Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Like many Tier 1 operators, Telefónica is facing a battle to retain customers not just for the primary TV service, but also for the smart home, where Google and Amazon in particular have made great inroads on the back of voice-driven assistants. But Telefónica differs from most rivals in favoring a dedicated device, its Movistar Home gateway, to host the user interface for converged services, rather than the TV itself or the user’s smartphone. The Spanish operator’s pitch is that the device doubles as the remote control for the TV service while also incorporating its AI-based apps and algorithms for smart home functions. It can also host third party apps that integrate with the TV service for added value and,…
The ‘open’ embedded SIM (eSIM) technology brought forward by Deutsche Telekom, nuSIM, has been chosen by Qualcomm for use in the 9205 LTE modem, one popular in Cat-NB, Cat-M, and 2G IoT applications. Huawei has also followed suit, using nuSIM in its Hi2115 Cat-NB SoC, and demonstrating the connection in a Quectel BC95-G module. This is a big development in the world of IoT-focused eSIM, as the vendors try to reduce hardware costs to facilitate wider adoption. It is also surprising that Qualcomm hasn’t chosen something from up its own sleeve, but with Huawei on board too, it seems that nuSIM is well on the way to becoming the standard choice. nuSIM was unveiled in the run up to MWC.…
Dish Network waved goodbye to another 79,000 pay TV subscribers in Q3, shrinking the satellite base further to 9.5 million. However, the US operator surprised by beating expectations with a gain of 48,000 Sling TV subscribers, to total 2.7 million subs. Altice USA’s pay TV subscriber exodus accelerated by 14.3% year on year to 32,000 during the third quarter, dropping to 3.27 million subs, of which 492,000 are on the next-gen Altice One platform. As a result, video revenues dropped below $1 billion for the first time since merging the Cablevision and Suddenlink Communications businesses, falling 5.8% year on year to $993.2 million in Q3. Cord cutting hit Liberty Global hard during Q3 with 65,700 net video cancellations across the…
It’s impressive really that a bumbling retail giant like Walmart managed to keep a video streaming business afloat for so long, threatened by ever-increasing and more technically accomplished adversaries. Now the time has come for Walmart to move Vudu on, the platform it bought nine years ago for $100 million, making way for a new wave of lumbering US companies in the OTT video market. History has a habit of repeating itself. Apple, AT&T, Disney and NBCUniversal – all peddling disruptive new OTT video offerings – need to know that just because you were so successful in one field, you are not guaranteed riches in another. Sure, 3 out of 4 have enviable experience in the media market, combibed with…
Comcast might as well name its ad tech business Complex if the cable TV operator plans to continue chopping and changing at the current rate. Comcast’s latest ad decision saw the Spotlight cable advertising unit rebranded as Effectv to stress its new-look addressable approach, while timing the makeover to reveal two new products. Despite being something of a pioneer itself, this latest advertising evolution is again leaning on the AdSmart technology inherited via Sky which has come to prominence as the world’s bar-setting addressable platform. But far from Comcast’s attempts at knocking the bigger half of the online ad duopoly down a peg or two a few weeks ago, the company’s Effectv push is working much closer to home. The…
We said in our last edition of Rethink Energy that climate change and environmental policy would come to the forefront of the UK’s snap election, and with fracking in the hot seat, this is already proving to be the case. The Conservative-led government has called for an immediate suspension of fracking, but its focus has been on earthquake activity and not climate change. The ban, already initiated in Scotland, will now be extended to England, for an indefinite period “until and unless” shale gas extraction is proved to be safe. It looks possible that the ban may be short term, but the government reinstating fracking will face significant public opposition. The moratorium follows a study published by the Oil and…
Ship owners may be able to avoid investing in new engines for new fuels, as nanotechnology emerges which allows vessels to slash emissions, while using existing bunker fuel supplies. While the industry will relish the monetary savings and hail the reduced sulfur emissions, if taken up, this technology will stunt the rate at which the maritime industry reaches climate targets. Daphne Technology has developed a new closed-loop nanotechnology-based scrubber, which will allow cargo ships to comply with new International Maritime Organization emission regulations, while still using Heavy Fuel Oil into the 2020s. Sea transportation accounts for 90% of the worlds international trade, and emissions are predicted to increase between 50% and 250% by 2050. Air pollution from international shipping is…
Like many Tier 1 operators, Telefónica is facing a battle to retain customers not just for the primary TV service, but also for the smart home, where Google and Amazon in particular have made great inroads on the back of voice-driven assistants. But Telefónica differs from most rivals in favoring a dedicated device, its Movistar Home gateway, to host the user interface for converged services, rather than the TV itself or the user’s smartphone. The Spanish operator’s pitch is that the device doubles as the remote control for the TV service while also incorporating its AI-based apps and algorithms for smart home functions. It can also host third party apps that integrate with the TV service for added value and,…
