Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Almost two years have flashed by since Faultline Online Reporter last covered Net Insight, but at IBC last week we discovered that the Swedish IP video vendor has finally given its True Live video synchronization software a name, calling it Sye, and also struck an integration deal at the show with Ericsson for the UDN (Unified Delivery Network) content distribution service. We get the impression that Net Insight has struggled to win customers for its True Live product, not due to the technology itself being flawed as the demos we have been shown look impressive, but simply because of the demand from broadcasters to have a perfectly synchronized video ecosystem across multiple screens is not high enough. Sports broadcasters have…
Plenty of piracy news and security deals came of out IBC, presenting some positive steps forward for the industry and good news for the technology vendors, but the growing reliance on security can also spell trouble for service providers and their respective CDN suppliers – as networks are burdened with handling more and more components in video content such as forensic watermarking. CDN technology firm Edgeware addressed these issues last week, announcing an integration deal with ContentArmor’s watermarking technology and talked up the case for operators to build out their own CDN architecture. Edgeware’s CMO Richard Brandon broke down watermarking into two methods in our IBC meeting – manifest-based and bitstream-based watermarking. The issue here is that there has to…
When we first heard that some of the TV companies wanted to put a feature into TVs they make, which allowed you to change channel by voice command, Faultline Online Reporter could not be less excited. On its own, the ability to change a TV channel is little more than a gimmick. When Siri came out, we can remember being positively irritated at the voice and the stupid way that every iPhone owner just HAD to show us how clever it was, when all it did was regurgitate Wikipedia entries. But the idea of an ever present voice assistant, which moves from your car to your home to your place of work, which is always on hand, who knows you…
The final point made by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson at the Goldman Sachs event (see above) was that he has to deliver 1Gbps in both fixed and mobile wireless to support the telco’s full vision for converged services, content and media. His presentation seemed to signify a more rounded strategy for 5G+content/media than Verizon’s. AT&T has better assets, both in the network and the multiplay, and it looks tough for its rival to beat that without a really barn-storming content deal (and there aren’t many candidates in the US), or a reversion to its traditional approach, that of investing in having the highest quality network experience. That, however, would need to go beyond being narrowly first to launch 5G services…
Not virtual reality, machine learning or AI, but it was a company name that claimed the IBC buzzword crown in Amsterdam this week. Among the countless vendors Faultline Online Reporter spoke to at the show, hardly a meeting went by without the mention of an AWS integration and the promising prospects its mega web infrastructure can help spin up as vendors strive for scalability. Two years on since its takeover of encoding pioneer Elemental, the cloud giant is growing exponentially, at around 100% a year. The conclusion we are leaning towards is that if a vendor really wants to scale and take the cloud opportunity by the horns, it really only has two choices, AWS or Azure – and the…
[This article originally appeared in our sister publication, Faultline Online Reporter, which is focused on the video industry.] Comcast claims to have saved tens of millions of dollars of truck roll expenses, by using a machine learning program that can predict with 90% accuracy whether or not it will need to send a technician to a customer’s home to fix connectivity problems. Every operator would love to reduce truck rolls. Estimates of the average costs vary, but tend to be somewhere between $50 and $100 per visit. Even if a company is using the most efficient vehicles possible, those costs are increasing as fuel and labor costs rise. All service operators are well aware that they end up dispatching technicians…
Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Trimble continues its M&A spree, acquiring 10-4 Systems, a supplier of shipment visibility solutions, adding it to Trimble’s Transportation Management Systems (TMS) suite. ARCA has acquired GeoTraq, the maker of one of the smallest cellular tracking modules, looking to add the feature to ARCA’s utility appliance recycling programs. Alphabet is reportedly preparing a $1bn investment in Lyft, according to Bloomberg, with the cash coming from Google or its private equity wing CapitalG. No public comments. // Laws, Regulation, and Lawsuits // The US House of Representatives has passed the ‘SELF DRIVE’ bill, which sets a framework for national self-driving regulation. It…
