11569 search results for Open RAN

Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Amazon has acquired Graphiq for $50m, according to sources in the LA Times, a data analysis and search specialist, in a move to improve Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant. SoftBank is reportedly looking at taking a major stake in Uber, something that sounds in-character for the firm, given its ARM-pounce when forex allowed it to buy the British institution for cheap. Recent bad press will have damaged Uber’s valuation. Innogy has announced a new €250k investment opportunity prize for its innovation hub project, for startups exploring the machine economy. Prodea has acquired Arrayent, adding the IoT applications platform to Prodea’s end-to-end managed…

Here has launched Here Real Time Traffic, its first service built on data aggregated from its OEM-owners’ vehicles, ahead of an expected sea-change in automaker habits. Owned by a consortium of Audi, BMW, Daimler, as well as Intel and a trio of Chinese investors, Here will use their sensor data to improve the accuracy of mapping platform – tapping into the latest data being collected and shared by connected cars, as the company looks to counter a resurgent TomTom. Here has released little information on exactly what sensor information will be used in Real-Time Traffic, although the company’s launch materials  suggest that all modern sensors in a vehicle could contribute to the platform – from GPS, acceleration actions, braking pressure,…

Qualcomm has launched its Neural Processing Engine (NPE) Software Development Kit (SDK), a system for running machine-learning functions on its Snapdragon range of mobile processing platforms. However, the launch comes as the pressure on Qualcomm builds, as Apple disputes patent royalties it claims it does not owe to Qualcomm – causing quarterly net income to fall 40%. Those Q3 figures may well get worse in Q4, as Apple appears to be having some success in rallying the industry to sue Qualcomm – with Foxconn notably taking up arms. Recent legal losses to BlackBerry ($940m) and the Korean Free Trade Commission (KFTC – $927m) have savaged its operating cashflow, which fell from $1.8bn in Q3 2016 to just $100m in the…

Intel has added its Arduino maker board market to the IoT scrap heap. The development board had been intended to be a rival to the likes of Raspberry Pi, but the product is now being scrapped after little interest from the community. The move comes as the final nail in the coffin for Intel’s IoT maker market after killing off Edison, Galileo and Joule earlier this year. It adds to the growing list of recent misfires the company has had in its efforts to diversify away from its core CPU business. It’s hard to know whether to applaud Intel, for sensibly removing itself from a market it had made negligible impact in and was relatively small anyway, or to feel…

It’s been a long time coming, but the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has finally released Bluetooth 5, the new version of the protocol that brings significant range and bandwidth improvements, as well as the new mesh networking features that will allow Bluetooth to challenge the likes of Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread in emerging IoT markets. With around 92% consumer awareness, Bluetooth is likely only second to WiFi when it comes to brand visibility. It has a major advantage here over rival radio protocols, thanks to this consumer familiarity, and assuming the SIG’s messaging is on point, Bluetooth 5 and its mesh capabilities should enjoy considerable success in the smart home. As long as smartphones continue to function as the…

Network slicing, until very recently, seemed like a distant and rather esoteric vision, yet at a time when many operators are sceptical about the 5G business case, there is real impetus to make slicing real and deployable. Slicing could greatly improve operators’ ability to monetize their 5G networks and their virtualization projects, because it harnesses the capabilities of both those technologies, and diversifies they way they can be used to drive new revenues. It allows virtual slices of network capacity to be called up for particular services, industries or customers, automatically optimized for their individual connectivity requirements (such as low latency, high bandwidth or high device density). That makes operators far better equipped to support vertical industries such as manufacturing,…

The spectrum between 3.4 GHz and 4.2 GHz is the focus of intensifying interest from regulators and operators round the world. Until recently only really useful, in wireless broadband terms, for fixed services, it is now regarded as one of the most valuable new bands for 5G. Small cells have neutralized the disadvantages of its short range and poor indoor penetration, while it offers a large amount of capacity which, in many markets, is underused, or can be converted to mobile use by adapting current fixed wireless licences. The biggest impetus for 3.5 GHz 5G has come from China, and this has led many other regions to prioritize this area of spectrum as a pioneer band for 5G, even though…

