Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
The third quarter of 2017 produced a mixed bag of fortunes for broadband operators, with cable majors such as Liberty Global posting poor results, with a 30% net income dive and video subscriber losses. But where some fall, others rise. At present, the ball is in the telco park, and Vodafone was the stand-out performer in Europe in the last quarter, posting a significant uplift in broadband subscribers and a small video customer boost in its first half 2017 filing. Vodafone’s impressive rise to 17.1m broadband customers across Europe, from 12.9m this time last year, builds on the strong mobile and telecoms insurgence into cablecos’ core markets, which has been a long time coming, especially as MNOs tap into wired…
The ramifications of another major deal for Turkish WiFi expert AirTies, this week landing its extenders at Orange in France and Poland, looks on the surface to spell bad news for French TV and WiFi software vendor SoftAtHome – but why would Orange choose to butcher one of its own? WiFi has been a central topic of discussion in our multiple meetings with SoftAtHome this year. The French firm told us at the recent Broadband World Forum event in Berlin that the company has spent two years fine-tuning its Smart WiFi product for its parent company Orange’s Livebox universal home gateway, enabling the Livebox itself to become a WiFi repeater, suggesting that there is no better place for a repeater…
Spanish sensing provider Libelium has begun a transformation, expanding from its focus on sensing hardware and trying to shift the focus onto its Meshlium gateways and supporting software services. With a new cloud partnership with NEC, and a new code-free programming service to support its sensors, the company’s CEO Alicia Asin explained the reasons behind the transition after a decade in its core business. Simply put, Libelium knows that it can’t provide all the hardware needed for the variety of sensing applications in the IoT – and that trying to do so does not scale. Instead, it hopes to provide the gateway services using its Meshlium hubs, and expand its software services too – all while fostering a cloud partner…
The ONAP (Open Network Automation Protocol) is a major power play by AT&T. Although China Mobile also contributed code and other operators are now involved, the heart of the would-be open source standards came from the US operator, which is therefore helping to establish the rules for the new world of automated, software-defined networks, and how they are managed and orchestrated. But the company which may well make the most commercial hay from ONAP is Amdocs, which helped AT&T design and implement the operator’s original inhouse system, ECOMP, and which is making ONAP the basis of a new integration business. The software house is preparing a carrier-grade release of the open source ONAP code, which will also be targeted at…
The semiconductor industry’s consolidation continues, with Marvell making a play for Cavium. Marvell has offered $6bn in cash and stock in the latest major M&A move in this sector – only a week after Broadcom made a play for Qualcomm. If both the acquisitions were to go ahead, Intel would face two far stronger challengers in the server, cloud infrastructure and telecoms hardware markets, since both predators would gain greatly enhanced platforms for these spaces. And the two developers of ARM-based processors for the telecoms space, particularly Cloud-RAN, would be snapped up, creating uncertainty as to whether the powerful platforms which are emerging from Qualcomm and Cavium would be as well supported by the new parents. So, as Intel tries…
Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Uber has secured an investment of up to $10bn from SoftBank, after disagreements that leaked out of discussions appear to have been settled. $1bn is confirmed, the rest is optional, and could give SoftBank up to 20% of the struggling ride-sharing startup. Intel says its IoT group has posted record results, hitting $843m in Q3, up 23% year-on-year. However, much of its apparently now-canned hardware accounted for $680m of that total. Raytheon and MetTel have announced a new global security alliance, which they are aiming at governments and industrial customers, looking to protect legacy systems and IoT. Marvell is reportedly buying Cavium for…
The smart home market is behind schedule, and early-adopter enthusiasm has only taken it so far. The next step needed to drive it forward requires a reconsidered approach to design and marketing, and the support of operators and utilities that can offer it as part of an existing service. At the European Smart Home summit, which Riot chaired, the differing approaches and ethos of many companies were presented, with utilities particularly interested in taking a foothold in the home. What follows is a recount of the first day. The second day will be published in next week’s edition. For those who don’t think they have an interest in the smart home, it should be stressed that the sector is likely…
