Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Video codecs are a perennial point of contention, but critical to many mobile and broadband applications – and years of battles over the main candidates have always threatened fragmentation of effort, especially between the two main contenders, the MPEG-backed HEVC, and its successor Versatile Video Coding (VVC); and Google-supported AV1. A recent tidbit of information suggests that HEVC might have just leapfrogged AV1, say analysts at Wireless Watch’s sister service, Faultline, which provides weekly analysis of the digital video market. The irony here is that Google, the single largest proponent of AV1, might have signed the alt-codec’s death warrant, by finally enabling HEVC inside Chrome. The clue here is a website called CanIUse, brought to our attention by Jan Ozer,…
The O-RAN Alliance, the main body devising specifications to underpin Open RAN platforms, needs to forge partnerships with official standards-setting organizations such as 3GPP, as these will be influential in adopting O-RAN specs within broader, and globally accepted, standards frameworks. The Alliance has been building these relationships gradually, and last week announced a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with US standards group ATIS, which is the main regional partner for 3GPP. The goal is to “further both organizations’ mutual objectives to advance the industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and global standards-compliant mobile networks”, said a joint statement. ATIS is influential in the US ecosystem, which has been a particularly intense focus of O-RAN development because many US policy makers believe…
There was a time when the HomeGrid Forum’s (HGF) powerline technology, G.hn, was being pitched as a whole-home alternative to WiFi. These days have passed, and HGF is now looking at a pile of new applications outside the home, and to some extent, leaving the operators behind. However, HGF president Livia Rosu told Wireless Watch’s sister service, Faultline, that G.hn still has an important role to play. Back in 2014, the operators collectively whiffed a significant opportunity to be major players in the nascent smart home realm, using their CPE and in-home networks as the conduit for what could have been an incredibly sticky customer offering. Further, this would have been the first step in being involved in nearly every…
Eyebrows have been raised in the low-power WAN world at the success of the Weightless protocol, which many had believed to be defunct, in Taiwan’s smart metering sector There, local IoT firm Ubiik just secured another order, worth $17m, from Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) for 450,000 additional meters. This will become part of Taipower’s advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system which will then have over 1m of the devices connected by Weightless. The surprise is that many assumed Weightless had sunk almost without trace, with few references to it among analysts or technical publications since 2017, although as it happens Wireless Watch has charted its progress since then. But Ubiik has continued to promote the protocol on its technical merits, presenting…
Over the past year, UK incumbent BT has forcefully put into motion its group-wide restructuring and reprofiling strategy, aimed at shifting the focus from being a traditional network operator, to becoming the country’s leading digital service provider (DSP). This aspiration is indicative of the growing confidence of traditional telcos to deploy new 5G use cases, a few years after many launched 5G services, initially driven by high-throughput consumer mobile broadband. It also highlights the challenging macro-economic environment in which BT Group, and the wider telco sector, find themselves. . BT’s ambition is to transition away from a ‘telco’ image, instead wishing to be perceived as a ‘tech-co’. The initial tactics are to separate its traditional consumer mobile and fiber provider…
Cellnex’s CEO Tobias Martinez will leave the top job this summer, in line with a radical new strategy by Europe’s leading pure-play tower operator. Cellnex will reduce its reliance on expansion by acquisition of other towercos or site portfolios, as its aggressive M&A-driven growth of the past few years will inevitably slow because of regulatory scrutiny, and the law of diminishing returns – the biggest and most attractive deals will have been done and the remaining prospects will be smaller and potentially harder to justify in terms of new business versus rising debt. The change in Cellnex’s strategy is not peculiar to that company, or to Europe. Tower operators in some parts of the world are feeling pressure from the…
