Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
US field programmable gate array (FPGA) pioneer Xilinx has achieved something quite remarkable given the circumstances, dropping two new video transcoding appliances for compute-intensive workloads. Based on the NGCodec assets acquired last year, Xilinx promised its data center customers a major evolution in video capabilities by combining NGCodec’s encoding expertise with its own acceleration platform – and an evolution for people who are tired of racking and stacking Intel CPUs is precisely what they’ve got. The result is the Xilinx Real-Time Server reference architecture, targeted at live streaming, esports, gaming, teleconferencing and every other latency critical application that has experienced explosive growth in 2020. Optimized for video transcoding, Xilinx’s pair of appliances are built on the open source FFmpeg framework…
Last week, we explored the problems facing Viasat, after it announced it had plans to launch a LEO satellite constellation if it could secure FCC funding. However, the FCC has been making noises about excluding satellite operators from the rural broadband funds, due to their latencies being too high. This week, Telefónica and Telesat have announced the completion of a test that shows latencies that fall under the FCC broadband definition, which suggest that the FCC is definitely wide of the mark, when it comes to ruling out satellite entirely. What’s more, they suggest that the SpaceX claim of 25ms latencies might be achievable too, although that seems like it could be only in the best-case scenario. Telesat and Telefónica…
The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) has its roots in helping public WiFi operators to roam and interoperate across their hotspot networks. While its remit may be wider these days, it has returned to those roots by adopting Cisco’s OpenRoaming technology, with a view to establishing a global standard for WiFi roaming. One of the disadvantages for WiFi operators, compared to cellular, is that they do not have the seamless, global, transparent roaming system that has been a key factor in the success of mobile networks from GSM onwards. That cellular roaming was hard-won, and challenges continue to arise with each new generation of technology – roaming between network slices is a popular topic of conversation now. But users greatly benefit…
CableLabs, the R&D arm of the US cable industry, presented a few updates on the group’s Adrenaline virtualization project during day one of the virtual Cable Next-Gen Europe event last week. Adrenaline is described as a modern computing architecture that supports centrally managed deployments of fixed, mobile and edge workloads on a common accelerated distributed infrastructure. CableLabs’ CTO Belal Hamzeh said: “Today we look at the HFC network as a connectivity platform, to carry data from point A to point B. For us to evolve and support emerging applications, a different perspective is required, we need to start looking at the HFC network as a connectivity and compute platform.” He added: “We see virtualization as a huge enabler for such…
Telecoms operators have some natural advantages in addressing the rising demand for edge computing to support applications that must tick demanding boxes in terms of security and privacy, responsiveness or availability. They have readymade locations in which to install edge data centers – repurposed central offices or even cell sites – and an investment in edge infrastructure can support multiple business cases, from supporting a distributed virtualized RAN and core, to improving performance of core services such as video streaming, to enabling new revenue streams from enterprises which want to run applications on a public, rather than on-premise, edge. However, as we have often analyzed in Wireless Watch, most operators will hesitate to deploy the density of edge infrastructure that…
Google was firmly overshadowed by Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure in the telco cloud market – until the past couple of months, when it has been closing on its rivals, with a rear-guard action that hits two current telco sweet spots, edge computing and the desire to avoid a cloud lock-in. The latest operator to sign up a strategic partnership with Google Cloud is Telefónica, which said the cornerstones of the deal are Google’s newly announced Mobile Edge Computing platform and services, plus its development of a multicloud strategy. Google will extend its cloud services using Telefónica’s infrastructure in the Madrid region, initially. That will enable the telco to use Google Cloud to expand its own services, especially for enterprises.…
