Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Nokia’s latest quarterly results revealed slight revenue improvements, a 40% year-on-year drop in net profits but improved operating margins. They were overshadowed by news of more job cuts, making it clear that, to achieve more impressive figures, the Finnish company still needs to slash its costs, as well as accelerating its expansion into new software and enterprise markets, and leveraging 5G. Its efforts to inject growth into its business and move beyond the current period of stagnation show a contrasting approach to that of arch-rival Ericsson. While Ericsson’s CEO, Börje Ekholm, reversed his predecessor’s strategy of expanding into new markets, especially vertical industry sectors, Nokia has been pushing aggressively to turn itself in to a software-driven company which has a…
Following several months of evaluation, the IEEE has established a formal study group focused on ‘extremely high throughput’ (EHT) for WiFi in bands between 1 GHz and 7.125 GHz, which would include the current WiFi allocations, and the 6 GHz spectrum which the FCC plans to open up for unlicensed usage (and other countries are likely to follow). The EHT group held its first meeting in Hawaii last month, and has started identifying requirements for a potential amendment to 802.11 to boost peak throughput in mid-band spectrum, bringing it close to that in millimeter wave bands (where the closely related WiGig/802.11ad standards live, but which still have challenges in terms of range and indoor penetration). While the study group seeks…
At its most recent meeting, on October 23, the FCC voted unanimously to move forward with the allocation of an additional 1.2 GHz of unlicensed spectrum in the 6 GHz band (5.925-7.125 GHz). As elsewhere in the spectrum, the US regulator is running out of virgin airwaves and needs to adopt creative solutions to allow wireless broadband services to coexist with incumbent users, without interference. The most complex system has been adopted in the 3.5 GHz CBRS band, which has three tiers of access including unlicensed, and relies on a series of spectrum access systems (SASs) to allocate vacant channels. In the 6 GHz band, the main existing users (in the 5.925-6.425 GHz and 6.525-6.875 GHz portions) are operators of…
Adoption of the new WiFi Alliance standard for multi-access point (AP) mesh, branded EasyMesh, is already a key theme in the unlicensed wireless sector, less than six months after the specification’s release. EasyMesh was developed by the Alliance to encourage interoperability between multi-AP hardware and software from different vendors, in a scenario where multiple APs are coordinated by cloud-based software. A certification program is already underway. However, EasyMesh has some catching up to do, if it is to achieve the mass adoption a standard requires for success – it is still considered to be a few years behind proprietary mesh architectures from the likes of AirTies and Comcast. It may narrow the gap with them in time, but in the…
// M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Arena Solutions acquires Omnify Software, a provider of PLM software for device manufacturers, to incorporate into Arena’s electronics and medical device PaaS. Nokia has joined the Avanci licensing group, set up by Qualcomm and Ericsson back in 2016, bringing the number of participants up to 20. IBM is acquiring Red Hat for $34bn, paying a 61% premium on the share price, to snap up the open source cloud specialist, which has annual revenues of $3bn. Hitachi has sold its Clarion automotive navigation division to Faurecia, and OEM that is 46% owned by Peugeot. At $1.3bn, it’s a 10.5% premium on closing price. Intel has announced record quarterly results, hitting $19.2bn in revenue, with data center…
The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) churns out new working groups at a rapid rate, and its 2018 Summit in London was the launchpad for two particularly interesting ones. Given the intense interest in all things edge-focused, the Edge Application Developer Project may be timely, but also risks further fragmentation in an immature landscape where confusion is holding back real progress. The second is CANDI (see below), which will work on disaggregated cell site gateways, an essential component of future 5G deployments. In many ways, this is the kind of work on which TIP should focus. It aligns directly with the overall goal of driving a commoditized, open hardware platform on which a software-driven network can run, and is an area…
