Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
In its plans to build a truly cloud-native network, Orange is taking its lead from hyperscalers, but also adding its network knowhow to the mix. Orange Group’s VP of Software Engineering, Philippe Ensarguet, explained the process the French-headquartered operator is going through at the Telco Cloud & Edge Forum. “The way we are going to operate will be very different but super inspired by the hyperscaler,” said Ensarguet. Software development is imperative for the next stage of growth for operators, even those that are not jumping into the digital services realm will need to update their networks to grasp opportunities for growth such as network APIs. Software-defined networks centralize network management and enable network programmability, such as APIs. “It is…
Microsoft has declared its intent to win the elusive Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) race by plotting to spend $100 billion on a supercomputer with the help of partner OpenAI, of ChatGPT fame, with which it holds a profit sharing arrangement – and in which it has invested $10 billion. The project will have significant implications for the field of AGI, as well as for connectivity, integration and sustainability of such powerful machines. There is already evidence that the AI hardware race is changing the face of communications, for both local hardware clusters and edge compute, as well as over longer distances, by stoking demand for high throughput. For the wireless industry, it will increase the need for even higher frequencies…
Much like the arrival of 4G, the 5G standards have targeted bleeding-edge high-throughput use cases, paying little attention to the potential enormity of the low-power and low-data IoT applications. eRedCap might eventually serve that need, but in the meantime, the 3GPP ecosystem has been blindsided by Wirepas – a Finnish firm that has leveraged the DECT spectrum to introduce 5G NR+, aiming to solve so many of those IoT headaches. Wirepas has used the DECT cordless phone standard to create DECT NR+, and submit it via ETSI and the ITU-R, as part of the IMT-2020 suite that includes all those 3GPP cellular standards. This has, in some ways, blindsided the 3GPP, explained Wirepas CEO Teppo Hemiä, but it has also…
The FCC is due to vote on new net neutrality regulations on April 25th, and with a Democrat majority of commissioners, we should see new legislation enacted. However, it is all but certain that this will not be a landslide decision – opening the door for future partisan bickering. For MNOs, the uncertainty is risky, and fingers will be burned. Much of the draft focuses on restoring/enacting the 2015 regulations, known as the Open Internet Order, which were undone in 2017 by the Trump administration – by chairman Ajit Pai, who also pushed for the FTC to take on the role of policing the ISPs, rather than the FCC. As part of this, Pai declared that ISPs were Title I…
There is always room for improvement, and benefits can come from unexpected places – particularly in the erratic web3 realm. For decentralized cloud object storge provider Storj, a recent cost optimization effort fueled by rapid growth has successfully doubled storage performance and slashed latency in half, claims COO John Gleeson, in conversation with Faultline. The secret behind the code overhaul that has enabled these improvements is quite simple—Storj cut down on the excess of durability it provided customers. While at first that sounds like marketing speak for purposefully downgrading product quality, Gleeson explains that Storj had previously been overzealous on that front, providing in practice some twenty 9s of durability, much more than what traditional object storage companies offer. With…
As the US Presidential elections creep over the horizon, Democrats are desperate to squeeze in a final hurrah at the FCC. With a Democrat majority secured, a vote on net neutrality is tabled for the end of this month, but the hostility surrounding all political machinery in the US makes the course of events impossible to chart, even in the short-term. Net neutrality was introduced by the FCC in 2015 under the Open Internet Order, only to be repealed by the Trump administration in 2017. With the FCC now set on a last-gasp reinstatement before election season, we could be looking at another couple of years of yoyoing policy if Trump secures the White House in November. Even if Biden…
OpenAI, the ChatGPT creator, is flouting hard-fought AI usage guardrails by shopping out its text-to-video service Sora to Hollywood, which could overhaul the entire movie production ecosystem. One might think the dust has settled from writers’ and performers’ strikes that took Hollywood by storm last year, but that was only a brief interlude. AI concerns have not magically gone away, quite the contrary, and the video game industry could very well be the next sector paralyzed by strikes. Major video game studios are now preparing for a remake of the movie industry tetraplegia as ongoing negotiations with the performer’s union SAG-AFTRA are hitting a roadblock with the renewal of its video game contract with major studios, known as the Interactive…
