Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
In the past few years, Ericsson has sought to be as big a player in the TV and media market as it is in the mobile network, so the giant IBC broadcasting event is increasingly important to it. Its boldest move was to acquire Microsoft’s ailing MediaRoom platform, and this year, it announced two major partnerships, with Google and Intel, to help drive its efforts. Part of Ericsson’s interest in TV springs from the consolidation trend, as its traditional MNO customers merge or form partnerships with broadband and TV providers and chase converged platforms to support multiplay services and multiscreen delivery of video. It also aims to expand the pool of service providers in which it can fish, as it…
This is the last year of the CTIA show in its current format – or rather its most recent format, rebranded as Super Mobility in an attempt to restore its faded glories. Next year it will be part of a merged effort with the GSMA, to be called MWC Americas, and we can hope there will, once again, be a strong US-based event in the calendar to complement the Barcelona super-show. The European MWC has grown year-by-year by expanding its scope to new topics such as virtualization, apps, WiFi and virtual reality, as well as by taking a truly international stance, regardless of its location. CTIA has done the opposite during its steady decline since its heyday, becoming increasingly parochial…
Senet has announced a partnership with Gemalto that sees it adopt the security specialist’s back-end device provisioning for use in its growing North American LoRa LPWAN network. The integration is the first of its kind for LoRa, the Semtech-invented low-power long-range wireless protocol. With Gemalto, LoRa is collectively gaining something of a stamp of approval, as Gemalto’s reputation in the M2M and cellular industry is pretty solid when it comes to device security – probably the single largest hang-up that most potential IoT adopters have, given the prevalence of hacking or attacking headlines. Of course, the North American LPWAN market is heating up, with Sigfox still expanding, Ingenu rapidly rolling out coverage, and the looming presence of the MNO’s experiments…
From the start, live streaming has been social and has become an important media facet. The real-time format, combined with the wide reach of live streaming platforms like Facebook Live and Twitter’s Periscope have caused live streaming to become an important mode of delivering news to a large number of people very quickly. When Philando Castile was fatally shot by police while sitting in his vehicle during a traffic stop, his partner Diamond Reynolds quickly began live streaming the aftermath while still in the vehicle with Castile in a raw video that allowed her to call for help and document the incident, and ultimately added to the growing rhetoric of police brutality in the US. When the cameras were shut…
Brightcove was never going to cut a content security deal with one of the major DRM suppliers, as most of its video is played out in a browser, for its 5,000 plus customer base. Most of them are not video providers “per se” although some, like Showtime, clearly are. Brightcove’s customers include the New York Times, Oracle, Showtime, Philips, Macy’s, Bank of America, the US Army and Honda. Essentially it is an online video platform where professionals interact with it via the web, using tools provided by Brightcove to store, edit, manage and monetize video. But the fact that its next generation platform will use a DRM offering from castLabs, a company that simply licenses the DRMs that are freely…
Ingenu has announced a module manufacturing deal with u-blox, a familiar name in IoT-focused wireless radios, which will see u-blox sell modules compatible with Ingenu’s RPMA LPWAN technology. In addition, the company announced a reselling deal with Podsystem, in what is said to be the first of a number of deals that look to expand Ingenu’s sales channels. For Ingenu, it’s another step towards being able to take a step back from the actual work of manufacturing hardware and running the back-end network services, and being able to sit back and rake in the royalties and licensing revenues. Ingenu’s CEO, John Horn, previously explained that Ingenu’s value lies in its intellectual property, not in its services, and becoming a pure…
Deutsche Telekom (DT) has unveiled its redesigned Qivicon Home Base 2.0 at the IFA convention, in a move that it hopes will entice fellow European operators to adopt the platform. With its Magenta SmartHome app, DT hopes new features will sway the decision-makers at operators, as well as impress the consumers who take a look at the German convention. The telco has also announced new hardware partnerships with Sonos (home audio) and Netatmo (thermostats, cameras, weather stations), which brings some brand-name recognition to the platform. The Sonos inclusion is also being positioned as a potential security measure, using fake dog-barks to potentially discourage intruders, as well as playing alarms if needs be. The recent addition of the DECT ULE protocol…
