Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Fox has lifted the lid on how it built a workflow of various AWS tools to create its ‘Catch Up With Highlights’ feature ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, hosted in Qatar late last year. Built in eight weeks, the full product can ingest broadcast streams, pinpoint match highlights, and then encode delivery streams with metadata. Effective highlights can further pillage the gold mine that is live sports, bringing more eyes to sponsors long after the event has passed, while simultaneously slashing editing costs. While AI-led, automated highlight clipping has already been around for a few years now, although Fox’s claims of this being the first “end-to-end” workflow does seem to stand up, just about. Catch Up With Highlights…
One might assume that with video streaming experiences becoming more interactive in nature, that Berlin-based CDN slinger nanocosmos has been riding a natural wave of two-way live events that erupted out of the Covid-19 pandemic. nanocosmos’ VP of Business Development, Chris Strijbosch, is evidently not a fan of assumptions. Speaking to Faultline this week, Strijbosch counters that nanocosmos was well ahead of the curve, getting into interactive streaming back in 2013. Just to be clear, by interactive streaming, we don’t mean collaborative consumer features such as watch parties, but interactive B2B streaming opportunities such as live auctions or gambling. These use cases are bread and butter for nanocosmos, and the vendor announced a new customer this week with Wegner, a…
Supply chain analytics start-up Humans Not Robots, now striving to be called by its lighter on the lips initialism HNR, officially became a member of non-profit Greening of Streaming (GoS) two weeks ago. To celebrate the occasion and get up to speed, Faultline sat down with HNR’s CEO and co-founder Kristan Bullett this week. HNR’s services fit well into GoS’s objective of ending the corporate game of scope 3 hot potato, where supposed net zero goals are met by punting activities to the supply chain and ignoring their impact. Regulators in Europe have long woken up to these shenanigans, and do not let it slide. Consequently, operators and broadcasters need accurate scope 3 measurements and ways to tackle them,…
Pitched as a tool for probing the next big streaming blind spot, cloud-based OTT video monitoring specialist Touchstream is in the process of deploying a product hot off the press with one of the biggest broadcasters in the US, Faultline can reveal. Before unwrapping the technology, we are obliged to point out that the Touchstream in question, split between Madrid and Melbourne, is not to be confused with the US company of the same name – the one you may recognize from recent headlines involving a lucrative nine-figure patent infringement settlement against Google. Unfortunately, this Touchstream is not the lucky recipient of $340 million in Google cash, but the patent case has proven to be something of an accidental marketing…
US solar employment figures grew 3.5% in 2022 to 263,883, with 9,500 jobs added in the residential sector alone at an 11% growth rate. That’s according to the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) Solar Jobs Census, which also found a 5% in clean energy storage jobs – rising to 85,858 – and that 44% of solar firms reported difficulty finding qualified applicants, the highest figure yet reported in its survey. In order to meet IRA domestic content adder requirements, Array Technologies will source steel tubing from a Texan steel mill opened last month by Lock Joint Tube. ReNew, the Indian renewable developer and manufacturer, has signed MoUs with the Power Finance Corporation (PRC) and REC Limited, both state-owned, under which…
German coal giant LEAG, which runs a total of four open pit lignite coal mines and four coal-fired power stations in Eastern Germany, has pledged to reinvent its product offering in a dramatic shift towards renewable energy with the help of iron-flow energy storage provider ESS and potentially others. The company is looking to replace its coal-fired power plants with a mix of renewable energy generation and long duration energy storage technology to directly replace the functionality of its coal-fired power stations, once technologies have been proven at a small scale the company is looking to deploy between 2-3 GWh of long duration energy storage alongside 7 GW of renewables, eliminating up to 20 million tons of carbon dioxide per…
The wind industry still finds itself in turbulent waters, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, according to multiple experts and CEOs that eat and breathe wind turbines. China is still very much leading the way in both total installed capacity and initiative so far this year. With just over 20 GW of new capacity installations in the first half of 2023 alone, the Asian country is pulling further and further away and could represent over 40% of the predicted 1 TW global wind capacity by the end of the year. Out of the other front runners, Germany installed 1.5 GW and Brazil added 2.3 GW whilst the likes of India, Italy and Greece installed less than…
