Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
The 5G core network (5GCN) rose to public consciousness with the hullabaloo over Huawei’s involvement in the roll-out in some markets, where it has often been confined just to the RAN, on the grounds that it posed less threat to national security there. Whatever the reality of such perceptions, the controversy did focus minds on the critical role of 5G core in meeting many of the promises for new cases and particularly for underpinning network slicing upon which operators are pinning future revenue hopes. The way the 5G core is implemented will be critical for performance and especially satisfying demands for ultra-low latency, as well as security. This had led to increased focus on 5G core among operators and their…
Xilinx, which is likely to be acquired by AMD this year, made a significant play for the open RAN market last summer when it launched its Telco Accelerator Card, with O-RAN networks specifically in mind. But it is looking for a wider role in this space, aware that to make an open vRAN software ecosystem tenable, it will be necessary to have high performance semiconductors that can support the capabilities of a 5G macro network without the need for vendor-proprietary ASICs. The FPGA supplier has scored a significant win in this fledgling environment with a deal to power Fujitsu’s O-RAN 5G radio unit (RU), which are being developed for the US market and deployed by Dish in its greenfield open…
The rising complexity of 5G radios, as they evolve to support large numbers of different spectrum bands plus Massive MIMO antenna arrays, is putting RF transceiver chip providers in a strong position in the overall RAN component value chain. This has seen Analog Devices (ADI) sign a string of strategic alliances with radio unit and RAN processor suppliers, which promise to give it a pivotal role in the emerging open RAN ecosystem. One of these is with Marvell, a long-standing partner which extended the relationship to 5G Massive MIMO late last year. Marvell is building a comprehensive 5G vRAN semiconductor platform for both open and integrated architectures and will work with ADI on 4G/5G radio solutions focused on high orders…
Following the recent memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by four European giants – Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone – to promote and develop O-RAN platforms, Telecom Italia (TIM) has joined the party, adding its signature to the MoU. The Italian incumbent was an early triallist of 5G-oriented virtualized RAN architectures and has worked with traditional and new partners, including Nokia and Altiostar. It is already a board member of the O-RAN Alliance and has worked on an open RAN project in Brazil under the auspices of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP). Its CTIO, Michele Gamberini, said it is joining the cross-operator effort to support “Italian companies already developing solutions for new generation mobile networks”. This is a reference to one…
Japan’s leading MNO, NTT Docomo, is driving scale into the open RAN industry by announcing an alliance of partners. Docomo has a long history of gathering favored vendors and working closely with them to develop cutting edge technologies. The difference this time is that the focus is on open specifications, and some of the cooperative work could be fed back into the wider O-RAN community. Its initial chosen vendors include long-standing local partners Fujitsu and NEC, with which Docomo has co-developed technologies for 3G, 4G and 5G – the new international prominence of these two owes a great deal to their cooperations with such a demanding telco customer over the years. This shows how open platforms could be leveraged to…
The stage was set last year for a battle royal in the European cell towers market, with Cellnex – by far the largest pure-play neutral host in the region – expanding its footprint rapidly, while Vodafone placed its huge portfolio of 68,000 Europe-wide towers into an autonomous unit called Vantage Towers. Spain-based Cellnex has wasted no time in buying yet more tower assets in the early weeks of 2021, possibly spurred on by a desire to consolidate its leadership position as firmly as possible before Vodafone floats Vantage Towers. When Vodafone announced its plan last year, group CEO Nick Read was upbeat about the value of the tower assets, which could be unlocked by setting up an arm’s-length division and…
Special Report: The rise of neutral host networks Neutral host infrastructure is as essential to open networks as new RAN platforms Amid the clamor and politicking that surrounds the transformation of the RAN market, the dramatic changes in the ownership and centers of power in underlying infrastructure are less likely to hit the headlines. But the steady trend towards sharing the cell sites, fiber and cloud infrastructure that will underpin 4G expansion and 5G is just as significant, in its own way, as open RAN, in making future wireless networks more open and more affordable for a wide ecosystem of suppliers and operators. The trend for operators to carve out their macro network towers and rooftop sites into joint…
