Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Third-placed German cable operator Tele Columbus has made its belated entrance into the OTT scene with the launch of a 4K hybrid IP video service advanceTV – a project headed up by Canadian IPTV software house Espial. Faultline spoke to Espial Director of Marketing Kirk Edwardson and VP of Marketing Jeff Huppertz this week, discussing how the company’s RDK-based set top is driving a new wave of services for Tele Columbus, as well as the company’s future plans for spreading its wings in Europe. The advanceTV project began back in September 2015 and will be deployed in Germany next month, available to Tele Columbus’ 3.6 million cable homes. The rush to get advanceTV launched implies that Tele Columbus has opted…
Video compression, or encoding, continues to be at the heart of everything that Faultline Online Reporter writes about. It defines what is possible and underpins all the ambitions in the marketplace, whether you are AT&T offering up DirecTV NOW or Netflix, or Verizon trying to put building blocks in place for its own video strategy. But the backdrop is more than a little fluid, and while we have all learned that HEVC is the new Black in encoding, few understand how precarious its purchase is on the leading edge of the market. One company that offers a serious “leg up” in this market is in fact not even a compression company, but one which offers the opportunity to apply perception…
DirecTV Now is flying – so much so that CBS boss Leslie Moonves has come out and openly mentioned it is in discussion with AT&T on a deal for its inclusion in the service – something we have been saying all along. Slowly, with a cool deliberation, AT&T is building what everyone expected would come from Apple or Google, a genuine alternative to cable TV, which is sent over the internet. CBS CEO Moonves spoke this week publicly at the UBS Global Media and Communications conference suggesting in a quote from The Godfather, “We’re not unreasonable people,” implying that CBS would drive a hard bargain, but a deal would be done. He gave an indication that he thought CBS Showtime…
Nokia seems highly aware of the need for strategic partners from the IT and data center world, to help it with the process of transforming a mobile network into an applications and IT platform. Its alliance with Intel is crucial in this regard, and now it has expanded its relationship with HPE, with plans to co-market various Internet of Things products from next year. The collaboration will target smart city and industrial/manufacturing customers with an integrated end-to-end offering – combining Nokia’s networking expertise with HPE’s cloud and server products, as well as its network-edge gateways. At the HPE Discover event in London last week, the IT giant also announced a “holistic” approach to the IoT, embracing any protocol or vendor,…
The UK telecoms market continues in its state of turmoil, with pay-TV provider Sky entering as an MVNO while incumbent BT continues to defend its ownership of its wholesale arm Openreach. UK regulator Ofcom has a shot across BT’s bows last week when it decided to require the legal separation of OpenReach from BT – though so far only as a subsidiary, and entirely within the BT group. Openreach will be set up with a majority of non-executive directors and the chairman unaffiliated to BT, but it cannot take on its own debt, without indebtedness at BT rising, and until that is the case, nothing much will change. This does not address some of the issues which have concerned competitors,…
The quest for freedom from US technologies and patent fees has been a persistent theme in China and has helped shape the new mobile landscape, in which Baidu and Alibaba, not Google and Amazon, dominate the user experience. Less is heard about another massive market, Russia, but here too, the push for technology self-sufficiency is gathering momentum, creating opportunities for alternatives to Android and iOS. The Russian government has chosen Sailfish – a Finnish Linux-based mobile operating system created by start-up Jolla – as the basis of its own mobile software platform, which will be developed by new venture Open Mobile Platform (OMP) and will be adopted by government agencies and state-owned corporations. This is a major boost for Sailfish,…
At last, a company is prepared to be disruptive and shake up the stagnation of the Indian mobile market. This may be the third largest in the world in terms of subscriber numbers, with higher growth than the US or China, but its regulator persists in imposing excessive spectrum charges and red tape, while no mobile operator has had the courage to counter this with creative business thinking, rather than just legal challenges and general negativity. Now Reliance Jio has burst on the scene with low cost 4G-only data services and free voice, combined with a whole suite of applications and content. It has many challeneges. Its network is criticized for being slow compared to some rivals’ 4G. It certainly…
