Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Anyone associated with the WiFi industry may have been left feeling a little disappointed by a press release from UK telco BT this week, claiming a unique new WiFi system called BT Plus with Complete WiFi which, other than a strange disc-shaped UFO-like repeater, doesn’t appear to offer much in the way of individuality. This was originally pre-announced in January 2017, and we understand the networking is based on the MediaTek Adaptive Network extender technology. We feel the real aim of BT Plus is to function as a testbed for the operator’s future 5G service (currently penciled in for a September 2019 launch). This announcement gave us a real headache. Upon first inspection, the new BT offering seems to have…
YouTube has spoken out again heeding fresh words of warning regarding Article 13, the controversial censorship reform waved through by the European Parliament five months ago, otherwise known as Europe’s less theatrical equivalent to the implosion of net neutrality in the US. YouTube has gone all-out with a new campaign, launching the website saveyourinternet.com, featuring a video run down of FAQs along with testimonials from YouTube stars and other internet personalities, notably Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the worldwide web’s founding father. It has urged users of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Dailymotion, SoundCloud, Snapchat and more to upload their own #SaveYourInternet content to pressure the European Parliament into a rethink. YouTube alone has a monthly global user base of 1.8 billion, in…
In a statement of Disney’s intentions to rival the major traditional TV service providers, the company has dropped its advertising contract with Comcast’s Freewheel and opted instead for Google Ad Manager. An intriguing part of the news was revealed by the CTO of Disney’s Direct to Consumer and International unit, Aaron LaBerge, admitting that an in-house ad tech project was a major consideration. So what swayed the decision – money, complexity, inexperience, or none of the following? Given the trend of major US companies, operators in particular, buying into the ad tech business, Disney following suit would not have been a huge surprise. LaBerge explained, “It was better for us to explore a partnership than trying to reinvent the wheel…
The sight of Amazon and Facebook leading the big tech charge into premium sports rights has been received as a threat on two counts by venues such as sports bars whose livelihoods depend on communal viewing of live matches. On the one hand it exposes them to the challenge of streaming quality which is far more critical for them than a consumer accessing the same event on smaller screens at home. More critically these big players are peddling a disruptive model by encouraging viewing at home with the social element coming through online communication and chat rather than face to face over drinks in a bar or other public place. The services have not been designed for consumption “en masse”…
France Télévisions is more likely to lose than gain from ceasing to distribute complete shows or series on YouTube, after earlier doing the same for Netflix. But the state broadcaster claims it is merely taking a lead out of Disney’s book by deciding to keep its global rights at home, in this case to boost the French OTT platform Salto, which it set up in collaboration with commercial broadcasters TF1 and M6. Even Disney may not be able to resist the advancing tide of Netflix, Amazon and Google, so we feel France Télévisions has little chance and would be better off taking advantage of these distribution avenues to maximize its audience. Oddly enough, France Télévisions director-general Delphine Ernotte made the…
Wireless Watch’s sister service, Rethink TV, recently published a forecast on Android TV. AT&T’s interest in this technology is well documented, but less well known, especially in the USA, is the Android TV Operator Tier. This is something that Google has led with in Europe. It is essentially a version of the platform which allows an operator, or third party specialist, to build a separate launcher (3SS and Accedo are specialists), so that nothing of the Android brand is seen anywhere, and the layouts and functions are defined and branded by the operator. The Android team launched this option back in September 2016, but it took until January 2018 before implementations began to appear in Europe. The AT&T deployment, which…
Imagination Technologies has launched its latest automotive graphics processor unit (GPU) IP design, the PowerVR Series8XT-A. Imagination says the surrounding software, tools and support package will give the technology a 10-year lifespan for adopters. The GPU design can be licensed directly by chipmakers, or by automotive OEMs (which can then commission a chip partner to build the silicon). It makes the expected performance claims, but a big part of the launch marketing concerns its safety features. Automotive buyers are extremely sensitive to such issues, and the ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 compliance is laid out in the extensive documentation. The company is one of the automotive old guard. Imagination claims that it has over a 50% market share by volume,…
An early assumption that 5G would be led first by densification has been challenged in the past year or two by the emergence of Massive MIMO as a major element in many MNOs’ 5G strategies. Operators, particularly in Asia, are looking to use large antenna arrays, combined with beamforming, to add huge amounts of capacity to their existing macrocells, before they move on to deploying large numbers of small cells. European MNOs have been less aggressive about Massive MIMO trials than some of their Asian counterparts, such as Softbank in Japan or China Mobile. But the UK is proving to be an exception. BT’s mobile arm, EE, was an early public exponent of macrosite enhancement as more important, in the…
The Linux Foundation’s Deep Learning Foundation – an umbrella group for several projects in this area – has announced Athena, the first release from the Acumos AI initiative, which is based on code originally submitted by AT&T. The US operator kicked off the program with a view to lowering the barriers to entry to AI, which it intends to use aggressively in its own operations, including planning and optimizing its networks. AT&T has donated code in order to kickstart several open source projects, and as these start to release their first software one by one, it is becoming easier to join the dots between them and discern a broad, telecoms software platform being driven heavily by this one operator. For…
