Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
ARM and Nvidia have announced a partnership that will combine Nvidia’s open source Deep Learning Accelerator software and framework (NVDLA) with ARM’s recently announce Project Trillium – to create a chip design that can be used for machine-learning and AI applications at the network edge. Essentially, this is a way for developers to take advantage of Nvidia’s development ecosystem, to more easily create applications for ARM-based chips. Project Trillium, announced in the run up to MWC, continues ARM’s strategy of designing chips that can then be licensed by other companies and manufactured. ARM had said that third-party designs could be integrated under the Trillium umbrella, and the Nvidia NVDLA seems to be the first instance of this. Strangely, Trillium won’t…
A data-driven video advertising unit will launch later this year within NCC Media, the cable media group owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox Communications. Comcast’s Media 360 advertising arm will combine resources with the partner firms to design, deploy and sell unified ad solutions across NCC’s footprint in the US, delivering targeted audiences across linear and VoD platforms – using “non-personally identifiable data and targeting capabilities.” Satellite transmission technology provider NovelSat has extended its partnership with French encoding firm Ateme, integrating its PCIe-based NS10C Satellite Modulator cards and NS20C Satellite Demodulator cards into Ateme’s Titan software converged headend. The tie up is targeting broadcasters launching HD and UHD transmission, with the joint system including high efficiency satellite signal modulation within…
Sky’s ambitious broadband-only TV initiative is set to make its mark in Italy from summer 2019, following a deal allowing Sky Italia to access Open Fiber’s FTTH network. The operator’s pay TV service Sky Q will be delivered over fiber, bringing next-gen features and faster streaming speeds to Italian users with the aim of stemming the flow of subs from pay TV over to OTT. In addition, the move adds some substance to long standing rumors of Sky going full quad play in Italy via an MVNO partnership – giving Sky Italia the option to use Open Fiber’s network infrastructure for wireless backhaul. Some see FTTH networks working as complementary to mobile networks, delivering rapid data transfer speeds between mobile…
Orange is fighting a long slow battle for survival in Belgium, but back in February it received a bit of a blow, with Telenet signing up local cable conglomerate VOO, as an MVNO. This used the Base mobile network which Telenet acquired from KPN when previously VOO had been with Orange. If Orange does not acquire the municipal run VOO, there is every chance that Telenet will – despite the fact that Liberty Global right now is more interested in selling in Europe, than buying – which is why this week Orange has expressed an interest in acquiring VOO. For a long time it was obvious that Orange, as a purely mobile operator, had a limited future in Belgium, a…
The video codec scene has lit up pre-NAB, the first big trade show following the debut version 1.0 launch of disruptive royalty-free codec AV1 last week. Crucially, disruption will come from where vendor loyalties lie in the patent licensing pool divide, with one firm which perhaps doesn’t pull as much media attention as the encoding big hitters, Israeli compression specialist Beamr, releasing a new transcoder for HEVC streaming to HLS devices this week. “AV1 is quite possibly for the future, but HEVC is today,” was the message from Beamr’s VP of Marketing Mark Donnigan, speaking to Faultline Online Reporter at Mobile World Congress. Before we dive into the new Beamr Transcoder VoD’s specs, Beamr claims its framework can be readily…
While there are no detailed documents on their websites, it is now obvious that there is a very public fight for CBS to takeover Viacom, including leaks this week to Variety and Reuters, which are pretty much in full agreement that a low ball bid has already been made and already been rejected, signaling that talks are now on in earnest. The low bid shows the ruthless streak in Leslie Moonves, who has clearly realized that the lower the value of Viacom in such a deal, the higher value his existing CBS Class B non-voting stock and options amount to in the combined entity. If he has to take over Viacom, he wants to make sure he gets fully compensated…
Google has openly criticized the FCC’s management of the critical C-band debate in the past, claiming a third of all FCC-registered C-band satellite dishes are abandoned and calling to free up spectrum for a new fixed wireless service. The tech giant has now weighed in with a potential solution which would apparently satisfy satellite, mobile and fixed wireless players – while simultaneously bashing the recent, similar plan from SES and Intelsat. By opening up a 100MHz slice of spectrum at 3,700MHz to 3,800MHz for mobile 5G in densely populated urban areas, Google claims this may enable some level of global harmonization – in a “win-win-win” situation. In a proposal submitted last week in collaboration with the BAC (Broadband Access Coalition),…