Nokia’s CEO, Rajeev Suri, has acknowledged that the Finnish company’s 5G chip strategy is partly to blame for its falling margins, as highlighted in its recent quarterly results announcement. Margins were hurt by the high costs of its Reefshark family of chipsets, which power equipment from high end routers to base stations to Massive MIMO antennas. Although Reefshark was launched to acclaim in the engineering community, its reliance on programmable chip technology and inhouse designs makes it costly compared to platforms based on microprocessor or system-on-chip (SoC) technology. The big three network OEMS have taken differing approaches to silicon. Nokia and Huawei have remained in the tradition of designing their key chips inhouse, to give themselves control and differentiation, while…
The start of 4G was a major wake-up call to many operators, that a new network does not necessarily bring a premium in revenue terms, not even for a first mover. Now that early 5G deployers are starting to announce financial results, it is clear that the same will be true of the new networks, at least in familiar consumer and mobile broadband (MBB) markets. In the UK, BT/EE revealed six-month figures which showed almost no impact from its early launch of 5G, back in May. The telco was clear that the financial impact will not come from more of the same in MBB services, but from new models, particularly those which will rely on its plans for increasing convergence…
Many of our readers have met Rethink staffers at the events we attend and chair, and while always a bit of a blur, they are a vital way to get a taste for an overall market – away from the worst influences of marketers and PR types. Connected World was no different, and the co-located Smart Home Summit was an excellent resource of tidbits and leads – painting a picture of a market that is heading in the right direction, if a little more slowly than people have expected. The first speaker, Siemens’ Head of Global Change Alexandra Kirk, outlined how the business world has changed quicker than most could have anticipated, migrating swiftly from VHS rentals to Netflix streaming…
Our trip to Connected World last week led to the discovery of GeoSpock, a startup that offers a cloud-based platform to assist with collation, processing and visualization of vast geospatial data sets. With smart city and maritime partnerships underway, as well as recent expansion into Asian markets, it’s worth exploring where the startup emerged from. GeoSpock was founded in 2013 in Cambridge, UK by then-PhD student, Steve Marsh, and CEO of Horizon Discovery Group, Dr Darrin Disley. The duo hoped to design an ‘extreme data’ search engine that could process huge amounts of information that would help contextualize the physical world. The company operates in four main verticals – maritime assets and logistics, telecoms, smart cities, and ‘DataTech’…
It is 20 months since AT&T announced that it planned to deploy a white box router on every cell site (about 60,000 over several years) and to open source the network operating system they will run, DANOS (disaggregated network operating system). Things have gone rather quiet about this ambitious plan to drive openness and low cost into AT&T’s network edge, while also stimulating a broad open ecosystem for white box routers in general (the telco has also contributed its router specs to the Open Compute Project). Now the operator has announced that it will donate DANOS – which it developed itself, based on its acquisition of Vyatta from Brocade – to the Linux Foundation on November 15, a year later…
A tidbit we picked up recently is that the global export volume of containerized shipping has increased 4x in the past twenty years. Asset tracking has always been a prized IoT use case, and three deals have cropped up in the past week that suggest that the market is flourishing. Asset tracking is a difficult balancing act for the LPWAN side of things. If the asset you want to track is of a high enough value, then the cost of changing batteries regularly or paying extra for SLA-backed cellular and satellite connectivity won’t be a burden for you. LPWAN technologies have always stressed the long battery life that the protocols enable as a key selling point, but in asset tracking,…
The theory of targeted advertising is that less can be more, that by dividing an audience up into segments, the total value of the inventory is increased. Each segment receives a relevant ad more likely to elicit a positive response and so its value measured in CPM (cost per 1000 subscribers) goes up. But standing in the way of this goal is fragmentation, because if multiple audiences across different channels and services are split into separate targeted segments, the size of each one can become too small to register significant uplifts for brands, or revenues for operators. Commercial forces have operated in both directions, towards and away from convergence around common standards or platforms, whether proprietary or from industry bodies.…
Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) founding member and overall video streaming darling Haivision has used its enviable growth momentum to poach the LightFlow Media Technologies part of video optimization outfit Epic Labs – a month after the two vendors joined forces on bringing content-aware encoding to edge devices. The similarities between Spain’s LightFlow and SSIMWave, the Canadian perceptual video quality specialist which Faultline has spoken with numerous times this year, are striking. In fact, during conversation with SSIMWave at the recent IBC show, we suggested the vendor’s captivating technology and revered R&D record would surely attract acquisition interest soon. Naturally, SSIMWave has upheld the position that it has very few direct rivals, yet Haivision has inadvertently exposed a clear-cut competitor and…