Amazon will be one of the chief power makers of the Internet of Things, with its AWS cloud platform and AI-driven analytics. At its re:Invent conference last week, it said that AWS was set to book $13bn in revenue this year, with a 50% growth rate, and one million active customers. In particular, AWS claims it is securing deals with large enterprises, not just its traditional customer base among start-ups and early stage developers. No wonder, then, that companies throughout the mobile value chain are announcing new partnerships with the retail giant – from operators like AT&T, which is entrusting its enterprise cloud platform to AWS, to the chipmakers which hope to see their silicon enabling the the IoT from…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances The prpl Alliance and the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA) have announced a joint collaboration, to advance smart home security. Samsung appears to have dropped out of its rumored plan to acquire Magneti Marelli and its automotive assets. Intel has added former ARM and Delphi staff to its IoT leadership team, targeting growth in its automotive portfolio via the new Automated Driving Group (ADG). Nokia and HPE have announced a new strategic collaboration to target smart city and industrial customers, with connectivity and compute/network solutions. Fitbit is said to be acquiring Pebble for around $40m, according to The Information. Alibaba’s YunOS has joined the ZigBee Alliance. WISeKey is buying QuoVadis, a PKI security provider and certificate authority,…
The recalcitrant nature of telcos is that they always believe they are invulnerable to change and they can always call the government’s bluff and this week’s move by the UK regulator Ofcom, is little more than a shot across the bows of the UK incumbent telco, British Telecom, after it tried to call Ofcom’s bluff. Ofcom this week decided to require the legal separation of OpenReach from BT, but so far it is as a subsidiary, and entirely within the BT group. It clearly does not address the issues about governance, and whether or not cash supply can be wrested away from the BT cashflow, whether or not the parent board can intervene in its business, and having a management…
Non-profit trade group the HomeGrid Forum has announced that Chinese chip vendor Xingtera has become the first certified silicon vendor of G.hn chipsets in China. Xingtera’s XT18000 chipset will support the G.hn home networking standard, allowing for cable network speeds of up to 1 Gbps. It says G.hn is China’s most “accepted” smart home wireline home network technology. The European Aviation Network (EAN) says it has successfully carried out a program lab test to deliver an in-flight broadband video conference. The EAN, fronted by Inmarsat, Deutsche Telekom, Nokia and Thales, claims this is the first live over-the-air (OTA) connection of its type, using its dedicated LTE mobile network – a network which can work at speeds of up to 1,200…
Sky’s long awaited MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) venture has finally arrived, built around the O2 Telefonica owned network, unveiling features of its new mobile data plans that it hopes will throw a spanner into the works of the UK mobile market. Rival mobile operators may be breathing a sigh of relief at first glance, as Sky Mobile’s debut has not been as aggressive as first feared, but the MNOs in mainland Europe will be observing Sky Mobile’s operations like hawks, in preparation for its inevitable invasion on Italian and German soil. The key feature of Sky’s new mobile plans is the ability to save unused data for up to three years, to be redeemed at any point in time…
In the wake of every US election you have to be able to tell the difference between really new possibilities, and those which are just talked about in order to wake up the financial markets, after the numbing process of waiting for the new administration. So, which of these describes this week’s idea, out of UBS securities, which suggests that Comcast and Verizon should merge. The merged company would be number one in broadband with close to 30 million broadband lines, about level number one in TV with around 27 million customers, and first in cellular with well over 100 million customers. UBS securities thinks that the Trump administration is going to be so lacking belief in regulation that just…
Independent licensing administrator HEVC Advance has announced its intention to make some significant changes to its royalty scheme for software-only HEVC encoders and decoders – readying itself for the upcoming launch of software from rival Cisco-inspired body, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). HEVC Advance, backed by the likes of Dolby Labs and Warner Bros, states it will seek no royalties for certain versions of HEVC software on mobile devices and PCs after the first purchase is made. It aims to speed up widespread adoption of the HEVC digital video coding standard, also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, for fast online and mobile streaming in existing consumer devices – while at the same time restricting Apple and Samsung’s…
