Your browser is not supported. Please update it.

Searching Weekly Analysis

11542 search results for Open RAN

Wireless Watch
27th July 2020

Don’t let the 5G kaleidoscope obscure the power of Nokia and Ericsson

At Wireless Watch, we keep a very regular eye on the activities of challenger companies that may break into the closely guarded 4G/5G RAN and core fortress. The competitive landscape, static ever since Huawei entered the market with such disruptive force, is now shifting again. This time, there is no single new force to up-end the industry. Instead, the landscape is a kaleidoscope, with many elements constantly rearranging themselves. Riding on the wave of interest on open architectures such as O-RAN, and by the start of the slow progress to a fully virtualized and disaggregated network, the prospect of a more diverse and competitive supply chain seems more real than it did at the start of the 4G era. Then,…

Rethink Energy
23rd July 2020

Renewables orders this week

SSE is hoping that its 520 MW Arklow Bank offshore wind project could be built by 2025, if it is fast tracked by the Irish government. Vestas has received a 50 MW order from Bac Phuong JSC in Vietnam for the second phase of the Dong Hai 1 intertidal wind project. Vestas won the contract for the first phase in December 2019 and will now supply all of the turbines for the 100 MW project. Installation of the company’s 4 MW turbines will be completed in Q3 2021. Siemens Gamesa has won a 78 MW order for the Hiep Thanh nearshore wind farm off the coast of Tra Vinh, Vietnam. Commissioning of the company’s SG 5.0-145 turbines will be completed…

Rethink Energy
23rd July 2020

UK fund to kickstart decarbonization is tiny, just £350m

The UK will place hydrogen and carbon capture at the core of its industry decarbonization, following a £350 million boost to fuel green recovery, announced this week. But compared with other countries in Europe, the amount seems tiny. As part of the country’s drive to reach net zero emissions by 2050, the injection of finance aims to help businesses slash emissions across heavy industry, construction, space and transport. This also comes alongside the inauguration of the country’s Jet Zero initiative, which had its first meeting this week, aiming to create a net zero future for aviation. The paltry £350 million is unlikely to make any real dent in the investment required for the UK’s industrial sector to reach net zero,…

Rethink Energy
23rd July 2020

Europe’s hydrogen bus fleet to double in size through 2020

The number of hydrogen buses in operation in Europe will more than double through 2020, as the continent’s six demonstration projects wind to a close. But as the idea of a hydrogen economy starts gaining traction, market conditions could see buses in the first category of transport technologies to see rapid decarbonization through the use of fuel cells. The current operational fleet of 107 fuel cell buses in 2019 will rise by 98 to a total of 205 across seven European countries this year. Leading additions will come from the UK (62), France (16), Germany (13), the Netherlands (4) and Denmark (3). With some exceptions, these installations primarily come off the back of six European initiatives to prove the technology…

Faultline
23rd July 2020

OTT Video News, Deals, Launches and Products

AT&T bled 886,000 premium TV subscribers in Q2 2020, shrinking its total video footprint further to 17.7 million, while AT&T TV Now shrank by 68,000 subscribers to a low point of 720,000 – totaling a net loss of 954,000 video subs. If it wasn’t for gains on AT&T TV offsetting DirecTV losses, the picture would have been a whole lot worse, which Faultline will report on in greater depth next week after AT&T’s earnings call takes place later today. The WarnerMedia segment took a hit from Covid-19, as revenues tumbled 22.9% year on year to $6.8 billion for the quarter, from total revenue down 8.9% to $40.95 billion. In fact, revenue was down across the board for AT&T, including the…

Faultline
23rd July 2020

Synamedia CDN has possibly kicked Ericsson UDN out of Etisalat

Synamedia’s portage of a private CDN at UAE-based operator Etisalat will hardly be sending shivers down the spines of Akamai and Cloudflare, yet the deployment is symbolic of a need for large service providers to not just increase the size of their delivery pipes, but to diversify technologies inherent in the video delivery infrastructure itself. A name that might well be disgruntled by the news, however, is Ericsson, having ran a joint deployment with Etisalat of its Unified Delivery Network (UDN) across the Middle East for delivery of OTT video since March 2017 – with ambitions of establishing a global telco-owned network capable of competing with established CDN players. Ericsson did not respond to our requests for clarification on whether…