Sigma Designs has opened up its Z-Wave protocol to developers, allowing them free access to the Z-Wave Interoperability Specification and the Z-Wave Security Specification, which were previously only available to Z-Wave Alliance members under non-disclosure agreement. It’s a big move that looks likely to gain Sigma and Z-Wave a lot of momentum in the smart home space, ahead of what looks to be a busy holiday season if the expected Apple and Google smart home announcements arrive this month. With the move, Sigma is significantly opening up its Z-Wave technology since both the hardware and protocol needed to create Z-Wave products have become far more accessible to developers looking to adopt a low power mesh protocol for smart homes and…
The Thread Group has announced an interoperability deal with the EEBus Initiative, which will see the two collaborate on smart home solutions. The deal follows similar moves by Thread to secure liaisons with the ZigBee Alliance and the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), and looks like something of a reinvigoration for the alliance, following a recent lull. The EEBus Initiative stems from a collaboration between Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) and the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU). It was established to promote the E-Energy research program, and consequently has strong history in the renewable energy and smart grid sector – into which smart homes eventually slot, as a core component in demand response…
Liberty Global’s Virgin Media operation in the UK is rumored to be buying the consumer WiFi operation of broadcast infrastructure player Arqiva – better known for managing DVB-T broadcast multiplexes and towers, including mobile base station masts and small cell locations. Arqiva has made foray after foray into consumer facing businesses, but has had little commercial success to date. It acquired the WiFi operation in 2012 when it bought Spectrum Interactive for £23.4m ($30.6m), which at the time had 15,500 hotspots in 2,100 locations – mostly in hotels, restaurants, leisure outlets and airports. Today it is described as having 27,000 hotspots, so has added 11,500 in four years, in 100,000 hotel rooms, 61 airline lounges and 35 airports, and all…
WiFi roaming on a grand scale is the order of the day as a rising percentage of wireless data travels over the unlicensed-band technology, and as a wide range of service providers put WiFi at the heart of their networks. Just weeks after the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) – the grandfather of WiFi roaming – announced agreements to allow movement between 23 operators of city networks, CableLabs, the cable industry R&D organization, pledged to launch a roaming hub for as many as nine US cable operators, by early 2017. That could further accelerate the creation of a nationwide network of cableco-deployed hotspots to supplement the CableWiFi Alliance’s huge roll-out. A nationwide roaming agreement of that kind, which could provide seamless…
Google’s hurricane force of disruption to traditional mobile businesses seems to be slowing to a strong gale, as the company pulls in its horns in some areas – adjusting its investment priorities in a world of changing competitive forces and rising challenges. Or perhaps the wild child of Silicon Valley is just growing up. Last week, the company was reported to be halving the workforce at its Fiber unit, and now it seems to have halted Project Ara, the modular smartphone initiative which was supposed to transform the economics of mobile devices for vendors and consumers and apply an open source model to hardware. Instead, the company is apparently taking a conventional route, planning a new handset brand, Pixel and…
A SpaceX rocket undergoing pre-launch testing has catastrophically aborted, culminating in a gigantic explosion and the loss of the Spacecom Amos-6 satellite payload that was due to add Facebook’s Free Basics services to sub-Saharan Africa, as well as home broadband to parts of Europe and the Middle East. SpaceX said vaguely that an “anomaly” was to blame, and that there were no injuries. The Falcon-9 rocket’s anomaly “originated around the upper stage oxygen tanks and occurred during the propellant loading of the vehicle. We are continuing to review the data to identify the root cause,” it said. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that he was deeply disappointed by the explosion, but that Facebook “remains committed to our mission of connecting…
