Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Mapping provider Here has acquired Advanced Telematics Systems (ATS) this week, hoping to augment its Open Location Platform (OLP) with the German software company – which specializes in over-the-air (OTA) updates for automotive applications. It comes after a partnership announcement with Fujitsu, which will act as a system integrator for Here in automotive and smart city projects, and a smaller installation win with Hyundai. But the big news for Here is the initial launch of v1.0 of the OLP, to select customers. Here has been leading the market for mapping platforms for cars, although has been having to fend off advances from chief rival TomTom. Here is pursuing a diversification strategy of sorts, providing an application platform akin to Google…
As part of its bid to engage younger, smartphone-addicted viewers, Viacom has pushed ahead into new video formats and technologies under its Viacom NEXT studio. The studio is “working on the future of entertainment,” the company declares on its website, which isn’t quite fully built yet. “With a focus on virtual reality, we are making room-scale interactive music experiences, narrative worlds, games, and exploring live-action capture techniques.” Viacom is desperate to wedge its feet into any open doors at the moment that could lead to more engagement with its target audience: young viewers who don’t watch TV. The studio debuted earlier this year with the launch of a mind-bending music video. It has since released a handful of other VR…
French-Israeli OTT technology outfit Viaccess-Orca has increased focus on its Viaccess security roots by partnering with an expert in hardware root of trust technologies, Rambus, to provide pay TV operators with a system for securing OTT, IPTV and broadcast services – enabling customers to upgrade set top security by adding hardware-dedicated algorithms inside the chipset after deployment. Rambus is bringing its CryptoMedia Content Protection Core, previously called Cryptographic Firewall, to the VO Shield product, targeted specifically at protecting premium content including 4K. We are usually quick to presume that most moves made by Viaccess-Orca are influenced by its parent company Orange, and the same may be true this week as Orange is quickly expanding its 4K Livebox deployments beyond France,…
Disney’s partnership with the relatively unknown German transactional VoD (TVoD) service Pantaflix is perhaps most significant as it follows up a major announcement between Netflix and Deutsche Telekom just last week – signaling that the two new enemies are taking very different routes to market in Europe. While a deal with Deutsche Telekom opens up some 7.3 million pay TV subscribers as potential Netflix customers, plus scope to expand the deal to 160 million mobile subscribers worldwide, Disney is instead hedging its bets on a streaming service that only launched in July 2016 – in what is the fledgling company’s first major studio deal. As of the first quarter next year, Pantaflix users in Germany and Austria will have access…
FCC chairman Ajit Pai has made some creative decisions during his first 10 months at the helm, but is likely to be remembered almost entirely for overturning net neutrality in the US, despite the anger of the Internet majors which have such a huge place in the modern American economy. As the US looks set to become far less open than many of the countries which would like to challenge for that digital leadership – notably India – it may be protecting the business models of its fixed and mobile operators for a few years, but it risks putting the brakes on innovation in the wider telecoms landscape. As he has indicated since taking over from Tom Wheeler in January,…
China’s online advertising market sits somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 billion and growing. The market is dominated by China’s top online firms, including online retailer Alibaba and web services giant Baidu. But the country’s large market size, coupled with a rise in consumer spending over the past decade, has attracted online giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon to compete for advertising dollars. Tencent, however, may be considered a sleeping giant of China’s digital ad market that’s just now getting out of bed. The company, which was founded in 2004, is comprised of seven business units under the umbrella of Tencent Holdings. It operates two social networks, WeChat and QQ, alongside a gaming division and a few online video services…
Nine months after we first heard that Amazon was poised to join the Streaming Video Alliance, the firm has finally put pen to paper by signing up its AWS cloud technology arm. Members don’t come much bigger than AWS, and the latest addition is a huge boost for promoting technical collaboration across the OTT video industry. With Netflix now relying heavily on AWS infrastructure as well as investing R&D dollars in its own streaming technologies, we would not be surprised to see the world’s largest streaming company become the next significant member of the Alliance. However, despite the Streaming Video Alliance boasting some major members, it is less common for giant companies or service providers to join groups pushing for…
These various requirements include, but are not limited to, providing a reference offer, enabling network access upon reasonable request, and not discriminating unduly. The remedies also include charge controls. The UK operators are staking their claim to be trailblazers in 5G (see separate item), but access to high quality, affordable fiber will be as essential to the new networks as advanced radio expertise. The state of the dark fiber market will help decide the 5G winners and losers – plentiful, modern and cost-effective fiber is one factor that puts Japanese operators ahead of the world so can UK regulator level the playing field for UK MNOs? Currently, the mobile operators complain that BT’s wholesale arm, Openreach, restricts affordable access to…
by Simon Thompson Network slicing is the great hope for a brand new business model for 5G, one that would encourage a wealth of new connected services and revenue streams. Telefonica has been a trailblazer, especially in its cooperations with Huawei, but its latest slicing claims are based on work with a start-up, Netsia. It has demonstrated an end-to-end slice which includes the RAN (the toughest part to slice, especially before 5G) – this could support new service models, and also shows how operators believe the new software-defined telco network will open the doors to a new supply chain full of innovative players and price competition. In network slicing, a virtualized, programmable network would allocate the right combination of resources…
FCC chairman Ajit Pai has made some creative decisions during his first 10 months at the helm, but is likely to be remembered almost entirely for overturning net neutrality in the US, despite the anger of the Internet majors which have such a huge place in the modern American economy. As the US looks set to become far less open than many of the countries which would like to challenge for that digital leadership – notably India – it may be protecting the business models of its fixed and mobile operators for a few years, but it risks putting the brakes on innovation in the wider telecoms landscape. As he has indicated since taking over from Tom Wheeler in January,…
