot in a rabbit hole, and falls a lot further into an innocuous question than we thought was possible. This week, the matter was how much idling processing power is out there in the operator set top installed base? A company’s environmental credentials are becoming increasingly important, and so we sought to gauge just how much processing power is out there. As set tops spend so much of their lives idling, there are some pretty strong parallels to be made with self-driving cars – whereby owning a car that spends 95% of its life parked and not driving is an incredibly inefficient use of resources. To cut a long story short, there is something like $8.8…
The recent additions of video delivery experts Ateme, Broadpeak, and Varnish Software to the Streaming Video Alliance’s (SVA) Open Caching project has been embraced by high-profile members including Disney and Verizon with open arms, as the alliance continues to encourage outsiders to help plug gaps in the network technology initiative. In a timely webinar, given recent controversy about the exclusive open caching arrangement between Verizon and Disney+, the SVA welcomed Sanjay Mishra, Associate Fellow at Verizon, who singled out scale as the most important aspect of open caching, which is gaining traction among ISPs with proven methods for equalizing the playing field for all video subscribers, where any consumer within the network footprint can receive content equally in terms of…
Apple smartphones make greatest 5G speed gains Of all the 5G smartphones in Europe, Apple 5G iPhones have achieved the greatest advantages over 4G in download speeds, according to London-based mobile analytics firm OpenSignal. Increases over 4G measured for the iPhones ranged from 3.4 times in the UK to 1.9 times in Italy. Samsung phones had smaller increases in download speed, although with a narrower spread between countries, ranging from 1.6 times in the UK to 1.4 in both Italy and Germany. However, Samsung phones still did better than other brands tested apart from Apple. 5G tower boom reported in USA Cell towers are being constructed at record levels in the USA because of booming 5G deployments. This has been…