Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Neither company made much of a mark on the NAB show floor but that didn’t stop Netflix and Intel throwing the cat among the pigeons at a codec-centric show with the launch of collaborative AV1-based technology called Scalable Video Technology for AV1 (SVT-AV1). The software-based scalable codec claims 50% bandwidth efficiency over AVC while maintaining video quality, achieved partly through Intel’s acquisition of eBrisk last year – enabling faster AV1 algorithm development in the open source community which Netflix and Intel hope will spur innovation in video compression. Intel network platforms group VP and GM of the visual cloud division Lynn Com said, “This codec makes it possible for services ranging from video on demand to live broadcast of 4Kp60/10-bit…
The third wave of the 3GPP Release 15 standards – the so-called ‘late drop’ – has been released, several months later than originally expected. They were ratified at a recent meeting of the 3GPP RAN group in Shenzhen, China. This was not accompanied by much fanfare – it mainly consists of highly detailed technical specs, many concerned with dual connectivity (see separate item). However, the existence of multiple waves of standards, and the delay to the third of these, suggests the 3GPP process is struggling to adapt to the extreme complexity of modern networks. The first set of Release 15 specs defined the Non-Standalone radio network, a subset of the full standard which was fast-tracked, under pressure from operators led…
A surprising amount of heat can be generated in video quality measurement not just between competing vendors but also champions of different algorithms. It has risen up the agenda, as was evident at this year’s NAB 2019, because of growing use of streaming over networks of varying capacity to devices of different types and resolutions. This makes it harder for broadcasters, operators and content owners to deliver a consistent viewing experience and has driven demand for better measurements of perceptual video quality against a constantly moving target. The field has attracted a number of start-ups and also standards initiatives, some from established bodies and others led by operators, aiming to emulate and automate human video perception. One problem has always…
Day 2 of NAB 2019 delivered a non-publicized nugget of information we have been trying to extract for some time – the Verimatrix brand will live on in the wake of its acquisition by smaller security compatriot Inside Secure. Well, almost, as we probably weren’t the only party guilty of steaming straight past the Verimatrix stand obliviously at NAB 2019, as the Faultline autopilot sought out a flash of distinctive green rather than the new look morse code inspired logo. Cementing the longevity of the Verimatrix legacy will, however, come at a cost – with the Inside Secure name likely to be phased out pending a shareholder vote at the end of June. Verimatrix President and COO Steve Oetegenn was…
The first and only time we have earmarked a single company as the buzzword of a major tradeshow was AWS back at IBC 2017, hardly a surprise given its scale, which makes the achievements of a little company called Haivision all the more remarkable – a name which was scarcely off people’s lips for the duration of NAB 2019. Perhaps best known as a founding member of the SRT Alliance, Haivision has been blown away by interest since open sourcing the technology two years ago, yet it was a product hot off the press which was garnering all the attention at a packed NAB stand. Called SRTHub, the technology is ripe for disruption in its fledgling state after launching last…
Samsung has finally signed up for the royalty-free video codec group, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), in what is sure to throw the cat among the pigeons at this week’s big broadcast show, NAB 2019, where MPEG will be demonstrating many advances in its own codec technologies, targeting 5G applications among others, and pushing its own royalty-free option too. Samsung could be interested in getting on board to influence developments around AV2, the successor to the AV1 codec currently in development as AOMedia’s alternative to the other major codec, HEVC. Samsung is also a member of HEVC Advance, the patent pool behind that would-be standard, but will want to keep its options open as both technologies fight to dominate…
Chirp has come a long way since we first encountered the start-up, exhibiting a way to use audio bursts to transmit data between toys for children. We could see the potential for the technology in RF-constrained environments, and after an initial deal with energy supplier EDF, Chirp has made headway in the sector. Now, it has announced a new software developers’ kit (SDK) for ARM’s Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M7 microcontroller (MCU) platforms, which brings the technology to the lowest-power silicon to date. Wireless Watch’s sister service, Rethink IoT, spoke to CEO James Nesfield about the announcement, and to catch up with happenings at the firm. Nesfield said that there have been some technical optimizations with the protocol to ensure it runs…
