Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Hutchison Whampoa is facing tussles with the European Commission over two proposed acquisitions for its Three group – of Telefonica’s O2 in the UK, and Vimpelcom’s Wind in Italy. The company has made three pledges to the European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, in a bid to secure approval for its UK bid, which is expected to hit problems because it would reduce the number of MNOs in the country – an issue which did not affect the recently completed purchase of EE by telco BT, even though that has far bigger market reach across the whole quad play market. Canning Fok, co-managing director of the CK Hutchison group, which runs 3 Europe, outlined the three promises – the merged entity…
British satellite communications provider Inmarsat has joined the LoRa Alliance, one of the groups vying to lead the LPWAN (low power wide area network) space, which is expecting significant growth on the back of smart city and other IoT deployments. Inmarsat is the first satellite business to join the Alliance and this will enable LoRa developers to add satellite datalinks to their hubs and services in order to meet the more challenging network connectivity requirements. For Inmarsat, this is an extension of its Internet of Everywhere campaign, which it launched back in September. The IoE strategy and product campaign aims to provide global M2M and IoT connectivity via its satellites, as well as broadband for the more traditional customer bases…
The twisted saga of LightSquared continues, with the mobile broadband operator – once tipped to be a significant disruptor of the US telcos’ cosy world – relaunching itself under a new name, Ligado Networks. Much has changed since LightSquared was forced to file for bankruptcy protection in 2012, and even more since 2010, when it originally set out its ambitious vision for a wholesale-only LTE network in L-band spectrum previously allocated to mobile satellite services (MSS). Now the cablecos look like the biggest threat to the wireless status quo, Dish is lurking with similar former satellite spectrum, and the industry is moving towards multiplay services, software defined networking and 5G. Ligado will need a lot more than a new name…
Opera Software has agreed to be acquired by a consortium of Chinese investors for NOK10.5bn ($1.23bn). The consortium is led by Golden Brick Silk Road Equity Investment Fund and also includes Beijing Kunlun Tech, Qihoo 360 Software and Yonglian Investment. The Norwegian firm has been an influential player since the dawn of the mobile web, first with its browser – the dominant offering before smartphone platforms ushered Apple’s and Google’s own alternatives to center stage – and then with its efficient data technology for low end devices, and its mobile advertising and content services. But it has been struggling financially and last summer, it initiated a strategic review process and was widely expected to be acquired. The company said the…
There is a broad assumption that 5G will end up being an umbrella platform which includes a range of radio access technologies under its heavily virtualized canopy. Many of the R&D projects feeding into 5G – from vendors, governments, operators or academic institutions – are focused on this endlessly flexible, sliceable, programmable network. But in terms of specific radio standards, the process is being driven, just as in 3G and 4G, by the 3GPP, and while there was a very wide range of submissions to its kick-off meeting last September, its processes and concerns do not seem to have changed as radically as the brand new requirements of 5G might demand. There is no real reason why this should be…
Nobody could accuse India’s telecoms regulator, TRAI, of being in the operators’ pockets. This month it has, once again, set eye-watering reserve prices for the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction (see separate item), and now it has taken one of the toughest stances in the world on net neutrality, in effect banning zero rated or discounted content deals like Reliance Communications’ Facebook Basics, or Bharti Airtel’s Zero. In a ruling on Monday, TRAI said telecoms providers are banned from offering discriminatory tariffs for data services based on content, and from entering deals to subsidize access to certain websites. They have six months to wind down any existing arrangements which contravene the new rules. Its stance is even stricter than in…
The latest round up of OTT video news, deals, launches and products for this week. Set top shipments hit 11.3 million in South Asia during Q4 2015, growing 52% year on year, according to researcher Dataxis. Of these, some 6 million set tops were shipped to India, as the country pushes the digital transformation of its cable TV network. Technicolor shipped around 2.38 million set tops to India in Q4 2015, mostly to DTH satellite TV operators, and Skyworth shipped 2.19 million. Finnish video and broadband technology specialist Teleste says it has developed a solution to deliver EPG information from the Teleste Luminato headend to Samsung’s Lynk Sinc, designed for the hospitality industry. The system provides remote management of interactive…
