Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
There is an air of anticipation; that the Connected Home Over IP (CHIP) Project is about to release something juicy for the smart home – something that the operator crowd is going to sink its teeth into. Wireless Watch’s sister service, Faultline, which provides weekly analysis of digital video issues, has spotted a handful of breadcrumbs that hint at the shape of the CHIP project’s efforts. In isolation, these crumbs are not particularly noteworthy, but they add up to something that deserves examining – a wireless stack that would join together multiple different wireless protocols within a home, allowing messages to be carried between devices regardless of their OEM, and which would add a value greater than the sum of…
The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has welcomed its newest promoter member. Chinese device manufacturer Oppo will collaborate with AOMedia, which aims to influence how the media ecosystem drives content creation, content provision, media delivery and consumption, as well as video compression. Having an OEM onboard AV1’s standardization body is a neat victory for AOMedia, as it may stall some of the sceptics that argue AV1 has a limited future in hardware. Oppo is perhaps best known for its mobile handsets, which is an area where AOMedia desperately needs to cement and expand AV1. It also demonstrates the growing appetite of Chinese companies to be involved in codec standardization. China has often been viewed as a wild card, both in…
Many politicians and suppliers in the USA believe they can harness Open RAN and cloud-based 5G architectures to pivot the mobile networks supply chain back to their hi-tech industry, and away from those of China (and implicitly, the Nordics or Japan). But the 5G battle lines are, to some extent, laid down, while 6G still has everything to play for, and there are various initiatives – from Department of Defense projects to government funds – to make 6G a US-driven set of standards. However, a new trade group, the Next G Alliance, set up to manage North America’s progress to 6G, is not taking the America-first view, but will be led by AT&T’s CTO Andre Fuetsch and Ericsson’s Jan Söderström…
Marvell has been steadily expanding its position in the RAN market with chips for many elements of the disaggregated 5G architecture, and has strategic deals with Nokia and Samsung, the biggest hitters in the Open RAN space, and with Fujitsu. One of the commercial fruits of the alliance with Samsung is a new system-on-chip (SoC) to be used in Massive MIMO and other advanced radio units for an Open RAN or virtualized RAN environment. The SoC was jointly developed, harnessing Marvell’s processors to support the demanding beamforming requirements of Massive MIMO, and also using some Samsung IP. It is the companies’ first jointly developed single-chip radio and their first to support mid-band M-MIMO. Products based on the chip will be…
Autonomous transportation will arrive far faster away from public roads, at sites such as ports, airports and industrial complexes where drivers can be trained and all vehicles identified clearly, without having to cater for as many unpredictable situations. This will in turn help develop, test and tune the technology for later deployment on public road networks. Such deployments are already occurring with the latest at the Port of Barcelona in Spain where Telefónica is rolling out a mobile network incorporating the 5G version of cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X). This initially pilot deployment was commissioned by Netherlands-based port operating company APM Terminals, for connecting not just conventional vehicles around the site but also cranes and other machinery for loading, as well as…
The momentum behind an open disaggregated cell site gateway (DCSG) is gathering pace, with more operators signing up to trial systems based on one of Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP’s) most mature platforms. Earlier this month, Japan’s KDDI announced a multi-operator trial with MobiCom of Mongolia. And now Vodafone has completed a live trial in its Romanian market, which focused on 5G and on interoperability with existing transport networks. Vodafone Romania has completed a live network trial of open IP routing using a DCSG, based on a combination of hardware from Edgecore and software from ADVA – a combination that has been attracting a lot of attention in this segment. The DCSG, based on TIP specifications, was deployed in seven of…
One of the biggest questions surrounding Open RAN is who will do the integration of the many moving parts, if an operator goes for a true multivendor approach? Some operators, particularly smaller ones, are placing their hopes on initiatives such as Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP – see separate item) to provide a large measure of pre-integration, a step on the way to a plug-and-play network. However, that remains a distant dream for macro networks that will be charged with shouldering the considerable traffic and reliability burdens of 5G use cases. In this case, systems integration (SI) is likely to be a large part of the effort of deploying an Open RAN – a Rethink study found that on average, operators…