Operators often express their determination not to let 5G create a massive capex hike, but unless they adopt radically different approaches to deployment, they are likely to get caught up in a spiral of investment. 5G was meant to be all about virtualized, software-based networks, and an open, WiFi-like ecosystem – both trends creating a new cost base. But first wave 5G is looking similar to 4G – mainly physical baseband equipment; increasingly large and complex antenna arrays; high priced spectrum licences; the same old vendors (though even fewer than there were at the start of 4G). If the new, open, software network will have to wait for a future phase of 5G deployment – and if operators do not…
One of the most interesting aspects of 5G is the way it will drive new approaches to deployment, and a rebirth of private networking. 5G has the capabilities to enable many new services and experiences for enterprise and industrial organizations, including those which require very low latency, high availability or strong security. But in many markets, MNOs find it very difficult to make a strong business case in industrial or IoT sectors, and prefer to focus on their familiar consumer broadband user bases. That has created damaging misalignment, and lack of trust, between industry and telecoms in many areas. But it is also opening the doors for enterprise-focused service providers to offer mobile services which are optimized specifically for certain…
For all the reasons set out above, the coming year will be a critical one for Huawei, especially in Europe, where it needs to lobby governments not to impose US-style restrictions, and to consolidate its position with operators. The latter will be essential to drive growth in the Chinese firm’s second largest market, western Europe. It is entering a critical period of operator investment – the first phase of 5G-driven capex spending, in which each vendor will get a strong indication of how well its products and messaging will play in the new networks. With some home advantage in Greater China, but no ability to sell 5G in the USA, the two largest early 5G markets are polarized in terms…
There are two aspects of the emerging 5G industry in which international geopolitics threaten to make the business case even tougher for operators than expected. One is the race to be ‘first to 5G’, which is pressurizing some MNOs to launch 5G services before they have a credible ROI (return on investment) plan. The other is the escalating tension between China and the USA over cybersecurity allegations and trade wars. This is starting to prompt copycat behavior from US allies, threatening operators with the prospect of being barred from buying 5G equipment from Chinese vendors – which, in turn, will reduce price competition and deny them the ability to use some of the most advanced 5G technologies, where these are…
Voice may be one of the hottest markets in digital entertainment right now but there remains an abundance of challenges in perfecting the underlying technologies which deliver such divinely convenient experiences. Dialects, accents, over-talk, syntax, slang terminologies – these are all common problems. But while modern advances generally make life easier, building products around something as complex and fast-evolving as human languages mean these hurdles are only becoming more difficult to navigate. Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft battling it out in voice has made for fascinating observation over the past couple of years since the market really kicked into life as a means of controlling content or a smart assistant – but ultimately will the winners and losers be decided…
When we put together a forecast for our sister service Rethink TV on Android TV, a number of people told us that AT&T was looking to invest in the technology, and it seems the operator’s interest is widely known in the Android community. Less known about, especially in the US, is the Android TV Operator Tier, something that Google has led with in Europe, essentially a version whereby a separate launcher can be constructed either by the operator or a third party software house (3SS and Accedo are specialists), so that nothing of the Android brand is seen anywhere, and the layouts and functions all use operator branding and are defined by them. It’s not news, the Android team put…
Disney executives finally agreed on a name for the company’s unborn video streaming service, canning Disney Play in favor of Disney+. Shortly afterwards, details on T-Mobile’s uninspiring TV plans, set to launch by the end of this year, were leaked in an FCC filing, while its mobile-first successor will launch around the same time as Disney+. Is there any wiggle room for a collaboration here or are the two destined to be at loggerheads? CEO Bob Iger also said Disney could buy the extra 40% in Hulu it does not already own (30% from Comcast and 10% from WarnerMedia), while it will inherit 21st Century Fox’s 30%, giving Disney a current 60% controlling stake in the streaming firm. First of all,…
There were mixed reactions to news that the much-anticipated acquisition of Arris by CommScope had been agreed. Most of the negative comments from investment analysts related to the low profitability of Arris’s heartland business in set-top boxes (STBs), but in reality, Arris has been making strategic acquisitions to diversify its business and boost its margins, and some of those products will prove highly strategic for its parent. The $7.4bn deal is likely to see an acceleration in Arris’s move away from STBs. There is a slim chance the deal could give Arris sufficient scale for a remarkable turnaround in its core activity, better able to compete with Samsung, Humax and Huawei. But it is more probable that the combined company…
There is hot debate about whether the emerging edge compute business models will really dovetail as neatly with telcos’ networks as they would like to think. ETSI’s Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) architecture started with the assumption that cell sites and central offices would make idea locations for edge cloud deployments, and so would put operators in pole position in the value chain. However, while that may be true for classic telco applications like video caching and content delivery, much of the potential of the edge cloud lies in industrial applications, and there, each industry and use case may require a different edge – in a factory for a manufacturer, for instance. But some companies are clinging to the telco edge…
The place that edge compute will play in the telco’s network, and its business model, is a topic we have been tracking with interest this year. While there is a strong logic to convergence of compute, storage and connectivity – all in locations close to the user to improve service response times – it is not clear that operators will always take the leading role in deploying and monetizing edge networks. Many industrial and IoT applications will rely on edge locations that go far beyond the sites and central offices in a telecoms grid, and as some of those sectors look for edge cloud resources on a global scale, the real power may lie with organizations that can aggregate physical…