Network infrastructure supplier Commscope is circling Arris for a potential takeover bid, according to Reuters. We feel a deal would make sense, giving Arris the scale to compete with the likes of Samsung and Huawei in the set top sector and move into 5G. Both companies are of a similar size in terms of valuation, Arris with a market cap of a little over $4.3 billion and Commscope valued at $4.7 billion, although Commscope’s share price fell off a cliff back in May when it spoke openly of some tough times ahead. Our gut instinct is that, should a deal be agreed, the Arris management team should take charge of the merged entity – judging by its exemplary track record.…
Almost everything at the Broadband World Forum in Berlin this week was all about speed – and while the big stories we covered this week (see separate stories in this issue) were virtualizing broadband and upping WiFi speeds, there were other items on show that caught our attention. Perhaps the least spectacular was one that interested us the most. After years of listening to G.hn and the world of no new wires, and MoCA for homes that already have Coax, seeing KDPOF from Spain selling chips for Plastic Optical Fiber was somewhat retrograde. The only technology in sigh was the plastic fiber that could be folded into knots and still perform at 1 Gbps, as Carlos Pardo, CEO of the…
Get used to the term OB-BAA – you’re going to hear it a lot over the next two to three years. It stands for Open Broadband – Broadband Access Abstraction and it refers to an abstraction layer in the virtualization of Telco broadband. After a day of hearing it, we asked Stefaan Vanhastel, head of fixed networks marketing at Nokia and he explained why in his view it was important – as the first use case for virtualized telco broadband networks. The explanation givers some background to why one of the events of the show – interoperability between Nokia and Huawei’s OB-BAA implementations – is seen as so significant. Cable has somewhat left Telco broadband in the dust, not just…
Plume pulled off something of a coup at this week’s Broadband World Forum in Berlin, with the CEO announcing that the company was open sourcing some key elements of a WiFi architecture that has helped Plume conquer Comcast, Liberty Global and Bell Canada in WiFi cloud management. It has pretty much been established that the reliability and throughput of WiFi can be helped enormously by managing connections and by having more than one Access Point in a home, far more than just pushing bigger and more powerful chips at the WiFi market. Without Multi-AP WiFi 1 Gbps broadband does not make sense, and without that the future of how we expect mostly OTT video to be distributed comes under pressure,…
One of the world’s most advanced operators in deploying new network architectures is Japan’s NTT Docomo, and the company is boasting of its early stage gains from using commodity servers as it moves towards fully virtualized networks. Although this transition is far from complete, Docomo says it has already achieved 10% reduction in relevant capex. Hiroyuki Oto, general manager of the MNO’s core network development department, said the commodity hardware had resulted in capex savings despite some additional costs associated with management and network orchestration. Oto said 12 types of network function have now been virtualized, including the EPC (evolved packet core) and IMS (Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem). However, most of Docomo’s commercial services are still supported by conventional EPC…
Days after Facebook had revealed the Portal and Portal Plus, direct rivals to Amazon’s Echo Show, Google waded into the smart home video conferencing space with its Google Home Hub. Evidently, video calling is a killer app, drawing the eye of these web giants, but Facebook’s support for Alexa, and apparent enthusiasm for a Google Assistant integration, could provide a neutral host with huge reach for the two camps. Lenovo actually beat Google to market with a video-screen hub based on Google Assistant. Amazon was first out, although the first Echo Show did look a lot less polished than the updated version launched a few weeks ago. For all these devices, there’s not exactly much in the way of clamor…
Mavenir is best known for its virtualized EPC (evolved packet core), but since its acquisition of Ranzure, it is also a player in the open vRAN space too, supporting the emerging open interfaces which will allow networks to be stitched together using RAN, core and transport components from many suppliers. Mavenir is active, in particular, in TIP, CORD and the xRAN group – the former now part of the enlarged Open Networking Foundation platform; the latter in the process of being merged with the Cloud-RAN Alliance to form the ORAN Alliance. None of these open platforms and would-be standards will have much impact if they are not surrounded by a wide ecosystem of partners, and some of the power in…
