Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
The first case of European consolidation in 2018 has already emerged, as Swedish mobile operator Tele2 announced a $3.3bn takeover of cable TV and broadband provider Com Hem. A mega triple play operator will be born through the merger, putting pressure on incumbent MNO Telia and cable TV rivals TeliaSonera and Telenor’s Canal Digital – in a country renowned for its exceptional broadband speeds. Com Hem has invested significantly in network infrastructure in recent years and also bolstered its TV and fiber to the home opportunities by acquiring Boxer less than two years ago, as well as embracing multiscreen and IP with open arms, which has transformed the company’s TV fortunes. The cable provider has long been looking for a…
Two of the companies which have emerged from Asia to move the goalposts in the mobile industry, Softbank of Japan and Xiaomi of China, are both considering IPOs (initial public offerings). Softbank could be set for an $18bn IPO value if it goes ahead with reported plans to spin off its domestic telecoms units as a separate entity, thereby offering about 30% of its shares to the market. In a statement to the Tokyo stock exchange, Softbank said: “We are always studying various capital strategy options. The listing of Softbank Corp. shares is one such option, but no decision has been made to officially proceed with this course”. However, some analysts expect the IPO to be launched as early as…
The world of low power wide area networks (LPWANs) has started the year in turmoil. T-Mobile USA has become the latest in a very short line of operators to reveal national pricing schemes for these services, bringing a small dose of clarity to a very immature business model. Other operators are still focusing heavily on unlicensed spectrum options like LoRa, which is being expanded significantly by Proximus in Belgium. But another cheerleader for unlicensed LPWAN, Sigfox, has started 2018 with major cutbacks and question marks over its future. In the US, T-Mobile announced the country’s first Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) service plan for low power connected devices. Consumers can access the network – which is deployed on existing LTE infrastructure and spectrum…
Sprint CTO John Saw has thrown cold water, again, over the hype about millimeter wave spectrum for 5G. With Verizon and AT&T vying to be first to deploy 5G (initially for fixed wireless) in high frequency spectrum, Sprint is focusing on its biggest asset – its plentiful holdings of midband spectrum in 2.5 GHz. The US operator was crowing recently when the 3GPP adopted its 2.5 GHz band – which it already uses for high capacity LTE – as an official spectrum option for 5G New Radio (NR). This gives Sprint the chance to refarm 2.5 GHz spectrum in future for 5G, and to make use of some of the airwaves which are currently unused. At the Citi conference in…
Deutsche Telekom is to place its edge compute activities in their own unit, to be branded MobiledgeX. This is just the latest announcement from an operator which is hoping to ride on the tide of interest in edge computing to support new revenues and business relationships. But as we have argued before, this can be a double-edged sword for operators. While ETSI’s Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) architecture has strong telco roots (and was originally mobile-specific), other edge compute platforms clearly envisage enterprises or cloud providers having the upper hand in the value chain. The rise of the connected edge will support the distribution of cloud services and content closer to the user. This will be important to reduce strain on…
Any company which has previously struck gold by focusing primarily on the cellular market now needs to move beyond that as quickly as possible. Nokia, MediaTek, even Apple are feeling the strain of the slowdown in revenue growth in mobile networks and devices. Perhaps the most vulnerable has been Qualcomm – so dominant in chips and patents, it had the furthest to fall, and its past few years have been heavily driven by the need to extend its engineering and licensing expertise to new sectors. At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, it was talking up the successful aspects of those efforts, even under the shadow of a hostile takeover bid from Broadcom. Indeed, one of the…
In the midst of its acquisition by Silicon Labs, Sigma Designs has taken the wraps off of its new 700-Series Z-Wave chips. With heaps of smart home devices being unveiled at CES, Sigma is hoping to push its new silicon’s capabilities into a growing ecosystem that seems to finally be ready to take off. Z-Wave’s chief rival Zigbee shows no signs of going anywhere, but it has been a very notably quiet CES for Thread – though it might still be too early to pass judgment on the newest mesh networking rival, Bluetooth Mesh. The most notable new Z-Wave feature is the claimed ten-year battery life, for devices sending up to ten messages per day, using a coin-cell battery. For…
CES 2018 was packed with new deals and products in the automotive sector. Autonomous driving has once again seen a host of announcements, particularly in terms of real-time mapping, while multiple proponents of Cellular-Vehicle to Everything (C-V2X) have used the show to release their plans for the technology. Here is a rundown of the most notable automotive news from the show so far. Samsung reveals Drvline platform, C-V2X telematics box: Samsung has revealed DrvLine, a modular hardware and software-based platform for autonomous driving. Samsung is claiming that the biggest selling point of DrvLine is that it is an open platform, meaning that OEMs will be able to decide precisely which hardware and software they wish to incorporate in their autonomous…
CES 2017 was the first year that CES seemed as much an automotive conference as a consumer electronics one, and 2018 has been no different. With Intel, Ford, Qualcomm, and Samsung trading blows in the hardware front, Here and main rival TomTom used CES as the stage on which to announce a wave of news that sees them both expand their automotive mapping and services arsenals. Here was going all out at the show, following a smaller flurry of news in December. Its major announcement was the launch of its new Here Mobility division, and specifically the Open Mobility Marketplace (OMM) – the platform that the new wing of Here plans to use to link service providers with potential customers.…
Smart Home and Automotive are the two hot topics at CES this year, with AI only really making any impression on the back of announcements regarding digital assistants. However, two silicon announcements are significant in both the enterprise and consumer markets – with CEVA unveiling its new NeuPro family of network-edge AI processors, and Ambarella launching its new CV1 computer vision range. For CEVA, this is about snaring a share of the low-power devices that want to adopt AI-based processing – outside of the data centers. CEVA is pitching it as a deep learning option for edge-device vendors ‘looking for a streamlined way to quickly take advantage of the significant possibilities that deep neural network technologies offer.’ NeuPro is another…
