Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Like other tier 1 operators, Telefonica is facing a battle to retain customers not just for the primary TV service but also for control of the smart home where Google and Amazon in particular have made great inroads on the back of voice-driven assistants. But Telefonica differs from most rivals in favoring a dedicated device, its Movistar Home gateway, to host the UI for converged services, rather than the TV itself or the smartphone which the user probably already has. Telefonica’s pitch is that the device doubles as the remote controlling 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…
The Government in Colombia has awarded $2.2 billion in contracts for wind and solar projects as part of attempts to diversify its electric grid. Hydropower currently provides 70% of the country’s electricity, although remains vulnerable to droughts. Five wind projects and three solar projects have been confirmed to currently undisclosed companies, contributing towards a 2.2 GW target of renewable energy by 2022. NextEra Energy in the US has reported an increased development pipeline in renewables with its backlog rising by 1,375 MW in the quarter including 747 MW of solar and 340 MW of battery storage, all of which is to be paired with solar projects. This is despite a transmission upgrade impacting a number of existing deals which…
News this week that four out of five coal plants in Europe are no longer profitable, with combined losses up to €6.6 billion, could see governments buying coal units with green bonds, to retire them early. This is the idea floated as a remedy by Carbon Tracker, who wrote the report. Instead of coal owners hanging on forever to eke out an existence on their stranded assets, all the while spewing CO2, this move by governments could be decisive – conditional upon the same companies using the money purely on renewables. It is a way of getting coal owners off fossil fuel addiction. The report from Carbon Tracker, under the name ‘Apocoalypse Now’ was released on Thursday, indicating that lower…
US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has called for organizations to step up their facilitation of storage in US wholesale markets, as current practice threatens to stunt technological innovation. Both regional transmission organization PJM Interconnection and independent system operator Southwest Power Pool (SPP) are being told them must change their practice to come in line with FERC Order 841, despite failing to fully comply with rulings designed to promote electricity storage for regional grids. FERC has demanded that both organizations closely review their requirements for storage to be accepted into respective energy markets and allow innovation in storage to be supported. Order 841, issued by FERC in February 2018, directs grid operators to remove barriers to the participation of electricity…
Reliance Jio is India’s poster child for an operator which is deploying digital platforms and services, but its disruptive impact on the market are pushing its rivals to adopt advanced digital strategies too, to support new services and reduce costs, and so try to beat Jio at its own game. Market leader Vodafone Idea has announced plans for a ‘universal cloud’, as well as an ambitious program to roll out edge cloud sites (see separate item). The company is linking more than 100 data centers to form its cloud, using the Red Hat OpenStack Platform as its NFV infrastructure, along with that vendor’s Ceph Storage, Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The aim is “to transform its distributed…
As WiFi has become increasingly integral for broadband providers and ISPs, the market for routers, hubs and extenders has split between retail and service provider products. While vendors such as Netgear, Linksys and TP-Link continue to compete on features, service providers are more concerned about ease of deployment and automation, desperate to avoid escalating support calls, or worse – customer churn out of frustration when WiFi does not work in part of the house. They are also increasingly concerned over security in the wake of privacy legislation such as the EU’s GDPR, which is why Amazon acquired WiFi mesh router firm Eero, while Turkey’s AirTies in March 2019 announced a partnership with Cujo, a US start-up peddling AI-driven security monitoring.…
The LoRa Alliance is strengthening its Indian infrastructure in preparation for the nationwide roll out of NB-IoT networks. India’s first domestic LoRaWAN test center opened this week, streamlining the deployment of LoRaWAN devices. This is just in time for arrival of the major MNOs into the Indian LPWAN market. It was announced this week that TUV Rheinland has just opened India’s first LoRaWAN certification testing site in Bangalore, with DEKRA set to open another in Mumbai by the end of the year. Also announced was the availability of the LoRaWAN Certification Test Tool (LCTT), which lets developers better examine how their systems are going to fair during the certification process. The test centers allow Indian developers to check their devices quickly against…
While 5G may be going through the inevitable reality check with many operators, it is still a label that helps to drive share prices up and excite venture capitalists. Wireless network equipment has hardly been a hot market for VC investment for many years – the last time was probably the WiFi bubble of the mid-2000s. But the 5G label, and the prospect that a more open, cloud-based approach to mobile networks may make new entrants viable at last, looks to be changing that. The prospects for start-ups to attract funding for RAN technologies are being boosted by the operators’ desire to support companies which could open up their supply chains; and in the USA, by the politically driven push…
Fixed wireless access (FWA) has been the belle of the ball in the first phase of 5G, largely because it is the only mainstream use case that is enabled by the early 5G platforms, that provides some operators with a brand new revenue stream. While the enterprise and IoT services will need to wait for the 5G core and future standards, and the mobile broadband use cases are more of the same, FWA offers selected operators a chance to provide fixed/mobile convergence and multiplay services for the first time. The long term business case looks marginal for most operators, however. Three UK is one of a handful of mobile-only providers which are launching FWA-first, to leverage plentiful amounts of spectrum…
When a technology is in its hype phase, that usually results in a flurry of start-ups and acquisitions, and there are signs that the M&A process is beginning in edge computing. In the past week, Intel has acquired Pivot Technology’s Smart Edge platform, while data center operator EdgeConnex is said to be in acquisition talks with a Swedish would-be buyer. Intel is paying $27m for Smart Edge, which provides a cloud-native platform to support edge deployments, largely deployed within mobile networks. The chip giant is clearly keen on the distribution of the cloud, because it will involve larger numbers of chips than a very consolidated infrastructure model, and may be less susceptible to the pressures of dealing with the webscalers.…
