11569 search results for Open RAN

The latest casualty of the modem market’s consolidation is Marvell, which announced a “significant restructuring” of its mobile platform division which will involve a sharp reduction in its activities and workforce. The plan will involve cutting about 17% of its total global workforce – it employed 7,163 people as of January 31. Marvell has not published a quarterly earnings report since May, but has offered preliminary estimates for the first half of fiscal 2016, in which it said its mobile platform unit had generated about $122m in revenues and $13m in gross profit. The company said the restructuring and job cuts will make annual operating expense savings of $170m to $220m. There had already been warning signs for Marvell in July, when it…

While comprehensive Cloud-RAN deployments like the one envisaged by China Mobile are on a very distant horizon for most operators, there are increasing moves to use virtualization in at least some areas of the RAN, in order to increase efficiency and enable truly heterogeneous networks (HetNets). This is especially seen in small cell projects. Recent Rethink operator surveys indicated that, for two-thirds of MNOs planning virtualized RAN implementations in the next five years, the work would start with small cells. This is for several reasons. One, as operators embark on densification programs, the small cell layer can be deployed from scratch and so a new architecture is possible without having to risk disruption to the established LTE macro network –…

M&A, Strategies, Alliances The IoT Security Foundation has launched, with founding members including Intel, Vodafone, Siemens and BT. The non-profit aims to focus on best practices and knowledge sharing. The WiFi Alliance has launched a new Implementer membership level for companies getting involved in IoT and smart home devices via WiFi usage. Quirky is selling off Wink, after the company declared bankruptcy. Lowe’s has joined the ZigBee Alliance, bringing its Iris platform to the group, and following on from last week’s launch of the alliance’s Chinese member group, which aims to promote ZigBee adoption among Chinese companies. Reuters is reporting that Cypress Semiconductor is preparing a rival bid for Atmel, entering the ring alongside Dialog Semiconductor. Sensity Systems and Genetec…

The HEVC Advance group – set up as a rival patent pool to the MPEG LA for the next generation video codec standard – has signed up MediaTek, but has also said it would “look again” at its policy of charging content owners for HEVC patent licences, and would come out with a new deal shortly. While MediaTek’s addition is not enough to swing the vote in one direction or another, the Taiwanese chipmaker does own MStar, which has around a 70% market share of smart TV chips globally, so it is clearly influential. The MPEG LA grouping has 32 members, but these include the two smartphone leaders, Apple and Samsung, as well as Asian broadcasters and operators (NHK of…

The US Department of Transportation (DoT) has awarded $42m to three parts of the country suffering from major traffic congestion. The government pilot scheme will equip around 10,000 vehicles with V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) and V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) communication capabilities by 2017. New York City, Tampa Bay and some areas of Wyoming will be the recipients of the funding, with the bulk of it going to a project in Manhattan, which will allow vehicles to talk to each other as well as to traffic infrastructure, such as traffic lights. The project will effectively form a gigantic dynamic mesh network of constantly communicating vehicles, providing huge potential to massively reduce both accident and mortality rates – claiming it will cut the unimpaired vehicle crash…

Among the many races to set standards for the internet of things (IoT), one of the most closely watched is between AllJoyn and IoTivity. Both aim to be the standard frameworks for interoperability between IoT devices, regardless of operating system or protocol, and both are open source, but AllJoyn is based on code written by Qualcomm while IoTivity is backed by Intel. The race between these chip titans to take the lead in a critical area of the IoT has so far gone Qualcomm’s way, since its AllSeen Alliance is dealing with commercial code which is incorporated in various real world products, and AllJoyn has secure a list of supporters with near-term implementation plans. Meanwhile, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC),…

The Mexican market is undergoing a transformation. It has a new regulator, Ifetel, set up in 2013 to replace the ponderous Cofetel and shake up a market entirely dominated by America Movil. Movil’s power is being whittled away by regulatory changes, forced divestments and the entry of AT&T after its acquisitions of Iusacell, Nextel Mexico and DirecTV. And the upcoming LTE auctions could change the landscape further if well-funded new entrants secure valuable spectrum. Mexico – the second largest economy in Latin America and the region’s largest smartphone base – has announced plans for its long-awaited auction, which will take place in January. Ifetel will offer 80 MHz of spectrum including 30 MHz in the AWS-1 band (1710-1725 MHz/2110-2125MHz) and…

