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Faultline
27th February 2020

Windstream snubs existing video partners with YouTube TV

US internet and video service provider Windstream has snubbed its two existing video partners by bringing in a third. Alongside offers for both the in-house Kinetic TV streaming service and DirecTV, customers are now being offered their first month of YouTube TV free. Naturally, Windstream disagreed with Faultline’s stance and had a few things to say on the matter. It is a perplexing move for Windstream’s Kinetic internet service to partner with a third video service platform, perhaps driven by the financial woes experienced at the beginning of 2019. With subs not growing fast enough to counter the gargantuan losses, Kinetic seems to be willing to irk existing partners to bring more subs on board. YouTube TV directly competes with…

Faultline
27th February 2020

Targeted ad spec will extend HbbTV legacy for European broadcasters

The HbbTV Association’s announcement of its specification for targeted advertising should sustain the technology for the European and especially German commercial broadcasters already on board, but fail to win new recruits. Called HbbTV-TA, the association as good as admits the limitations of its ambition with its boast that it has huge potential for adoption in Europe as the first open standard dedicated to targeted advertising in broadcast TV. It argues erroneously that HbbTV-TA will enable new business models and revenue sources that have so far been “largely restricted to the advertising market on the internet or OTT/streaming services.” It fails to mention the few proprietary platforms that have emerged, most notably Sky’s AdSmart developed with help from remnants of Cisco…

Faultline
27th February 2020

Dolby, Bitmovin aim to debunk HDR myths – end up making more

US encoding expert Bitmovin and image technology darling Dolby aimed to debunk 5 myths about Dolby Vision and HDR during a webinar this week. In reality, 3 core “myths” were addressed and stretched to look like 5 – pertaining to price, complexity and device availability. The first concerns the perception of Dolby Vision – the company’s proprietary HDR video format – as a premium feature. Such qualms about price have escalated since the arrival of Samsung’s royalty-free rival HDR10+, as well as competition from InterDigital’s SL-HDR1 and SL-HDR2 (acquired from Technicolor). Panelists tackled this fable by pointing to Dolby Vision’s more than 25 content partners, growing from the handful of premium content partners including Netflix and Hulu when the technology…

Faultline
27th February 2020

OpenSync ubiquity certain as TIP pushes WiFi interoperability

It was fitting that the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) should make its presence felt in the absence of Mobile World Congress 2020 this week. Founded by Facebook and a consortium of telcos at the Barcelona mobile show four years ago, TIP has celebrated its birthday by implementing OpenSync, the open source software best known for powering adaptive WiFi architectures – as co-created by Samsung and Plume Design. The importance of WiFi to TIP was realized rather late in the day, only last year forming a dedicated project group designed to accelerate the development of WiFi technologies. TIP’s WiFi Infrastructure and Systems working group will use OpenSync in the software stacks of both TIP Access Point and the newer TIP Cloud…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

Qualcomm and Internet giants call for clear coexistence rules in 60 GHz

Despite the hype around 5G millimeter wave bands such as 26/28 GHz, much of the pioneering work of making high frequency spectrum economically viable for mainstream wireless devices was done in 60 GHz. In most regions, this is unlicensed spectrum in which the dominant technology has been the WiFi-like technology WiGig (IEEE 802.11ad standard, with a next generation planned, called 802.11ay). However, even in a band with plentiful capacity and a relatively mature technology, there can still be disputes about who should be able to use it, and how to protect others from interference. A group of companies including Qualcomm, Facebook, Google, Intel and Samsung have formed a 60 GHz Coexistence Study Group because they are concerned about the use…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

Two-horse race to become Amazon’s smart thermostat

With Tado announcing 1m units of its smart thermostat sold last week, a thought occurred to us. As Big Tech muscles its way into every corner of the smart home, it is increasingly surprising that Amazon lacks a smart thermostat in its arsenal. Amazon’s acquisition of such a company has long been overdue, but the tech giant has inexplicably held off. Following its acquisition of Ring and Blink, a thermostat seems to be one of the final pieces of the smart home puzzle – and one of the most obvious advantages that its chief-rival Google has, which gives Google almost direct access to the utility market. There are two smart thermometers which Riot believes are the most likely acquisition targets…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

