Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
The “end to end” OTT business seems to be an area that has venture capitalists enthralled right now and there are new arrivals entering this market every week. One company we met last week is not new, but a new arrival in Europe, Anvato – already strong in among broadcast players in the US. We have pointed out once or twice before how there can be no room for 30 or so companies who all claim to offer the same thing. They need to differentiate from one another, have a “rock solid” route to market, which doesn’t mean gaining one customer, which it supplies end to end, and then hanging on trying to please that customer until they come across…
UK incumbent telco BT’s Openreach division is facing renewed calls for its demise or forced separation, this time from Sky – which is asking UK regulator Ofcom to refer BT to the Competition and Markets Authority. Sky claims Openreach is failing in its obligations to provide access to the fixed-line networks to BT’s competitors – in its initial submission to Ofcom’s Strategic Review of Digital Communications. For BT, this would add another CMA investigation to the books, as BT is currently in the process of acquiring EE, the UK’s largest MNO and the product of an Orange and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom) venture. The CMA investigation into the EE buy has been fast-tracked to phase 2, bringing the potential final decision…
If anyone doubted the scale of Reliance Industries’ (RIL’s) ambition in re-entering the Indian telecoms market, those whispers were silenced at this week’s launch of Digital India Week. Reliance Jio Infocomm, the conglomerate’s youthful wireless operator subsidiary, shared top billing at the event with the largest Indian mobile carrier, Bharti Airtel. Huge sums were bandied around – $39.2bn by RIL, $15.7bn by Airtel, much of that earmarked for 4G. While the two companies’ CEOs were full of smiles on the day, Airtel has a challenge to respond to the launch of Reliance Jio’s 4G services this year, and to defend its lead in a market which has been suffering from over-competition and razor-thin margins for years, even without the entry…
There may be seven pillars in the house of wisdom, but Cisco is only promising six with its framework for the internet of things (IoT). The company’s power rests heavily on frameworks – on harnessing its networks and platforms to unify all the disparate elements that make up a large enterprise, a carrier system, or an entire internet. Cisco has pulled together most of its IoT-related products and services – including 15 new additions – under one roof, itself held up by the six pillars. The result, the vendor says, is the kind of structure which will enable IoT systems to scale, by allowing critical functions like data gathering, data analytics and security to be addressed in a common manner.…
Voice over LTE may be just another packet of data in the IP world, but voice services remain uniquely challenging to deploy and will force operators to invest more in infrastructure from base stations to Diameter signalling routers, if they are to deliver a noticeably superior quality of service compared to Skype – which is essential if they are to have any voice-based business case at all. Even the case they have is a thin one. For most carriers it is defensive, enabling them to cling to users who default, out of habit or loyalty, to cellular voice and messaging once they are mobile. Some argue that they will be able to add so many added-value services on top of…
If 5G is to deliver on any of its large promises, it will have to signal the end of ‘one size fits all’ for wireless networks. The latest in the long string of international 5G projects, launched by the European Union’s PPP (public-private partnership), has this firmly in its sights, which gives cause for optimism that it will deliver something useful. The initiative has one of the tongue-twisting names beloved of the EU – 5G Novel Radio Multiservice adaptive network Architecture – but at least this comes with a neat acronym, NORMA – although the lower case ‘adaptive’ sadly downplays the most important world in the title. A network that can adapt to many services and usage patterns, some of…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Sierra Wireless is acquiring MobiquiThings, a European MVNO that focuses on managed connectivity services for the IoT using its MobiquiSIM platform. It currently holds 75 customers, and manages 100,000 subscriptions. Fujitsu has expanded its relationship with IQP and its code-free app development platform, as well as establishing the Open Innovation Gateway developer accelerator program in San Francisco. TotalTrax and Wyless have teamed up to provide telematics using cellular connectivity, for connected forklifts in warehouses. Ericsson is providing SaskTel with its M2M connectivity management platform – the Ericsson Device Connection Platform. Dimplex has picked Ayla Networks to help connect its electric heaters to the internet. Apple has become a voting member of the Bluetooth SIG, with a seat…