Comcast claims to have saved tens of millions of dollars by reducing the number of truck rolls, by using a machine learning program that can predict with 90% accuracy whether or not it will need to send a technician to a customer’s home to fix connectivity problems. Every operator would love to reduce truck rolls. Estimates of the average costs vary, but tend to be somewhere between $50 and $100 per truck roll. Even if a company is using the most efficient vehicles possible, those costs are increasing as fuel and labour costs rise. Every operator is well aware that they end up sending people out on the road more often than is really needed, because many problems could be…
Open source continues its march into the once well-defended telco equipment fortress. Large operators are getting increasingly engaged with the disruptive Facebook-led Telecom Infra Project, which seeks to establish an open ecosystem for the RAN. And support is also growing for network virtualization software solutions based on OpenStack and other open source initiatives. Vodafone, for instance, made two parallel announcements last week – that it had joined ONAP (Open Network Automation Protocol), whose open source management and orchestration (MANO) platform is largely based on AT&T code; and that it will deploy VMware’s vCloud NFV as part of its virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN) program. This is very important for VMware, which dominates enterprise virtualization, but has often been regarded as…
While many operators are interested in the high capacity of the millimeter wave bands from 26 GHz upwards, the early trials are often focused on a fixed wireless access (FWA) model which looks unattractive in most markets. Verizon and AT&T may see FWA as a means to expand their fixed/mobile footprint, but for most operators, the level of investment required to come close to the performance of fibre would be prohibitive. Speaking at the broadcasters’ annual jamboree, the IBC conference in Amsterdam, Balan Nair – CTO of cable giant Liberty Global – insisted 5G would not be a replacement for fixed broadband. “The economics just aren’t there,” he said. “You’re talking about buying hundreds of towers and all of that…
Apple is breaking new ground with the iPhone X, the most radical redesign of the normally conservative iPhone to date. So far, the vast majority of coverage has focused on the X (pronounced ‘Ten’). Priced at $1,000, the X will be available in November – later than normal. The new pricing threshold is a big step up for Apple, although not inherently an indication of future minimum pricing levels. It is thought that the iPhone X’s screen has driven the cost of the phone up substantially, and the rumored low manufacturing volumes may also keep the per-unit cost of the phone higher than Apple’s already relatively expensive handsets for the foreseeable future. The upcoming iPhone 8S (or maybe Apple will…
The final point made by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson at the Goldman Sachs event (see above) was that he has to deliver 1Gbps in both fixed and mobile wireless to support the telco’s full vision for converged services, content and media. His presentation seemed to signify a more rounded strategy for 5G+content/media than Verizon’s. AT&T has better assets, both in the network and the multiplay, and it looks tough for its rival to beat that without a really barn-storming content deal (and there aren’t many candidates in the US), or a reversion to its traditional approach, that of investing in having the highest quality network experience. That, however, would need to go beyond being narrowly first to launch 5G services…
Automakers like Tesla are embracing software simulation to rack up virtualized testing hours, in an effort to accelerate the delivery of new revenue generating services in their vehicles – against a backdrop of increased automation that could lead to a cliff-edge fall for their sales. Simulation looks set to slash the four-year testing norms to just one year, and the impact this will have is not clear. Simulation entails testing a new piece of code written for a vehicle in a virtualized setting, to ensure that code doesn’t break the vehicle out on the road – allowing them to test new IVI software in a virtualized car, for instance. Once this this simulated testing is complete, the automaker can then…