Altice boasts of mobile growth and launches whole-home WiFi

US cable operator Altice USA boasted that its mobile service has been gaining ground more quickly than those of rivals Comcast and Charter, as it announced otherwise downbeat fourth quarter results with rising video subscriber losses. In the quarter, it gained 54,000 customers for its new Altice Mobile service, which it launched in September 2019 and now has 69,000 subs. “We’re growing two times faster than the other MVNO offers,” said Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei, who added that the cableco has already signed up nearly 2% of its broadband customer base for mobile services. These services are based on a ‘full MVNO’ agreement with Sprint, which involves joint build-out of small cells using Altice’s backhaul, plus an additional roaming…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

Netflix reignites video codec wars with support for AV1 on Android

Video codec engines are whirring back into life, disturbed by recent HEVC Advance movements in Asia-Pacific. Netflix sent out disruptive ripples of its own late last week by adding support for AV1 on Android smartphones in a move that will see adoption soar for the royalty-free, Google-backed compression technology. Netflix has reported 20% compression efficiency gains over VP9 by replacing it with AV1, which you could criticize for underperforming, considering AV1 has promised as much as 30% efficiency increases over current generation codecs VP9 and HEVC (H.265). However, AV1 decoding is 30% more complex than VP9 or AVC. Only select Netflix titles are available to stream via the Data Saving feature that enables AV1 compression. Netflix is simply reacting to…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

Google engineer criticizes Samsung’s security in latest Android tensions

There has always been significant tension in the Android community between Google’s own implementation of the smartphone platform, centered around its services such as Search and Maps, and those of some of the biggest handset makers. In the past year, this tension has deepened because Google has stopped allowing Huawei to use its mobile services, since the Chinese firm was placed on the US entity list. This has prompted Huawei to develop its own alternative mobile platform, and to gain support for it from several other large Chinese handset makers, including Xiaomi and Oppo. Then there is a community of smaller device makers which use the open source version of Android – they have not signed up for the Open…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

LF Energy pushes open platform for smart grids

Open source technology and formal standards will increasingly work hand-in-hand in the 5G and IoT era, and a new example comes from the Linux Foundation’s LF Energy project,  which has announced the availability of Grid eXchange Fabric (GXF) as an open standard to be used in smart grid deployments. The project’s biggest challenge remains convincing the rest of the utility industry to come to the table, but open platforms should make this task a lot easier. The foundation for GXF came from Alliander, a Dutch distribution system operator (DSO) that was behind the Open Smart Grid Platform (OSGP). Alliander went on to join LF Energy as a premier member, and contributed the OSGP stack to the project, and now the…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

Ericsson moves towards bare metal to boost 5G core performance

Ericsson has unveiled some of the new products and other news that it had intended to showcase at the cancelled Mobile World Congress next week. Among these is a cloud-native 5G core, an important step with the first deployments of 5G Standalone networks – which require a 5G core – expected this year. Many operators will wait for several years before implementing 5G Standalone, waiting for the fledgling core technology to stabilize in performance and price. And some early adopters will stop short of a full cloud-native implementation and opt for some of the simpler virtualized architectures that are available. But for most the end goal is a fully cloud-based platform, implemented in containers and microservices on common cloud infrastructure.…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

NEC signs another ORAN partner, Mavenir, with private networks in view

The rise of self-contained private networks with their own core has cast a spotlight on several companies which have been pioneers of virtualising mobile cores on general purpose hardware (and even, in the case of one start-up, Quortus, on a Raspberry Pi). Some virtual evolved packet core (vEPC) providers, like Quortus, are mainly confined to specific vertical markets and almost entirely to private networks. Some have started to break into mainstream mobile operator trials and deployments, even gaining a headstart on the tier one OEMs in aspects of disaggregation and virtualisation – Affirmed Networks is an example. Others are expanding towards an end-to-end portfolio by offering a vEPC that can be deployed with a virtualized RAN, usually on a localized…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

Dell adds new hardware to its telco-focused edge strategy

Dell is a good example of a big player from the IT industry which sees edge computing and the Internet of Things as ways to grab a bigger share of the telecoms market. It targets variants on its server and storage products at the edge; it was a founder of the Open Edge Computing initiative. When the company set up a heavily edge-focused IoT division three years ago, it looked set to work directly with its familiar enterprise customers to bring a high-grade connected edge solution to their premises. But since then, it has been warming to the idea of partnering with operators in order to spread its net wider and provide a greater range of connectivity options. Last May,…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

