11569 search results for Open RAN

Away from the excitement about the long-awaited outcome of the 600 MHz band, there is actually far more disruptive potential in higher frequency spectrum, from the newly opened 3.5 GHz band to the emerging options in millimeter wave airwaves. Operators, whether established MNOs or would-be challengers, know they will need dense networks to support the capacity and ubiquitous coverage required for many key emerging applications like connected vehicles or smart cities. That means high capacity bands above 2 GHz will increasingly have more value than the former ‘beachfront’ airwaves below 1 GHz. But the rules for the higher bands are unclear, and may put swords in the hands of disruptors to far greater effect than the 600 MHz auction. Cable/WiFi…

The long-drawn out saga of the US’s 600 MHz incentive auction is over at last, and with Verizon and AT&T effectively sitting on their hands, the big winners are T-Mobile, Dish and Comcast. All three are seeking to disrupt the dominance of Verizon and AT&T, which until recently was looking almost like a duopoly. The end of the auction will also free players to pursue acquisitions again, once the FCC’s anti-collusion ‘quiet period’ ends. At that point, we may learn more details of the winners’ plans, but we can also expect to see T-Mobile and perhaps Sprint back in the M&A pool again by the end of the year. A number of smaller players have also secured licences – 23…

A new and particularly nasty looking bit of malware has been spotted in the wild, but for once, it might not necessarily be bad news. Called BrickerBot, the code attacks vulnerable devices in the same manner as Mirai, but instead of commandeering them for nefarious purposes, BrickerBot tries to take them permanently offline – acting as a dark-knight or a criminal, depending on whether you own the bricked device. Spotted by Radware, via its honeypot servers, BrickerBot exploits the Telnet protocol to brute-force its way into a device, in much the same way that Mirai operates. Radware wasn’t able to trace the attacks on its one of its trap servers, due to the strain using a Tor node to mask…

Delphi has struck a deal with Otonomo, an Israeli startup, to populate Otonomo’s cloud-based data marketplace with data generated by Delphi parts and technology – which the UK company sells to many of the biggest automakers. This is a move to challenge Here and TomTom, which have similar marketplace ambitions, and is looking to entice automakers with the potential for monetizing their data. The Delphi-Otonomo deal is very similar to those signed by Here and TomTom, although not involving the titanic silicon providers that are moving into the automotive sector – Intel (Mobileye) and Qualcomm. Delphi is a large supplier to the auto industry, with a current market cap of around $19.8bn. In terms of pure parts revenue, it sits…

The Tizen mobile operating system has had a hard time, demoted by its only major supporter, Samsung, from flagship smartphone platform to an IoT OS for consumer electronics and home appliances. Now, to hang even bigger question marks over its future, a security researcher has unearthed 40 zero-day vulnerabilities – surely sounding the death-knell for the project in an industry that is slowly waking up to the threat that IoT security poses. Branding it “maybe the worst code I’ve ever seen,” Equus Software researcher Amihai Neiderman presented his Tizen findings at Kasperky’s recent Security Analyst Summit. “Everything you can do wrong there, they do it. You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or…

As 5G networks begin to take form in the standardization process, and the number of IoT devices out in the wild continues to grow, the Mirai botnet served as a jagged reminder of the dangers that this device footprint could pose to enterprises. With crushing DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks a severe problem for businesses, Kentik is hoping that it can become an indispensable tool for enterprises and operators worried by the scale of IoT growth, which could be accelerated further by 5G. Kentik’s VP of product marketing, Alex Henthorn-Iwane, explained that Kentik isn’t rooted squarely in AI or IoT, but strongly overlaps both fields. Fundamentally an analytics tool, used by operators and networks, Henthorn-Iwane said that Kentik is…

Comcast has been preparing its Xfinity Mobile announcement for the past two years, so its launch has hardly been a shock – and in its early days, it looks unlikely to trouble the major mobile operators too deeply. However, to dismiss it as just the latest in the US’s long and mainly unsuccessful history of MVNOs would be to ignore its potential to disrupt the telecoms landscape. Indeed, Wireless Watch’s sister service, Faultline, which analyzes the digital video markets in depth, believes Comcast will, over time, unleash a “marketing tsunami” which could take 8m to 10m lines from incumbent MNOs in just a few years. Pricing is competitive but not the defining feature of the offering, whose disruptive potential lies…

