Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
This week’s Small Cells World Summit (SCWS) in London was less obsessed with 5G than many current conferences, and instead was focused on the practicalities of driving mobile connectivity into every corner, in order to support new service providers and use cases – regardless of the radio technology. The overall theme was that many users and industries still need far better connectivity, sometimes with specialized capabilities such as high reliability. Indoor locations, densely populated city centers and transport hubs, roads and railways, vertical markets with demanding connectivity requirements – these will not be addressed only with the classic model of an MNO, armed with an exclusive licence, building a macro network and then filling the gaps with selected small cells.…
As Huawei’s predicament deepens, the industry as a whole will be the loser The situation regarding Chinese vendors’ ability to sell network equipment is developing rapidly as political and trade tensions between the USA and China intensify. In the past week, the sanctions against Huawei and ZTE have expanded from the USA and Australia to other countries (Japan); from network equipment sales to handsets and the Android platform; and from supply of technology to procurement of US components. Most operators continue to insist that they need freedom to choose the vendors they think best for their 5G networks – and many European governments are supporting that line, at least in the access network (the core is more sensitive to any…
Last week, an executive order emerged from the White House, giving the US government the ability to blacklist telecoms equipment from non-American companies. Widely interpreted as a move to break a deadlock in the China-US trade wars, a wild card played by Tariff Man designed to force concessions, Huawei is battening down the hatches, as Arm and Google break ties with it. Meanwhile, Qualcomm was going about its business, still glowing from its settlement with Apple, when Judge Lucy Koh ruled it was a monopoly. Qualcomm had evidently run out of good-boy points. After the executive order, it seemed that there was a glimmer of hope for Huawei, as the US Department of Commerce (likely realizing how much mess was…
Comcast’s MachineQ has opened up about its quiet change in strategy, which has seen it pull back on plans to build all-encompassing LoRaWAN networks in the US, acting as a network operator for the unlicensed-spectrum LPWAN technology (U-LPWAN). After listening to customer feedback, it has begun pivoting to cater for the demands of a DIY crowd that wants coverage in specific geographic locations, and not access to expansive national networks. We have long been of the opinion that LoRaWAN is best suited to campus-based deployments, where only a handful of gateways might be needed to provide connectivity for thousands or tens of thousands of devices, within a relatively small geographic area. On a cost basis, this is something on which…
Roku has launched an analytics tool called Activation Insights, a piece of software for tracking a brand’s linear TV campaign performance and flagging the potential missed OTT audience opportunity. Part of the Roku Ad Insights suite, Roku says the software helps marketers analyze AVoD campaigns and it can also provide the optimal budget to spend on the Roku platform. WarnerMedia is making its esports debut this summer with a Mortal Kombat tournament series broadcast on Twitch by the AT&T company, in partnership with Turner Broadcasting’s ELeague. Highlights will appear later on TBS following the initial live stream. Vivendi is facing complications selling off Universal Music Group, according to a Bloomberg report, stating that “some private equity investors balk at the…
For most people operating outside of broadcast circles, the transition to IP is increasingly seen as ancient history with telcos long leading the way and leaving broadcasters in their wake. So why is it that many years later, the concept of embracing and pioneering IP in a broadcast landscape remains a substantial roadblock? Back at NAB, we reported from an interesting panel discussion where we heard trials and tribulations right from the horse’s mouth in the form of the BBC and Cisco, so it was a fitting follow up to hear a different perspective from one of the smaller vendors in the scene. Faultline Online Reporter spoke with Norway’s Nevion, a supplier of real-time video monitoring and management technology geared…
Netflix, with its natural commercial competitiveness, wants to dominate SVoD streaming in every market where it operates. We know it was slow to acknowledge the need to cut prices in India so that it remains only a minor player there, but more surprising at first sight are the difficulties Netflix has encountered in exploiting the booming Nordic SVoD market. It is a stretch as some analysts have done to say that Netflix is struggling in the Nordics given it has 45% of the SVoD market there overall, making it number one in some of the countries, but this is well short of the European average penetration of 72% in a region which has taken to SVoD more fervently than almost…
The US blacklisting of Huawei which was swiftly followed by Google’s announcement it would cease supplying the Chinese firm with Android support will backfire on many US technology sectors if sustained beyond the three-month reprieve that ends August 23rd. Both the US and Google have granted Huawei a stay of execution over Android after realizing an immediate ban would have a severe impact on existing owners of Huawei devices, especially smartphones, after buying them in good faith. The reprieve was contemptuously brushed aside by Huawei which has decided to come out fighting, having failed with its previous conciliatory efforts in which it had offered to submit software and hardware to independent verification before deployment. The real battleground for Huawei is…
The Flagships project has been awarded €5 million under the Horizon program, under the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, to support deploying two commercially operated zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell vessels in Lyon, in France and Stavanger in Norway. The Lyon deal will use to power a utility vessel on the Rhône and in Stavanger, hydrogen will power a ferry operated as part of local public transport. Both vessels will run on hydrogen produced by electrolysis from renewable energy. The consortium includes nine European partners, with two ship owners It makes so much sense that if you have unconnected solar panels, that their energy can be used to make hydrogen fuel from water. The University of Bath’s Centre for Sustainable…