Wireless Watch’s sister service, Faultline, which analyzes digital video and WiFi issues, has been critical of the European Commission’s €120m scheme to expand WiFi hotspots. The latest supporter of its view is Niklas Agevik, CEO at Instabridge, which markets a ‘free’ WiFi app – he took to social media recently to label the EU initiative a “marketing scam”. Agevik boasts spending his entire professional career in telecoms with five years at Ericsson, two at Payfone in the US and the last five years building Instabridge. He says the €120m has been put aside by the European Union on the say-so of Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, although it was voted through in a larger European Parliament appropriations bill.…
The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and the IPSO Alliance have merged to create a new mobile technologies and IoT-focused standards body – OMA SpecWorks. It’s another instance of consolidation in the IoT domain, though the overall pace of standards in this world is still slow. Not that this sometimes glacial pace is preventing progress. Businesses are driving innovation, even if standards efforts do not keep pace. The pace of change has quickened recently thanks to consolidation and interoperability agreements, but there is definitely a sense that many of the organizations engaged with IoT specifications should have been closely linked or merged from the start. The OMA-IPSO merger follows previous cooperation between the two groups. The pair are aiming to provide…
Cisco has clung to its integrated model – hardware and software inextricably bound together – for longer than most companies, but even the router giant has to accept the changes to its world, wrought by white box hardware, open source software and multivendor interoperability. So the company has made one of its most radical changes of direction ever, agreeing to sell some of its software, particularly for service providers, separately from its hardware, and enabling the software to run on third party devices. This reveals the pressure Cisco is under, as its market share in core sectors, such as switching, has declined (though in data center switching it is still over 50%), partly because of challenges from companies which do…
AT&T has led the charge in contributing inhouse developments to open source processes, in a bid to accelerate adoption of new software-driven network technologies, and increase its own influence over the whole ecosystem. But it is not the only carrier to take this approach. A smaller US player, CenturyLink, told the recent Open Networking Summit that it is planning to donate part of its NFVi orchestration process to the open source community. Adam Dunstan, VP of SDN/NFV engineering at CenturyLink, said that his team has extracted the Service Logic Interpreter from a module of the ONAP (Open Network Automation Protocol) platform. ONAP is one of the Linux Foundation-hosted systems which is largely based on AT&T code (along with ORAN and…
One of the most important trends we track at Wireless Watch is the changing pattern of capex investment in mobile networks. Early indications are that operators will deploy 5G more gradually, in most cases, than they did 4G, using it to complement LTE rather than replace it, and spreading the spend over more years – at least a decade, according to China Mobile. They are also looking for a very different cost base, with increasingly commoditized white box hardware, even at the base station end, and a shift towards software and hosted services. Another expected change is that operators will be far more open than they were in the past to co-investment with non-traditional partners. In the past decade, where…
Two ambitious start-ups aim to provide an open, nationwide platform across the US to support communications for robots, drones and driverless vehicles, and to process the data they produce. Hangar, which has developed a Robotics-as-a-System (RaaS) offering, initially targeting the construction sector, is working with Vapor IO, an edge compute specialist which has been working closely with the mobile industry. The RaaS will be powered by Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge infrastructure and will support drone deployments on an as-a-service basis for industrial applications like construction site monitoring and environmental data collection after a disaster. That will be just the first step to an open platform accessible to many sectors, the partners say. The importance of the edge infrastructure is to…
