Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Dish Network ended 2019 with under 12 million total TV subscribers, leaking 194,000 connections in the fourth quarter and 336,000 for the full year period. The Dish TV satellite service itself shed 511,000 subscribers last year, falling to 9.4 million, which was offset partially by Sling TV gains of 175,000 in the year, climbing to 2.6 million subs. While damning, it marks a significant slowdown from the 1,125,000 who cut the Dish Network pay TV cord in 2018. Disney’s research division has flexed its muscles with an AI-enhanced video compression model developed together with the University of California. While not a totally unique technique, the Disney Research says it has achieved less distortion and smaller bits-per-pixel rates than other…
Combining fiber and copper networks into a single home gateway might not scream the next frontier for WiFi connectivity, so why has it never been done before? ZTE has unveiled exactly that this week, kitting out its new gateway to the rafters with mesh WiFi networking and support for the latest WiFi 6 standard. It’s a jam-packed first of its kind from the Chinese electronics giant that is sure to provoke rapid responses from rival manufacturers, many of which should have plenty of spare time on their hands in the wake of MWC’s cancellation. Called the ZXHN H6606, ZTE’s gateway supports the open source EasyMesh specification, plus support for VDSL2 35b network technology which is capable of reusing existing copper…
Peer assisted content delivery has been around well over a decade but is only now coming of age for video distribution in the streaming era, because of its potential to improve core bandwidth efficiency by up to 10 times. This can help negotiate peaks in demand during major live events and also allow streaming services to be deployed over bandwidth-constrained networks, such as 3G or even 4G cellular infrastructures, as well over aging DSL or cable services. Until recently, online video has mostly been delivered via the traditional client/server architecture on a one-to-one unicast basis where clients download content from dedicated servers managed centrally, often via a CDN and then onto an access network operated by an ISP, either a…
Google has gone coy about Android TV despite some significant gains being made, content to let the operating system do the talking. Meanwhile, battle lines with rival set top software platforms, especially RDK, have become more clearly defined, while the distinction between operator-owned and retail boxes has started to fray. We are now seeing some operators at last rein back from directly controlled set tops and instead encourage users to cut the cord with them and purchase retail devices. In France, Canal+, admittedly more of a broadcaster than operator these days, started in 2018 offering subscriptions via an Apple TV 4K box with its myCanal app preloaded. Google has been pursuing both options with Android TV, but it is the…
Vodafone has been something of an enigma around WiFi technologies when compared with its European operator compadres. A report from The Register this week lifted the lid on the UK telco’s WiFi management innards, revealing its network data cruncher to be AirTies no less, following four and a half years of silence. Faultline pushed for country-specific details on the deal but AirTies was unavailable for comment. The big reveal was tucked away in a story on Vodafone’s questionable customer data practices, talking about the wealth of information collected in order to provide the luxury of end user WiFi support. This includes slurping up MAC address, serial number, user given host names and WiFi connection quality, as well as info on…
“We are the guardians of the future” defended InterDigital CTO Henry Tirri, in response to Faultline’s criticism of his company’s distinct lack of PR presence relating to the Technicolor R&I assets acquired last year. In all fairness, we told InterDigital that lying low was fair game for a company with such a patent-heavy business model. Still though, we were not in agreement. The cellular technology specialist completed the acquisition of Technicolor’s visual technology research division in July last year, along with some 30,000 patents and a prolific engineering workforce. Naturally, we were chomping at the bit to get our teeth into something juicy soon to emerge from a business which InterDigital itself told us it could run more proficiently than…
Two of our favorite things have only gone and teamed up this week, open source and standards, with the Linux Foundation’s LF Energy project announcing the availability of Grid eXchange Fabric (GXF) as an open standard to be used in smart grid deployments. However, the project’s biggest challenge remains convincing the rest of the utility industry to come to the table, but open standards 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 Linux Foundation initiative hopes that…
Trade and cybersecurity wars between the USA and China have created an artificial ‘race to 5G’ which threatens the future of the mobile standards-making process. As both sides try to reduce reliance on the other’s technology and patents, they are retreating behind their walls, investing in building up homegrown suppliers and threatening to block the other’s vendors from their 5G contracts. Of course, the race is unequal – China has Huawei and ZTE to set against the USA’s clutch of start-ups and $1bn support fund in the RAN; and has already rolled out more than 10 times the number of 5G base stations, despite starting deployment later than AT&T and Verizon. But that will only increase western defensively, none of…
Qorvo has bought Decawave for $400mn. The acquisition takes place as Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology, one of Decawave’s signature offerings, is becoming an increasingly popular means of determining location amongst OEMs. This creates questions as to what Qorvo’s motives are. The company gets a huge chunk of its custom from Apple, which recently announced it would be incorporating UWB into iPhone 11s. This begs the question, will Qorvo’s acquisition place Decawave’s UWB technology behind Apples walled garden? Despite the press release preaching the standard clichés of openness and outreach, Apple’s general methods of practice would suggest that Qorvo’s UWB chips might find a single home. Decawave announced the acquisition would “advance market penetration of UWB and enable broad global adoption of…