Donald Trump’s appointment of key advisers on telecoms and media have struck fear in to net neutrality supporters and could even spell the end of the FCC as we know it, some believe. Jeffrey Eisenach, a long time lobbyist for Verizon and an economist with the Federal Trade Commission in the Reagan era, and Mark Jamison, a former Sprint lobbyist, are leading the team which will transition the FCC to the new administration. Eisenach once wrote that “declaring the Internet a public utility is not necessary”, while Jamison wrote a blog post last month entitled ‘Do we need the FCC?’. In this, he argued that most of the agency’s functions should be transferred to other bodies, leaving it with just…
The UK’s current right-leaning Conservative government last week announced plans for £1bn in broadband investments including fiber and 5G, as well as a pot of money for autonomous vehicles. In Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond’s Autumn Statement, outlining financial plans for the country in the build-up to its Brexit negotiations, a new body called the National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF) was announced. This will oversee government spending in housing, transport, digital communications and R&D – with a budget of £170bn over the next five years. There are a number of political skeptics, and the government itself has noted that it will have to increase its borrowing by £122bn over the five-year period too. But those disputes aside, there is…
This week sees the formal launch of AT&T’s DirecTV Now mobile streaming solution, which analysts believe will make sense of the telco’s bid to acquire Time Warner. Wells Fargo senior analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said the launch “could lay the foundation of investors getting the planned acquisition of Time Warner that much more”, because it demonstrates how carriers are the bridge between content creators and content consumers. Increasingly, that bridge is mobile, as viewers consume more video content via wireless devices, and if it owns Time Warner, AT&T will be able to “leverage the many content delivery platforms it will now have and drive more eyeballs (and usage) to its wireless network,” wrote Fritzsche in a research note. “With its growing…
The base station antenna may have been a workhorse in the background in the past, with excitement centering on the baseband, but in pre-5G architectures it is becoming the star of the show. Massive MIMO and active antennas will be essential to many of the networks envisaged by the vendors and the trailblazing operators, and there is a huge amount of innovation going on in this area, by the large OEMs and by antenna specialists like Kathrein or CommScope. At last, it seems, active antenna units (AAUs), so long heralded as a revolutionary force in networks, will have their day in the sun. At its Mobile Broadband Forum in Tokyo last week, Huawei was focusing heavily on its AAU offering,…
Huawei has been assembling its cloud platform for mobile networks piece-by-piece for two years, as part of its broader ‘cloudification’ program for service providers, both entrenched and new. There are three main elements for the mobile operator – first came CloudEdge for the core network, launched in 2014; then CloudRAN in April this year; and now a cloud-based air interface, CloudAIR, which allows for dynamic allocation of spectrum bandwidth across multiple bands. “We launched the CloudAIR solution to help reshape the air interface,” said Edward Deng, Huawei’s president of wireless solutions. “Our focus is on improving the efficiency of the air interface, enabling operators to deploy services more flexibly and, of course, enhancing user experience. CloudAIR is designed to enable…
The UK government is embarking on a bold strategy to boost the country’s network speeds by investing in fiber broadband and 5G technologies over the next five years, with the goal of encouraging businesses to set anchor on the island by keeping pace with the likes of Germany in Internet of Things (IoT) projects. The Autumn Statement, delivered this week by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, promises government investments of more than £1 billion ($1.25 billion) in digital communications by 2020 or 2021. This will include £400 million ($500 million) for a new Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund for fiber to the premises (FTTP) infrastructure. The cash will be allocated between rival operators to upgrade residences to ultrafast broadband with…