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Two of the big-four voice-based, AI-augmented, digital assistants have announced a tie-up this week, with Microsoft and Amazon announcing that they have partnered to integrate Cortana and Alexa. The goal is to provide better access to each platform’s unique features, and looks like an attempt to bridge the gap from the home (Alexa) and the workplace (Cortana). Microsoft has a presence in the vast majority of enterprises, which use its Office suite and Outlook email platform in their everyday operations –  although Google and its software suite are doing their best to scratch out some market share from Office. With the Alexa integration, Microsoft would be able to open up all of the rich data from that professional environment, and…

Fitbit has launched its first true smartwatch, the $300 Ionic. With support for third-party apps, but notably no cellular connection, the Ionic is going head to head with the likes of the Apple Watch, by aiming to provide a premium user experience, as well as challenging the also expensive fitness-focused watches from the likes of Garmin. Due for release in October, the Ionic will be the most expensive Fitbit device sold to date. While $30 more expensive than the first-gen Apple Watch, the Ionic is still cheaper than Apple’s gen-two design – the one where Apple finally nailed the hardware and software to provide a suitable experience. By most accounts, Apple leads the smartwatch market, and so Fitbit has a…

After a very busy few months, the automotive industry seems to have quietened down. Ford and Domino’s partnership to deliver pizza using self-driving Ford Fusions sounds light-hearted at first, but it represents what could be an important shift in the battle for consumer trust in autonomous vehicles. It also comes in the week that Uber finally got a new CEO, who hopes to spruce up the smoldering garbage fire that is Uber’s public image. For both companies, the goal is to improve public perceptions. Both Domino’s and Uber are offering a service (pizza and mobility, respectively), but while Domino’s is looking to gauge the receptiveness of its customers to a self-driving pizza delivery process, Uber is hoping to salvage its…

So Microsoft and Intel want to replicate the models of data centers past in the AI cloud world – with standard processors, even if those are now programmable. But Google insists dedicated hardware is essential for deep machine learning and neural network applications, as Jeff Dean, a Google senior fellow and leader of the Google Brain deep learning research project, argued in a keynote speech at last week’s Hot Chips conference. Dean explained how deep neural nets are supporting major developments in speech and vision recognition, search, robotics and healthcare, among other things. He outlined how neural networks can help solve all the 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century, identified by the US National Academy of Engineering…

Microsoft has launched Project Brainwave, a new research program aimed at creating a system that can process inputs as soon as it receives them, for ‘real time’ AI tasks. The project sounds like good news for Intel, as Microsoft is relying on its Stratix 10 FPGA chips to power the platform. If the capabilities can be made to work commercially,  Microsoft hopes it would help its Azure cloud operation to become a serious cloud-based AI computing provider. This is important to Microsoft Azure in the enterprise world, but especially the mobile one. AI-driven user experiences and applications, from personal digital assistants to extreme context awareness, are helping to define the next generation of Internet interaction, and increasingly, this takes place…

A marriage between Vodafone and cable group Liberty Global has been reportedly on the cards for years, but in the MNO’s home UK market, it may have found another option for improving its access to all-important fibre – a tie-up with Openreach, the wholesale arm of incumbent telco BT. Mobile-only operators round Europe are seeking fiber partnerships so they can participate in one of the region’s few areas of consumer growth – quad play bundling. It has been assumed for years that this trend would finally drive Vodafone to agree a merger or joint venture with Liberty, which runs cable operations in several key European markets including the UK (it owns Virgin Media). So far, despite many rounds  of talks…

We have written it so many times in recent years; and operators and vendors have said it so many times – if 5G deployment is to be cost-justified, beyond a few showcase networks, it must support a wide range of high value enterprise services. The consumer broadband model is dead as a source of growth or decent profitability. Like voice before it, it will continue to deliver cashflow, market share and other good things. But no operator can build out a new network without additional sources of revenue and growth. It all seems so obvious, especially as LTE enhancements, including ‘Gigabit LTE’ (see separate item), can easily support changes in consumer demand for years to come. Yet many operators are…