The Z-Wave Alliance and Marvell have both announced developer platforms for their respective communities, this week, and the total number of Z-Wave devices shipments has also now passed 40m after a record-breaking quarter. Sigma Designs, the owner of Z-Wave, has announced a new SDK, and Marvell has unveiled two new Kinoma hardware development platforms. Marvell recently open-sourced the Kinoma JavaScript application development framework, after partnering with Kinoma Software back in January to create the Smart Home Cloud Center – a turnkey reference platform for telcos and OEMs to manage a smart home with, using Marvell’s SoCs and communicating using WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, G.hn, and ZigBee. Now Marvell has released two new hardware devices that will allow developers to immerse themselves…
The new FCC rules on Net Neutrality in the US look to be getting an early test, as Commercial Network Services (CNS) has filed a complaint against Time Warner Cable. It argues that TWC has been charging it too much to deliver its streaming media services. TWC has argued back that this is about peering which because CNS has little traffic, does not qualify for free delivery. CNS is planning to stream a huge firework display on July 4th. TWC also says that paid prioritization is only banned in the final mile. We shall soon see if this FCC has teeth. Quantel, which recently bought Snell, has put out a global survey which it says suggests that 1,000 broadcast personnel…
Online retailer Alibaba is planning to launch a premium streaming video service in China. The service, called Tmall Box Office (TBO), will offer films and TV series from China and other countries, plus original series and productions. It will be available on Alibaba’s line of smart TVs and net-top boxes. “Our mission, the mission of all of Alibaba, is to redefine home entertainment,” said Patrick Liu , Alibaba’s head of digital entertainment. “Our goal is to become like HBO in the United States, to become like Netflix in the United States.” The online video market is extremely competitive in China. The entertainment and media market in China is the third-largest in the world, and is projected to reach $214 billion…
In the second of our series of articles on the rise of programmatic ad buying we look at how the distinction between viewing platforms is fading, with campaigns becoming spread across multiple outlets and a growing focus on the concept of the total audience. As programmatic buying extends across platforms we chart how it is also spreading geographically from the US to Europe and non-English speaking markets. The arrival of programmatic ad buying on TV can be seen as part of the drive towards harmonized cross platform campaigns that exploit the complementary strengths of the big screen, tablet, smartphone and other viewing devices. The phenomenon is already well established online and as the tools became available it was inevitable that…
We spent some time this week listening to the unique perspective of a new broadband leader, in Sckipio, where marketing Supremo Michael Weissman, pointed us to a Broadcom lock-in, talked about over-performance in its chip trials, and its innovative method for connecting its G.fast lines to optical backhaul. He paints a convincing picture of a two horse race with Broadcom, confesses that chip development between the two companies are neck and neck, but coming from a vastly differing points of view, and claims 5 hardware partnerships and 44 trial projects underway. While the cloud represents the answer to most technology questions right now, many old telco-based operators, who to this day rely on copper connectivity in the last hop to…
Nokia is searching for a new owner for its Here mapping division, and continues to add to the attractions for a potential buyer. This week, it published a set of specifications for integrating data from a wide range of in-car sensors via the cloud, aiming to set a standard way to address this challenge. Here – richly functional and independent of any one mobile platform – has a real chance to challenge Google and become a de facto standard to power location-aware services. This is particularly true in the automotive sector, where Android and iOS are less established than they are in smartphones, and where the carmakers are keen to build in-car service platforms which they – not the mobile…
The Weightless SIG, which controls the would-be standard for low power wide area (LPWA) connectivity, has announced the first network using its Weightless-N protocol. This has been established in London and deployed in partnership with the UK’s Digital Catapult program. Weightless-N, released in May, had to be developed somewhat hurriedly after the group switched its attentions from its original target spectrum in the TV white spaces, to the ISM licence-exempt bands also occupied by rival LPWA offerings like LoRa and Sigfox Weightless-N is based almost entirely on technology from Nwave, whereas the initial platform was devised by Neul, which is now part of Huawei and the Chinese giant’s bid to push a hybrid LPWA/cellular solution through the 3GPP under the…