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was back to its usual strength earlier this month, after a couple of Covid-hit years, providing this sector’s biggest showcase for new gadgets and technologies, in Las Vegas. Until the smartphone era, this was a huge event, but one that Wireless Watch took only a passing interest in, as most consumer electronics did not feature wireless connectivity, beyond Bluetooth or the occasional WiFi link. But with the iPhone came the age when consumer gadgets increasingly had to be connected at all times and in all places, and when cellular network were carrying a rising tide of ever-more sophisticated devices with associated traffic, that had to be monetized, somehow, by the operators. In recent years, then,…
Five years ago this week… Broadcasters used CES 2018 to toast the arrival of ATSC 3.0 as an official standard, following recent approval from the FCC, despite the distinct lack of ATSC 3.0-capable TV sets or other devices on the show floor. Station groups like Sinclair and Pearl TV were offering OTA operators private demos of ATSC 3.0 features that had already been available via pay TV and OTT services for years – end-to-end cloud management, targeted, data-driven ad insertion, and interactive on-screen program guides. Not much has changed judging by the announcements to come out of CES 2023. — Following increased political pressure, beleaguered sports streamer DAZN is issuing refunds to dissatisfied subscribers in Italy, following the latest bout of performance complaints. It comes as…
Amid the latest round of dissidence from its key media clients, Nielsen’s cross-platform advertising offering came into the world last week, offering some much-needed legs to the Nielsen One rebrand. However, this simply will not placate a feisty group of major video services, who are looking to use their collective power to act as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to measuring premium content. While Nielsen is no stranger to the spotlight in Faultline, it is rarely good publicity. It therefore felt only natural that in the week that the measurement monolith finally had some positive progress to report, a familiar set of its key media clients have banded together to create a well-choreographed distraction from the celebrations. For…
Warner Bros Discovery has cashed in on a raft of European content designed to streamline the overweight merged mass media conglomerate. The deal is a quid pro quo one, packaging up European rights for 168 episodes from 21 local series, including a handful of highly popular HBO Max shows, in a major boost for SkyShowtime – a new kid on the European streaming block at just three months young. SkyShowtime, the product of an ongoing incestuous joint venture between Comcast and Paramount in Europe, will hope the content exchange can provide a springboard for original production in its European footprint – which excludes a number of key markets. This boost is particularly welcome after the early effect of SkyShowtime’s launch,…
There was a time when the HomeGrid Forum’s (HGF) power line technology – coined G.hn –was being pitched as a whole-home alternative to WiFi. These days have passed, and HGF is now looking at a pile of new applications outside the home, and to some extent, leaving the operators behind. However, HGF President Livia Rosu tells Faultline that G.hn still has an important role to play. Back in 2014 or so, the operators collectively whiffed a significant opportunity to be major players in the nascent smart home realm, using their CPE and in-home networks as the conduit for what could have been an incredibly sticky customer offering. Further, this would have been the first step in being involved in nearly…
Codecs are a perennial point of contention, but a tidbit of information suggests that HEVC might have just leapfrogged AV1. The irony here is that Google, the single largest proponent of AV1, might have signed the alt-codec’s death warrant, by finally enabling HEVC inside Chrome. The clue here is a website called CanIUse, brought to our attention by who else but the venerable Jan Ozer, long-term streaming professional and recent Marketing Director at NETINT. On CanIUse, HEVC has historically sat in the high-teens realm, showing how it has been largely confined to the Apple ecosystem. Since the Chrome change, that figure has leapt to some 84.6%. Now, the caveat here is that only 17.6% counts as full support, with the…
Last week, Faultline covered Xperi’s CES 2023 announcements at length, primarily looking at the breakout of the TiVo OS in the smart TV market – coming Spring 2023. Meanwhile, the TiVo Managed IPTV Service was another product flying under the radar at the consumer-focused Las Vegas frenzy, one that deserves a second look. But first, the glaring omission of Xperi’s new toy, Vewd Software, from the company’s recent press binge, and lack of transparency on plans for the bankrupt Oslo-based business it acquired in July 2022, has made for frustrating writing. Xperi’s comms department has since put us here at Faultline out of our misery, informing us that Vewd Software has been fully integrated into TiVo OS, where applicable, and…