At the end of January, the US FCC telecoms regulatory body released a proposal to loosen the grip pay TV providers have on consumer set tops. Ahead of next week’s FCC vote, AT&T has openly voiced its criticisms over the proposal, claiming Google is behind the plans – likening it to the FCC demanding operators take control of Google’s homepage. Chairman of the FCC Tom Wheeler is determined to drive competition and therefore innovation in the US by opening up the market to box and dongle manufacturers such as Roku, Apple, Google, and TiVo. Devices such as Apple TV and Chromecast will hence be able to use the regular cable feed in collaboration with pay TV operators, putting them right…
One of the things that will not be answered by any amount of discussion about 5G is how the huge increase in bandwidth expected in next generation cellular gets backhauled. But at Faultline we have assiduously tracked the ownership of fixed line assets throughout the US and Europe, anticipating the rising cost of backhaul to cellular only businesses, which have no such assets. Vodafone was, for many years, the one major cellco that we felt was out of kilter with the rest of the market and it realized this and has since acquired Kabel Deutschland and Ono in Germany and Spain, opened its own fiber operations in Spain, the Netherlands and the UK, and acquired Cable and Wireless broadband assets…
Tesla’s PowerWall made a lot of waves when it was announced back in May. Currently, there is an extensive waiting list to buy one of the systems, and in the meantime, rivals are beginning to emerge that wish to challenge Tesla in this emerging market – that has huge potential impact on utilities and electricity wholesalers, as well as the homes of the near-future. ElectrIQ Power has developed a system that is very similar to the PowerWall, but which integrates the transformer and inverter into a single 7.5kWh unit. As such, the system is rather large – weighing in at 300lbs, and measuring 50-inches by 35-inches by 12-inches. With both indoor and outdoor installation possible, many users will opt for…
The open source movement now dominates software, but could it also become the norm in chips? Operating systems like Unix, which could be licensed for many computers, squeezed out single-vendor platforms, but then gave way in turn to fully open source OSs like Linux. Similarly, processor architectures which could be licensed by many chipmakers rose on the back of mass market products which needed a new cost structure – hence ARM’s leadership in handsets, or MIPS’ strength in home gateways and set-top boxes. However, it has been tough for those licensable cores to penetrate the high performance worlds where Intel and a host of specialized architectures still hold sway. That has driven ARM, in particular, to focus intense efforts on…
Smart city and smart grid technology vendor Itron has announced its new OpenWay Riva communications platform, in partnership with Adaptive Communications Technology, to deliver distributed intelligence over Cisco networks – with the mission of improving the resourceful use of energy and water. Itron says there are three central distributed intelligence capabilities of its OpenWay Riva platform – self-defined and refreshed locational awareness of edge devices, support for multiple communication and application protocols, and unprecedented processing power at the edge of the low-voltage network. Itron says the platform drives new applications and decision-making to the network edge to take action in near real time, which will enable utilities to push smart water, gas and grid apps to the edge – including…
The open source movement now dominates software, but could it also become the norm in chips? Operating systems like Unix, which could be licensed for many computers, squeezed out single-vendor platforms, but then gave way in turn to fully open source OSs like Linux. Similarly, processor architectures which could be licensed by many chipmakers rose on the back of mass market products which needed a new cost structure – hence ARM’s leadership in handsets, or MIPS’ strength in home gateways and set-top boxes. However, it has been tough for those licensable cores to penetrate the high performance worlds where Intel and a host of specialized architectures still hold sway. That has driven ARM, in particular, to focus intense efforts on…