Rakuten Mobile’s network deployment has been atypical in so many ways, including the fact that so many elements will have a very short life. Most operators aim to prolong the life of their network assets for as long as possible, even though that sometimes leads them to prioritize backwards compatibility over performance when choosing a next-generation equipment vendor. But Rakuten, having only recently switched on a 4G network with macrocell radios from Nokia and a core from Cisco and others, will turn to NEC for its 5G radios and core. While the Nokia radios will be in action for as long as 4G is run alongside 5G (several years at least), the 4G core could be phased out in just…
The 5G-centric stand-off between the USA and China continues to have major implications for Huawei and the whole mobile equipment industry. Ericsson said it is writing down the value of its Chinese inventory by about SEK1 billion ($105m) in the second quarter of 2020. Although the Swedish vendor did secure some deals in the most recent round of 5G awards by the three Chinese operators – unlike Nokia – the write-down suggests it had to give them a very good price in order to stay in their supply chain. The deals were struck against the context of the USA encouraging allied governments to bar Huawei equipment from 5G networks, and although this policy has had mixed success, it has redoubled…
There has been a great deal of lobbying in the USA for higher powered devices to be allowed in the CBRS band in 3.5 GHz, since that would increase the use cases which could be supported, and the commercial value of the networks. At a recent virtual event held by FierceWireless, one of the FCC commissioners, Michael O’Rielly, hinted that this change might be allowed, something that could boost the prices paid for CBRS licences in the upcoming auction. Currently, the FCC has approved two classes of CBRS access points with different output power thresholds – Category A with a maximum EIRP of 30dBm per 10 MHz; and Category B, with a maximum EIRP of 47dBm per 10 MHz. However,…
In late 2019, Malaysia came up with one of the most innovative, if potentially over-complicated, 5G spectrum schemes, with the aim of accelerating build-out, especially to support enterprises, via a shared network. Last month, however, the government said it would bypass the auction process altogether for 700 MHz, and allocate the spectrum to five operators – Celcom Axiata, Maxis, Digi and Telekom Malaysia, plus MVNO Altel Communications (though not 4G providers U Mobile and YTL). In the government’s new plan, of May 15, the three largest MNOs – Celcom, Maxi and Digi – would have been allocated 2×10 MHz each in the 700 MHz band, with TM and Altel receiving 2×5 MHz each. However, there was no mention of the…
Now that T-Mobile USA has Sprint, with its rich dowry of 2.5 GHz spectrum, in its clutches, it has wasted no time in deploying 5G in a three-tiered ‘layer cake’ stretched across the 600 MHz coverage band; Sprint’s 2.5 GHz, which has only been partially used for 4G; and millimeter wave spectrum. The first market to go live with all three variants was New York City, last month, and testing service Ookla said this “delivered an impressive user experience, and it was just an early taste of a 5G layer cake that could continue to improve”. Average download speeds had increased by 25% since January, to reach 98.96Mbps, with a peak of 541Mbps, said the mid-May report, because of the…
Legendary MPEG founder Leonardo Chiariglione has resigned, leading to the shuttering of the MPEG Group for unknown reasons. Despite pressure from emerging codecs and confusion around the three-way HEVC patent pool fragmentation, MPEG was clearly not going anywhere anytime soon. However, an ominous message on the MPEG Group homepage reads, “MPEG used to provide a proven mechanism to bring research results into standards that promote innovation for the benefit of all.” It comes only a few months after heavyweights Huawei, Samsung, and Qualcomm all put weight behind the recently approved essential video coding (EVC) standard as part of MPEG-5 Part 1, while Part 2 (LCEVC) has been gaining momentum in recent months. It’s possible these factors contributed to the MPEG…
With many looking to gaming as the next budding opportunity for advertisers, Faultline is checking in with those at the heart of the industry to see how they are prepping. This week, we caught up with Kristan Rivers, CEO and co-founder of AdInMo. Founded in 2017, the Edinburgh-based company places dynamic in-game ads – adverts embedded into gameplay – into digital games. This is done via two arms – providing SDKs and integrations to developers, and matching developers and advertisers through its own internal ad-exchange. Increasingly, the company is starting to work with external ad-exchange platforms, too. “We’re a technology platform but there’s a sales process as well”, explained Rivers. “We’re an ad network – we match audiences with brands.”…