Many of the services that will be enhanced by edge computing involve a complex mixture of applications and providers. Smart cities, smart factories, connected vehicle services and others all require a large number of applications and stakeholders to work together in a seamless way. In some cases, this will be achieved by one of those stakeholders – a telco, a webscale provider, a vertical specialist – acting as the integrator, but the ultimate goal is to have open platforms that allow developers to deploy capabilities easily via application programming interfaces (APIs) or, increasingly, container-based microservices, which can be mixed and matched like Lego pieces. MobiledgeX, a Silicon Valley organization spun out of Deutsche Telekom, is one of the players trying…
At the start of the edge computing, when the telcos’ dream that most of the edge would be built on their sites was still alive, some tower operators also saw the opportunity to extend their neutral host business model beyond cell towers, fiber and power, to include edge processing and storage at their sites. This could target more revenues from telco tenants, or support for enterprise or cloud clients wanting to leverage these locations. Crown Castle was the leader of this thought process, and made some ambitious statements about the business opportunity, as well as signing a strategic alliance with Vapor.io, a start-up specializing in building neutral host edge data centers, with a particular focus on towercos. However, Crown Castle…
Many operators are convinced edge computing will improve their 5G business case – almost 70% agreed with that statement in a recent survey of over 80 MNOs conducted by Rethink. But the number with a commercial deployment or clear, near-term plan remains small, indicating the gulf between aspiration and readily available solutions and business models. Some operators are blazing the trail, however, and will provide valuable examples for others to follow. At several edge-related events over recent months – including the Edge Computing Congress in London last month and numerous edge sessions in this week’s Mobile World Congress Americas – some of these telcos’ efforts have been highlighted. Many of these are US-based, though it is clear that a significant…
Some SoftAtHome feathers were ruffled over the summer when Faultline suggested rival WiFi software specialist AirTies was nudging into the French firm’s Swiss stronghold. SoftAtHome’s response has been pretty significant, porting its software on the Qualcomm Networking Pro 1200 platform in a deal designed to lay the foundations for ISPs to pair WiFi 6 and 5G networking capabilities in a single home gateway. While we heralded the arrival of Qualcomm’s Networking Pro Series platforms in August as a milestone moment for WiFi 6 (802.11ax), the emphasis of this week’s announcement on 5G was inadvertently SoftAtHome’s way of getting back at us. We continue to highlight how WiFi and 5G are capable of operating in shared spectrum, and any argument otherwise…
Mobile operators still have a curious antipathy to sharing their RANs, despite the increasingly strong case that this will be the only way to make 5G roll-out affordable – at least with the density and indoor penetration that many 5G use cases will require. Some operators are starting to get that message though. Vodafone is pursuing higher levels of active RAN sharing in key markets like the UK and Italy than it has before; some MNOs are coming round to the idea that they should encourage neutral hosts in small cell and industrial environments, rather than take on the whole cost burden themselves. A few countries have sought to take sharing a step further and mandate a single network for…
The LoRa Alliance is strengthening its Indian infrastructure in preparation for the nationwide roll out of Cat-NB networks. India’s first domestic LoRaWAN test center opened this week, streamlining the deployment of LoRaWAN devices. This is just in time for arrival of the major MNOs into the Indian LPWAN market. It was announced this week that TUV Rheinland has just opened India’s first LoRaWAN certification testing site in Bangalore, with DEKRA set to open another in Mumbai by the end of the year. Also announced was the availability of the LoRaWAN Certification Test Tool (LCTT), which lets developers better examine how their systems are going to fair during the certification process. The test centers allow Indian developers to quickly check their…
Europe’s video market experienced invasions from contrasting corners of the globe this week as Tokyo’s Rakuten and San Francisco’s Tubi rolled out their respective AVoD platforms across the continent. While entertainment platform Tubi is targeting an early 2020 kids content launch, Rakuten has more immediate disruptive potential and apparently is a keen reader of Faultline. Rakuten’s rise also signals good news for Nielsen, as provider of its targeted advertising platform, an important part of the deal we’ll touch on further down. When the e-commerce giant launched its dedicated sports platform in its native Japan over the summer, Faultline questioned Rakuten’s ambitions by urging the company to bid for rights to make an audacious move into the European sports scene. Realistically,…
As WiFi has become increasingly integral for broadband providers and ISPs, the market for routers, hubs and extenders has split between retail and service provider products. While vendors such as Netgear, Linksys and TP-Link continue to compete on features, service providers are more concerned about ease of deployment and automation, desperate to avoid escalating support calls, or worse – customer churn out of frustration when WiFi does not work in part of the house. They are also increasingly concerned over security in the wake of privacy legislation such as the EU’s GDPR, which is why Amazon acquired WiFi mesh router firm Eero, while Turkey’s AirTies in March 2019 announced a partnership with Cujo, a US start-up peddling AI-driven security monitoring.…
Sports streaming is made for dynamic ad insertion (DAI) because personalized user data can be combined with contextual information about the unfolding event to target ads highly effectively. Pubcaster France Télévisions is the latest to deploy DAI for streaming within its France TV Sport application accessible via iOS, Android and HTML browsers, having evaluated targeted ad delivery during its OTT coverage of the French Open tennis championships at Roland Garros and Tour de France cycling championships early in the French summer of 2019. France Télévisions is rather late to the party given that BT Sport for example introduced DAI for its streaming services in 2016, but the broadcaster is really targeting 2024. In that year it has exclusive French rights…