Open platforms are strategically hugely appealing to operators, promising to stimulate competition and innovation during the difficult migration to virtualized 5G RAN. However, their appeal quickly fades if they cannot be proven to deliver commercial performance that is as good as – or even better than – that of traditional integrated networks. Rakuten, as the driver-in-chief of the emerging Open RAN ecosystem, has a particularly heavy responsibility to provide a burden of proof. The first operator in the world with a macro-scale commercial Open RAN will be scrutinized – and criticized – beyond all reason by other operators, and by Open RAN critics, eager to understand how this emerging platform really will perform in the challenging applications of 5G. The…
While the Open RAN offers obvious opportunities for non-traditional or challenger vendors in the mobile network ecosystem, it presents a dilemma for established network equipment suppliers (NEPs). So far, Huawei and ZTE have remained distant, even though many contributions to Open RAN code and plugfests have come from the Chinese operators. Ericsson is being cautious. On the one hand, Open RAN appears to challenge its business model just at a time when it is well-placed to dominate 5G RAN. The different recent misfortunes of Nokia and Huawei, plus the strong platform Ericsson built in the 5G-ready phase, have combined to put the Swedish giant in pole position to win the next stage of 4G/5G roll-out. That explains hostility to the…
Etisalat, which was one of the earliest major operators to embrace Open RAN, has gone a step further in seeking to drive scale into the ecosystem by putting its support behind the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP). The UAE-based regional giant joins fellow Middle Eastern operator STC, as well as Telefónica, in endorsing RCP. The platform is Rakuten’s attempt to create an agreed framework within which hardware and software from many vendors can be pre-tested and validated to ensure interoperability and reduce integration time. Eventually, virtual network functions could be downloaded from an ‘app store’ onto white box cloud hardware and open radio units, says Rakuten. There is a long way to go to achieve that vision and the support of…
In the early days of any significant move towards new open platforms, a key challenge is to balance the desire for a broad innovation base, with the need to achieve unified and operationally robust platforms in time to meet market deployment needs. Large players will push for breadth and openness of the platform to maximize participation, competition and new ideas; but also for a controlled and unified architecture that can achieve large scale quickly. In some cases the players supporting these objectives may have competing commercial agendas; in others they may be the same companies, seeking to strike the perfect balance between breadth and unity. The IT world went through this process of aligning different objectives, in the long migration…
The price of Brent Crude oil has fallen by more than 7% this week, despite one of the world’s largest container ships running aground and blocking 10 oil carriers in the Gulf of Suez – potentially carrying 13 million barrels of oil. Despite a 6% uptick following the news, oil has continued to stall as worries grow around delayed economic recovery from Covid-19 amid a new surge of infections and global vaccine delays. Italy faces a €11 billion stranded asset risk, if it continues with plans for a wave of new combined-cycle gas turbines, according to a new report from Carbon Tracker. As of last year, new clean energy portfolios, with the technical ability to provide 24/7 electricity, are cheaper…
Academics from the unlikely pairing of Wales and Canada are ramping up a new research and innovation scheme concerning a new hydrogen storage technology. Using a ‘molecular sieve,’ early research indicates that the costs of storing gaseous hydrogen could be cut by 80% thanks to a four-fold increase in storage density. Breaking such technological barriers will be vital in broader commercialization of distributed clean hydrogen through the energy transition. Under a commercial agreement signed last week, the University of South Wales (USW) will transfer its patented hydrogen storage technology to Hydro-Quebec’s Center of Excellence in Transportation, Electrification and Energy storage (CETEES), with the two continuing to work together on the project, aiming to reach commercialization over the next two years.…