A worrying number of services, technologies and even entire subsets of video markets hinge on the arrival of 5G and some businesses will crash out before they even get a sniff. But in one area, mixed reality, the 3GPP has completed work just in time to reignite enthusiasm. Last week, the 3GPP Codec and Media Working Group completed work on support for 360-degree VR video streaming services within Release 15, the first set of 5G standards. This came just a few weeks after mixed reality headset developer Magic Leap seemingly packed its bags for pastures new, one of the latest in a series of setbacks for mobile virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) projects. But the latest development should help inject…
Vodafone has discussed plans to introduce ‘outcome-based’ pricing for IoT connectivity, wherein customers are billed according to the outcome of the messages sent over the MNO’s network, rather than billed on a monthly cycle based around a usage limit. The operator’s head of IoT for the Americas, Ludovico Fassati, first mooted the idea at last month’s Mobile World Congress Americas. He said that the MNO had to be creative with its pricing, as it does not have access to the US networks directly. To this end, it would explore a different way of billing for services, given that AT&T, Verizon, and the likely merged Sprint and T-Mobile, will be able to beat it down on pure price alone. So, the…
There were plenty of announcements from supporting vendors at the London TIP Summit (see above), and one that caught our eye came from software integrator Aricent. The company has partnered with Intel, Fairwaves and Baicell on an open reference design for LTE virtualized RAN. Many operators originally expected to start deploying vRAN for 4G expansion, but their plans have been set back by the cost and complexity of the architecture, and especially the costly, proprietary nature of current fronthaul solutions (to link the centralized baseband and the remote radio units). Indeed, Rethink’s most recent survey of almost 100 MNOs found that many operators would not even deploy vRAN for their first phase of 5G roll-out, especially if they fall into…
The motivation for large operators to join groups like Telecom Infra Project is to open up the mobile network ecosystem, giving them access to a more competitive and innovative vendor landscape; reducing reliance on a few OEMs, and the risk of lock-in; and driving down cost dramatically ahead of 5G. It is clear that operator pressure, the entry of suppliers and practices from more open ecosystems like WiFi, and the new mechanisms to support start-ups, will all help to change the norms of the mobile industry. But if the large vendors adapt quickly enough, and agree to support the new open interfaces, disaggregated architectures and cost levels, will the world really be any easier for start-ups and independent suppliers? The…
As TIP increasingly casts its eyes across every element of the disaggregated telco network, it is considering yet another new project group, this one focused on the RAN. It already has OpenRAN and OpenCellular to produce low cost access points and open fronthaul protocols but the projected new group would be more 5G-specific. The aim would be to develop a white box reference design for 5G New Radio (NR), an equivalent of the OpenCellular (which covers 2G, 3G and 4G) for the new RAN. The group would define white box reference designs and the interfaces within and between disaggregated 5G NR elements. That would enable protocol stack suppliers to support different features and functionality, all running on the same open…
The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) churns out new working groups at a rapid rate, and its 2018 Summit in London was the launchpad for two particularly interesting ones. Given the intense interest in all things edge-focused, the Edge Application Developer Project may be timely, but also risks further fragmentation in an immature landscape where confusion is holding back real progress. The second is CANDI (see below), which will work on disaggregated cell site gateways, an essential component of future 5G deployments. In many ways, this is the kind of work on which TIP should focus. It aligns directly with the overall goal of driving a commoditized, open hardware platform on which a software-driven network can run, and is an area…
Four months after the Telecom Infra Project’s OpenRAN project group issued a request for information (RFI), it has announced those vendors which best met the scope of that RFI. The aim of the process is to identify and highlight suppliers which may be well positioned to execute on the vision of an open, disaggregated, virtualized mobile network in future. Vodafone and Telefónica both issued their own RFIs, based on the TIP OpenRAN one. In future, we might expect these independent suppliers to be joined by some new challengers, currently being incubated under the TIP Enterprise Acceleration Center (TEAC) program. Companies like Athonet and BISDN, among others, are being supported by four TEACs, established by BT, DT, Telefónica and SK Telecom,…