Spanish sensing provider Libelium has begun a transformation, expanding from its impressive range of sensing hardware and trying to shift the focus onto its Meshlium gateways and supporting software services. With a new cloud partnership with NEC, and a new code-free programming service to support its sensors, Libelium’s CEO Alicia Asin explained the reasons behind the transition after a decade in the sensor business. Simply put, Libelium knows that it can’t provide all the hardware needed for the variety of sensing applications in the IoT – and that trying to do so does not scale. Instead, it hopes to provide the gateway services using its Meshlium hubs, and expand its software services too – all while fostering a cloud partner…
Komatsu has signed up Cloudera to provide a machine-learning and analytics platform, to improve its heavy equipment offerings for global mining customers. Running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, the Cloudera Enterprise system will be providing monitoring analytics for the machinery powering surface and underground mining, allowing Komatsu to better serve their customers. Komatsu says the new system has doubled its longwall mining production hours. It’s a big win for Cloudera, a provider of a machine-learning platform and analytics tools, which is now the brains behind the JoySmart Solutions platform, which ingests, stores, and processes data from the machines. It is then used to monitor operations – working out what is ‘normal’ behavior, sending out alerts if dangers are spotted, and guiding…
Broadcom is expected to submit an inflated bid for Qualcomm soon, after its $105 billion offer was rejected earlier this week. The question over whether or not a better offer than $70 a share will win over Qualcomm investors is frankly too close to call, but a hostile takeover looks likely after Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said, “Many have expressed to us their desire that Qualcomm meet with us to discuss our proposal. It remains our strong preference to engage cooperatively with Qualcomm’s Board of Directors and management team.” French security firm Inside Secure has launched its Silicon IP Programmable Root-of-Trust Engine, claiming to be the industry’s first RISC-V based platform security system. RISC-V is an open instruction set architecture…
Q3 2017 produced a mixed bag of fortunes, with cable majors such as Liberty Global posting frankly unsurprisingly poor results, with a 30% net income dive and video subscriber losses, but where some fall, others rise. At present, the ball is in the telco park, where Vodafone was perhaps the standout performer in Europe in the last quarter, posting a significant uplift in broadband subscribers and a small video customer boost in its first half 2017 filing. Vodafone’s impressive rise to 17.1 million broadband customers across Europe from 12.9 million this time last year builds on the strong telco insurgence into cable which has been a long time coming, as cellular operators tap into wired infrastructure for cellular backhaul. Granted,…
A headline passed our desk this week suggesting that US DTH player Dish Network has gone “All in” on Voice Control. It’s a cute gambling expression when you bet whatever you have left on one hand and in Dish’s case, it may well be appropriate. Stock at Dish is not quite at a 52-week low, but currently there are no rumors about it merging with anyone or a lucrative deal to sell off its mountain of spectrum, and it has been those two items that have confounded investors throughout the year, instead of its obvious fundamentals, which suggest that it is in 5 year transition from a $15 billion DTH company, to one with far lower costs, which does $5…
The ramifications of another major deal for Turkish WiFi expert AirTies, this week landing its extenders at Orange in France and Poland, looks on the surface to spell bad news for French TV and WiFi software vendor SoftAtHome – but why would Orange choose to butcher one of its own? WiFi has been a central topic of discussion in Faultline Online Reporter’s multiple meetings with SoftAtHome this year, telling us at the recent Broadband World Forum event in Berlin that the company has spent two years fine-tuning its Smart WiFi product for its parent company Orange’s Livebox universal home gateway, enabling the Livebox itself to become a WiFi repeater, suggesting that there is no better place for a repeater than…