It is rare to have an industry all on the same page, and the lack of tentpole figures that are both easily accessible and have consensus as to their accuracy mean that a market projection update from Dell’Oro has triggered consternation in the Open RAN community. Put simply, Dell’Oro is keeping its long-term projections for Open RAN equipment sales, but is taking between 10% and 15% off of the short-term picture. However, because it is a private research firm, it does not want to spill all those valuable insights in a press release, leaving the press scratching its heads, Dell’Oro issuing extra public comment, and an air of confusion. Some context is necessary, but there is a clear lack of…
Like those inane messages on trains to look out for anything that does not look right, the repetitive 6G drum beat falls on increasingly deaf ears. This is a pity because there are some good things coming, with the problem lying in the positioning as a radical step change rather than the evolutionary development they represent. Some operators and vendors are getting this, noting the muted attention to 6G at MWC 2023 this year, as well as at other events. But others are still hard at it, such as Japan’s NTT, which with researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has just completed a demonstration of a phased-array transmitter module to enable instantaneous ultra-high capacity data transmission to mobile receivers.…
Network slicing remains stuck in trial mode despite firm advocacy from some tier 1 operators such as Vodafone and Verizon. Operators remain concerned over uncertainties and “unknown unknowns” associated with full scale commercial network slicing, which would not all be identified or resolved by the current crop of field trials, however successful they are. Network slicing spanning a large area and supporting diverse use cases, including static and fast-moving devices, imposes additional challenges on top of the usual ones, because of the requirement to accommodate distinct QoS parameters over latency, bit rate, transaction volume, availability and security. Sticking points can be defined under three broad headings. First is the ability to mix slice use cases on a particular device smoothly,…
Smartphone vendors, apart from the big two, are now betting on a recovery in sales later in 2023, by stimulating their channels and plotting new marketing campaigns. As always there is a mixture of hope and self fulfilment here, since such activity is bound to have some impact on sales. However, any uptick will quickly fizzle out unless there is a genuine upturn in demand for consumer devices. Smartphones have admittedly become so embedded in our existence that the sector is distinct from say tablets and laptops, which are likely to prove harder to stimulate. But there is also a sense that there is little need to change models as often as every two years just to obtain the latest…
Global IoT is on the way at last amid various launches of platforms, services and standards for interoperability of devices or networks across borders. The most striking and tangible recent development is Verizon’s launch of a global eSIM platform offering connectivity through partner telcos across North America, Europe and Asis Pacific, to be followed by Latin America. This is a significant extension of Verizon’s existing IoT platform, supporting remote provisioning of devices with traditional removable SIMs, both by including embedded SIMs soldered onto circuit boards, and by striking partnerships with additional top tier telcos. The eSIM platform, called Verizon Global IoT Orchestration from Verizon Business, also ups the ante by targeting IoT developers and integrators much more aggressively, along with…
There has been talk for some years about the opportunities that lie in combining mobile and edge infrastructure. High-performance edge nodes built out to support distributed virtualized RAN could also be leveraged by operators to offer enterprise services or improved quality of experience, and edge infrastructure close to cell sites could be a new business for neutral hosts along with towers, power and fiber. Texas start-up Vapor IO has been a prominent player in shaping this emerging picture, and its regular changes of direction, or expansions of its model, reflect the immaturity of the market. Its latest alliance is with the USA’s leading cable operator, Comcast, and reflects a shift from passive infrastructure partners such as tower operators towards active…
