Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
The European Commission this week did not so much deliver a plan for the European Green Deal, so much as offer up a plan by which it will make a plan by March of next year. But this time the plan will be a no bullshit, uncompromising soup to nuts industrial strategy that will be fearlessly enforced if the tone of this document is anything to go by. We have to say this is a plan that has been put together by people who understand climate change, and how tricky it is to achieve decarbonization. It is not the eye-watering amount of money that it will take which is the most impressive detail (€220 billion), but the level of joined…
Mobile operators which embarked early on the process of virtualizing their networks may wish they had waited. Early deployment of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) relied on first generation technology, such as OpenStack cloud infrastructure and virtual machines (VMs), which is now seen as cumbersome and outdated. The next push will be to migrate to highly flexible, disaggregated technologies like containers and microservices, in order to support fully cloud-native core networks and, eventually, RANs. The pain of having to update a hard-won virtualized network at such an early stage is not unique to operators. Even the webscale companies, which defined so many of the rules for the cloud-based telecoms era, have felt similar pain. Amazon’s CTO, Werner Vogels, told the AWS…
Verizon was not the only major operator signing up for Amazon Web Services’ Wavelengths edge/5G proposition at re:Invent. Other operators which were acknowledging the wisdom of making a friend out of AWS, rather than investing in a go-it-alone cloud/edge strategy, were Vodafone in Europe, KDDI in Japan, and SK Telecom in South Korea. All three will launch deployments in 2020 and AWS promised “more global partners” to come. Vodafone says it will run AWS Wavelength “in strategic locations” within its 5G network, starting in the UK and Germany. “With Europe’s largest 5G network across 58 cities and as a global leader in the IoT with over 90m connections, Vodafone is pleased to be the first telco to introduce AWS Wavelength…
The key to the promise that 5G will be something very different from 4G lies in the convergence of cloud and networks – or of advanced data processing with advanced connectivity, to enable a host of new use cases and revenue streams. Some of these are focused on traditional consumers of mobile network services, including many focused on AR/VR, but the real socio-economic impact – and impact on operators’ balance sheets – will come in the enterprise. Here, operators have battled with several barriers: They are not global, whereas many of the early investors in cloud/5G applications are likely to be multinational, and not want to sign different contracts with operators in each country. They, generally speaking, have limited track…
ABB has signed up startup Verdigris to augment its smart building offering, using Verdigris’ machine learning expertise to create a system that will predict unplanned energy consumption spikes, and then let ABB act accordingly. This could be a big win for the Silicon Valley firm, as ABB’s industrial reach is extensive. Verdigris came to the fore through ABB’s Open Innovation program, a strategic plan to engage with accelerator programs and incubators. ABB uses the program to find potential partners that it could incorporate into its portfolio, as do many of its rivals and other large enterprises. For ABB in particular, it is looking to expand its ‘digital energy’ offering, and so is looking for anyone interested in the smart grid…
Ajit Pai, chair of the FCC, has run out of patience with the US-developed DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications) technology for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity, and is now giving new hope to Cellular-V2X to become a near-global standard. The 3GPP solution could now gain two dedicated 10 MHz chunks of spectrum in the USA’s 5.9 GHz V2X band. The FCC said it would “take a fresh look” at the 5.9 GHz band, 75 MHz of which was allocated to DSRC in 1999. Pai believes that, in 20 years, DSRC has failed to build on its opportunity to develop and deploy useful services. There has been little evolution of the technology and a disappointing level of deployment, critics say, and alternatives like…
As we predicted, the industrial big-boys are bypassing the MNOs in their IIoT ambitions, and there’s no shortage of companies who would be happy to help. Nokia and Ericsson are even twisting the knife in the MNOs, but a plethora of suppliers will be able to take advantage of the growing penetration of open source software and hardware in the cellular supply chain, thanks to the availability of private spectrum licenses and the use of unlicensed spectrum in cellular networks. This is far from a death sentence for the MNOs, but they have to face up to the fact that the once-hyped Industrie 4.0 market, which was going to be a goldmine for the MNOs, has little overlap with the…
There is a comfortable notion that telcos are bound to make a success of edge computing because their physical assets – cell sites, central offices and so on – map so well to the locations needed for an edge cloud. Operators do have a good set of sites, on which they could build cloud infrastructure, or support third parties to do so. But there will be many applications that need a very different set of locations – particularly indoor-heavy ones – or will require added value services that operators are not well-placed to provide. Many operators are over-optimistic about just how far the sites alone will take them in the edge market. But those which invest in the right services…
Regular readers will know exactly how we feel about vendor-authored reports, so we were bamboozled to notice a strange trend of vendors publishing research about technologies or markets in which they don’t appear to have any immediate vested interest. The most glaring came from French compression company Ateme, just last week associating itself with personalization software. Apparently, 8 in 10 broadcasters risk falling further behind streaming services due to management indecision about migrating to cloud infrastructure, which Ateme argues is a must-have for personalized advertising strategies. Clearly, there are countless factors as to why broadcaster services are being out-viewed by OTT video offerings, and Ateme is highlighting one of many – just not the one we expected. Ateme is basically…