The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and the IPSO Alliance have merged to create a new mobile technologies and IoT-focused standards body – OMA SpecWorks. It’s another step forward for consolidation in the IoT standards domain, which has also seen the OCF swallow the AllSeen Alliance, but the overall pace of standards in the IoT world is still slow. Not that this sometimes glacial pace is preventing progress. The IoT is still definitely a thing that businesses are driving forward, in chase of objective business benefits. However, the rash of standards projects launched in the past few years have collectively moved fairly slowly. Things have improved via consolidation and interoperability agreements recently, but there was definitely a sense that the swathe…
Distributed network architecture supplier Streamroot has formed a product integration with digital video technology firm castLabs, creating compatibility between Streamroot DNA and Prestoplay, castLabs’ suite of player SDKs which includes an HTML5 player for browsers, plus SDKs for Android, iOS and desktop apps. The duo say the benefit to OTT video providers is easy deployment, unrivaled CDN offload, cost reduction, improved QoS and increased delivery capacity during peak traffic. UK regulator Ofcom has issued a statement on measures for increasing full fiber broadband network investments. Ofcom has ordered BT to make its telegraph poles and underground tunnels open to rival providers. Ofcom has also decided not to regulate the prices of Openreach’s fastest wholesale superfast broadband, while cutting the price…
The bid of US cable giant Comcast, for Sky, which operates in Europe using DTH and OTT video, has run the full gamut of being described as a stroke of genius (by us), widespread US analyst approval and now we are on to despair. The simple reason is that the share price of Comcast has collapsed by around 20% since the bid was launched. Comcast has not said just how it intends to pay for Sky just yet, but presumably with some element coming from those self-same shares. At least one US analyst, including some who have praised the deal, have now turned full circle and begun to ask if CEO Brian Roberts will change this mind, purely because he…
We came across another organization this week which does not like the European Commission wasting €120 million on new WiFi hotspots, and this one went as far as describing it all as “a marketing scam.”The comments came on social media from Niklas Agevik, CEO at Instabridge, which markets a “free” WiFi app. Agevik boasts spending his entire professional career in telecoms with five years at Ericsson, two at Payfone in the US and the last five years building Instabridge. He says the €120 million has been put aside by the European Union on the say so of Jeans Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, although it was voted through in a larger European Parliament appropriations bill. The European Commission…
Within minutes of each other, encoding rivals Ateme and Harmonic announced new ATSC 3.0 partnerships this week in the run up to NAB. The broadcast standard has promised to revolutionize over the air (OTA) television but still there remains a distinct lack of ATSC 3.0-capable consumer devices – and industry players will be hoping next month’s Las Vegas show floor doesn’t mirror the sorry sights for ATSC 3.0 witnessed at CES back in January. To US firm Harmonic first, which is aiming to accelerate ATSC 3.0 adoption by signing up for the Phoenix Model Market Initiative, a collaborative effort headed up by broadcast partnership group Pearl TV, plus TV station affiliates of Scripps, Fox Television Stations, Meredith, Nexstar, Tegna, Telemundo…
The first set of 5G New Radio (NR) standards – for Non-Standalone (NSA) systems – may be finalized, but that is just a drop in the ocean when it comes to the full 5G platform. Not only does 3GPP have to complete Release 15 in June with the Standalone version of NR, plus the 5G Core Network, but it is already engaged in initial work on study items for Release 16. That should be ratified next year, and will significantly enhance 5G capabilities, especially when it comes to new use cases enabled by ultra-low latency, massive density, device-to-device communications and unlicensed spectrum. Last week, a 3GPP plenary meeting was held in Chennai, India. Lorenzo Casaccia, VP of technical standards at…
Two ambitious start-ups aim to provide an open, nationwide platform across the US to support communications for robots, drones and driverless vehicles, and to process the data they produce. Hangar, which has developed a Robotics-as-a-System (RaaS) offering, initially targeting the construction sector, is working with Vapor IO, an edge compute specialist which has been working closely with the mobile industry. The RaaS will be powered by Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge infrastructure and will support drone deployments on an as-a-service basis for industrial applications like construction site monitoring and environmental data collection after a disaster. That will be just the first step to an open platform accessible to many sectors, the partners say. The importance of the edge infrastructure is to…