Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Orange and Deutsche Telekom are increasingly common collaborators on many projects from shared infrastructure to Facebook TIP incubator programs. What most of these cooperations have in common is a bid to slash costs through sharing and open technologies. Their latest project is no exception – it focuses on using open source software and standards to create a common platform to integrate smart home devices, streamlining management and operating costs, and supporting a wide range of services and devices. The platform chosen by the two telcos as the basis for their smart home framework is the venerable open source Eclipse Foundation, which offers software development platforms for various scenarios. At its EclipseCon event this week in Germany, Orange (which has just…
Tensions between the satellite and terrestrial wireless communities have been rising for years as mobile operators (often backed by their governments) have tried to muscle into satellite spectrum. They have often argued that satellite spectrum is underused, while MNOs face a shortage of airwaves, but as the 5G era approaches, satellite is actually enhancing its role in the patchwork of broadband delivery, and there is a rising need for both sides to drop hostilities and work together in many areas of 5G, from spectrum sharing to combined access and backhaul solutions for connecting the underserved. Many of these arguments are rehearsed first in the US, and at the FCC’s next meeting on November 16, some of the key issues will…
The rising importance of edge computing is both a major opportunity and a major headache for mobile operators. On the one hand, the distribution of cloud resources – processing, storage, memory and services – to the network edge and even as far out as the device, plays to their natural strengths. MNOs understand how to plan, route and optimize highly distributed networks with large numbers of often moving end points, and the edge model puts greater weight on the connectivity – often wireless – than a heavily centralized cloud platform. In the central model, they run the risk of the connectivity between the cloud and the devices being commoditized. In the edge cloud, there is the potential to integrate those…
If one thing was clear at Broadband World Forum (BBWF) in Berlin last week, it was that nobody can afford to be religious about their choice of broadband technology any more. Fiber, copper, wireless – all of these will not just be used in parallel by the same operators, but will increasingly be converged under access-agnostic platforms to support network slicing, network-as-a-service and software-defined access. In this scenario, some of the arguments about the survival of copper, and the pros and cons of G.fast, already sound old-fashioned. G.fast is not fiber, but it is hard to imagine it will not play a valuable role for many operators. While the UK’s BT and Germany’s DT have been early trialists, G.fast is…
Broadband World Forum (BBWF) used to be an event which scarcely appeared on Wireless Watch’s radar, but that is no longer true. Wireless is becoming more central to the broadband world, whether because of the revival of interest in fixed wireless access (FWA) or because telcos and cablecos need to add a mobile service to their multiplay bundles. And wireline broadband technologies are increasingly vital to mobile operators. Backhaul is no longer a matter of choosing between a leased T1 line or purchasing a microwave licence. As cells get smaller, and networks become virtualized, many different fibre and copper options are being considered for backhaul and fronthaul (see separate item on G.fast). Deutsche Telekom took the wireless/wireline convergence theme a…
Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // FedEx has acquired Northwest Research, a company specializing in inventory research and management, hoping to expand its e-commerce capabilities for “at-risk shipments.” Digi International has acquired TempAlert for $45m, a provider of connected temperature monitoring systems for food services, healthcare, and industrial customers. Delphi is acquiring nuTonomy for $450m, adding the startup software specialist to drive Delphi’s autonomous driving initiative – adding over 100 employees. Enel has acquired eMotorWerks, using its EnerNOC subsidiary, to add the EV-charging infrastructure specialist and iits JuiceNet platform to Enel’s growing portfolio. // Laws, Regulation, and Lawsuits // Microsoft is dropping a lawsuit against the US,…
Two weeks ago, Intel announced the launch of its Saffron Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Advisor service, based on software it acquired with Saffron, and running on top of its Xeon CPU hardware. Promising an unsupervised machine-learning capability, Intel has signed the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) as the first customer for the system, which will hunt for signs of fraud and money laundering, in a notable win for Intel. The key to the new approach is Associative Memory, which Intel says will find and explain ‘multidimensional patterns’ inside bank or insurance data. That data is often rather unstructured, which has been the stumbling block for automated systems in the past. Thanks to the new approach, Intel says that the Saffron AML…
Liberty Global has renewed its product agreements with TiVo and signed a multi-year extension for intellectual property to access patent portfolios, most of which presumably come from the Rovi side of the business. Helmet-mounted display maker Everysight has selected the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410E embedded platform to power its Raptor AR Smartglasses, to be released soon on an invite-only basis, costing €579. The Raptor device is targeted at cyclists and triathletes, providing a multimedia display showing data such as route navigation, time, distance, speed, heart rate, cadence and power. The Snapdragon 410E allows for up to 8 hours of usage and integration with WiFi, Bluetooth and ANT, the wireless sensor network owned by Garmin – allowing Raptor to interface with the…
Recent moves from OTT video firms in Europe have applied some added pressure to Zattoo, but the Swiss internet TV provider has won an opportunity to quell its doubters with its first US win, at Florida-based telco Hotwire Communications – deploying the Zattoo End-To-End platform and service to “several hundreds of thousands of customers.” Since its inception 10 years ago, Zattoo has racked up around 550,000 active subscribers in Germany, so being immediately tasked with a few hundred thousand extra will be a big test for the company’s technology. Zattoo boasts around 34 million monthly views on its free ad-supported offering, but there is much more at stake when serving video services to an operator’s customer base. Hotwire is launching…
