Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Verizon and AT&T face significant engineering challenges to build on their initial, limited roll-outs of 5G in millimeter wave spectrum, and deliver broad coverage and high data rates given their lack of midband airwaves, which are ideal for first-phase 5G. The two companies have always invested large sums in their own technologies and architectures, so if anyone can make a powerful service platform at viable cost, with mmWave spectrum, these two are likely to do so. Some initial tactics have included advanced deployment of MIMO antennas and beamforming, as well as migration roadmaps to highly virtualized networks and to automation. But making a high performance network that reaches users indoors as well as out, given the limited range and indoor…
Canadian perceptual quality specialist SSIMWave slipped out a pre-IBC press release late last week talking about demonstrating support for Dolby Vision for the first time in Amsterdam. In conversation with the company earlier this year, SSIMWave cited being a partner licensed to monitor Dolby Digital Plus for live and VoD workflows – collaborating with Dolby on monitoring the preservation of Dolby Vision and Atmos content across distribution. So, not actually a new update at all, and SSIMWave has since confirmed to us that it will be making its debut Dolby demonstration in a few weeks – which Faultline Online Reporter will be seeing firsthand. The move is timely because the unstandardized nature and inconsistency of screen brightness ranges associated with…
Video streaming technology supplier Haivision is hoping its recent selection by NASA to deploy video streaming across multiple bases for mission critical applications will help win other contracts where security, resiliency and low latency are requirements. While enterprises are unlikely to be swayed by the mere fact of NASA’s endorsement it will draw their attention to any relevant technical specifications and compliances relevant for their requirements. In fact, Haivision has been working towards this contract for several years, with a key move coming in January 2018 when the company announced that several core products had been accredited by the US Defense Information Assurance Risk Management Framework (DIARMF). This accreditation authorized the use of Haivision’s IPTV, enterprise and digital signage products…
With Disney prematurely boasting how its forthcoming OTT video service is ready for anything the world can throw at it, you can almost guarantee that launch day will be a disaster. HBO’s well-documented Game of Thrones streaming woes have been referenced by Disney as an important lesson, from which the company’s robust BAMTech foundations can learn from to supposedly make Disney+ immune to overload. A poisoned chalice if ever we heard one. Don’t get us wrong, BAMTech is a formidable company with advanced technology, but Disney is naive to believe it can deliver a perfect video streaming experience every time. BAMTech cannot influence congestion on a particular internet service provider’s network; nor can BAMTech solve bad apple or sticky client…
Luxembourg-based media firm RTL Group underwent a long-awaited face lift this week involving an injection of new executive blood, based on the aspiration of “shaping the future of the European total video industry,” as proclaimed by CEO Thomas Rabe. Back in March, Faultline Online Reporter highlighted RTL’s advertising technology arsenal as one of Europe’s most promising trends, after a rapturous performance in the full year results of parent company Bertelsmann, and we think RTL thinks it finally has something resembling a definitive strategy etched out. First things first though, “total video” reflects an ill-judged idea at major European broadcasters that despite the diversity of the continent as a whole, that their homegrown successes are enough to merit belated onslaughts against…
Verizon and AT&T face significant engineering challenges to build on their initial, limited roll-outs of 5G in millimeter wave spectrum, and deliver broad coverage and high data rates given their lack of midband airwaves, which are ideal for first-phase 5G (see separate item on Russian MNOs). The two companies have always invested large sums in their own technologies and architectures, so if anyone can make a powerful service platform at viable cost, with mmWave spectrum, these two are likely to do so. Some initial tactics have included advanced deployment of MIMO antennas and beamforming, as well as migration roadmaps to highly virtualized networks and to automation. But making a high performance network that reaches users indoors as well as out,…