Faultline
23rd July 2020

Peacock stumbles in debut week, prompting more adventurous ad formats 

Last week’s episode of The Faultline Podcast prematurely hailed Peacock’s launch a smooth ride compared to the train wreck debuts of HBO Max, Quibi and even Disney+. One week on, users have reported navigation struggles, HDMI woes and – of particular concern – a platform already showing signs of a content crisis. But above all, Peacock’s prolonged absence from Roku and Amazon streaming devices is NBCUniversal’s most pressing concern. Peacock is missing out on 70 million potential pairs of eyeballs in the US, and growing. We understand this isn’t any fault of NBCU directly, with the two streaming stick heavyweights reportedly demanding egregious terms for distribution deals, as discussions reached stalemate in a similar state of affairs experienced by HBO…

Faultline
23rd July 2020

Xiaomi preps Chromecast-based dongle for global launch

Xiaomi has been quietly fleshing out its consumer electronics offerings, expanding quite competently from smartphones into wearables, then earbuds and laptops, and a range of smart home gear. Now, it is readying its Mi TV dongle for an international launch, which may well ruffle feathers in the OTT marketplace – especially given its propensity for being a white label vendor. Xiaomi’s design team are quite evidently fans of Apple’s aesthetic, and this fondness is obvious from the remote control bundled with the dongle. However, the most prominent features are the Netflix and Amazon Prime Video buttons, which should snap users straight to their preferred choice. Of course, if this had a Disney+ button, that would be something of a first,…

Faultline
23rd July 2020

V-Nova hints at LCEVC license plan, with risky traction over cash strategy

October 2020 is shaping up to be the biggest month in V-Nova’s rollercoaster history, one which has seen the UK-based compression vendor pivot from being the target of much resistance from the video industry, to being instrumental in the delivery of a new standardized codec in the form of LCEVC (low complexity enhancement video coding). In less than three months’ time, LCEVC (aka MPEG-5 Part 2) will be subject to editorial review from the standards body powers that be – but what do we know about the critical licensing terms for LCEVC? Faultline managed to scratch below the surface of the unfinished LCEVC licensing structure ahead of completion of the final standard – with V-Nova CEO and co-founder Gudio Meardi…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

Round-up of highlights from the week’s news

After two years, TPG and Vodafone Australia finally merge The merger of Australia’s third and fourth operators – Vodafone Hutchison (VHA) and fixed provider TPG – has finally taken place after two years of negotiation with the Competition and Consumer Commission. As in many other markets, Australia’s antitrust agency was concerned about the reduction of the number of MNOs from four to three. But the Federal Court overruled the Commission in February, arguing that TPG would not invest in 5G infrastructure if it were left standalone, whereas a stronger third player would increase competition to the leaders, Telstra and Optus, and improve consumer choice. The combined entity will be worth AUS$16.63bn (€10.03bn). It will be called TPG Telecom. TPG has…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

USA clears firms to work with Huawei on standards, split on open RAN

One of the fears about the USA’s deteriorating relationship with China, which has resulted in intensifying sanctions against Huawei, was that this would disrupt standards processes and international cooperation in organizations such as 3GPP. That could delay or weaken future 5G and other standards, and even lead to the mobile world splitting into two regional camps, with a return to the old days of GSM versus CDMA. However, the US government recently said US firms could work alongside Chinese ones in standards bodies without requiring special clearance. “The United States will not cede leadership in global innovation,” said Wilbur Ross, the US Secretary of Commerce, in his statement about the decision. “The Department is committed to protecting US national security…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

Orange kicks off open RAN project for underserved users in Africa

Large-scale deployment of open RAN, or indeed any virtualized RAN, in the established macro network footprint remains a medium term option at best, for most operators. However, many large telcos want to take the measure of emerging platforms and suppliers by putting them through their paces in greenfield sites, or in rural and emerging economies. Here, a low cost base is essential because of limited numbers of subscribers or limited disposable income; and in underserved areas, the risks of a new network being overwhelmed by traffic are lower, and quality of service expectations tend to be lower. Even if O-RAN for primary, high traffic macro networks is a way off, rural areas are a different matter. Smaller operators working in…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

TechM bids for BSNL contract, possibly opening doors for O-RAN

A consortium led by giant integrator Tech Mahindra has emerged as a bidder for an LTE upgrade project for India’s state-owned operator BSNL, after Chinese vendors were banned from the project. The Indian government has not banned Huawei and ZTE completely from 5G networks but has indicated it will impose stricter security regulations (on top of already stringent rules introduced more than a decade ago), and is likely to keep Huawei and ZTE out of the state-controlled networks of MTNL (in Delhi and Mumbai) and BSNL (everywhere else). The approach ties in with Indian policies to stimulate usage of locally produced equipment in telecoms networks; to build up its homegrown cellular equipment business (which is extremely small); and to encourage…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