Studios and broadcasters had a strong presence at Video Exchange in London this week, meaning piracy was on everyone’s lips. Yet while many speakers warned of ballooning revenue losses at the hands of content pirates, very few were willing to disclose their specific anti-piracy strategies. Thankfully, a few specialist security technology vendors were on the hunt for customer prey. Viaccess-Orca was eager to clear the air after a webinar last week left Faultline scratching its head about VO’s role in an evolving security world. Dynamic watermarking was the French firm’s term of choice to sweeten us up, promising that a new product launch is penciled in for early next year. “It has taken a long time to develop…
The Great Firewall of China just got a little tighter. The Chinese government has slammed the doors on the creation of fake news, specifically taking aim at AI-based videos. Far from being another draconian internet content crackdown, the rest of the world would do well to take a leaf out of China’s book this time around – but it does raise questions over how the new legislation could leak out and hinder the wider video industry. Comparisons could be drawn to Europe’s contentious Article 13 reform, which went down like a lead balloon with industry groups such as the European Broadcasting Union, despite its intention to control content scraping and therefore help extinguish fake news. While there is plenty of…
We cannot really blame BP for wanting to get into biofuels in a big way, but we can complain about the manner in which it does it. If a country has plenty of arable farming land then it can chase after both food security, food export and also biofuels. But Brazil is opening flaunting global public opinion, and burning down its forests in order to make space for all these activities. This week BP completed the deal that it first highlighted in July in Brazil with Bunge Bioenergia. We said at the time, it was just providing Brazil with more reasons to burn down its forests, and we’re sure that BP would say to us “If we don’t do it,…
Ireland announced a new auction scheme this week, which will see 12,500 GWh worth of capacity added to meet the country’s growing energy demand. Many are getting excited over the prospect of exporting electricity generated from offshore wind, but due to a severe lack of infrastructure, Ireland will not be able to go hell-for-leather in adding new capacity. Prioritizing grid development will be the biggest challenge to the country, but large-scale reform, rather than adding infrastructure when necessary, would inevitably make the coming surge in renewables a more sustainable prospect. Suddenly the idea we floated in last week’s issue from SuperNode of a European Supergrid does not seem so absurd, and Ireland could well provide the first step towards a…
A night-time tour of the historic City of London showed off its new connected lighting system to media. This is based on Wi-SUN technology, which is now powering a 12,000-unit deployment. The City of London is something of an oddity. Occupying a little over a square-mile of the capital, the area is London’s primary central business district, and the heart of the financial and legal professions. It is run by the City of London (CoL) Corporation, which governs the Square Mile itself – an area that houses many of the most famous London landmarks, including St Paul’s Cathedral. The CoL is not one of the 32 London boroughs, rather it is the smallest county in the UK. The CoL has…
We have often questioned the comfortable telco notion that they are bound to make a success of edge computing because their physical assets – cell sites, central offices and so on – map so well to the locations needed for an edge cloud. Operators do have a good set of sites, on which they could build cloud infrastructure, or support third parties to do so. But there will be many applications that need a very different set of locations – particularly indoor-heavy ones – or will require added value services that operators are not well-placed to provide. Many operators are over-optimistic about just how far the sites alone will take them in the edge market. But those which invest in…
The GSM Association (GSMA) has done a powerful job, over the years, of promoting the interests of its mobile operator members worldwide, influencing regulatory and competitive policy as well as technology developments. However, the more far-sighted operators know they need to accept that their role in the 5G era will change significantly, and they will need to take account of new types of wireless service providers, whether as new competitors or as partners. Arguably, the GSMA is not adapting as quickly as it should do, in order to represent the MNO community in a modern, 5G-centric context, rather than clinging to an old order that will be inadequate to meet the demands of enterprise markets in future. The Association’s reluctance…
Two announcements in the smart building sector are indicative of a warming market, waking up to the immense commercial opportunity that awaits them. Johnson Controls has acquired EasyIO, the latest step in its bid to become a business aimed squarely at the smart building market, while ABB, the venerable Swiss industrialist, launched a new Building Management System (BMS) aimed at small and medium businesses – looking to widen its customer base. For Johnson, this should be quite a cheap pick-up. Based in Kuala Lumpur, EasyIO does have global customers. Providing BMS hardware and services, including the HMI devices like touchscreens and thermostats, EasyIO aims to provide all the sensing and actuation equipment needed to connect the myriad systems in a…
A night-time tour of the historic City of London, drawn up to show off its new connected lighting system, was not something we could easily say no to, and so Riot travelled to the Big Smoke to learn how the ‘Corporation’ settled on and implemented the Wi-SUN network that powers the 12,000-unit deployment. The City of London is something of an oddity. Occupying a little over a square-mile of the capital, the area is London’s primary central business district, and the heart of the financial and legal professions. It is run by the City of London (CoL) Corporation, which governs the Square Mile itself – an area that houses many of the most famous London landmarks, including St Paul’s Cathedral.…
China Mobile has been prominent in warning of the risks of high 5G power consumption, and now the operator’s EVP, Li Zhengmao, has called on the government to subsidize electricity costs for telcos in order to accelerate 5G expansion. Speaking at a GSMA seminar in Beijing last week, Li said operators had made little progress in reducing 5G power consumption and cost. In the early days of the standards process, there were ambitious claims that the 5G radio would be far more power-efficient than its predecessors, but these gains have been more than cancelled out by the larger number of cells and antennas that are required for 5G. Higher frequency spectrum, from 3.4 GHz up to millimeter wave, are being…