Many kinds of service providers are converging on the opportunity offered by combining next generation connectivity and content delivery, with edge cloud infrastructure. Wireline telcos, cloud providers, content delivery network (CDN) companies and mobile operators are all keen to expand their business into new applications which are enabled or enhanced by bringing data processing and connectivity close to the end user. That will make it a tough market in which to succeed for any one company, and over time the best chances will come to those MNOs which leverage a combination of 5G, their own edge locations (such as cell sites), and partnerships with the controllers of other assets. Cloud providers like Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure are obvious candidates,…
AT&T is positioning itself as the pivotal company in an ecosystem of telco-oriented cloud providers. That started a few years ago with its Domain 2.0 supply chain reorganization, introducing new vendors alongside established ones to support its conversion to software-defined networking (SDN), virtualized networks and white box servers and switches. It has built on that internal process by contributing various developments for virtualized networks into open source, hoping to create global de facto standards according to its own vision of the cloud network (these include the Linux Foundation-hosted ONAP and ORAN). And it is assembling an increasingly broad range of strategic partnerships with major IT suppliers, via direct alliances – like those with Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS – and…
Russia’s mobile operators have something in common with their US equivalents – unlike most MNOs round the world, they will have limited access to midband spectrum, and the C-band around 3.5 GHz, which is considered ideal for first-wave 5G deployments. This is pushing them to deploy in millimeter wave spectrum, earlier than any business plan would deem ideal, since there are still challenges in terms of device availability, network optimization and equipment cost. But to deliver the promised 5G data rates, capacity is required, so both Russian and US operators have been forced to move up the spectrum at an early stage. The C-band provides high capacity, without the high engineering and propagation challenges of millimeter wave; most MNOs will…
If any country needs a new set of economics before the operators deploy 5G, it’s India. The MNOs have struggled since the 2G era with excessive bureaucracy, inflated spectrum prices, very low ARPUs, challenging terrain and market over-crowding, not to mention high pressure from government to achieve lofty but often impractical national broadband goals. Some of these challenges have been reduced in recent years, mainly by consolidation of the market down to three major MNOs – Vodafone Idea, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel – plus the two state-owned companies, BSNL and MTNL. This has given the privately run survivors greater economies of scale, lower competition and greater nationwide reach. But the other factors remain unchanged, including proposals by regulator TRAI…
The US Energy Storage Association (ESA) repeated its fears this week that tariffs on Lithium Ion batteries, due to increase next week, could halt the shift to grid energy storage deployments, which are going ahead right now. The press release was attributed to ESA CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman’s and was a revisit of a statement issued by the ESA back in June when it first voiced concerns as the tariffs were initially announced. This is the problem with a technologically ignorant US president, conducting a trade war. He thinks renewables don’t matter and has tied himself to the fossil fuel brigade which thinks making renewables more expensive at the border, will just help them stay in power for longer. Actually the…
In the US, when you have a progressive state government and a pair of retrogressive energy suppliers, you have an arm tussle which can drift into the obscure. So this week in North Carolina, where the progressive governor wants to push for 70% emissions cuts by 2030, there is acting out in parallel an insane example of fossil fuel addiction. A comprehensive paper was produced this week stating the advanced planning for emissions reduction in North Carolina, which will result in immediately concrete actions plus long term policies expected to come into effect in 2021. The document highlights a clear and unambiguous opening of the gates to multiple forms of competition across the energy eco-system, so that local generation options…
We are still of the opinion that there is a lot of money to be made by the company that nails a solar-plus-storage smart-home offering, sold as a service and installed professionally. The cost of such an offering makes it rather prohibitive as an upfront purchase, but the service model means that savings in electricity could be put towards the repayments or subscription fee. To this end, news from Smart Energy and Tesla show that the industry has taken another step towards such an offering. Smart Energy is a small Australian outfit that has had success with a sales model that lets customers pay for the complete installation using the savings that it generates. It is the most popular approach…