Sonos has announced that it will be pushing a Google Assistant integration to many of its devices in the near future, expanding on the Amazon Alexa interface that it has had for some time. It’s a sensible move for Sonos, and one that opens up channels into Google homes, but it comes in the same week that Google’s decision to shutter the Works with Nest program has caused much consternation. Google announced, as part of the recent Nest reshuffling at Google I/O, that it would be shutting down Works with Nest, and launching Works with Google Assistant. Privacy was mentioned frequently, and it seems to be that Google wants to tighten up the ways that devices access personal data within…
In what seems like a somewhat unfitting end for such an important player in this game, Control4 has been bought by SnapAV – a firm that makes home audio and security equipment aimed at professional installers. It’s a vertical move that sees SnapAV pay $680mn for what is essentially part of its own supply chain, but given that Control4 was positioned to become a king-maker of sorts, the deal feels rather underwhelming. Perhaps we’re just a little salty about the recent goings-on in Westeros, but we’d normally be a bit more enthusiastic about a deal of this size. In time, perhaps this will obviously be a fitting end, although both Control4 and SnapAV would probably like to stress that there’s…
Imagination Technologies is rebounding from its near-death experience, when it was forced to break up the company after Apple stopped using its PowerVR GPU (graphical processor unit) cores in the iDevices, in favor of an inhouse design. The UK company sold off its MIPS processor core unit and other acquisitions it had made in recent years, but continues to develop licensable GPU cores, and to extend them to support new mobile use cases. Its latest move is to open up its PowerVR ray tracing intellectual property (IP), which has until now been used only in its own products, for third party licensing. It says this will extend its adoption via companies which will use it for emerging 5G applications that…
The USA’s determination to ‘win the 5G race’ is leading to all kinds of unusual government interventions in the supposedly free market economy’s mobile industry. The acquisition of Qualcomm by Broadcom was blocked, even though the latter was on the point of transferring its domicile to the USA from Asia. Proposals to accelerate US 5G build-outs with a government-backed wholesale network are still doing the rounds. 5G is central to the escalating USA-China trade and security wars, which have led to the barring of Huawei and ZTE from infrastructure contracts, and may spark further sanctions. And the Department of Justice has effectively warned a Federal Trade Commission judge to tread carefully before she issues any penalties against Qualcomm which might…
Arris, Irdeto, DATV, Enensys, Fluendo, Samba TV, and SmarDTV have all signed up to the HbbTV Association, bringing the initiative’s member base to 75 companies. HbbTV claims more than 300 million applications running on 44 million consumer devices are now using the open specifications to add features such as interactive services, OTT offers and targeted advertising to linear TV channels. Vodafone’s acquisition of German cable operator Unitymedia would significantly reduce competition and result in rising costs for triple play subscribers, warns German housing association GdW. “The EU Commission has rightly expressed massive competition concerns to the parties involved in the merger in areas including fiber-optic network deployment, internet and telephony as well as TV signal delivery to apartment blocks.…
Sonos has announced that it will be pushing a Google Assistant integration to many of its devices in the near future, expanding on the Amazon Alexa interface that it has had for some time. It’s a sensible move for Sonos, and one that opens up channels into Google homes, but it comes in the same week that Google’s decision to shutter the Works with Nest program – its smart home product brand – has caused much consternation. Google announced, as part of the recent Nest reshuffling at Google I/O, that it would be shutting down Works with Nest, and launching Works with Google Assistant. Privacy was mentioned frequently, and it seems to be that Google wants to tighten up the…
Financial analysts punished TiVo after the company finally went about deciding on its business separation saga almost one-year in the making. Investors have no doubt been left scratching their heads in bemusement as to why a sale of the products division hasn’t already been orchestrated. What has instead happened is an agreement to spin out the Product business to shareholders, while keeping the IP Licensing segment close to its chest. However, it notes the TiVo board remains open to strategic transactions for either business. During TiVo’s annual earnings call at the end of February, the company came out and confirmed it had received acquisition interest from a number of unnamed third parties, so what appears to have happened is a…
With 2019 pegged to be the year peer-to-peer (P2P) network technology finally breaks into the mainstream, we tuned into a webinar from Streamroot this week, the very company which voiced this prediction to Faultline Online Reporter last year. Unfortunately, a transparently pre-prepared Q&A session meant getting a progress update was out of the question, but there was at least an impressive demo of how rapidly a P2P integration can be completed (about 5 minutes). We were especially keen to hear from the French technology vendor considering it very recently won a deal with RTL’s M6 Group to power live and VoD delivery for its 6Play service, in March this year, and we were also hoping for an update on Dish…
A recent observation on the Faultline has seen a rise in the number of companies offering media asset management (MAM) systems, often going under the alias of digital asset management or production asset management systems. It may be coincidental that these similar offerings have appeared on our radar all at once, but regular readers will know there’s no such thing as coincidences – so is this instead another ramification of commoditizing OTT video technology forcing a number of vendors to trade “trendier” ventures for somewhat safer ground? UK-based start-up Imagen (pronounced Ima-jen so as to avoid confusion with Imagine Communications) morphed into what CEO Charlie Horrell described as a real technology company around 4 years ago and at the recent…
A catch-up with cable veteran vendor Vecima Networks since its acquisition of Concurrent’s video delivery and storage business last year has been a long time coming. Discussing pressing future trends including the convergence of DOCSIS and 5G technologies was front and center, making Vecima’s $29 million bet on an IP video company all the more obscure – although a deeper dive reveals the complementary businesses are clearly reaping dividends. Our first bone to pick, as with any M&A process, is whether any casualties to the Concurrent product line have arisen since the takeover. Against the grain, Vecima’s SVP of Product and Marketing for North America, Ryan Nicometo, who came over from Concurrent, revealed that nothing in the way of streamlining…