Five years ago this week… Israeli video optimization specialist Beamr acquired HEVC and AVC technology provider Vanguard Video in a bid to claw its way to the top of the encoding pile. It looked as though Beamr could be gearing up to fill the hole that was left by a string of top-tier codec acquisitions – most notably AWS’ acquisition of Elemental. Beamr’s deal meant it now held IP for both AVC and HEVC, and was therefore able to apply its content adaptation technology without offering up its own IP as open source, as mandated by GPL Version 2. — AT&T’s Warner Bros is making an abrupt U-turn. Warner Bros has made a vow of commitment to a…
Faultline tuned into something a little different this week, casting our attention to the Reimagining Section 230 live stream organized by technology newsletter Protocol and featuring Democratic Senator Mark Warner as the headline act. Warner waxed lyrical about his obviously blinkered take on the sweeping changes ahead for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – a long-standing law that essentially protects social media platforms from being sued as a result of user-generated posts. Warner’s abrasive attitude towards the two Protocol journalists tasked with questioning him was not a surprising attribute of a businessman turned politician, nor was his ability to downright dodge questions and interrupt at will. But something of a shocking revelation was that Warner openly – and…
Advertising upheavals are afoot ahead of the inaugural Spring upfronts, as technology companies and brands scramble to capitalize on an industry rapidly recovering from the anguishes of the past year. Billions of dollars are on the line at the second virtual upfronts presentations, scheduled for May, and the likes of NBCUniversal and Roku – two of the greatest advocates for driving disruptive new ad formats – are already out in force. However, any initial excitement quickly dissipated after we brushed away the superficial wording to reveal nothing but the usual ambiguities. First up, Roku revealed its new advertising brand studio this week, a place for producing new creative ad formats and TV programming which has ambitions of trashing the traditional…
What seemed on first glance a quite ordinary customer win for Ateme, at TDC-owned Danish video service provider Nuuday, was eventually appreciated by Faultline for its true beauty – which is as part of a much larger business transformation constructed around microservices. With businesses preparing to futureproof media workflows, we expect more of these types of deployments to come, and Ateme has evidently been ahead of the curve. Some 18 months have passed since Nuuday last appeared on the Faultline radar and – to no one’s surprise – the TDC subsidiary has recruited the French encoding expert to alleviate its pandemic-fueled video overload. Nuuday’s YouSee and Blockbuster brands, boasting 1 million viewers across 100 linear channels and VoD offerings, have…
There is an air of anticipation; that the Connected Home Over IP (CHIP) Project is about to release something juicy for the smart home – something that the operator crowd is going to sink its teeth into. However, we have been left disappointed before, and while it looks like a big reveal is being teased, the opacity of CHIP is detrimental. Faultline has spotted a handful of breadcrumbs that hint at the shape of the CHIP project’s efforts. In isolation, these crumbs are not particularly noteworthy, but they add up to something that deserves examining – a wireless stack that would join together multiple different wireless protocols within a home, allowing messages to be carried between devices regardless of their…
The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has welcomed its newest promoter member. Chinese device manufacturer Oppo will collaborate with AOMedia, which aims to influence how the media ecosystem drives content creation, content provision, media delivery and consumption, as well as video compression. Having an OEM onboard AV1’s standardization body is a neat victory for AOMedia, as it may stall some of the sceptics that argue AV1 has a limited future in hardware. Oppo is perhaps best known for its mobile handsets, which is an area where AOMedia desperately needs to cement and expand AV1. It also demonstrates the growing appetite of Chinese companies to be involved in codec standardization. China has often been viewed as a wildcard, both in the…
When plucky little Haivision was delivering its victory speech in late 2018 after a year of “people losing their minds” over SRT, Microsoft was among the key partners being thanked. This was a fitting tribute following the unveiling of SRTHub running on Azure at NAB earlier that year, which proved a pivotal turning point for Haivision and for global adoption of the low latency SRT protocol. Faultline said at the time that, as a steppingstone towards getting SRT integrated into OTT video software and relevant streaming platforms, they don’t come much bigger than Microsoft. Well, it turns out, they do, as AWS has finally signed on the dotted line to become a member of the SRT Alliance some two and…