In each generation of mobile networks, roaming has been a critical challenge, and in 4G, it involves carrier WiFi as well as LTE itself. More and more service providers offer combined WiFi/cellular packages, and with the introduction of standards like Passpoint and Next Generation Hotspot, there will be seamless authentication and hand-off between the two. Along with the shift to IP, particularly the introduction of voice services (VoLTE and WiFi Calling), the challenges are severe, but they will create new opportunities for roaming services. LTE roaming has already boosted business for IPX service providers, whether independents like BICS and Syniverse or carrier divisions. VoLTE, with the huge volumes of SIP signalling it generates, will add to the complexities, and now…
The shock waves sent out by the launch of Free Mobile services in 2012 continue to reshape the French telecoms industry. Two groups, Altice and Free’s owner Iliad, are battling to dominate the emerging quad play market and disrupt incumbent Orange, and the by-product has been a vicious mobile price war. Altice has already acquired the country’s second MNO, SFR, and has now made an offer for the third one, Bouygues Telecom. However, on Tuesday, Bouygues’ board unanimously rejected Altice’s unsolicited offer to acquire its telecoms subsidiary and insisted this was well placed to continue to compete on its own. This looks like an attempt to provoke a better offer, or a rival bidder (perhaps a revival of old merger…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Renesas has launched its Synergy platform, to connect its chips to apps and services in the IoT. The Industrial Internet Consortium has released its Industrial Internet Reference Architecture, as a guide for developers to use in designing systems using the IIC’s “common language” of interoperable standards and frameworks. Alcatel-Lucent and Sequans have combined to provide Orange with a 4G Kit for IoT, which Orange will use to speed up development and generate interest in the IoT. Sierra Wireless wraps up its acquisition of Accel Networks. Thinfilm has won an additional $22m investment from private investors, for its printed label electronics. The investing group now owns 6.1% of the company. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is calling for…
The Industrial Internet Consortium has announced the release of its Industrial Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA) – a document it says “provides a common language for the elements of industrial systems and the relationships between them.” This is a guide on how to build industrial IoT (IIoT) systems, with the backing of some very notable industry names. Unveiled at the Industrial Internet Berlin Forum, the IIRA is a framework that places both existing and emerging standards and protocols into a common structure, so that a business or organization can use it to spot the gaps in their systems or offerings. The IIRA outlines the key characteristics of a range of IIoT systems, as well as offering different viewpoints that should be…
Cellular module specialist Sierra Wireless has unveiled its latest attempt at promoting IoT hardware interoperability, with support from Freescale, Texas Instruments and Linear Technologies. The open hardware reference design is supported by another open interface standard developed by Sierra, and the support of three prominent chip makers bodes well for adoption. The target is to develop an IoT equivalent of the Mini PCIe connector, which allows components from multiple vendors found in laptops and desktops to be swapped by developers and customers alike. With the new hardware interface, different IoT modules can be combined to create new designs and implementations. The first mangOH (Open Hardware, presumably) connector will be found in the open hardware reference design that has already been…
The Weightless SIG has announced this week that the first Weightless-N low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) has been established in London. The new Weightless-N protocol, the first version of which was released in May, based almost wholly on technology from Nwave, now powers a network deployed in partnership with the UK’s Digital Catapult program. The government-backed Catapult has provided the roof infrastructure that secures the single Weightless-N base station. While initially very small, this deployment is more a test bed rather than a commercial venture, but the involvement of the Digital Catapult organization should open up this new platform to lots of the smaller startups that are involved in the program – which is backed by funding from the Innovate UK…