As centralized and virtualized RAN architectures move towards the mainstream of MNO planning, fronthaul issues will figure prominently at Mobile World Congress, creating new opportunities for dark fiber providers. Among ZTE’s pre-Barcelona announcements was a new OTN (optical transport network) product optimized for fronthaul, and reflecting how far ahead of the pack China is, when it comes to Cloud-RAN. The snappily named ZXMP M721 OD61 claims to address “the growing challenges and pain points that today’s mobile operators face with CPRI”. The offering can support 60G of bandwidth and claims to provide a highly efficient connection from the baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head to the CPRI interface that links them. It also supports multiple service access points, a…
The US regulator, the FCC, is finalizing its plans to open up the 3.5 GHz band under an innovative though complicated three-tiered system for spectrum sharing. More elegant approaches will hopefully evolve, but the FCC does at least deserve credit for highlighting the need for sharing, not just so that underused bands can be harnessed for data capacity, but also to enable new business models and new service providers. Unlicensed spectrum, notably with WiFi, has shown the potential for open airwaves to drive new services and operators. However, the limitations of unlicensed bands in terms of security, quality assurance and so on mean that the cellular operators have been less disrupted, especially in the high value end of their business,…
Korea Telecom (KT) and Nokia have announced what they claim is the industry’s first field trial of enhanced Machine Type Communications (eMTC), another name for LTE-M – the LTE spec designed to cater for low-power IoT devices that require very low data rates but very long battery lives that is also sometimes referred to as LTE Cat M. Elsewhere in the Korean cellular market, SK Telecom has signed a Memorandum of Understanding partnership deal with Cisco to develop new IoT solutions, according to The Korea Herald. The agreement will see SK Telecom’s ThingPlug application platform paired with Cisco’s Fog Computing portfolio. The pair reportedly hope to develop mobile apps and sensors that will provide real-time data and analytics in the…
Bluetooth beacon vendor Gimbal has finally made it onto the big stage, where it will star under the bright lights at the home of musical theatre – Broadway. The new deal will see Gimbal’s location and proximity technology and Urban Airship’s mobile engagement platform will power a new Playbill Passport app, using the brand of the iconic 130-year old Playbill magazine along with media and mobile technology firm Broadway Voice. Interestingly, the deal won’t be using the Bluetooth-based beacons for which Gimbal is most famous. Instead, geofencing is being put to use, in order to determine when a smartphone user is close enough to a theater for the app to trigger alerts and information about upcoming shows. The end result…
Intel has unveiled the Intel Retail Sensor Platform, which is aimed at retailers looking to create new technologically driven shopping experiences. The new platform is the first vertical solution built on Intel’s IoT Platform, which includes sensors, gateways, and the cloud management and analytics that tie the offering together. Intel famously failed in its mobile endeavors, but its attempts left the chip giant with a lot of expertise in designing small and power-constrained processors, which has been fed into the Atom and Quark families, the basis of Intel’s IoT portfolio. Now it is building a complete platform around those processors, including development and security stacks, devices and gateways, and a set of reference designs. The basic reference design currently consists…
When the term SON first hit the market, it meant self-organizing network and it was a relatively low level function, automating the process of allowing base stations to work together without interference. The rising interest in dense small cell networks placed new strategic importance on SON, since automation became essential, not just efficient, when provisioning huge numbers of base stations in close proximity. SON platforms which can manage hardware from many vendors, and interoperate with one another, are critical enablers for densification and future 5G architectures, and so are the focus of activity by several industry bodies such as the Small Cell Forum and the NGMN Alliance. And the acronym changed to reflect the deeper functionality of the new SON,…
AT&T disappointed Wall Street with its fourth quarter results, while Verizon exceeded expectations, though both carriers’ figures had some causes for concern – in AT&T’s case, a slowing of the postpaid mobile and U-verse TV subscriber bases and wireless revenue; in Verizon’s, falling wireless ARPU and some analysts’ fears that it will run short of capacity before its rivals do. AT&T reported total revenue of $42.12bn and net income of $4.01bn. For the year, the figures were $146.8bn and $13.35bn. But its wireless revenue for the quarter was down 4.9% year-on-year to $18.9bn. This was mainly because of lower equipment sales, as wireless services revenue fell by just 1.7%. The Dallas-based carrier picked up a total of 2.2m wireless customers,…