There is no great secret that what anti-piracy outfit FriendMTS has in watermarking technology clout, it has lacked miserably in marketing. Faultline even deplored as much in an August 2021 headline, and some three-and-a-half years later, our wish has been partly-answered, as the UK-based vendor presented the first installment of a new Security Spotlight Series. The focus of this inaugural spotlight was shone on server blocking, although significant time was spent brushing up the select audience on the FriendMTS portfolio, conscious that the current website (set to be revamped) does not do justice to the current product line. As a quick primer, Robin Boldon, Head of Product, flexed that FriendMTS has unrivaled reach and scalability, notably in the value of…
When Gracenote launched an uninspiring new service in connection with FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) metadata at IBC 2023, coined the Gracenote FAST Program, there was little indication that the new service was initially unavailable to US-based content providers. Given the head start that the US has in churning out FAST revenues, this was a strange opening strategy from the Nielsen-owned metadata outfit – appearing to mark months of missed opportunity. Now that the Gracenote FAST Program has settled in Europe (although no program members have been publicly named), the business has belatedly opened the FAST door to US-based content owners. These US asset providers will not appreciate being left behind European rivals targeting the same eyeballs with distribution of…
Maritime shipping is scrambling for decarbonization strategies mostly because regulations on ship operators are not strict enough. Early percentage-based carbon-emission reduction targets can typically be achieved by changing from bunker fuel to LNG (liquified natural gas), leaving the long-term solution still undecided. Ammonia has got the greatest potential but the industry seems set to go down the methanol route, as a steppingstone – perhaps unknowingly so. Methanol offers emissions reductions compared to bunker fuel due to its lower carbon content, reduced particulate matter, minimal sulfur, and lower nitrogen oxide emissions. Its cleaner combustion and potential for renewable production make it an environmentally favorable alternative for maritime transport. Ammonia provides further benefits due to the lack of a carbon atom in…
The Chilean Government has announced which of the country’s salt flats will be open to outside investment for the development of lithium extraction facilities, and that two will be reserved for government majority ownership. Officials have said that they will open a tender this month for the development of 26 salt flats within the country, set to conclude in July, as it aims to double its lithium output by the end of the decade. Both the Atacama and Maricunga salt flats will be reserved for majority government-ownership, but the government hasn’t ruled out working with private companies to develop other salt flats as well. Currently only SQM and Albemarle are actively extracting lithium from the country, both of which are…
Involution, or neijuan, is a Chinese term which many in the wider world are probably familiar with at this point. It means diminishing returns, in the grueling pursuit of minor improvements once all the easy ground has been staked out. It applies very well to the current situation in China’s solar manufacturing industry. Said industry has twofold overcapacity, rock-bottom prices, and some new manufacturing capacity being cancelled – but astonishingly, it also still has new billion-dollar factory expansions being announced, in pursuit of truly marginal improvements in product quality and marginal cost of production. When profit margins are low, this makes it harder to fund new production line upgrades, but in a sad irony it also makes it completely necessary.…
With Fubo foaming at the mouth over the advent of a “Hulu for Sports” joint venture between giants Disney, WBD, and Fox—which threatens to sink the vMVPD’s ship—some assistance may be coming in the form of Canadian video technology veteran Evertz. Evertz has introduced its Ease Live graphic overlay platform, bringing contextual advertising to the mix and enabling interactive features such as live game stats, watch parties and polls across mobile, tablets and Apple TV, Roku and Android TV devices. The mission is to grow user engagement as video services look to shore up the stickiness of high-priced sports content. Rights holders can collect first-party data from viewer interactions and offer rewards for engagement such as new features or discounted…