The cost and red tape associated with access to city sites are still slowing down the pace of densification, and the situation will hit crisis point when it comes to 5G’s requirements for smaller cells and dense urban capacity, argue operators like Sprint. In the UK, BT is calling for open access to infrastructure such as lamp posts, in order to lower the barriers to deployment. It wants an end to the exclusive concessions model, which is commonly used by local authorities in the UK. They award the right to deploy small cells or WiFi on their lamp posts and other sites to a single entity. Other service providers then have to pay a wholesale charge to the concession holder.…
The third wave of the 3GPP Release 15 standards – the so-called ‘late drop’ – has been released, several months later than originally expected. They were ratified at a recent meeting of the 3GPP RAN group in Shenzhen, China. This was not accompanied by much fanfare – it mainly consists of highly detailed technical specs, many concerned with dual connectivity (see separate item). However, the existence of multiple waves of standards, and the delay to the third of these, suggests the 3GPP process is struggling to adapt to the extreme complexity of modern networks. The first set of Release 15 specs defined the Non-Standalone radio network, a subset of the full standard which was fast-tracked, under pressure from operators led…
One of the most prominent technologies in the first 5G deployments is the 3GPP-based EN-DC (E-UTRAN New Radio Dual Connectivity), which allows devices to connect to 4G and 5G radio networks simultaneously. This is a key element in 5G NR Non-Standalone networks, which still use an LTE core. Last month, SK Telecom and Samsung completed an EN-DC device interoperability test which achieved 2.65Gbps data speeds to the 5G smartphone, by combining 1.5Gbps from the 3.5 GHz 5G band (100 MHz in bandwidth) with 1.15Gbps from LTE in 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, and 2.6 GHz bands (65 MHz in total). The test used Samsung’s commercial 4G and 5G NR networks and its virtual core (vCore). SK Telecom said it would be…
At February’s Mobile World Congress, a notable trend was for the major chip providers to be assembling end-to-end portfolios that would enable them to address the entire 5G network from switch-chips in the transport domain, to processors and FPGAs to support virtualized RAN and core, to base station and edge computing platforms. At that show, Intel launched a base station system-on-chip (SoC) and talked up a silicon family that it has been assembling for some years, through inhouse development and acquisitions like those of Altera and LSI Networking. Last week, the chip giant held its own event, entitled the Data-centric Innovation Day, at which it showed off new Xeon processors, as well as the AgileX platform, which provides a flexible…
If 2020 is likely to be the year when 5G moves into the mainstream, history may remember it as an even more important turning point for the mobile industry – the year when open source initiatives seized the balance of power from conventional standards organizations and traditional telco thinking. Not in the radio standards of course – it will be another generation or two before the 3GPP’s position is usurped. But when it comes to ETSI, increasingly projects inaugurated by that body are being taken up, perhaps hijacked, by open source groups hosted by the Linux Foundation (LF). In two key areas, edge computing and the management and orchestration (MANO) of virtualized networks, the industry impetus has shifted from ETSI…
Bavaria’s Ministry for Economic Affairs funded a 12-month project to test how Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC) technologies could be used in automotive applications, specifically, in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications. However, the project has missed its 20ms latency target, which is a setback for the push to turn cars into mini-data centers. The trial involved Continental, a major automotive OEM, Deutsche Telekom, Nokia, and research and testing institute Fraunhofer. It was looking to test both the technology and the business case. In terms of architecture optimization, the project managed to get latency down to 30ms, which is impressive for mobile networks, but still short of the 20ms target. It was carried out on the A9 autobahn, a 529km road that runs north-south…
The Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has announced that 102 mobile operators in 52 countries have deployed one or both of the two Licensed LPWAN (L-low power WAN) technologies, LTE Cat-M and Cat-NB. It comes as the unlicensed LPWAN ecosystem around the LoRa technology begins to shift from private networks to public ones that support the open LoRaWAN specification, with the main chip provider, Semtech, saying that the gulf between its private LoRa and LoRaWAN shipments is closing. The report focuses on MNO adoption, rather than footprint coverage or the number of devices. It says 149 operators in 69 countries are investing in L-LPWAN, with 102 MNOs in 52 countries having actually pulled the trigger on a deployment. Of the…
Multivendor 5G networks are a key goal of many operators, but far fewer expect to be able to achieve it, in the early days of their 5G deployments. In a survey of over 80 operators round the world in the last quarter of 2018, Rethink Technology Research found that 82% placed multivendor networks in their top three objectives for their next generation deployments, but 72%, in reality, expected to go with a single vendor for their first wave of RAN and core roll-out. A few powerful MNOs have broken the pattern, such as NTT Docomo of Japan and SK Telecom of Korea, with their virtualized 5G cores that combine virtual network functions from different suppliers. AT&T and Verizon plan to…
The push for open, and even open source, platforms is extending right down to the semiconductor layer, not just in data center infrastructure, but in the telecoms network. The established licenseable IP providers, such as ARM and MIPS for processors and CEVA for digital signal processors (DSPs), are seeking to move into Intel’s territory in cloud infrastructure while extending their influence in the 5G network and devices. In December, Wave Computing announced that it would offer the MIPS architecture, which it now owns following the break-up of former owner Imagination Technologies, as open source code with no royalties or proprietary licensing. Other open source chip projects – admittedly further from mainstream commercial products – include the FOSSi (Free and Open Source…
The Linux Foundation’s annual Open Networking Summit (ONS) has become of rising interest to the mobile and telco community as the open source organization has become increasingly focused on telecoms networks. There will be coverage of the highlights in next week’s edition of Wireless Watch, but one development caught our eye even before the event started on Wednesday. This was a demonstration of network slicing, harnessing the capabilities of the open source ONAP (Open Network Automation Protocol) software, which handles the management and orchestration (MANO) of all the components in a virtualized network. Slicing based on open source orchestration is interesting in its own right, but even more so because the demo was a collaboration between AT&T – the instigator…
The many promises made for 5G boil down to two categories – cost and versatility. On the one hand, they must deliver significantly reduced total cost of ownership (TCO); on the other, the flexibility to support hundreds of use cases with differing network behaviors, and to amend or replace them rapidly in response to changing requirements – thus generating new revenue streams for operators, across many industries. In these very early days of commercial 5G, there is a broad spectrum of opinion about how, when or even whether the platform will be ready to fulfil its promises. Nobody would argue that the current iterations can do so, in any but the most limited way. The next release of standards from…
Sweden’s SeaTwirl, a designer of a new type of wind turbine which floats at sea, has landed €70 million of funds from two major investors; Colruyt Group an €8.6 billion Belgium supermarket chain, which also owns Parkwind a wind energy group; and Norsea, a North Sea based logistics group with good experience in supporting wind farms. The weird looking SeaTwirl S2 (see picture of SeaTwirl S1 below) is due out in 2020 and will look much the same as the S1, but yield 1 MW peak. At that level if may struggle to compete with giant traditional wind turbines on floating platforms, such as those using turbines from Vestas from MHI Vestas Offshore and from Siemens Gamesa. These can give…
It will come as no surprise that IoT security is still a shambles, but F-Secure has reason to believe that this year could be a turning point. Elsewhere, SonicWall has spotted a 217.5% increase in IoT attack volume, with the two bits of news suggesting that something has to give – and give fast. SonicWall found that through 2018, there were 32.7mn IoT attacks detected by its systems. This was up from 10.3mn in 2017, and is attributed to IoT manufacturers not implementing proper security controls. Some 46% of global botnets originate in the US, says SonicWall, with second-place China on just 13%. However, because of the global reach of these botnets, this is a global problem and not just…