Once an obscure acronym, SDL (Supplemental Downlink) is now an increasingly central element of the rush to add spectrum capacity at affordable cost. The slow pace of bidding in the US 600 MHz incentive auction, and the controversy in India over high reserve prices for its upcoming 700 MHz sale, show that operators are becoming far less willing to fork out huge sums for airwaves. SDL, a standardized mechanism for aggregating downlink-only spectrum with an LTE host network, could be a far more cost effective route. It underpins LTE’s moves into unlicensed spectrum, while Nokia and Qualcomm have just conducted SDL trials in Europe’s fought-over TV bands. The more MNOs’ attentions turn from LTE coverage to high capacity, the more…
A few years ago, Dell’s acquisition of EMC would scarcely have merited a mention in a mobile service. But the convergence of telecoms and IT, as mobile operators look to virtualize their networks and embrace the cloud, means that this $63.4bn deal is highly relevant. It could usher in a powerful new supplier – comments by executives from both companies have pointed to an intensified focus on carrier and IoT platforms, and of course, part of EMC’s rich dowry is a controlling stake in virtualization giant VMware, and the IoT-oriented big data company Pivotal Software. The deal should close on Wednesday, the last major hurdle having been crossed when China’s Ministry of Commerce approved the merger. Michael Dell, founder, chairman…
Most of the handset makers were present and correct at the IFA trade show in Berlin, over 90 years old and even busier than January’s Consumer Electronics Show (because it is open to the public too). It has become an increasingly important event for mobile device makers in recent years, with good timing, in the first week of September, for launching products for the holiday season. This year there were plenty of mobile-oriented themes, including a focus on midrange, sharply priced handsets, which reflected the ongoing shift of the market towards emerging markets and price wars. Huawei’s Nova and Nova Plus secured the highest profile, but there were plenty of others, such as the HTC One A9s, another iPhone lookalike.…
Hardware Skyworks has announced that several of its semiconductor solutions are powering LG’s new Online Connectivity Units (OCUs), which are being used by a number of Volkswagen Group automobiles. Maxim has unveiled a new silicon design that aims to provide data assurance to protect users from counterfeit data from sensors, with the first kit including the DS2465 WiFi module and the DS28E15 sensor node. Intel has launched a new range of 3D NAND SSDs, with embedded designs for IoT devices. Renesas has expanded its Synergy platform in APAC, with new software and design tools to support the range of MCUs. Telit has announced a new IoT dev kit, in partnership with Texas Instruments, that includes access to Telit’s IoT Portal…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Huawei has joined the ZigBee Alliance. An Alphabet executive has left the board of Uber, as the competition and conflict of interest between the two companies intensifies. UK utility British Gas’ owner Centrica has acquired FlowGem for £13m, a startup that specializes in smart home tech that can detect leaks in water pipes. Aeris and Sonata Software have announced a partnership that pairs Sonata’s software development expertise with Aeris’ M2M connectivity offerings. The Hyperledger Project has announced 17 new members for its Linux Foundation hosted blockchain consortium, including Samsung SDS, Quickbooks, Intuit, and Sany. The Thread Group has announced a liaison agreement with the EEBus Initiative, to collaborate on smart home device development. Sigma Designs has opened…
The Thread Group has announced an interoperability deal with the EEBus Initiative, which will see the two collaborate on smart home solutions. The deal follows similar moves by Thread to secure liaisons with the ZigBee Alliance and the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), and looks like something of a reinvigoration for the alliance, following a recent lull. The EEBus Initiative stems from a collaboration between Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) and the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU). It was established to promote the E-Energy research program, and consequently has strong history in the renewable energy and smart grid sector – into which smart homes eventually slot, as a core component in demand response…
US OTT technology firm Kaltura has announced an integration with the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform to encode, store, and deliver OTT video content from the cloud – joining the likes of Akamai and Imagine Communications as OTT vendors with Azure integrations. So why is it that companies such as Kaltura, Akamai and Imagine, which are successful in the OTT video space, need to tap the conglomerate Microsoft for integration deals? What makes Azure an enticing option for multiscreen OTT is its scalability and its full end to end lifecycle support – from camera to consumption, with the ability to incorporate third party products for encoding, in particular within the workflow. The sheer scalability of Azure obviously opens up some…