As open source software moves into the mainstream of telco platforms (see separate item), so must white box, commoditized hardware, which drives the economics of software-defined networks (SDN). That white box approach will drive new suppliers of chips and boxes, as well as a rising interest in open source hardware, even for the base station. AT&T has been one of the biggest drivers of telco SDN and virtualization on the software side, and has shaken up some of its supply chain to support its massive Domain 2.0 project. However, for the physical networks, it has proved hard to reduce reliance on the traditional vendors, even if they have to fight to retain such dominant shares of AT&T’s deployments as in…

M&A, Strategies, Alliances Engie has acquired EV-Box, a supplier of EV charging stations with a global footprint, totaling some 26 countries, 980 cities, and 48,000 units. Sierra Wireless has acquired GlobalTop’s embedded GNSS module assets, for $3.2m, adding the portfolio and its $5m annual revenues to Sierra’s OEM Solutions product line. ABB is acquiring B&R (Bernecker and Rainer), adding B&R’s IoT and factory automation expertise to “close ABB’s historic gap in machine and factory automation.” Laws, Regulation, and Lawsuits The Google-Uber case has seen Otto co-founder Lior Ron named after a mistake in document redaction revealed his name. Levandowski isn’t painted in a good light. Uber has now said it doesn’t use the LiDAR technology that Waymo claims it does,…

As if Tizen hasn’t been abused enough by Samsung, demoted from flagship smartphone OS to its IoT operating system for its consumer electronics and home appliances, a security researcher has unearthed 40 zero-day vulnerabilities – surely sounding the death-knell for the project in an industry that is slowly waking up to the threat that IoT security poses. Branding it “maybe the worst code I’ve ever seen,” Equus Software researcher Amihai Neiderman presented his Tizen findings at Kasperky’s Security Analyst Summit. “Everything you can do wrong there, they do it. You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it. It’s like taking an undergraduate and letting him program your software,” he told Vice’s…

As 5G networks begin to take form in the standardization process, and the number of IoT devices out in the wild continues to grow, the Mirai botnet served as a jagged reminder of the dangers that this device footprint poses to enterprises. With crushing DDoS attacks a severe problem for businesses, Kentik is hoping that it can become an indispensable tool for enterprises and operators worried by the scale of the IoT. Kentik’s VP Product Marketing, Alex Henthorn-Iwane, explained that Kentik isn’t rooted squarely in AI or IoT, but strongly overlaps both fields. Fundamentally an analytics tool, used by operators and networks, Henthorn-Iwane said that Kentik is seeing (and helping to bring about) a change in industry thinking on the…

Transforming an operator’s network is not just about rethinking architectures – new pricing, skills and business processes may be just as difficult to implement. This has been the task of David Amzallag, group head of SDN and NFV at Vodafone, who is leaving the role in June. One of his legacies will be a new set of vendor agreements and pricing models to support Project Ocean, Vodafone’s huge, global network transformation initiative. This is a successor to Project Spring, which focused on physical network upgrades in wireless and wireline. Comparable to AT&T’s Domain 2.0 program, it is driving Vodafone towards software-defined, virtualized and cloud-oriented architectures. But like AT&T, Vodafone needs to rewrite the rules of how it deals with its…

Google has announced a patent pool for Android, attempting to avoid the legal disputes which have plagued the smartphone industry in recent years. This can be seen as opening yet another front against Apple, which initiated many of the lawsuits of the last decade, but is now under pressure from legal actions by patent giants like Nokia. However, it is also another step towards a broader rethink of the IPR licensing system which governs the mobile industry, and a recognition that the current system is broken, and will be entirely unworkable in the Internet of Things, with its huge numbers of low cost devices. The mobile industry has resisted the death of its secretive system of bilateral patents licensing deals…

Some of the biggest names in consumer technology have failed to make the smart home a thing, but this week, Ikea has waded into this apparent quagmire with its new smart home portfolio. With monstrous brand recognition, Ikea has already solved the distribution problem that the likes of Apple and Google have encountered – it already knows how to sell people things for their homes. For Ikea, it’s a case of home+tech, while for the smartphone platforms, tech+home is a lot trickier as consumers aren’t in the habit of buying homeware from them – or even making the kinds of routine and habitual visits to their stores. Ikea has marketed the notion of repeat trips, with each visit an opportunity…

As organizations such as Google and Facebook race to bring their web services to the next billion people, there is a real boom in store for companies which specialize in remote connectivity. Satellite and flexible, affordable base station solutions are in vogue, not just for underserved consumers, but for enterprises which need to connect up remote locations and equipment for the first time in order to support mobile-first and IoT strategies. One company which could benefit from this trend is NuRAN Wireless of Canada, which has raised its profile by joining Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project (TIP). TIP looks to shake up the economics of mobile networks with commoditized, open source hardware, a shift which will be particularly relevant in remote…