Smart home standard consortium the Z-Wave Alliance has announced Chinese equipment vendor Huawei as its latest member company. As a principal member, the Alliance says Huawei will take on a greater role in leading it and help guide future initiatives, as well as promoting partnerships among member bodies. Huawei joins principal members ADT, Alarm.com, Fibaro, Ingersoll-Rand, Jasco Products, Leedarson, LG Uplus, Nortek Security & Control, SmartThings, and Sigma Designs. 21st Century Fox this week expressed disappointment at the UK government’s decision to refer its bid for Sky, to the Competition and Markets Authority. Regulator Ofcom has consistently said that there is no basis for the referral, and the responsible Minister ignored its advice. UK MPs are obsessed with the power…
Five companies have emerged from the Go Ignite start-up acceleration hub with game changing partnership deals at some of the world’s largest operators – in technologies covering the connected home, AI and security. Granted these aren’t Faultline Online Reporter’s typical coverage areas, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoiding dipping into the IoT pool of buzzwords as these industries merge into the entertainment and social media ecosystems. Plus we think the emerging technologies are pretty cool, and so too do the giants Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Singtel and Telefonica. In the second year of the start-up initiative, Cujo and Vayyar Imaging claimed the Connected Homes crown, while Sparkcognition and NanoLock Security won the IoT Cyber Security sector, and SafeToNet was…
ActiveVideo, the joint Arris and Charter Communications cloud venture, has again teamed up with New York-based multiscreen software supplier Zodiac Interactive, as the pair continue to find ways of extending the shelf life of legacy hardware by bridging the gap between the set top and the cloud. The two firms have been developing a joint system for over four years now, and this week’s press release finally opens up some of the inner workings – combining ActiveVideo’s CloudTV virtualization capabilities with Zodiac’s PowerUp Stack software and PowerUp AMS (Advanced Messaging Solution) platform. The joint ActiveVideo-Zodiac system, which is a nameless product at the moment, claims “rapid time-to-market” – a statement ActiveVideo declined to elaborate on – giving operators a platform…
Comcast claims to have saved tens of millions of dollars through avoiding the need for truck rolls, by using a machine learning program that can predict with 90% accuracy whether or not it will need to send a technician to a customer’s home to fix connectivity problems. Every operator would love to reduce truck rolls. Estimates of the average costs vary, but tend to be somewhere between $50 and $100 per truck roll. Even if a company is using the most efficient vehicles possible, those costs are increasing as fuel and labour costs rise. Every operator is well aware that they end up sending people out on the road more often than is really needed, because many problems could be…
It’s not enough that US DRM specialist Verimatrix has branched out into analytics, but at this year’s IBC and other, more relevant shows, it plans to convince us all that it can carve out a place for itself protecting the Internet of Things. It will introduce Vtegrity, a security product that reaches from the chips on the tiniest sensor in the IoT, all the way to the cloud applications that it speaks to. It is both a mechanism for inserting keys at the lowest key ladder level when a chip is manufactured, to make all communication encrypted, but also a set of tool for identifying all communication sources through a trust model of certificates. The aim is to protect revenue…
Patent pools have been tried so many times in the cellular world that it seems unlikely they will ever take off. In the early days of LTE, there were no fewer than three different 4G pools, but none of them gained much traction, because they did not attract enough of the companies which control the lion’s share of the patents. For 5G, a new approach to IPR licensing seems inevitable (although some people said that about 4G), but it may rely more on open source norms converging with reinterpreted FRAND (fair reasonable and non-discriminatory) rules, as used by standards organizations like ETSI. Undeterred, one of those 4G patent pool operators is still soldiering on. VIA Licensing, a subsidiary of Dolby, …
The Open Connectivity Foundation’s (OCF’s) IoT land-grab continues, with the announcement of a liaison agreement with the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). This will see the pair work on co-developing standardized approaches for IoT device management. Because many IoT environments will see devices behaving in an ad hoc and unpredictable fashion, there needs to be an efficient way for IoT devices to discover each other easily when they are nearby, and begin communicating. There are practical reasons for this, such as guarding against interference, and making it easier to add and remove devices within a location. In an office building, this might mean that replacement light fittings or HVAC units would be able to discover the correct coordinating network for them…