While we are often critical of the mobile operators’ slowness to face up to the new world of open networks and services, AT&T is a major exception. The US giant is determined to help write the rules of the new telecoms sector, rather than be tripped up by them later. In so doing, it will hope to defend the interests of the established operators against the web companies which would like to steal their market – by behaving more like those web providers. Whether or not it succeeds, it will have contributed significantly to the wider industry process, in terms of technology and also by showing how a new-look modern telco might work. It has already initiated two industry groups…
AI startups received $1.8bn from investors in the first half of 2017, according to CB Insights. The second half of the year has seen a continuation of the trend, as Graphcore and SenseTime secured large capital financing rounds. This said, AI remains a trend with question marks hanging over it, with many of the industry’s leading researchers still feeling that we are a long way off solving critical issues with AI – like the frame problem, and inference. Typically, when most consider AI, they think of the Googles and Baidus of this world, who spent between $20 to $30bn internally on the area in 2016, according to McKinsey. Much of this effort has been focused on a race to achieving…
IT equipment giant Cisco is evidently frustrated by the pace of the smart city market, and has launched a $1bn fund to help cities get the ball rolling. Providing initial financing, in partnership with pension fund APG, Whitehelm Capital, and private equity firm Digital Alpha Advisors, Cisco is planning on securing some nice stable revenues out of these city projects – and is expanding its Cisco Kinetic for Cities platform. Smart Cities represent a huge opportunity for tech firms looking to expand. However, cities are normally strapped for cash, especially so in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Many cities will be aware of the benefits that smart city tech could provide, but are unable to front the cash…
Deutsche Telekom is the latest pay TV operator to sign an across the board deal with Netflix, having previously signed up only for Germany. DT is one of the largest pay TV operators in Europe, probably 3rd after Sky and Liberty Global, with an estimated 7.3 million customers, with 3.0 million in Germany and another 4.2 million outside it, which have now been opened up to become Netflix customers. Before this, customers in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands had Netflix access, including 4K content. Presumably a deal can also be reached for its 160 million mobile customers around the world at some point. US CCAP equipment provider Casa Systems is finally planning an IPO and says in an S1 filing…
Nine months after we first heard that Amazon was poised to join the Streaming Video Alliance, the firm has finally put pen to paper by signing up its AWS cloud technology arm. Members don’t come much bigger than AWS, and the latest addition is a huge boost for promoting technical collaboration across the OTT video industry. With Netflix now relying heavily on AWS infrastructure as well as investing R&D dollars in its own streaming technologies, we would not be surprised to see the world’s largest streaming company become the next significant member of the Alliance. However, despite the Streaming Video Alliance boasting some major members, it is less common for giant companies or service providers to join groups pushing for…
Linear is now the fastest growing pay OTT sector, especially outside the US where the SVoD brigade still dominate in terms of subscriptions at least. But the bigger picture is that OTT is spreading out across different revenue and business models while the distinction between on demand and linear is fading. It makes little sense to segment the pay OTT market into two boxes one marked SVoD and the other subscription linear, or SLIN, as one of our analyst peers has done. The problem with SLIN is that it is really little more than “not Netflix” since its definition seems to include just about everybody else of any standing, save perhaps for HBO Now. Netflix has gone out of its…
The FCC’s polarizing chairman, Ajit Pai, is in the midst of an extremely aggressive revamp of some of the core tenets of the FCC’s regulatory spirit, and in doing so Pai has garnered serious suspicion from members of Congress. Pai has pushed a handful of controversial agendas that will dramatically change the telecommunications landscape in the US. Those agendas range from loosening media ownership rules, killing Obama-era net neutrality protections, re-instating the UHF discount measure, and even downgrading the definition of “broadband” from 25 Mbps to 10 Mbps. But critics argue that some of Pai’s recent proposals will give one station group owner, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a significant advantage. From the outside, it appears that Pai’s FCC has been surprisingly…
When the deal for AT&T buying Time Warner was announced a year ago we wrote that the three regulators which stand in the way of the deal are the Justice Department (DoJ), The US Federal Trade Commission (ITC) and the FCC. The FCC has a duty of care to not let its assets – such as wireless spectrum – be used to the disadvantage of the consumer. It can block things which are seen as “not in the public’s interest,” which use such assets and it decided to give the deal a pass, leaving it to the other two. But the DoJ and the ITC can only act if the AT&T deal breaks specific clauses in either the Sherman AntiTrust…
The abolishment of geo-blocking in European Union (EU) countries this week has pro-consumer implications in areas such as online shopping, roaming charges and the use of credit cards abroad, but the news for the OTT video industry isn’t so rosy – as the EU’s law makers have U-turned on including streaming services in these new regulations. This goes against everything the European Parliament said in its draft law proposal back in May, which outlined scrapping the act of offering an online content service in one EU country and that country alone. This ruling was set to benefit the OTT video industry across Europe while striking a blow to content pirates, but the European Parliament, European Commission and European Council have…
While a few cheerleaders like AT&T and SK Telecom have blazed the trail in virtualizing their networks and moving away from dedicated, proprietary hardware, others are starting to follow suit. Bell Canada is preparing to replace its core network in readiness for 5G, with a target of moving from “90% customized hardware and 10% software to 10% common hardware and 90% software”, according to EVP Stephen Howe. The shift towards commoditized white box servers and switches running network functions as software – to replace complex, dedicated boxes with their own software – is designed to make the Canadian incumbent more flexible and cost-effective. The change will be implemented in tandem with a process of transforming its central offices into data…