Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Two-way partnerships to address 5G projects have been piling up. Every major vendor wants to gain the kudos which comes from providing the equipment for an MNO’s lab and field trials, whatever the upfront cost. Most large operators now have some form of public R&D program, often working with one or two others. Now some big players, such as AT&T and Deutsche Telekom, are forming far broader alliances. These may accelerate results and reduce costs, but they also threaten to keep 5G’s priorities firmly focused on the telco vertical, while sidelining those industries which could benefit the most. As standards start to be discussed and use cases defined, these collaborations are moving beyond PR and starting to deliver useful results.…
Some marriages, however fractious, just refuse to break. Like unhappy couples scowling at one another over the golden wedding cake, Microsoft and Intel are back on the same stage, announcing Project Alloy, a combination of the former’s upcoming Windows 10 merged reality platform, and Intel’s RealSense virtual reality technology. The Wintel double act defined the PC era but failed to repeat the trick in mobile devices, driving Microsoft and Intel towards new allies. Their lack of success in smartphones may have convinced them that they work better together after all –at Intel’s developer conference (IDF) last week, Project Alloy was a highlight, and could be the first step towards defining a new Wintel ecosystem for wearables and other emerging connected…
Turkish network technology vendor Argela has provided the first public practical demonstration of how network slicing could look if 5G operators harness the emerging M-CORD standard. Network slicing is perhaps the concept which will most justify 5G’s claim to offer something entirely different to 4G, and therefore be worth the investment. It involves allocating virtual slices of network capacity to a service provider or enterprise, on-demand and with the particular capabilities (speed, security levels, QoS, latency etc) which the service requires. This could usher in far more optimized support for the wide range of vertical market networks which 5G pledges to address, and a radically flexible wholesale model, enabling huge numbers of virtual service providers on an ‘as a service’,…
The smartphone market is not being turned on its head after all. Last year, all the talk was of the rise of Xiaomi and the decline of the established leaders. Now, we see Samsung consolidating its leadership despite its recent troubles, and the Chinese vendors with the strongest growth are the old names, like Huawei and Lenovo. Even more encouragingly for the older brands, the smartphone market’s relentless race to the bottom seems to be slowing. The latest quarterly figures from analysts at GfK, which revised its 2016 forecast for the smartphone market upwards based on Q2 results, indicate that growth is no longer confined to the sub-$100 category, but is swinging to more premium models, especially in China and…
Google’s latest operating system project, Fuchsia, may be largely a mystery, but it reinforces a truth that the platforms vendors are having, grudgingly, to acknowledge – one operating system does not fit all. For a company which has put so much effort into making Android an OS for all purposes, Google has a remarkable number of potentially conflicting platforms, now including Chrome OS, Brillo and Fuchsia. Even though it looks like an experimental OS for embedded devices, Fuchsia was described by its own Google team as being designed for “modern phones and modern personal computers”, which might be just how Android and Chrome OS would describe themselves too. So is Google hedging its bets, extending Android to cars, homes and…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Honeywell is buying JDA Software for nearly $3bn, in a move that takes the industrial giant a lot further down the path of its business transformation towards software and services. Xylem confirms its $1.7bn cash acquisition of Sensus, a global smart meter and analytics specialist. The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) has announced a new automotive project, which will collaborate with existing auto alliances to better link IoT verticals with the auto industry. BullGuard has acquired Dojo Labs, adding the consumer IoT security company to its portfolio, including the Dojo smart home firewall. Airbus has joined the Hyperledger Project, the Linux Foundation’s blockchain wing. Analog Devices has acquired Sypris Electronics’ cuber security solutions (CSS) business. ecobee has announced…