CableLabs, the R&D arm of the US cable industry, presented a few updates on the group’s Adrenaline virtualization project during day one of the virtual Cable Next-Gen Europe event this week. A mixed bag is how we’d describe Adrenaline’s progress some 18 months after work began, with lab-based developments chugging along nicely after open sourcing the technology earlier this year, while cable operator deployments face delays of an unknown timeframe due to pandemic-related restrictions. CableLabs CTO & SVP Belal Hamzeh set the scene for the event. “Today we look at the HFC network as a connectivity platform, to carry data from point A to point B. For us to evolve and support emerging applications, a different perspective is required, we…
Last week, we explored the problems facing Viasat, after it announced it had plans to launch a LEO satellite constellation if it could secure FCC funding. However, the FCC has been making noises about excluding satellite operators from the rural broadband funds, due to their latencies being too high. This week, Telefonica and Telesat have announced the completion of a test that shows latencies that fall under the FCC broadband definition, which suggest that the FCC is definitely wide of the mark, when it comes to ruling out satellite entirely. What’s more, they suggest that the SpaceX claim of 25ms latencies might be achievable too, although that seems like it could be only in the best-case scenario. Telesat and Telefonica…
ATSC 3.0 has been on the receiving end of some positive progress after months of hitches. It all started with Sinclair TV confirming what we already knew about its plans to install the transmission technology at its Las Vegas TV station, followed by the launch of Triveni Digital’s new ATSC 3.0 Cloud service which is designed to speed up launches. The celebrations were then topped off by the FCC’s decision to waive TV station ownership rules for ATSC 3.0 services – allowing broadcasters to lease spectrum between them. Given our warnings about missing the boat, speed is precisely what this market requires for survival – and together these three announcements should be important catalysts. Triveni Digital has been a sort…
Despite most of this year’s upfronts being ditched entirely, Disney was unable to relinquish the limelight. In place of the cancelled May event, it has decided to limp on with the Virtual Roadshow – a week of daily, half-hour presentations for media agencies, dolled up with some sickly appeals to nostalgia. Short on creative content, Disney used the event to show off advancements in its ad platform – some more timely than others. While cross-platform attribution ticks all the right boxes, a belated sign on to Nielsen’s addressable TV advertising was not the forward-thinking collaboration that the ad industry needs. Disney’s ad department was keen to use the opportunity to encourage buyers to look at the bigger picture. Advertisers were…
Google had a bone to pick with the tier 1 operator executive who vented their Android TV frustrations to Faultline last week – defending apparent drawbacks as disingenuous. As a recap, our operator source’s primary pain point was the lack of jurisdiction over the ecosystem, which was basically a moot point given how the entire appeal of Operator Tier lies in allowing operators to sculpt and control precisely what they want – leading to a little confusion over where you draw the line in terms of control. “What control? This operator clearly did not go through the documents or listen properly on the sales call,” said a contact at Google, who also wished to remain anonymous. Play Store integration is…
Something big is brewing at MediaKind. The Ericsson spin off venture has recently informed existing Mediaroom customers that an Android TV client is becoming available in the near future – marking its belated and potentially disruptive entrance into the Operator Tier marketplace. MediaKind has confirmed exclusively to Faultline that it will continue to invest in the Mediaroom program and its innovation roadmap, as the vendor embraces the Android TV ecosystem and adopts the technology as part of Mediaroom’s ongoing development. Our initial thought was that MediaKind has been forced into embracing Android TV following rumors that a number of major customers are considering abandoning MediaFirst, after failing to launch successful upgrades from the Mediaroom IPTV platform. As a result of…
Germany will inject a whopping €9 billion into the early development of its hydrogen infrastructure, according to the release of the country’s long-awaited National Hydrogen Strategy on Wednesday. With the country holding a position as Europe’s most gas-hungry nation, this marks an accelerated belief that net-zero emissions can be reached on an economy-wide scale in the coming decades. The strategy, and the level of accompanying investment, is a clear signal that the German government has confidence that hydrogen can provide a ‘silver bullet’ to industries that have so far proved hard to decarbonize. Of the €9 billion allocated, €7 billion has been earmarked for the market development of hydrogen technologies in Germany, with an additional €2 billion for international partnerships…