As Wireless Watch analysed last week, with Sprint and T-Mobile essentially unable to merge, the initiative in US consolidation has passed to the cable operators, as seen in Altice’s quad play-focused acquisition of Cablevision. With AOL and DirecTV under their respective belts, Verizon and AT&T have limited freedom to make further major acquisitions on the home front, while Sprint and TMO are more likely to be targets for cablecos than the other way around. That means the mobile players need to look for other ways, apart from M&A, to continue to build up their spectrum arsenals – expanded licence-exempt bands, supporting LTE as well as WiFi; next year’s 600 MHz auction; the rising use of carrier aggregation and of formerly…

M&A, Strategies, Alliances AT&T wants to help build sensors and provision cloud services for new IoT customers, and is now moving into consulting and integration services. PrismTech has launched its Vortex Innovator Program for IoT startups, aiming to provide free access to its Vortex data sharing platform for companies, before transitioning into licensing successful products. Salesforce has launched its IoT Cloud, to connect devices and things to its CRM platform. Alcatel-Lucent has acquired Mformation, and will integrate its IoT security and device management solutions into Alcatel’s IP Platforms division. Dialog Semiconductor is buying Atmel for $4.6bn, as the silicon consolidation trend continues. Ericsson and Korean MNO LG Uplus have signed an MoU, to work on 5G and IoT platforms in…

The US Department of Transportation (DoT) has awarded $42 million to three parts of the country suffering from major traffic congestion. The government pilot scheme will equip around 10,000 vehicles with V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) and V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) communication capabilities by 2017. New York City, Tampa Bay and some areas of Wyoming will be the recipients of the funding, with the bulk of it going to a project in Manhattan, which will allow vehicles to talk to each other as well as to traffic infrastructure, such as traffic lights. The project will effectively form a gigantic dynamic mesh network of constantly communicating vehicles, providing huge potential to massively reduce both accident and mortality rates – claiming it will cut the unimpaired (no…

The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) has released the Candidate Specification of its IoT specification, the code that will be converted into the IoTivity open source implementation. The candidate specification is effectively a pre-release version, and is used to spot any intellectual property conflicts that could arise in a sixty day window. Speaking to Kim Lewis (Intel), Scott Lofgren (Intel mobile group and UPnP Forum president), and Wouter van der Beek (Cisco principal software engineer and UPnP VP), we asked whether anything in the candidate spec was likely to be changed or challenged by lawyers, and were told that it was extremely unlikely. As such, the spec should be finalized by the end of October. The group noted that its cloud-native…

Pay TV and ISP operators already offer CPE-based services to their customers, typically via a set top, home gateway or WiFi hub inside a home. Alongside energy utilities, via smart meters, these service providers are slowly coming round to the idea of offering a smart home platform as a service (SHaaS), as a way of reducing churn and raising ARPU. Rethink was at IBC in Amsterdam this week, the International Broadcasting Convention, where players from all aspects of the broadcasting industry pitch tents and network, as well as show off their portfolios. This year, RIoT saw a lot more smart home offerings, including many from less familiar vendors. First up, we met Skyworth’s Darrell Haber, VP Marketing and Strategic Alliances,…

Both Vodafone and Liberty Global are eyeing the quad play trend in Europe and investing in assets to enable them to play a role – the UK-based MNO has been acquiring wireline operators and partners in key markets like Germany, sometimes competing for the prizes with Liberty; Liberty has been rolling out homespots to support WiFi-first offerings, especially through its Benelux and UK subsidiaries. There is a clear logic to a merger between the firms, or more probably, given the regulatory hurdles, an asset swap or joint venture. But John Malone, chairman of the US-based international cable group, threw doubt on this, telling Bloomberg that, despite months of talks, the companies had not worked out a workable deal. Vodafone confirmed…

As consumers watch TV on a widening range of screens and devices, every player in the mobile and media value chain is battling to own the user experience, and therefore be in pole position to shape the business model. No contender has every weapon in place, so each has to play to its existing strengths. In Apple’s case, that means building on its apps ecosystem to mask its limited number of content deals; for Verizon, by contrast, it means harnessing its mobile network and integrating AOL’s advertising platform as rapidly as possible. Both these companies launched new TV offerings in the past week and they epitomize the battle between device platforms and network providers, to own a TV experience increasingly…