CableLabs ups its edge game with Adrenaline and Low Latency DOCSIS

The cable industry, especially in North America, has increasingly been threatening to mount a challenge to MNOs that could be emulated round the world. First cable operators invested heavily in public and homespot WiFi to add wireless connectivity to their broadband/video bundles without the cost of licensed spectrum. Now they are looking to add cellular connectivity, either buying some of those licences and/or using shared spectrum schemes for 4G/5G, like the USA’s CBRS and future 5G-Unlicensed. Initiatives like that of the two largest US cablecos, Comcast and Charter, which have joined forces to develop mobile services, are worrying for MNOs, but the real threat from cable is not in connectivity. Even Comcast and Charter are unlikely to build a national…

Wireless Watch
21st February 2020

Private networks and edge – a dream combination, but not just for MNOs

Two of the most talked-about growth opportunities for mobile operators are edge computing and private LTE/5G networks. Both looked to be high on the agenda of Mobile World Congress – always a good bellwether for the year’s trends – until it was cancelled last week. But despite the allure of likely growth in revenues from these nascent sectors, they are challenging for MNOs. Unlike previous growth opportunities based on cellular voice or broadband networks that only they controlled, edge and private networks are open to competition from a wide range of other players too, including cloud providers and equipment vendors. There is considerable growth potential in both these markets, and they are, of course, interrelated. A private network for an…

Rethink Energy
20th February 2020

Renewable orders this week

Photosol will develop a 246 MW solar plant at the disused Creil Airbase in the Oise Department of France, to be completed by the end of 2022. Avangrid Renewables will develop a 162 MW solar plant in eastern Oregon which has yet to be named. Construction will begin by Q1 2021, with a PPA signed by Portland General Electric. Hellenic Petroleum has purchased a 204.3 MW solar plant under development in Greece from juwi. The plant is located near Kozani in Western Macedonia and should be complete by the end of 2021. China Energy Engineering Corporation will develop a 500 MW solar project in Uganda in two stages, at a cost of around $500 million. Iberdrola will commission the 328…

Rethink Energy
20th February 2020

Wave Swell identifies niche markets for early-stage growth

We keep an eye on the wave energy market week to week and try to talk to a provider once in a while who seems to have a promising business model or route to market. This week we talked to Wave Swell Energy – currently developing an extension on its traditional oscillating water column design (OWC), for a 200kW pilot project of its Uniwave system in King Island, Australia.   The company expects the project to be operational by the middle of this year – it’s already 75% to 80% complete – and aims to hit the ground running with several potential project in the pipeline and markets identified in the Pacific Islands and Maldives, which it will approach through…

Rethink Energy
20th February 2020

China’s 2019 energy numbers are in – renewables strengthen

Back in late January the Chinese energy trade association the Chinese Electricity Council released some data on the usage of renewables in Chinese electricity generation – it is eye opening stuff, even if we have come across it a bit late. China used 7.23 TWh, up 4.5% which was generated from a total installed power generation capacity of 2010 GW. Fossil power barely grew, and most growth was from renewables and there was a lot of cross-regional and inter-provincial power transmission spend, in double digit growth. The forecast for 2020 is a further rise of 4% to 5% with capacity rising to 2130 GW, an increase of 120 GW. It says that in 2019 non-fossil installed capacity reached 840 GW,…

Rethink Energy
20th February 2020

Coronavirus triggers rethink on Asian wind supply chains

Fears that the coronavirus will massively disrupt the wind power market are all but gone, with Siemens Gamesa and MHI Vestas both resuming operation in their Chinese facilities as of last weekend. But turbine-makers appear shaken and clearly wish to reduce their dependency on a Chinese supply chain, as capacity demands ramp up in the Asia Pacific region. India looks the best bet for Siemens to expand its footprint, whereas emerging markets like Taiwan and Japan may be where Vestas chooses to place its focus. With the outbreak of the Coronavirus, several key transport routes had been shut in China. With several restrictions imposed on workforce travel, Siemens Gamesa was forced to pause operations at both of its Chinese facilities…