Convincing operators and vendors of the benefits brought about by a multi-technology, open approach has been a difficult task for those pushing the development and adoption of particular network technologies, but there was an air of change arriving at Broadband World Forum (BBWF) in Berlin this week. Faultline Online Reporter attended an event hosted by US network equipment vendor Adtran, which discussed a mixed bag of network technologies, but what stood out was that every single presentation throughout the day mentioned a multi-vendor approach. This was refreshing to see from a vendor, as the benefits of using technologies from multiple sources is more obvious from the point of view of a large operator. Meanwhile, one of Adtran’s key European rivals,…
The major US cablecos have been setting the pace in incorporating wireless into their service strategies, and until now Comcast has been the frontrunner. But its actual commercial launch only came this year, and was followed quickly by an alliance with Charter to cooperate on mobile services, bringing the two largest cable operators together in an axis which could be a threat, down the line, to the mobile carriers. Now Charter has provided more detail on its own plans to support wireless and converged services, and eventually a quad play to challenge Verizon and AT&T. Although the US cablecos dabble periodically with acquiring spectrum (Comcast secured airwaves in the recent 600 MHz auction), they have scarcely deployed licensed cellular networks…
Broadband technology G.fast is about to be put through its paces by nbn (National Broadband Network) in Australia – the government broadband initiative which has been plagued with bad press since it was first announced in 2007. nbn’s troubles have been well documented, but this week saw the unveiling of the true extent of its financial calamity – which is why the importance of this move to G.fast cannot be overstated. At an Adtran event in Berlin this week, nbn’s Executive Manager of Corporate Media, Tony Brown, rolled out a refreshingly honest reel of costs associated with the mammoth fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network deployment scheme. The bill has amounted to $49 billion Australian dollars (US$37.8 billion) – spiraling wildly out of…
The connected and autonomous car is one of the most competitive areas for chip designers and Nvidia and Intel stepped up their battle last week. Nvidia unveiled the next generation of its Drive PX sensor fusion computers – codenamed Pegasus. Meanwhile, Intel hopes to make a splash with a new mathematical formula to ensure that self-driving cars never crash, while ARM is racking up wins for its new Cortex-R52 core, with Denso announcing that it had taken out an extensive licence. Nvidia seems to have significantly shrunk the size of the computer, with the on-stage presentation at its GTC event in Munich claiming that Pegasus is roughly the size of a licence plate – and capable of providing the compute…
The major US cablecos have been setting the pace in incorporating wireless into their service strategies, and until now Comcast has been the frontrunner. But its actual commercial launch only came this year, and was followed quickly by an alliance with Charter to cooperate on mobile services, bringing the two largest cable operators together in an axis which could be a threat, down the line, to the mobile carriers. Now Charter has provided more detail on its own plans to support wireless and converged services, and eventually a quad play to challenge Verizon and AT&T. Although the US cablecos dabble periodically with acquiring spectrum (Comcast secured airwaves in the recent 600 MHz auction), they have scarcely deployed licensed cellular networks…
A new and highly strategic alliance between Nokia and AWS highlights the new power politics of a world in which telecoms and IT are colliding and new revenues will be heavily driven by the distributed cloud and the edge network. The companies will cooperate in many areas from SD-WAN services to edge cloud reference architectures to IoT applications – in the kind of partnership which puts the MNO’s hopes of a brand new 5G business case at risk. It was inevitable that the webscale giants would want a key place in the telco network as the cloud moved to be fully distributed to every user and even connected object. But extending their control from their data centers right to the…
Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Westbase has acquired Control Limited, a maker of a cellular telemetry modem that is widely used in motorsport, adding the company to Westbase’s cellular distributor offerings. Truphone has acquired Cellnetrix, a German specialist in embedded and SIM OS solutions that has had its products included in some 250m mobile devices. Assa Abloy has acquired August, a maker of connected door locks. No price has been given, but the $23bn (owner of Yale) will have seen August’s encouraging progress. Lyft has closed a $1bn funding round, led by Alphabet, which values the company at $11bn – a big growth from its March…
Sigfox’s World IoT Expo was a stage on which a raft of new deals was announced, expanding its coverage and partner ecosystem. The launch of Admiral Ivory, a disposable radio option for asset tracking was the most interesting piece of news, and Riot spoke with CEO Ludovic Le Moan to get the run-down of the news. Le Moan said that the event was a success, with over a thousand attendees, and it was certainly a platform on which to announce a raft of new deals – which the company hopes will speed its growth. Sigfox has been growing steadily since its inception, but still hasn’t achieved the hockey-stick growth that many anticipated – although the same can be said of…
The auto industry seems to announce things in waves, and after a lull, a torrent has sprung forth. The largest breaker comes from Nvidia, which unveiled the next generation of its Drive PX sensor fusion computers – codenamed Pegasus. However, Intel hopes to make a splash with a new mathematical formula to help self-driving cars never crash, and ARM is racking up wins for its new Cortex-R52 SoCs, with Denso announcing that it had taken out an extensive license. Nvidia seems to have significantly shrunk the size of the computer, with the on-stage presentation at its GTC event in Munich claiming that Pegasus is roughly the size of a license plate – and capable of providing the compute power for…
Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft have launched Gluon, a new open source deep-learning interface that the pair hope will allow developers to more easily build machine-learning computing models – and boost demand for AWS and Azure’s cloud computing services. The pair have collaborated on entwining their Cortana and Alexa digital assistants in the past, so aren’t strangers to AI-based cooperation, but are firm rivals in the cloud computing market. So now that the introduction is out of the way, we can note that it is still very early days for the AI and ML markets – with the developer ecosystems still taking shape, and no clear standard approach taking the lead. There are still dozens of ways of doing roughly the…