Nissan kicked off a wave of reporting in the UK, after announcing that there were now more than 9,300 EV charging stations in the country, compared to 8,400 fuel stations serving conventional ICE cars. However, in terms of the number of vehicles served by each, the EV camp still has a lot of catching up to do – but it’s far from insurmountable. In a straight like-for-like swap, the typical eight-pump fuel station can serve far more cars in a given time period than eight EV chargers. The pumps will fill most fuel tanks in around two minutes, and the process of paying for fuel can often take longer than this. We feel confident saying that completely fueling an ICE…
CenturyLink’s network virtualization and edge compute strategy has been the talk of the town over the past week, in the process taunting AT&T’s own virtualization project. CenturyLink could be left red-faced if all this trumpet blowing proves to be purely hot air, particularly with the US telco’s inferior capex and recent gaffe which saw its network crippled for a day and a half. In short, CenturyLink has just switched on over 100 initial edge compute locations around the country for managed services, including a 5ms transport time from existing locations to the edge which it highlights as ideal for low latency use cases including VR, AR and machine learning-based services. But then a little spice was added to the mix.…
Record subscriber declines wreaked havoc on the pay TV landscape throughout the first half of 2019 and one vendor visibly feeling the effects of these reverberations is the Kudelski Group, as the digital security specialist chugs along with the rejigging of its legacy digital TV division. With digital TV revenues on the decline, down by 12% to $190.5 million for the first six months of this year, the company has sought to merge its conditional access and user experience product units into a consolidated DTV Product Unit – aiming to deliver a “more consistent and complete” offer to the market. Ironically, Kudelski last month published its latest Pay TV Innovation Forum report, in which just 26% of executives polled believe…
With our research arm Rethink TV recently publishing a prosperous esports forecast (see separate story in this issue), a niche piece of recent M&A activity caught our eye as one particular potential cash cow within the wider emerging esports scene. Esports technology start-up Cyberanking has been bought for a modest sum of $1.5 million by a company called Graph Blockchain, after contracting consulting firm Esports Capital to identify acquisition opportunities in esports and gaming verticals. Eventually settling on technology coined a gamified learning management system (LMS), Cyberanking’s platform aims to improve skills within esports with a focus on mental and physical health. Stay with us; we know the term blockchain might send some readers running for the hills but with…
Antisocial network Reddit is embarking on its first live streaming endeavor, in doing so threatening the established streamers Twitch and YouTube as well as the mainstream social media platforms. Reddit is certainly late to the party with a broadcasting toolkit feature, yet its diverse undercurrent of content and active user growth trajectory put the company in a unique position. Over five days of testing ending August 23, Reddit rolled out its Public Access Network (RPAN) software, allowing select users to live stream on r/pan – a dedicated subreddit (channel). Particular emphasis has been placed on making RPAN safe and secure – “be like the lambeosaurus – feed on pine needles and have a good time” reads one of the RPAN…
Deutsche Telekom’s familiarly reticent results do not paint a picture of an operator currently in the throngs of opposing a mega deal after regulators recently green lighted the deal for Vodafone to buy Liberty Global’s cable assets. Nor does its second quarter filing make much about the M&A activity across the Atlantic with its US holding merging with Sprint in a market-altering deal. This was despite the fact that T-Mobile USA remains a star. With the T-Mobile Sprint deal pending regulatory approval, which DT expects to arrive in Q3, the US company once again raked in subscribers from competitors – onboarding 1.75m to break 83m mobile subs. T-Mobile must be getting bored of breaking records, recording more than 1m net…
By becoming the world’s first satellite fleet operator to embrace ONAP (Open Network Automation Protocol), SES has reaffirmed its growing commitment to mobile connectivity as the company seeks to offset its waning video business. Naturally, SES doesn’t want anyone to interpret the move in such a way, yet the initiative could prove crucial in delivering next generation video around the globe as service providers migrate to virtualized network functions. SES has teamed with Amdocs to develop a standards-based network automation platform built on the open source initiative ONAP, driven by AT&T and now hosted by the Linux Foundation. This marks the start of an ambitious cloud virtualization project, setting the bar for the satellite community. Amdocs helped AT&T with its…