The IOTA Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation have announced a partnership that combines the Eclipse open source software efforts with the IOTA distributed ledger technology (DLT). The new Tangle EE Working Group takes the name of IOTA’s technology, which is positioned as an open source, fee-free mechanism to facilitate transactions for data and services, with a leaning towards the IoT – as you might have deduced by the name. The founding members of the new working group are Accessec, Akita, BiiLans, Calypso Network Association, Dell, Energinet, Engie Lab Crigen, Geometric Energy Corporation, IoTIFY, Object Management Group (OMG), Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, RWTH Aachen University, STMicroelectronics, Software AG, TMForum. Dell is very enthusiastic about blockchain in general, and so its…
In a converted factory across the water from Amsterdam’s central railway station, The Things Conference gathered under cloudy skies. The stage was set for the announcement of LoRa in 2.4 GHz, and The Things Industries’ new Packet Broker offering, covered last week, but there were plenty of LoRaWAN adopters there to show off their wares and network. Given the uncertainty about MWC, this might turn out to be one of the larger LPWAN events on the calendar. Kicking off the first day was a keynote from The Things Network’s founders, Wienke Giezeman and Johan Stokking, CEO and CTO respectively, and an opening video that poked fun at the rest of the wireless industry, before zipping over highlights for LoRaWAN –…
Within days of Bernard Looney arriving at the CEO’s office of BP he has issued a statement that he knows he cannot be called on – get to net zero by 2050. His tenure is likely to be just 10 years, 15 at the most and yet he is making a promise for 30 years, twice that amount of time. First let’s look at the pressures he is under. His entire career has been spent working oil upstream. He has no working knowledge of retail, go to market, R&D or business transition. He has lived entirely in a world where buccaneering exploration, which knows no boundaries, is rewarded purely on success. So he has no skills where the world perceives…
It’s an open race as to who will lead each sector of the supply chain through the buildout of offshore wind in the US, with state-led promises now amounting to 28 GW by 2035. Offshore turbine leader Siemens is the latest to pipe up with eyes on a state-side manufacturing plant, but could face competition from General Electric (GE). In a testimony on Friday, Siemens Gamesa’s head of government affairs claimed that the company was “actively examining” a $200 million blade manufacturing facility in the Hampton Roads area, in either North Carolina or Virginia. The new plant would employ 750 people and would most likely serve the initial purpose of supplying the three-phase 2.64 GW Dominion Energy project off the…
The shipping case study in the previous item illustrates the significance of the second major development announced at the Things Conference. The Things Industries, the commercial wing that has emerged on the back of The Things Network community, announced its Packet Broker, with the vision of finally interconnecting LoRaWAN networks effectively across the globe. This could be a very big step forward if the business can convince network operators to get on board, but many networks are not going to jump ship from their own network servers. This Packet Broker is essentially a mechanism that creates the equivalent Internet infrastructure that lets a PC or mobile device talk to the servers hosting an application. There is a complex web of…
UK incumbent BT/EE had initially restricted its new 5G services to customers of its Halo fixed/mobile bundle, but after three months of commercial 5G availability, it has changed its mind and will open the new mobile options to anyone. The initial policy was presumably designed to stimulate uptake of Halo, but even at launch, critics were pointing to the UK’s relatively low adoption of converged multiplay bundles, and BT ran the risk of falling behind Vodafone and O2 in market share (the smallest MNO, Three UK, also chose to have a restricted phase one, focusing initially on fixed wireless, to try to create its own fixed/mobile/video bundle). BT said in an announcement: “BT today announced it is making its 5G…
In the early days of network virtualization, the emerging platforms were described in rather simple terms, largely taken from the data center market, where the approach had originated. Replacing integrated, single-purpose appliances with software running on COTS hardware was the main theme, with the visionaries envisaging a shift to the cloud. But these early discussions tended to downplay what is unique about virtualizing a network. The network hardware and software itself would be particularly challenging to replace without compromising performance, and some of it, especially related to the RAN, would have to remain. Only a multi-faceted approach to virtualizing the access network – wireless or wireline – will deliver the promised results, but that will also mean investing in multiple…
As we went to press, the GSMA had finally taken the decision to cancel Mobile World Congress, an outcome that had rapidly gone from being inconceivable to being inevitable as more and more large companies dropped out, citing coronavirus fears. Of course, MWC would usually be a good forum for operators, vendors and regulators to discuss the current geopolitical issues in the market behind closed doors, but its absence will not fundamentally change any outcomes. Huawei is still suffering from uncertainty about the decisions major governments will make about its ability to bid for a place in 5G or other national networks. The UK’s policy is better, for Chinese companies, than an outright ban but excludes it from the core…
The rising pressure on Huawei, especially in Nokia’s heartland European markets, gives it opportunities to replace the Chinese vendor in markets which decide on restrictions in the 5G RAN or core; or to increase its share of multivendor customers. This is true of Ericsson too, but perhaps particularly significant for the Finnish company, which suffered severe 5G setbacks last year, mainly related to its decision to develop its own base station system-on-chip (SoC), a platform that incurred delays and high costs. To take full advantage of Huawei’s plight, it needs to convince operators that it has a clear and near term plan to migrate to new platforms and address initial teething problems, which were said to be responsible for launch…
The two largest US operators, AT&T and Verizon, have been global frontrunners in 5G. This is not so much in terms of subscriber bases, since their lack of midband spectrum forced them to start roll-out in millimeter wave bands, which do not lend themselves to broad coverage. AT&T is now deploying in sub-GHz spectrum too, but in such a huge base, it will be hard to achieve the 10% penetration of the subscriber base that the South Korean operators are enjoying (see separate item). The two US giants are not reporting 5G numbers yet, but even if these are modest so far, they have been frontrunners in a more important way, by driving some of the broader architectural changes that…
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…