Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
When we last wrote about Amazon channels we gave it low bandwidth and ranking, because the deal was essentially that in January 2016 Amazon Prime customers could buy Starz, Showtime and HBO on their own, for an unbundled price. Since then Amazon has added more of its own channels, such as an Anime channel added in the US in January this year – but we still failed to feature it as big news. But Amazon has pulled much the same trick in the UK, Germany and Austria this week, but with a greater variety of channels, many of them local to the offering, and it has effectively said if you are a Prime customer and already pay something to us,…
Rumors have emerged from Macquarie analyst group that BlackBerry is working with automakers Aston Martin and Range Rover to develop a security service for vehicles. The move is an expansion on BlackBerry’s software strategy, in the wake of its handset collapse, and a transition into software as a service (SaaS), indicating the importance of the automotive sector to BlackBerry’s transformation. According to the rumors, the system would remotely scan vehicles for computer viruses and tell drivers to pull over if they were in critical danger. BlackBerry will also install security patches to an idle car as part of the service, being tested by the luxury automakers – although neither parties would respond to confirm the rumor. The Macquarie analyst stipulates…
A notable feature of the path to 5G is that wireline organizations are almost as prominent in its development as the established wireless bodies like 3GPP and ETSI. CableLabs has been very active in 5G-related R&D, and now the Broadband Forum says it has been making “rapid progress” on 5G and related enabling technologies like the Cloud Central Office (CloudCO). At a meeting hosted by Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan, the Forum said it was preparing to stage and test implementations of five CloudCO projects at the first Open Broadband Lab. The CloudCO projects encompass architecture and hardware, as well as software implementation and migration. They represent one of the first use cases for the recently launched Open Broadband initiative. The…
With the Small Cells World Summit (SCWS) taking place in London this week, one of the themes will be the diversifying range of spectrum bands which can be harnessed for a dense network. Additional licensed bands are being auctioned or refarmed; operators are starting to think about millimeter wave spectrum for 5G; and LTE and 5G New Radio are being extended into unlicensed and shared frequencies like 5 GHz and 3.5 GHz. Two small cell vendors are focusing on these issues in their London announcements. IP.access has expanded the spectrum its cloud-based Viper2020 platform, which is optimized for neutral host deployments, will support. Cells managed by Viper2020 will now include those in the 600 MHz, 700 MHz and 3.5 GHz…
The race for fiber is becoming a hallmark of mobile network deployment. Whether operators plan to deploy 5G early, or milk 4G for years to come, they are moving towards new architectures which require fiber. The right balance between centralized C-RAN and edge computing will be essential, regardless of the radio standard, to maximize efficiencies while supporting services which require low latency or high data rates. Edge computing, whether based on ETSI MEC, OpenFog or other approaches, will one aspect of densification – bringing radio, processing and storage resources closer to the user via small cells and localized micro-servers. But in order to distribute cloud resources in this way, fiber will be essential, to connect the centralized and localized elements…
The twists and turns of the US telecoms and media markets get ever more tangled. There has been discussion for several years about whether T-Mobile should merge with Sprint or a cableco – now the firm hints it might do both. Meanwhile, Amazon has long had the potential to move markets in the US, though its venture with Globalstar was thwarted by regulatory opposition. Now it may be reviving the fortunes of another satellite player, Dish Network, with rumors that it will be the anchor tenant for a new wholesale network in Dish’s spectrum. New entrants into the mainstream mobile market, whether from the cable or satellite TV sector, need strong allies to make up for the established MNOs’ superiority…
// Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. // // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // Apple has reportedly acquired Lattice for $200m, a team of AI developers that specialize in unstructured ‘dark’ data. No comment from Apple, but Lattice’s 20 staff will join. Hexagon has acquired VIRES, a provider of simulation software for ADAS and autonomous driving technologies, adding it to Hexagon’s industrial and geospatial IT services. Joule has acquired NorthWrite, an energy management firm specializing in SMBs, to combine the software with JouleSmart’s smart usage equipment and efficiency service. u-blox and SIMCom have canceled u-blox’s proposed module IP acquisition, with the pair saying that they could not complete the deal as originally intended.…