Australia has suggested its intent to reach net zero emissions by 2050, with Prime Minister Scott Morison announcing that he will commit to the pledge “when I can tell you how we get there.” Solar power is likely to provide much of the country’s decarbonization; per head Australia has the most capacity with 644 W per person currently installed, while hydrogen exports look set to replace the country’s international fossil fuel trade. Based on the country’s current level of emissions, the pledge would account for at least 1.16% of global CO2 output. Thyssenkrupp has successfully completed its first test of using hydrogen in the steelmaking process. The project, which started in November 2019, injects hydrogen into a blast furnace replacing…
President Joe Biden has signed an executive order which ends federal subsidies for fossil fuels, while putting his might behind offshore wind – with a promise to double the country’s offshore wind capacity by 2030. This is certainly a positive statement of intent that clean energy will be a priority through his administration. However, the offshore wind pledge is somewhat empty. Doubling the country’s minimal offshore wind capacity still leaves it with basically nothing, while doubling its current projected capacity to 2030 would be virtually impossible. It’s been a busy start to Joe Biden’s first term as US President. In terms of energy, it has seen the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, the rejoining of the Paris Agreement, the…
Last week as the ink was drying on our last issue, General Motors came out with a statement that stunned car makers everywhere – CEO and Chairman Mary Barra put out a statement that the company would go carbon neutral by 2040, and that this would mean stopping the manufacture of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2035. This is entirely consistent with Rethink Energy forecasts on Electric Vehicles, and only with our forecasts. Other forecasters have pitched EV cumulative sales at such low levels they could never have anticipated moves like this, because their numbers just do not reflect it. Mostly forecasts from Bloomberg, S&P and Wood MacKenzie are oil influenced and lagging reality. The reasons for the GM…
Sony has joined the SRT Alliance, marking a significant, although belated, endorsement of the low latency streaming protocol. While we assume the product range will expand, the first SRT-enabled offerings suggest that Sony is eyeing up the world of live events and remote production. The first set of products to support SRT comprises two remotely controlled IP cameras – the SRG-XP1 and SRG-XB25. Sony announced both models in April of last year, clearly rushing to cash in on the sudden need for remote production. Both cameras are geared for all-IP production environments, with a single Ethernet cable supplying power, streaming video and camera control signals between a camera and the control center. Offering 4K 60p video contribution at low-latency, Sony…
In the most recent installment of the SRT Tuesday webinar series, video contribution start-up Newsbridge described how the low-latency streaming protocol was nothing short of a godsend in early 2020 as lockdowns sent content businesses into panic mode. A whole year and a whole load of work later, Newsbridge is a beaming example of a software company that might not be around to tell the tale, were it not for open source SRT. In a nutshell, Newsbridge supplies software for creating content collections based on AI and deep learning techniques. But when Covid-19 struck, suddenly there were widespread challenges accessing content, as most media clients stored content on-prem. This prompted a huge rise in remote workers using VPNs to access…
Picking up on a theme of linear on-demand viewing, Portuguese cable operator NOS has injected its pay TV platform with Deep Content Understanding technology from Dutch vendor Media Distillery to create engaging new viewing experiences. Faultline has, however, spotted a glaring omission from this latest venture. We have come to associate Media Distillery as a specialist in applying a mix of machine learning techniques to identify visual and audial aspect data inside video – including faces, speech, objects, logos, and text. Using its Deep Content Understanding software to identify what comprises a piece of content, Media Distillery claims this is the most efficient way of yielding accurate results to determine relevant topics, events, or specific time markers in real-time. This…
Vodafone has been vaulted from pay TV periphery to cloud video spotlight in a couple of short years, this week publishing its most important financial results to date outside of its core mobile business. In Germany, where Vodafone has absorbed the Unitymedia cable assets from Liberty Global, the gentle handling of the transition from Horizon TV to Giga TV was not exactly a smooth one for the operator over the fourth quarter. Vodafone Deutschland registered 75,000 German video customer losses – wrapping up a year to forget in which 281,000 cut the cord. In the bigger context, Vodafone Deutschland won’t be worried, with its total TV subscriber base of just over 13.4 million a considerable increase on the 7.54 million…
The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) has released its latest report, outlining how cellular and WiFi should work together to provide access to a new breed of services, applications and experiences, especially in the fields of Industry 4.0, AR/VR, smart cities and edge computing. Convergence has two main thrusts – one in the radios, used by devices to connect to networks; and the other in the networks themselves, and the multitude of operators that run them, with growing overlap between video services that have moved into the mobile services realm. As an example, in a home, you can picture a scenario where a smartphone is accessing a premium video service provided by a mobile operator – or at least resold through…
The way is being cleared for mobile operators to start deploying new interactive multimedia services combining 5G New Radio (NR) with IMS (IP Multimedia Service). This will be enabled in part by availability of conformance tests, validated by the two key global certification forums. German testing group Rohde & Schwarz (R&S) has claimed to be first out with IMS conformance test cases for 5G NR, validated by the PTCRB, the certifying body for North America. Since the Global Certification Forum (GCF), the certification body for the rest of the world, also bases its validations on standards developed primarily by 3GPP and Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), approval there is likely to follow swiftly. Indeed, R&S stated that the conformance test cases open the door…
The big battles for 5G infrastructure processors may be between the chip giants, but there are plenty of start-ups aiming to get involved too. One of these, hailing from Silicon Valley, is EdgeQ, which has emerged from stealth mode with plans for a system-on-chip (SoC) targeted at telecoms networks. It plans to base its product on the open source RISC-V processor architecture and to target applications where AI and 5G are both in use, enabling the same chips to accelerate both workloads and so achieve efficiencies in power consumption, space and processing. According to CEO Vinay Ravuri, processor cycles between 5G transmissions can be used to perform AI tasks, effectively multiplexing the workloads together, “much like how virtual machines run,”…
Ericsson appears to be taking full advantage of the challenges its main rivals experienced, for different reasons, in the 5G market in 2020. A rising pace of 5G roll-out was the key driver for a growth in full year and fourth quarter revenues and profits, and for 2020, it achieved its targeted operating margin of 12.5% two years ahead of schedule. The last quarter of 2020 was the strongest indicator yet of the success of a turnaround plan, initiated at the start of 2017 by then-new CEO Börje Ekholm, that reversed a previous strategy of diversification and focused intensely on 5G and mobile networking. The narrowing of horizons may still be storing up problems for the future, particularly in the…
Even the most modern, resource-efficient network in the world does not make it easy to break into a saturated mobile market with three heavily entrenched operators, as Rakuten Mobile is finding out. Free Mobile did it in France, but that was in a market where the existing MNOs had kept prices high and were slow to respond effectively to the newcomer. Reliance Jio disrupted the Indian landscape, but that was by providing extremely low cost services in a very cost-sensitive market, leveraging a low cost base and significant amounts of asset sharing. Rakuten took a leaf out of Jio’s book by offering free services to incentivize users to migrate to its service, but has so far had limited success. It…
End-to-end network slicing is one of the most significant justifications for investing in a 5G cloud-native core at an early stage. This will allow operators to carve out virtual slices of their networks, to support the specific performance requirements of a particular application, industry or even user. This can be done in a static way using existing techniques with the evolved packet core, but the 5G core, combined with emerging orchestration technologies, will allow slicing to be flexible and dynamic. This will help operators enhance the revenue potential of their 5G networks by supporting enterprise customers with very demanding performance needs, and to back that with a service level agreement (SLA) without the cost of building a dedicated private network.…