The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is gearing up for the next edition of its annual FYUZ conference, which brings together multiple open networking projects and stakeholders such as the O-RAN Alliance. The FYUZ 2023 agenda hints at some shifts in direction for the body, which was founded by Meta to drive availability of low-cost, common telecoms network platforms. Its agenda has broadened since its foundation. It has projects in open WiFi, transport and fixed networks as well as RAN. In the RAN, it was quickly drawn into the industry excitement about Open RAN, particularly the O-RAN Alliance platform. However, while O-RAN is often driven by the USA and by large RAN vendors, TIP has had a more European and operator-centric…
Five years ago this week… FCC Chairman Ajit Pai (2017-2021) handed the issue of US broadcaster Sinclair’s attempted purchase of Tribune Media to an administrative judge. The merger would have controlled local news coverage serving around 72% of the US audience—breaking the 39% maximum rule. Pai argued Sinclair was attempting to bypass the limit by selling off TV stations in a way that would still allow the broadcasting behemoth to control them in practice, even if not in name. The merger was ultimately called off by Tribune a month later in August 2018, and in 2020 Sinclair agreed to pay a then record $48 million fine to the FCC to close investigations into the unaccomplished deal. Witbe, a provider of…
With the ongoing strikes of writers and actors in the US driving a wedge through the content production pipeline, Faultline has received numerous email requests to speak with experts on the subject. One of those is Blair Harrison, CEO and Founder of channel creation company Frequency, who – it transpired – wasn’t totally aware that he had been nominated for the role. Ahead of our video call with Harrison this week, we had assumed the narrative would go something like this: ‘These strikes are ultimately good news for TV advertising because it delays the production line for premium content on SVoDs, triggering consumer fatigue and a spate of cancellations. In turn, viewing for AVoD, FAST and FTA services will spike.’…
With a contract freshly extended until 2026 in hand, Disney CEO Bob Iger gave CNBC a landmark state-of the-union type of interview last Thursday, dropping announcements and harsh truths at every turn. While the public might focus on Iger’s comments over the Hollywood writer and actor strikes, one moment Faultline was particularly interested in was his refusal to rule out licensing content to other streaming platforms. Such a move would make the mastodon join the current trend, as cash-strapped streamers – that had focused on attracting users at all costs with the creation of large libraries of original content – are now having to cut the costs and make money with what they have. Iger said it himself in the…
At just 23 people, there is a case for Seoul-based Bluedot becoming the joint-smallest member of the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), along with iSize Technologies, as the AV1 video optimization start-up risks it all to rub shoulders with giants. Founded in 2019, it has taken four years for Bluedot to take the plunge by joining the members alliance that promotes adoption of the AV1 video codec. Briefing Faultline on the decision this week, it soon became clear why Bluedot made the move into AOM now, in 2023 – because it does not yet have a single customer. The start-up launched onto the scene in 2019 with a software/hardware hybrid of AI-based video optimization technology and flexible FPGA-based semiconductor design.…
A novel AI-based content protection offering from Tel Aviv-based Videocites has been making waves, recently capturing the attention of DAZN to capsize social media pirates, with claims of removing 90% of illicit social media streams within minutes. Now – thanks to Videocites CEO and co-founder Eyal Arad – we understand what makes it tick. “We are a different animal in the industry. We track every piece of video across social media – live and recorded,” Arad tells Faultline. Immediately, Arad puts words into action, revealing something not conveyed in the recent DAZN marketing – that Videocites’ social media video detection algorithms are not all work and no play. As well as helping sports rights owners protect revenue loss to pirate…
The UK government committed itself to an expensive electricity future for its energy security strategy this week, endorsing a long held Conservative party manifesto pledge, that a quarter of electricity would come from nuclear. It has appointed a supremo who has immediately granted vast sums of public money to companies that he used to work for. The long term target is to reach 2050 with 24 GW (25%) of capacity coming from nuclear from what it believes is 14% today, targeting a ramp up in generation from 7GW to 24GW over the next 30 years. Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, naturally announced the grand plan, which follows the £700 million investment…