The Eclipse Foundation has published its third annual IoT Developer Survey, charting the popularity of languages and operating systems among IoT developers and projects, and this year’s results are good news for Linux and Canonical. However, for security aficionados, the survey makes for grim reading, and while Thread and LPWAN are both seeing growth, a key takeaway is the distance between GE’s Predix and the big-three IoT cloud platforms. The report notes that there is a more diverse set of industries represented by the respondents, with Industrial Automation, Smart Cities, and Energy Management seeing significant growth compared to the year before. IoT platform/middleware was the most popular are, with 41.6% of the vote, followed by Home Automation on 41.1%, and…
Silver Spring Networks (SSN) is hoping to boost the appeal of its IoT network offerings with the expansion of its developer program – adding new dev kits and software tools to boost both third-party and customer experiments. It’s a means of casting the net wider, with Silver Spring hoping to draw in new customers to its IoT network platform. With over 26m live devices, SSN is in the business of deploying both public and private low-power mesh networks for utilities, smart cities, and increasingly industrial customers. Using Wi-SUN as the link between end-device and gateway, SSN also offers its Starfish platform as a way of providing devices with access to an open multi-tenant public network. SSN’s Itai Dadon, Senior Director…
Rumors have emerged from Macquarie analyst group that BlackBerry is working with automakers Aston Martin and Range Rover to develop a security service for vehicles. The move is an expansion on BlackBerry’s software strategy, in the wake of its handset collapse, and a transition into software as a service (SaaS), indicating the importance of the automotive sector to BlackBerry’s transformation. According to the rumors, the system would remotely scan vehicles for computer viruses and tell drivers to pull over if they were in critical danger. BlackBerry will also install security patches to an idle car as part of the service, being tested by the luxury automakers – although neither parties would respond to confirm the rumor. The Macquarie analyst stipulates…
Belgian cable operator Telenet has selected Netcracker to support its digital BSS (business support systems) transformation. Netcracker’s Customer and Revenue management offerings and billing services will aid Telenet with the integration of Base’s 3 million wireless subscribers – the mobile operator it acquired for €1.325 billion ($1.47 billion) last year. Netcracker says the addition of its BSS suite to Telenet’s existing OSS (operational support systems) capabilities from Netcracker will create a full stack to reduce capex, opex and IT spend. Global pay TV subscriptions are set to hit 1.09 billion by 2022 in 138 countries, adding 134 million over the next five years, according to a report from Digital TV Research. The falling number of pay TV subscribers in the…
While the attack by Apple, on the likes of both Qualcomm and UK GPU firm Imagination are not directly related to video, they do concern us at Faultline Online Reporter. They threaten to de-stabilise the set top and cellphone industries, but not for competitive reasons – more anti-competitive. We have reported elsewhere in this issue that MIPs is now up for sale from Imagination, in the hope that this will strengthen its balance sheet, and it sounds like it was part of the problem and that perhaps Apple resented Imagination from developing it. MIPs is the architecture of choice until very recently, for all set tops, including those from Broadcom, until two years ago, when suddenly it picked up its…
The US arm of Korean start-up Titan Platform, a content platform provider and hardware maker, has revealed that a major US telco is investigating the potential launch of a home gateway with a SIM card – based on the belief that millennials are axing their broadband subscriptions. They would reportedly prefer to have an extra $5 a month fee attached to an unlimited mobile data plan by dropping a SIM into a home gateway, rather than pay the full amount for a broadband package. According to the CEO of Titan Platform US, Adrian Sexton, his company is currently in discussions with one of the big four US telcos to be the hardware provider for a project of this type. AT&T…