During Faultline’s summer break last week we missed Microsoft’s acquisition of Beam, an interactive live games streaming startup based in Seattle. Beam’s SDK technology will integrate live streaming features into Microsoft’s Xbox One consoles, allowing users to play alongside their favorite gamers. This has the promise of being a significant move from Microsoft as live streaming goes from strength to strength, but while the practice of watching others play video games is very popular thanks to YouTube, the idea of doing it while playing isn’t a trend that has kicked off – and this will be particularly more difficult to achieve on consoles than PCs. However, Beam has a trick up its sleeve to trump rival game streaming services such…
The opening keynote of the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) was used to unveil Project Alloy, an all-in-one merged-reality headset that Intel says will redefine what is possible in VR. Project Alloy will be offered as an open platform in 2017, and Intel is working with Microsoft to optimize Windows-based content for Alloy. APIs for the hardware kit will also be made available to developers, and Intel hopes that these developers and some specific partners will build their own branded designs from Alloy. Windows Holographic is an obvious candidate, but Apple has yet to make a VR or AR play in either its desktop or mobile portfolios. For now, the real-world objects that are integrated into the merged-reality environment are markedly…
British Telecom CEO Gavin Patterson is engaged in a critical campaign to land itself sole ownership of a Universal Service Obligation (USO) for all of UK broadband, which will ensure that it remains a national monopoly – with the net result that it will inherit wide ranging advantages in both wireless and wired broadband throughout the foreseeable future. Faultline has very specific recommendations for regulator Ofcom and feels this should not happen. The eyes of every telco on the planet is likely firmly focused on the outcome here – once one telco makes a killing out of accepting a broadband USO, then everyone will want to copy the formula. The idea behind a USO is that everyone in a national…
Back in 2003 we wrote something called the Faultline Manifesto which predicted that one-day online trading exchanges would be the basis of real time content provision to broadcasters and OTT services globally. When this failed to happen 13 years on, we began to think, “Oh well getting one prediction wrong is not the end of the world.” But it turns out we didn’t so much get it wrong as get it way too early. This week we came across The RightsXchange or TRX, named the exact same name as The Rights Exchange, which was launched by Softbank, and based on Intertrust DRM technology in the US back in 1998, which disappeared without trace. Eventually we still believe that all content…
Intel has been trying to reposition itself these past few quarters, into a company with a firm focus outside its core offering of PC and server processors. Drones, machine vision, and the IoT have been recent additions to the portfolio, and at its Intel Developer Forum (IDF) the company unveiled a new pursuit – a VR headset called Project Alloy. After its mobile failure, Intel needs its IoT plans to pan out. Its more IoT-specific announcements saw it unveil the Joule developer board, which is aimed at those looking to experiment with its RealSense 3D vision camera technology, as well as the commercial launch of its Aero drone-based developer kit. As the IoT is data at its core, a new…
It’s a question that has been at the back of our mind for a while now; is it possible to prevent an Internet of Compromised Things by including some sort of kill-switch in IoT devices? In recent interviews and briefings, we’ve put the question to those in the industry, to see if we’re on the mark or a little loopy. The good news is that we weren’t laughed at. The bad news is that the equivalent of a dead-man’s switch for IoT devices isn’t exactly feasible at the device level. However, both Barracuda Networks’ VP Network Security, Klaus Gheri, and ForgeRock’s EMEA Director, Advanced Customer Engineering, Simon Moffatt, explained ways of mitigating rogue devices in the wild – a key…
Google has started work on a new operating system, which will support micro IoT devices and scale all the way up to PCs. The OS is an ambitious project, with one core component drawing a lot of attention – it won’t be using the Linux kernel at all. With Fuchsia, Google is trying to build a non-Linux OS. There have been no official announcements about Fuchsia, and it appeared on GitHub with just the description “Pink + Purple = Fuchsia (a new Operating System). We won’t spend much time trying to analyze that, but Imagination Technologies, its MIPS processor architecture, and the prpl Alliance are well known for their purple branding. We aren’t so sure about Pink’s connotations, but MIPS…