Altice wants to split its US and European operations into two separate companies, as part of a restructuring plan to reduce debt and simplify the company to enhance accountability and transparency. Altice Europe will include Altice France, Altice International and Altice Pay TV subsidiaries, integrating Altice’s support services businesses into its respective markets and bundling Altice Europe’s premium content activities into one separately funded operating unit. Altice USA will distribute $1.5 billion in cash dividends to all shareholders prior to the split, while Altice NV will use €625 million ($751.6 million) to pay back debt. Patrick Drahi will become president of the Altice Europe board and chairman of the Altice USA board. European media group RTL has acquired Nordic network…
Apple very quietly slipped its membership application to royalty free video compression group the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) at the turn of the year. This is simply a practical step. It will no doubt take about five years for all devices to support AV1, for its performance claims to be borne out and for the royalty free element to be guaranteed. That means that for Apple, a company that likes to take control of all its key architectures, it is time to develop some influence in the enemy camp. It is only from inside this camp that Apple can assert its own patents in compression, but being so late into this game, Faultline Online Reporter would suggest that Apple’s…
Despite mobile operators’ often hyped-up promises for new 5G models, any disruption in the industry in 2017 was driven by non-traditional players, particularly fiber providers such as Iliad of France and new entrants such as India’s Reliance Jio. Both these companies, and others like them, have been chipping away at the mobile market for some years now, but 2017 was the year when their impact on their respective countries was clear to see in terms of the shift in market share and service models. As incumbent rivals started to respond, this year, both are looking to expand on what they have achieved so far, RJio scaling up by acquiring the telecoms assets of Reliance Communications (RCOM), Iliad by making further…
The first case of European consolidation in 2018 is underway as Swedish mobile operator Tele2 announced a $3.3 billion takeover of cable TV and broadband provider Com Hem. A mega triple play operator will be born through the merger, putting pressure on incumbent MNO Telia and cable TV rivals TeliaSonera and Telenor’s Canal Digital – in a country renowned for its exceptional broadband speeds. Com Hem has invested significantly in network infrastructure in recent years and also bolstered its TV and fiber to the home opportunities by acquiring Boxer less than two years ago, as well as embracing multiscreen and IP with open arms, which has transformed the company’s TV fortunes. The cable provider has long been looking for a…
CES 2018 is emblazoned with Google branding in preparation for a year in which the company will go hell for leather against Amazon in the battle for TV and the ever-important role that voice will play in the video ecosystem. A handful of announcements stake their claims as significant from the mountain of press releases this week, combining to paint a picture in which Google leads the pursuit of owning the connected TV, while Amazon is way out front in almost every other connected device – except for smartphones. Google has bagged a new smart TV partner this week to add to its growing list, as it announced a partnership deal with Haier for an Android TV integration on the…
This week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas will see two companies aiming to address one of the biggest concerns over Internet of Things devices – battery life. Ossia and Energous are both focused on long-range wireless charging. The former is publishing its technology specifications as a would-be standard for others to license, while the latter has won FCC approval for its WattUp system, setting the stage for commercial roll-out. Ossia is proclaiming what it calls a global standard for wireless power, pitching its Cota technology as the solution to the problem of charging devices in motion, without line of sight, and at a distance. The Cota Standard 1.0 spec has been released to OEMs, and Ossia will be…
At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), digital assistants – voice-activated and AI-driven – were in the spotlight. These devices have the potential to be the new smartphone for digital services providers, creating a powerful opportunity for Google, Amazon, Apple and others to control the user experience across mobile, smart home and media usage, and to place their content and apps center-stage. Google and Apple succeeded in doing that in the smartphone, but now need additional platforms to drive uptake of their services and their access to customer data. Amazon and other web players failed to break the Apple/Android duopoly in handsets, but see digital assistants as their new chance to shine. So Amazon was trying to keep up the…
Despite mobile operators’ often hyped-up promises for new 5G models, any disruption in the industry in 2017 was driven by non-traditional players, particularly cable providers such as Iliad of France and new entrants such as India’s Reliance Jio. Both these companies, and others like them, have been chipping away at the mobile market for some years now, but 2017 was the year when their impact on their respective countries was clear to see in terms of the shift in market share and service models. As incumbent rivals started to respond, this year, both are looking to expand on what they have achieved so far, RJio scaling up by acquiring the telecoms assets of Reliance Communications (RCOM), Iliad by making further…
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been hailed as significant opportunities for mobile operators. AI/ML has the potential to revolutionize the way operators plan and manage their networks, significantly contributing to the introduction of what Deutsche Telekom calls “brutal automation”, and to better detection of security threats. These techniques could also help MNOs rethink their user experience, supporting new interfaces for consumer applications, Alexa-style, and new customer service tools like chatbots. Another opportunity lies in the assumption that all companies delivering AI-enabled services to mobile users will need to do so over the cellular network. AI and ML have the potential to make sense of the vast quantities of data generated by connected people, cars and ‘things’, and…