China has been the savior of the mobile infrastructure business twice before, injecting huge capex sums into networks just as other regions’ deployments were drying up. That will not be the case in 5G. China Mobile has already warned that it will only invest heavily when it sees a clear case, and the restructuring of China Unicom this month, coupled with a dramatic slashing of its capex budget, will worry suppliers further. The Unicom deal brings in a wide range of funding partners from different industries (see below) and while that could establish a blueprint for shared investment that could be emulated across the 5G world, it will certainly slow short term opportunities for network OEMs. To survive, vendors will…

Microsoft has launched Project Brainwave, a new research program that aims to process inputs as soon as it receives them, for ‘real-time’ AI tasks. The project sounds like good news for Intel, as Microsoft is relying on its Stratix 10 FPGA chips to power the system – which Microsoft hopes will help lead to Azure becoming a serious cloud-based AI computing provider. For Intel, Microsoft’s endorsement is rather valuable, especially if other cloud-computing providers pay attention and follow suit. For years, Intel has been able to count on the continued growth of computing requirements as a growth vehicle for its Xeon CPU sales – but the advent of AI-based applications and their bespoke hardware requirements has severely disrupted that long-term…

One of the pioneers of edge computing in the mobile environment is UK-based Quortus, whose central offering is a virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC) that can be run on very small footprint hardware including a small cell or an edge server within a backpack (or even a Raspberry Pi). Now the company has gone a step further with PocketEPC, an app-based solution which will greatly simplify the deployment of cellular networks. The Quortus vEPC supports self-contained, localized mobile networks which can carry out many functions for an enterprise or remote location, while still linking to the main MNO core when required. Increasingly, this model – localized subnets enabled by edge computing and often by shared spectrum – will be important…

Dell’s acquisition of EMC last year brought it firmly into the world of software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualization, but both companies have often struggled to cross the gulf between their data center heartlands and the telco market. A trial with BT, focused on open, disaggregated switching, could give Dell the kind of jewel that will boost its standing with carriers, and help it raise its game against HPE in this sector. Programmable, virtualized and white box switches are seen by operators like AT&T – which has developed one with Bigfoot Networks – as an important way to hack away at a major area of network cost, while creating a platform that can support agile service delivery. Dell EMC and the…

As outlined in several articles in this issue, one of the great challenges of designing the new-look mobile or converged network is to make open source technologies, designed for software-defined data centers, fit for purpose even for the most performance-intensive telco functions, up to and including the RAN. That means closer cooperation between the standards effort for the 5G New Radio, and the various initiatives which aim to transform the mobile network into a virtualized, programmable, software-driven services platform to support the distributed cloud. The logic of the latter development is clear, because it will allow established or new mobile operators to expand their revenue models with rapid roll-out of new services and with flexible network-on-demand options. However, they still…

The developments in India’s mobile market will be horribly familiar to operators in France, which are only just stabilizing after Iliad’s Free Mobile wreaked havoc as a new entrant, unleashing price wars by harnessing its capex-light, modern network on incumbents with all the expense of legacy infrastructure and services. Reliance Jio has been striving for a similarly disruptive effect in India since it finally launched its LTE-only services, with a high-impact free introductory offer, less than a year ago. In that time, RJio has captured 41% share of India’s total wired and wireless broadband market, according to new figures from regulator TRAI. This far outstrips its largest rivals – Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications – and the…

Wholesale-only networks seem an almost inevitable result of the evolution of mobile communications. Yet according to a GSMA report, most of the national initiatives which have been set up in recent years around the world are failing. This is serious news, because without workable approaches to network sharing and wholesaling, it will be impossible to build 5G to the density required, in an economic way, and many aspects of the 5G vision, including on-demand services, will be hard to realize. As mobile connectivity becomes essential to life, the need for ever-increasing capacity, reliability and ubiquitous coverage grows. Even with the developments which will transform the cost of building and running those networks – automation, virtualization, commoditized hardware – those challenges…