Google getting its AI-driven Assistant technology into Sony’s Android TV sets is one of the easiest decisions the search giant has ever had to make – a move that could spearhead the beginning of a significant fightback against Amazon Alexa in the smart home battle. It is unclear to what extent users will be able to use Amazon’s Echo smart speaker (also driven by an AI application, Alexa) with the Sony Android TVs, now that Google Assistant is integrated. The fact that the touchscreen Echo does not allow YouTube videos to be played suggests Google and Amazon would rather butt horns, but consumer pressure may make that impossible. Despite devices from Google, Amazon and more providing access to third party…
At last there is a version of a cellular broadcasting standard which has been created with input from commercial broadcasters, and is not just the pipe dream of the mobile operator community. There have been so many false dawns for mobile TV that there is inevitable skepticism, when yet another attempt is made to get it off the ground. But there are two big differences this time around. Firstly, people are now consuming video on mobile devices in industrial quantities anyway. A lot of that consumption via tablets is over WiFi, but the fastest growth has been through smartphones by people on the road. Secondly, for the first time broadcasters have got on board and shaped the development of the…
The survival of the mobile-only business model is looking shaky and that is driving MNOs to seek fixed-line acquisitions and partnerships – mainly based around fiber, but with some operators also placing their hopes on 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) as a way to deliver fixed/mobile and quad play bundles, at lower capex cost. In the UK, mobile-only operators like Telefonica O2 and Three say they are evaluating FWA, while infrastructure provider Arqiva recently acquired millimeter wave spectrum in the 28 GHz band in London, and carried out demonstrations of a potential wholesale 5G fixed network, working with Samsung. But the main concern of MNOs in the country is to have an alternative to Openreach – BT’s wholesale arm –…
After years providing racks and protocol stacks, and other under-the-bonnet offerings, Radisys is carving out a new – and higher profile – identity for itself as the heart of the M-CORD project. This open source initiative is part of the wider CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) movement, which is gaining momentum amid telcos’ moves towards virtualization, software-defined networking (SDN) and edge computing. Radisys contributed its own virtualized EPC (evolved packet core) framework to M-CORD a year ago, but operators are insistent that their next generation platforms must be multivendor as well as open source. So now, Radisys has integrated another vEPC, from Mavenir, into its implementation of the M-CORD code, providing an open reference solution for the system…
Qualcomm has announced the commercial shipment of Centriq 2400, the server processor range on which it is basing its attack on Intel’s heartland in the cloud infrastructure market. It was boosted by endorsements from three of the webscale giants which will be key targets for new server architectures – Microsoft Azure, Google and Alibaba (though no confirmed deals, and an absence of Amazon or Facebook). The system-on-chip, announced last year, is the first server processor to be manufactured in the 10 nanometer process and claims to be the highest performance ARM-based server chip, as it takes on not just Intel, but more established vendors of data center and cloud processors based on the ARM architecture, notably Cavium. “Today’s announcement is…
Qualcomm is coming out fighting, as everyone would expect from the bruising San Diego chip provider. It has rejected Broadcom’s $103bn takeover offer (plus $25bn debt), which could now go hostile, or spark a bidding war. And the rejection was accompanied by a string of announcements which highlighted the strengths Qualcomm still has, despite its legal and competitive battles – strengths which could still enable it to remain independent. The company touted a string of deals signed with customers in China – the source of many of its woes in recent years; as well as the commercial shipment of its first server processor, designed to open up new markets in data centers and cloud platforms; and the promise of a…
Facebook’s ambition to turn the telco’s network supply chain upside-down is unbridled. At last week’s annual summit for its Telecom Infra Project (TIP), operators, start-ups and other partners were discussing radical ways to build a cellular network that would be as affordable and simple as WiFi. The projects are ticking many of the MNOs’ current hot boxes – sub-$1,000 base stations, open and interoperable networks, artificial intelligence to support extreme automation. The TIP was launched in February 2016 and now has over 500 members. Axel Clauberg, the TIP chairman, who is also VP of innovation at Deutsche Telekom, said: “I strongly believe we need some exponential innovation to master the exponential growth challenge.” Santiago Tenorio, group head of networks strategy…