IEEFA points out this week that NV Energy has made a comparison on geothermal comparing it to the costs of nuclear and reckons that even the new NuScale Small Modular Reactor is way more expensive than existing geothermal state of the art. Two quoted projects – one at $69 per MWh and the other for $70 per MWh, which could be built virtually anywhere – are both now way cheaper than the recently increased costs for NuScale of $89 per MWh. NV Energy will use them to retire coal plants. One of these is with age-old tech and the other with Canada’s Eavor, which Rethink Energy has written up here. EDF Renewables and the UK’s Luminous Energy are planning an…
In what looks like a counter offensive against the G7 over funding to cut fossil fuels, China has now put together a $13.8 billion package for the Philippines renewables sector, pushing solar, wind and energy storage from 9 separate Chinese companies. If it adopts a similar strategy for most of its belt and road countries, it would lead to huge global Chinese renewables installations. This is perhaps the approach that China should take, investing directly in Asian and African infrastructure to give it political influence over policy, rather than its approach in Taiwan, which is basically to threaten invasion. The Philippines has only just reached 100% of homes having electricity, but still less than 50% have clean cooking facilities, which…
India’s deployment of solar capacity is grinding to a halt as new production is not yet online at scale to meet demand, stockpiled Chinese goods from before April 1st 2022 have mostly been used, and some of India’s module output is being exported to the US. India installed 13.9 GW in 2022, up 17.5% year-on-year, which is half the global growth rate of the solar industry. The 2022 figure, though it is a record, is also not enough to meet the targets set by the Indian governments, and it’s growth on a small base considering the scale of the Indian economy and power sector. If anything Indian solar ought to be growing much faster than the global average, which was…
A motley collection of some of the major power brokers in Distributed Energy in the US have been pulled together by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) into an initiative that should see virtual power plants explode on the US scene over the next two to three years. This sudden acceleration of VPPs could significantly upset the control that US utilities have over US power markets. RMI is calling this the Virtual Power Plant Partnership or VP3. The deal includes car heavyweights General Motors and Ford, SunPower, and Sunrun, two of the largest installers of home solar and batteries, along with Google’s Nest smart thermostat subsidiary, and demand response and VPP software suppliers OhmConnect, Olivine, SPAN, SwitchDin, and Virtual Peaker. Initial…
Germany’s new entrant operator, Drillisch 1&1, has finally switched on part of its new 5G mobile network, at least to support fixed wireless access (FWA). This is an important milestone not just for the operator itself, but for the Open RAN community, for which it is a European poster child, and for Rakuten Symphony, which is providing the network platform and integration. A series of delays last year was casting a shadow over the Symphony-led dream of pre-integrated open networks that are relatively easy and quick to deploy, compared to traditional models – though 1&1 largely blamed other factors such as slow implementation of infrastructure deals by towercos such as Vantage. Owned by German ISP United Internet, 1&1 is Europe’s…
Amdocs’ agreement to buy UK-based service assurance software house Mycom OSI has collapsed. The Israel-based OSS/BSS heavyweight announced the deal, worth up to $188m, last May, but before the holiday it said the UK competition authorities were taking too long to issue approvals. Anthony Goonetilleke, Amdocs’ group president of technology and head of strategy, told an analyst Q&A session: “We have a list of other stuff that we’re looking at, and we just wanted to get it over with and not mess around with it because the market is not waiting.” Analysts were surprised by the reason given for the failure of the deal, since there appeared to be no reason why the UK competition authority would engage in a…
The revenue boost that the mobile equipment and software vendors – especially Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung – have enjoyed in the USA will soon be sharply reduced. T-Mobile USA, while announcing a very strong 2022 for business, also said its expansive 5G build-out had achieved a high degree of scale and it would reduce its capex sharply from 2023. AT&T, which had a far more mixed year in 2022, has already talked about capex reductions, as has Verizon, and AT&T set out a cost-cutting program at the start of the year. Meanwhile, China’s massive 5G roll-out is slowing, and increasingly focused on Chinese vendors anyway. All this makes the start of India’s 5G roll-out, which is occurring at breakneck speed,…