Trusted execution is critical for IoT security

Amid the wider turmoil over 5G and national security, operators and their customers are more concerned in the immediate future over threats to emerging use cases, especially around the IoT (Internet of Things). To date, damaging attacks relating to the IoT have tended to involve recruitment of relatively dumb devices such as CCTV security camera in botnets for launching DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. However, the attacks that brought down the Ukrainian power grid around Christmas 2015 gave an early, if as yet almost unique, demonstration of the potential threat posed to both national infrastructure and the Industrial IoT (IIoT) from the increased connectivity. In that case, the attack exploited the connectivity between the grid’s operational systems and the…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

DT upgrades 15,000 more antennas in software but clings on to Huawei

For operators with relatively new and modern 4G networks, upgrading base stations and antennas to 5G can be primarily a software update rather than an old-style rip-and-replace. Deutsche Telekom, for instance, has announced the software upgrade of an additional 15,000 antennas for 5G, serving Nuremberg and Hanover among other cities, as well as rural areas like Schwanebeck in the Harz Mountains and Westerland on Sylt. These are using 2.1 GHz refarmed 3G spectrum, joining some of the antennas already converted, which are in the 3.6 GHz band. The telco is already providing 5G coverage to over 16m people in Germany, spanning over 1,000 towns and cities. The operator claims that, in the rural areas, the network is achieving more than twice its previous…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

Nokia says operators can save billions with its new 5G software upgrades

In the transition from 3G to 4G, the idea of software upgradeability really took hold in the macro RAN. However, the proportion of the time and cost of a major upgrade that really could be moved from physical processes to code updates remained limited, and projects to upgrade or replace networks were still long, expensive and heavy on labor. In the transition to 5G, in which networks are inherently more software-based, the software upgrade is becoming a more meaningful term. Of course, antennas still have to be mounted on towers and fibers run for backhaul, but many of the 4G radios installed in recent years are 5G-ready, and even some physical processes are becoming more streamlined and automated, as operators…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

O-RAN may be both too early and too late to achieve a diverse vendor base

The rising pressures on Huawei (see separate item) provide an opportunity for the emerging open RAN architectures, and their suppliers, that previous attempts at a new open mobile platform did not enjoy. When a vendor is incumbent and doing a decent job, the disruption and risk of swapping equipment and trusting to a less familiar partner often outweighs the temptations. But when a vendor has to be compulsorily removed – and at a time that coincides with the adoption of new technologies in 5G and virtualized networks – there is far more incentive for operators to try something new. In the parliamentary hearings that led up to the UK government’s decision to ban Huawei from the country’s 5G networks, two…

Wireless Watch
20th July 2020

Has the open RAN movement got its timing wrong?

The UK government’s decision to ban Huawei entirely from its operators’ 5G networks, and to force them to remove any equipment already deployed, has thrown a harsh light on the thorny issue of rip-and-replace procedures in the mobile industry. In the run-up to the new policy announcement, Philip Jansen, CEO of incumbent telco BT, said his firm was already set to spend £500m ($630m) to remove Huawei from the core network of its EE subsidiary, and to reduce Huawei’s presence in its access networks to 35% (the cap set, under an earlier UK policy decision, on the Chinese vendor’s share of 5G or fiber infrastructure). To replace Huawei completely in 5G would increase that financial burden by adding up to…

Rethink Energy
16th July 2020

The world of renewables this week

The EU’s carbon price has hit record levels of €30 per ton of CO2, after months where reduced electricity demand, economic fatigue and decimated air travel have caused the price to sink as low as €5 per ton. Orsted has hired UK telecom provider Vilicom to provide a 4G mobile network for the construction, development and deployment of the 1.4 GW Hornsea One offshore wind project. Saudi Arabia will use the world’s largest green hydrogen plant, mentioned last week in Rethink Energy, to fuel global bus and truck fleets. The $5 billion project will use 4 GW of renewable capacity to produce green hydrogen as a joint venture between Air Products, ACWA Power and the city of NEOM. CATL and…

Rethink Energy
16th July 2020

Renewables orders this week

Oscilla Power has entered the planning stages for a 1 MW wave power pilot project off the southern coast of India. Siemens Gamesa has secured two deals worth 165 MW in Vietnam. The 75 MW Tan Thuan wind farm and the 90 MW Thai Hoa wind farm will use the company’s 5.0-145 turbines, and will be commissioned in Q3 2021. MingYang has said that it could deliver China’s first floating wind turbine in 2021, which will be rated at 5.5 MW capacity. Nordex has received a 40 MW order from the VSB Group in Finland for the Juurakko project. From Q2 2022, the company will install 7 of its N163/5.X turbines, with commission set for the following quarter. Dongfang Electric…