Projects like the Flat Distributed Cloud (see above) are still somewhat futuristic, despite FDC being demonstrated in an LTE testbed. But others are working on more readily deployable mobile edge cloud platforms. One interesting start-up is Vapor IO. It recently announced its ‘data center as a platform’ offering, Project Volutus, which is powered by its Vapor Edge Computing technology. Vapor IO’s proposition is to offer fully managed micro data centers at the base of cell towers and other cell sites, to allow MNOs, and cloud or webscale providers, to deliver edge cloud applications efficiently, and in a manner that can harness intelligence about the radio network and the location and context of users in a cell. This is interesting because…

The US and Polish examples in the previous report are two of many which epitomize the complex choices operators will need to make about network architecture, and how that will influence the physical assets they will need to access. The balance between centralized and edge-based resources, and the distances between the two, will be important, and will vary depending on the key use cases which will drive the 5G model. While virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN) enables an MNO to be far more flexible in allocating its digital resources, those towers, data centers and local sites and servers will not be so easily rearranged, so the topologies will need to be considered carefully. Some of the options are not fully…

Cloud-RAN (or Centralized-RAN) can inject new efficiency and flexibility by virtualizing the functions of a RAN and allowing large numbers of large or small cells to share a common baseband resource in the cloud. That, however, has limitations when it comes to low latency, and will often be complemented by an edge-based topology such as ETSI’s Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), which will allow both the access point and the IT platform to be located close to the user, and potentially in the same housing (though that is controversial). The upshot is that operators may be turning their baseband network functions into software, but they will need far larger numbers of cell sites, fibre links (long and short range) and new…

Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // ST Engineering is acquiring Aetheon and its autonomous mobile robot technologies, namely the TUG robot, a self-driving 1,400lbs machine that is aimed at industrial applications. Quarterhill (WiLAN) has acquired iCOMS, a Belgian Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) specialist, for $1.1m. It will be integrated into Quarterhill’s IRD subsidiary. Oaktree Capital has acquired My Alarm Center, a provider of home and commercial security services, and home automation. Other smaller investors have become small stakeholders. // Laws, Regulation, and Lawsuits // US Congress has approved a proposal to overhaul federal autonomous vehicle regulations, allowing automakers to deploy up to 100,000 self-driving cars without having…

Riot was invited to Digital Catapult’s startup presentation evening. On display were 12 startups hoping to court investor interest, for future funding rounds. But the evening highlighted key challenges for startups in the LPWAN space, concerning coverage and potential margins on products. Digital Catapult is a UK government backed organization, that aims to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) grow and scale faster. The UK LPWAN market is still nascent, more so than other European countries. The lack of LPWAN network connectivity is hard to overlook, and presents a large challenge to some of the startups. The evening gave the companies a chance to present their products for five minutes. They ranged from devices aimed at public bicycles, pet health…

  Stanford University has published a report detailing how targeted incentives, such as payments to specific groups of customers, to encourage the installation of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) have the potential to cut the utility costs by 50% – a model that should persuade utilities to ramp-up their smart grid investments, to achieve those cost reductions. By taking a targeted approach to DER, as the report suggests, the utilities can make large savings on energy and infrastructure bills. Utility DER incentives, have tended to be untargeted in the past, and more like blanket offers. The Stanford model suggests that is not necessarily the most effective approach for a utility. DER can cause savings by reducing energy purchasing costs and reducing…

A US Congress subcommittee has approved a bill to allow automakers to deploy up to 100,000 self-driving cars, which would not need to meet existing vehicle safety standards – a significant win for the automotive industry, which massively increases the potential scope of testing for both startups and incumbent automakers. The bill also bars state legislatures from imposing additional driverless car rules, meaning this should be the norm nationwide. If the legislation makes it through a Congressional vote and onto the President’s desk, it will help to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technology. Allowing automakers to test up to 100,000 vehicles is a step change on the current regulatory situation. Currently, states have the power; issuing approvals to automakers…

It’s been a long time coming, but the Bluetooth SIG has finally released Bluetooth 5, the new version of the protocol that brings significant range and bandwidth improvements, as well as the new mesh networking features that will allow Bluetooth to challenge the likes of Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread in emerging IoT markets. With around 92% consumer awareness, Bluetooth is likely only second to WiFi when it comes to brand visibility. It has a major advantage here over rival radio protocols, thanks to this consumer familiarity, and assuming the SIG’s messaging is on point, Bluetooth 5 and its mesh capabilities should enjoy considerable success in the smart home. As long as smartphones continue to function as the main interface between…