In a 5G era when the cellular network needs to support not just connectivity, but a fully distributed cloud and apps platform, APIs (application programming interfaces) will be as important to interoperability as radio standards. Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that the 3GPP has seized back the responsibility for defining standards for northbound APIs to connect the cellular network with applications servers. In 2008, the standards body transferred its efforts on northbound APIs, in the shape of the Open Service Architecture API, to the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). Since then, the OMA has developed standardized interfaces between mobile networks and the service infrastructure, though these are increasingly augmented, depending on the use case and network, by APIs from other…
One of the great debates which will help to shape next generation mobile networks and services concerns the growing role of open source in the cellular world. Some operators have raced to embrace open source technologies in the network, to accelerate the progress towards virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN). Open source platforms for hardware elements like base stations and radios are even starting to emerge. But there are risks as well as rewards in the open process, and most players are looking towards a hybrid approach where the speed and broad-based innovation of open source can be tempered by the clear direction and strong quality control of a formal standards process. Indeed, the Linux Foundation itself has published a white…
One way that T-Mobile USA and Sprint could reduce their 5G capex bills, and placate investors and international parent companies, would be to combine their efforts, in a joint venture or a full merger. The two companies have danced around one another before, and now merger talks are reported to be back on, no doubt encouraged by a new government which is expected to be more laisser-faire when it comes to approving major M&A deals. Sprint’s parent, Softbank, previously came close to bidding for TMO in 2014, but backed away in the face of probable opposition from the antitrust agencies. Earlier this year, with a new administration in place, Softbank chairman Masayoshi Son hinted that he would be interested in…
The 5G race has certainly started in earnest in the US, but it remains unclear how the big four mobile operators will reconcile their caution about capex levels in the next few years, with the proposed investment in upgrading their network, arguably before a brand new radio is really justified by new revenue streams. Verizon and AT&T, of course, are initially focusing on fixed wireless, which helps to improve the cost of expanding their broadband footprint, and can help them move out of their fiber footprints. Combined with the lack of requirement to buy early-stage, and expensive, smartphones, that strategy is a sensible way to test new technology, even if it is unlikely to revolutionize their challenged fixed-line businesses. For…
Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, for free, each Monday. M&A, Strategies, Alliances Gooee has joined Philips Lighting’s Sensor Ready (SR) certified program, adding to a list of smart lighting partners that Philips can use to sell its Xitanium connected lighting products. Belden has reportedly dropped its $380m bid to purchase Digi International, following Digi’s results that were half what Belden was basing its offer on. DMI has acquired Lochbridge, an IoT solutions provider that focuses on automotive, healthcare, financial, and manufacturing, integrating it with DMI’s mobility offerings. AMCS Group has acquired Senddr, an Irish software developer experienced in process automation, looking to use Senddr to augment AMCS’ waste management portfolio. Itron is acquiring Comverge for…
The City of Toronto is building a smart traffic management platform in an attempt to alleviate its infamous congestion issues. The project seems to be the city’s first of its type, and could eventually form the basis of a much broader reaching connected ecosystem – gradually building in other pieces of the smart city puzzle into the platform. The project is employing the helping hands of mapping expert Here, for its Open Location Platform (OLP), and California-based informatics firm Iteris, for its iPeMS (Performance Management System) software. Here’s intelligent mapping capabilities will be familiar to most, having won some major deployments for funneling back vehicle sensor data, most recently at BMW, but Iteris is a company that has so far…
On the back of its full-year results, Bosch invited us to attend its Annual Press Conference and a tour of its facilities in Stuttgart – paying for our flights, hotel, and food. Disclosure aside, the visit illustrated the importance that R&D and startups to both Bosch and other giants that must embrace the Internet of Things – a trend that is as potentially rewarding as it is disruptive. Sitting in on the announcement, listening to it be translated from German to English in near-real time, the initial focus appeared to be on addressing criticisms of diesel engines – in the wake of many cities considering bans on the engines in order to address air quality regulations. Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner…