Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
The French government has been forging ahead with it national plan to revitalize its industry, in which adoption of industrial 5G will play a key role. Central to the ‘France Rélance’ and ‘France 2030’ strategies is the exploitation of 5G connectivity for industrial verticals such as healthcare and manufacturing. From 2019, French telecoms regulator Arcep has been issuing experimental spectrum licences for local use, in the 26 GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) band. The purpose was to help stakeholders to develop the necessary capabilities and explore use casesand commercialization models, and to test their 5G-based services and products. the Spurred by a damning report on the state of French industrial 5G, published in March 2022, Arcep expanded the scheme to include…
The year 2023 is showing some signs of being a watershed for 5G in millimeter wave spectrum, marking the tipping point from early optimism with mainly small-scale deployments, to an era of relatively widespread deployment to relieve capacity constraints and ultimately usher in new applications. The year has begun with a note of optimism as Mexico announced it would make up to 7,750 MHz of mmWave spectrum available to operators for 5G deployments during 2023. This comes as several emerging economies are looking to mmWave to help 5G reduce their historical broadband deficit, even if the improvements are patchy at first. This comes at a time of significant differences between developed mobile economies over their attitude to mmWave, with Japan…
Five years ago this week… French TV vendor Wyplay breathed a sigh of relief as its Frog middleware entered millions of Latin American homes as part of Telefonica’s new IPTV system. Aggregating broadcast TV with recording functionality, multiscreen, push VoD, interactive applications and more, Frog’s open source architecture was rewriting the set top environment as we knew it. There was no mention of Wyplay playing a part in Telefonica’s European operations, but Faultline felt that the rapidly growing platform would eventually win this more lucrative slice of the Spanish giant’s business, to align with the expansion of its Movistar OTT service. Things have been quiet since, except for a comment from Wyplay in 2020 about Telefonica’s Open Middleware V.8 offering direct access to Netflix, Prime Video,…
Domestic WiFi has long been a bugbear for home broadband services delivered over wireline or fixed wireless access (FWA) connections. As WiFi became widely used as the last hop in the home for connecting laptops, tablets, gaming consoles and other devices to the internet, consumers became more demanding of performance. Often problems with the WiFi itself overshadowed improvements in the fixed broadband, with variable coverage around the home and users tending to blame their provider for problems beyond their reach. This in turn led to various tools being developed by WiFi equipment and technology vendors, designed to give operators some visibility over the WiFi network beyond their gateway or router, which previously they regarded as the end point of their…
A peculiar deal between Belgian multi-play operator Telenet and parent company Liberty Global (with a 59.2% shareholding), inked shortly before the New Year, needs some unpacking. A new service agreement with Liberty Global Technology Services opens up availability of three applications to Telenet. Certain outlets have jumped to frame the service agreement as an acquisition, which is not entirely accurate, although this is most definitely a transaction with money changing hands – at the cost of €165 million to Telenet over 3 to 4 years. The three technology applications being licensed by Telenet are EOS, OneConnect, and Aorta. EOS (Entertainment Operating System) forms a core part of the technology behind Horizon – which itself underpins the Horizon Agreement signed between…
The holiday season has clearly not been a restful one for FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who began the new year as blood thirsty as ever. Recent comments that the Indian Government set an “incredibly important precedent” by banning the use of TikTok in 2020 have made the headlines – setting the scene for another turbulent year for ByteDance in the land of the free. To no one’s surprise, Carr thinks that the US should follow India’s lead. “For those who argue that there is no way to ban an app, India is an example of a country that has done it and done it successfully,” Carr told The Economic Times this week, arguing that TikTok offers the Chinese government opportunities for…
Video gaming veteran John Carmack has quit his loosely-titled but significant role as VR consultant at Meta, leaving a fiery memo on his way out the door. The venerable industry executive appears to have been exasperated by the burden of bureaucracy, which paints a poor picture of the conditions inside Meta – which has seen its share price plummet as CEO Mark Zuckerburg chases the Metaverse dragon. Perhaps the highlight of the memo is a paragraph that reads “we have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugarcoat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and…
A cheesy trade show like CES is rarely the best opportunity for hard-nosed technology vendors to flex their muscles. Often those doing the most important jobs in our industry fail to dazzle the easily impressed consumer market. That said, CES is a big show for big screens – with Roku among the most significant announcements with its line-up of proprietary smart TVs. The price range is arguably the most headline-grabbing of the specifications, with the 11 different models starting as low as $199 and ramping up to $999, with screen sizes stretching from 24-inches to 75-inches. The reception of Roku’s partners – the smart TV OEMs currently licensing the Roku OS – could make for intriguing viewing in the smart…
Isn’t it funny that all the talk of ‘fair contribution’ so far has focused on payments, and not a technological fix? Well, no, not really, but it does illustrate the incumbent thinking, when it comes to settling traffic grievances. This will be a topic that gets a lot of air, in 2023, and could be a neat opportunity for vendors to peddle their wares. Specifically, the Spanish deputy prime minister raised the issue in a parliamentary debate session shortly before the new year, saying, “If we want to continue making the necessary investments in technological infrastructure, we need everyone who uses and benefits from them to contribute to financing that investment.” On the face of it, this is a fair…
Colorado based Solid Power has signed a licensing deal with BMW Group with an up-front payment of $20 million for its solid state battery technology. BMW will build its own pilot plant in Germany and Solid Power will provide a sulfide-based electrolyte. It has been saying it will make batteries ahead of market leader QuantumScape, which will have a factory in 2024. But the Solid schedule has slipped twice. It has had a deal with both Ford and BMW since 2019, and has taken several rounds of funding from them both. To us this is not so much a sign of confidence as impatience that it the battery has not materialized, and BMW thinking it can do better. QuantumScape took…
China Three Gorges Energy, a state-owned power company, set the gears in motion with the construction of the first pilot project as part of the 16 GW Kubuqi Desert energy hub. Jointly constructed with the Mengneng Group, the Kubuqi hub is claimed to be the world’s largest renewable farm of its type. The pilot project will take the shape of a 1GW solar farm plus additional storage. With planned capacities of 8GW solar, 4GW wind and 4GW coal that will account for peak demand amortization, the almost green desert farm doesn’t have a public deadline as of now, but it will most likely be fully operational by the end of the decade as China is preparing to meet its 2030…
Nokia claims Europe’s largest private 5G network, in Calais A private industrial 5G network in Europe has opened in Calais, France, comprising 59 small cell antennas to cover a 50,000 square-metre production site belonging to Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN). This site belongs to Nokia, which also supplied the technology with the claim it has become Europe’s largest private 5G network to date. Nokia worked with French MNO Iliad and enterprise service provider Free Pro, both part of Iliad Group, along with France-based Industry 4.0 consultancy and integration specialists Sopra Steria and BSCA. The project is described as a key element and concrete step in ASN’s Industry 4.0 initiative to modernise its industrial processes, optimise operational performance, and improve working conditions…
Ericsson expects flat growth in the mobile networks market for the foreseeable future, and told its recent Capital Markets Day that it will aim for the lower end of its range in terms of targeted EBITDA margins by 2024. Even that goal will require further cost-cutting moves, to reduce cost by about $1bn next year. CFO Carl Mellander said: “Our expected continued strong business performance, in combination with measures to offset external headwind, puts Ericsson on track to reach the lower end of our long-term EBITA margin target range by 2024.” This will disappoint some investors, which have penalized Ericsson for disappointing margins in some of its recent quarters. The Swedish firm has established clear leadership in its core RAN…
Domestic WiFi has long been a bugbear for home broadband services delivered over wireline or fixed wireless access (FWA) connections. As WiFi became widely used as the last hop in the home for connecting laptops, tablets, gaming consoles and other devices to the Internet, consumers became more demanding of performance. Often problems with the WiFi itself overshadowed improvements in the fixed broadband, with variable coverage around the home and users tending to blame their provider for problems beyond their reach. This in turn led to various tools being developed by WiFi equipment and technology vendors, designed to give operators some visibility over the WiFi network beyond their gateway or router, which previously they regarded as the end point of their…
Last week, the UK government announced £110m in funding allocation for 5G and 6G technologies. The package comes in three parts. A combined £28m will be allocated to the universities of York, Bristoland Surrey, to develop, design and build future networks such as 6G. The three universities will partner with Samsung, Nokia and Ericsson for this endeavor. The second part of the package, and the heftiest, is an £80m research center, the ‘UK Telecoms Lab’, to be built in Solihull near Birmingham in central England. It is to serve as a secure research facility for mobile network operators (MNOs), suppliers and academics working on future 5G and 6G technologies and networks. Lastly comes a new R&D partnership with South Korea,…
Special Report: A look back at 2022 This is the last edition of Rethink Wireless Watch for 2022, and as is traditional, we are starting the issue with a look back on the defining themes of an eventful and challenging year, and thoughts about how they will continue to shape the industry in 2023. Our next issue will be published on January 9 2023, when we will dust off our crystal ball and predict the most significant developments for the mobile industry in the new year ahead. It is worth looking back at the highlights that we selected to kick off this year. In the first edition of 2022, the focus was heavily on Open RAN and its potential…
Faultline warned only last week how technology companies are obsessing over subjective sustainability indexes as a badge of honor. Days later, Akamai announces that it has been included in the 2022 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices and the FTSE4Good Index – which aim to offer investors a way of factoring in ESG data into financial decision making. Just a week after the BBC divided opinions by announcing plans to go all-IP from 2030, the National Audit Office (NAO) has questioned the British broadcaster’s leadership, saying that it requires stronger digital leadership structures to complete its online vision. NAO has also criticized the vague personalization element of the BBC’s spending plans, which we can empathize with. Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest stinging SEC…
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has voted to investigate the looming $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard King by Microsoft. The current government has an axe to grind with the tech sector, but the facts of the matter here appear weak – and it looks like significant political capital is about to be expended on a deal that does not look too bad on paper, in one of the most competitive media markets. These could, of course, be famous last words. The FTC announcement says that the deal “would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors on its Xbox gaming consoles, and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.” The FTC voted three to one, in favor of the filing.…
Another court proceeding against Netflix and Hulu lobbied back in 2020 has come to a head in recent weeks, in what is a small but significant win for video streaming against the weight of US cable. While the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision that Netflix and Hulu are not defined as “video service providers” and are therefore not liable to pay the same franchise fees that local cablecos are, we feel the decision will not deter copycat lawsuits down the line. It begs the question of where, in the eyes of the law, the line is between cables in the ground and servers in the sky-rise? Faultline and other outlets will continue to describe the Netflixs and Hulus of the world…
Last week, Faultline challenged the video technology community to throw us some surprising and stinging predictions for 2023, without falling into the FAST trap. Disappointingly, the trend of free ad-supported streaming TV copycats continues, with little regard for the underlying macroeconomic uncertainties triggering ad-supported trends, as these pages have already warned on numerous occasions. As we wade through the vendor crystal ball pit that fills the Faultline inbox at this time of year, one from Synamedia sticks out in this regard. While we don’t totally agree that content owners are “rushing headlong to adopt a YouTube-style business model” – because YouTube is in a league of its own – we do agree that launching into ads risks locking content owners…