We are becoming increasingly aware that Entertainment OS, Comcast’s technology stack which powers all of its cherished products and syndication partners like Australian Foxtel and South African MultiChoice, is slowly but surely distancing itself from RDK (Reference Development Kit), the middleware foundation on which the entire tech stack was built on. First we noticed the absence of any RDK mention during a marketing presentation at the recent CTV World Summit—a surprise given Comcast is one of the founders of RDK along with Liberty Global—and there is now an uncomfortable silence around the Xumo streaming dongle’s most recent deployment. Mediacom, the fifth largest cable operator in the United States, has become the third operator to deploy the Xumo Stream Box, after…
Taking codec adoption for live video encoding under the microscope, when we compare results from Haivision’s latest Broadcast Transformation Report with Bitmovin’s recent Developer Report, we can see the two results are mostly in agreement, but with some distinctions. AVC remains by far the most used for live encoding, followed by HEVC, with AV1 still at a disappointing plateau. The line graph below shows a few discrepancies in results. Bitmovin’s findings show a spike for AVC usage (from 78% to 86%) over the past year, while Haivision found a continued slight decline (from 81% to 79%). Weirder, Bitmovin’s HEVC plot dropped off from 2021 to 2022, and was then flat for 2023, before usage ticked up in the latest results.…
As vanilla headlines project that AI will take center stage during the upcoming 2024 NAB Show, you can guarantee that most technology organizations showcasing in Las Vegas will be ignorant to how their businesses are being impacted by the homogenization of AI-based tools, namely the capabilities of generative AI. Nor do many companies truly understand how their customers are dealing with the disruptive potential of machine learning and large language models – to approach with caution, or run full steam ahead? In the years to come, we could see a reversal of trends similar to our recently observed cloud crunch, whereby technology businesses are now actively shifting compute resources from cloud infrastructure back to on-premises systems, after charging into the…
British broadcaster ITV may not be glamorized on the global stage in the same regard as the BBC, its long-time adversary (and occasional partner), but the primarily advertising-funded organization is hoping to be heralded an environmental trendsetter in the media and entertainment industry. The reason for highlighting ITV’s funding model in this opening gambit is deliberate. The pages of Faultline have emphasized on many an occasion how the advertising world is polarized to environmental efforts across the TV ecosystem. The future success of the ad-funded business model relies inherently on more TVs being switched on for longer periods of time with more ads per hour in increasingly intrusive places (we’re looking at you, Telly), hence the incessant pushing of free…
As the first e-diesel plant opened its gates in Texas recently, we feel the need to address the carbon question – not from a sustainability point of view but from an economic one. The price of e-fuels is contested to say the least, not any less than the price of green hydrogen, so we won’t use that as an argument for why hydrogen has an advantage. Both molecules are expensive to make right now. Rather, we will dissect the manufacturing processes typical to e-fuels. The carbon element can be obtained via multiple pathways, so no one technology or company can claim the entire demand potential as a learning curve catalyst. The likelihood is that multiple technologies will emerge as ‘competitive’…
Tsingshan Holdings’ battery oriented subsidiary has announced its intentions to build a battery manufacturing plant in Indonesia’s Weda Bay, alongside the group’s raw material processing facilities. Tsingshan is the world’s largest producer of nickel products due to its significant operations in Indonesia, supplying into the Chinese steel and battery industries. This will be REPT BATTERO Energy Co’s (REPT) first overseas battery factory, which could come online as early as next year, a timeline considered a key benefit by the company. REPT began by selling batteries into the battery energy storage system (BESS) market, but has since expanded to automotive OEMs including Stellantis NV, Li Auto Inc. and SAIC Motor Corp. It ranked as China’s No. 9 in terms of electric…
Telcos intent on nurturing their AI capabilities are finding it harder to compete at the very top table with hyperscalers and other tech giants, over recruitment and retention. That was one of our takeaways from MWC 2024 this year, finding that even major tier 1s are having to rely on partnerships with the major players to be competitive over AI capabilities at both operational and customer facing levels. We can take AT&T as one of the more successful and forward-looking telcos over AI, but this has come through partnership with AI cloud platform provider H2O, and increasingly Microsoft, after the operator decided from June 2021 to migrate its whole 5G network to the Azure cloud. In some respects, AT&T has…