Samsung has unveiled a machine-vision platform based on IBM’s TrueNorth processor, a chip designed to operate in the same fashion as the human brain, and bring superior compute power to far smaller power packages. The Samsung system, called the Dynamic Vision Sensor, appears very impressive, based on the demonstration at Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology. The South Korean giant says that the chip allows its camera to see the world at 2,000 frames per second (fps), which requires a very high processing bandwidth. What’s remarkable is that the system only uses 300 milliwatts of electricity. Also this week, the pair continued their collaboration with the announcement of IBM’s new SyNAPSE chip – a complement to its TrueNorth neurosynaptic/neuromorphic chip, which…
A couple of months after Google acquired fixed wireless provider Webpass, the rationale for the deal is becoming clearer. The search giant has suspended build-out of some of its planned Google Fiber deployments, quite possibly because it is exploring lower cost wireless methods to bring broadband to US homes and disrupt the incumbent telcos and cablecos. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Google has delayed fiber roll-outs to three Silicon Valley cities – San Jose, Mountain View (Google’s HQ) and Palo Alto. The fiber installers were reportedly told that “Google was going to re-evaluate this whole project because they were thinking of going aerial”. A Google Fiber spokesperson told the newspaper that talks with these cities, and others in the area…
The USA’s National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) has published its IoT security model, in a 25-page document that aims to bring some order to the Internet of Things. However, with the increasing attack surface that IoT tech provides to other nation states, are we going to see an increasing amount of government intervention in IoT security standards and practices? After all, there are parallels to be drawn within operating a defective water treatment plant that accidentally poisons the population and accidentally (or negligently) allowing remote attacks to open a dam or turn off the power to a town. But while governments tend to operate inspection and regulatory agencies to keep tabs on these public and private ventures, there…
A few months ago, Ericsson’s departed CEO Hans Vestberg was calling on the industry to focus on conventional, standardized delivery methods for 5G, rather than getting too hung up on drones and balloons. This month, Ericsson has moved to the forefront of the growing trend to use drones to extend mobile connectivity, partnering with China Mobile for a field trial of what, the companies claim, is the first ‘5G-enabled’ drone system. Of course, 5G is not defined, but the claim rests on the fact that the drone system has emerged from Ericsson’s 5G R&D program, and has been designed to the low latency levels foreseen for next generation networks, in order to enable applications in the emergency services and other…
One of the presumed outcomes of the 5G process is full convergence of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, with one or more air interface standards which can span both, using frequencies entirely flexibly according to requirement. This is a very long way off, if the current quarrels over extending LTE into licence-exempt bands are anything to go by. Coexistence of WiFi and LTE in the 5 GHz band is beset by political and commercial agendas, but there are also genuine technical problems in the way of being good neighbors. This is unsurprising, given that the two technologies started from very different places and have evolved separately, under the auspices of different standards bodies. Will this situation improve in the 5G era?…
Kepler Communications has secured $5m in seed funding for its satellite network and service ambitions. The Toronto-based startup is focused on IoT use-cases, but is several years from full scale commercial launch. Kepler’s pilot program is scheduled for Q4 2017, and conforms to the core tenet of the satellite industry – that laying the groundwork for a deployment takes a long time. Kepler is basing its business model around its belief that over the next five years, nearly six million devices will require an M2M satellite connection – citing examples ranging from strain gauges on bridges, soil acidity sensors, seismic monitors, and shipping containers. It is aiming to build a satellite platform that its a hundred times cheaper, partly by…
US cableco Wide Open West (WOW) said this week it will acquire NuLink‘s systems in Newnan, Georgia, a local provider of high-speed Internet, digital cable TV, and phone services to residential and business customers with 34,000 homes and businesses. It was bought from Halyard Capital, a New York-based private equity firm. Terms were not given. A Washington state attorney has filed a $100 million legal action against Comcast for “grossly misrepresenting” a service protection plan which charges subscribers $4.99 a month to insure premises cables are in working order. Cablecos will only fix external cables usually. It claims it is in breach of the state Consumer Protection Act. Effectively Comcast continued to charge for on-premises work, even when they had…