Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Q: what happens when a video quality specialist, a security expert, and a pair of video data professionals walk into a room? A: a whole load of potential solutions to the many challenges that comes with delivering, monitoring, and monetizing sports content. That’s what Faultline got when we welcomed SSIMWave, Verimatrix, 24i, and Firstlight Media onto our Sports Challenge live panel session this week – a discussion influenced by the migration of sports online and the resultant struggles of OTT video providers the world over to reliably deliver sports content. No example is more pertinent than DAZN in Italy (see separate update on Sky Italia this week), which spiraled so far into QoE chaos that it even incited government intervention.…
In the same breath that Warner Bros Discovery revealed plans to push deeper into free ad-supported streaming TV, Disney is joining in the fun, announcing the roll-out of an ad-supported tier of Disney+ in the US from early December 2022 and internationally from 2023. The date is critical, as it will see Disney beat both WBD and Netflix to the ad punch, by many months. Taking in the bigger picture, it seems strange to frame this as Disney getting a head start in ad-supported content given the abundance of free content already out there. Nonetheless, a head start it is against these two major rivals, although we reserve that Disney has a history of rushing things to market before the…
A provincial government in Pakistan has granted permission for the construction of a 400 MW green hydrogen project, powered by 500 MW of wind and 700 MW of solar power. The facility will be developed by Oracle Energy, a JV owned 70% by Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum – a member of Dubai’s royal family – with the remaining 30% being held by Oracle Power. The project aims to produce 55,000 tons of green hydrogen per year. Dominion Energy has received final approval for its 2,600 MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project in Virginia. The development is expected to enter operation in 2026. Shell has acquired a 2,900 MW portfolio of renewable power projects in India from Actis, for…
This week has seen oil prices fall to levels not seen since before the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a global recession starts to bite, the oil industry must realize that the heyday of the past few months is over. Rethink Energy anticipates that it has just two years to get its affairs in order before consumers present an unrelenting squeeze on global oil demand. Sitting at around $95 per barrel, Brent Crude oil – a global benchmark – is now below the $96.84 per barrel it closed at on February 23. The West Texas Intermediate has dropped below $90 per barrel. Both have now fallen over 25% since they peaked above $130 per barrel in March. With…
The price of polysilicon is to fall steeply from the start of 2023, according to new Rethink Energy research tracking production capacity expansion plans announced by nineteen Chinese companies. With millions of tons planned, up from today’s global capacity of 880,000 tons, with investment costs running to the tens of billions of dollars, the most likely outcome is another decade of overcapacity and prices bumping along at marginal production costs. The companies involved can all see the overcapacity coming and have announced their investments in multiple phases, with latter phases “dependent on market conditions.” But the 18-month build time of these factories, the record high prices still being set for the rest of 2022, and the rapid and erratic growth…
South Korea’s first ATSC 3.0 deployments arrived three years before tests in the USA were eventually promoted to permanent NextGen TV signals. Despite the two nations being trailblazers of ATSC 3.0 technologies in their own rights, cooperation on business models has been an afterthought – arguably slowing down US deployments of NextGen TV. It is only now, two years since the first US network affiliates set ATSC 3.0 in stone across Las Vegas, that Sinclair Broadcast is teaming up with two top Korean broadcasters – KBS and MBC – to jointly develop and implement NextGen TV technology and business models. There are also technical collaborations with SK Telecom, via a joint venture called Cast.era, whose latest focus is…
Auto giant BMW Group has installed an Open RAN private 5G network to test new technologies and train employees at its largest European vehicle production site. The carmaker aims to equip all its global production facilities with 5G, and built its latest 5G testbed at its plant in Dingolfing, Germany. The Dingolfing factory makes the all-electric BMW iX among other models, and has been a hub for BMW’s research on autonomous and connected logistics for almost three years. Its 5G network was already in place before work began on the new testbed but there will now be the added opportunity to put Open RAN technology through its paces. Open RAN is likely to impact on small cells and…
The network costs and commercial viability of Germany’s new mobile entrant, Drillisch 1&1, are even less visible than those of Dish (see separate item), since roll-out has scarcely started. The main known fact about 1&1’s strategy is that it will use the Open RAN platform and integration services from Rakuten’s integration arm, Symphony, but since the German player made that announcement about a year ago, it has provided almost no further information. This has prompted speculation that its parent, broadband provider United Internet, may be rethinking its decision to build a national 5G network in the spectrum it acquired at the last German auction. However, that would mean forfeiting the spectrum, since it came with a condition of installing at…
MediaTek, the Taiwanese chip vendor locked in a tussle with Qualcomm to lead the smartphone system-on-chip market, has become Intel’s third major foundry customer. Building a chip manufacturing business to challenge the leaders, TSMC of Taiwan and Samsung of Korea, is a key strategic growth objective of Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. It also aligns with the USA’s bid to increase its self-sufficiency and global impact in strategic semiconductor technologies such as those for 5G devices and AI. Intel already has a foundry deal with Qualcomm, despite competing with the fellow US firm in some areas, and has now added MediaTek, which will split its business between its existing partner, TSMC, and Intel Foundry Services (IFS). In particular, this…
New York is the latest city to start work on building full cellular coverage across its whole network including tunnels, having already done this for stations. The City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has commissioned Transit Wireless to connect all 418 miles of tunnels and 281 underground subway stations as part of a $600m project that it has estimated will yield $1 bn in undefined benefits over the 10-year lifetime of the contract, which would therefore generate a positive ROI. Transit Wireless, majority-owned by BAI Communications, has also established WiFi and cellular connectivity at some stations, as well as full cellular coverage of the L Train tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan, so was in pole position to win this…
India’s operators may have tried, in the past, to postpone the financial burden of another spectrum auction, but for government agencies it was essential to accelerate the pace of 5G in the country, while for vendors, the prospect of build-outs in the third largest mobile economy was particularly attractive. Now that the spectrum auction has concluded (see separate item), the suppliers will be hoping for swift pickings, and they may not be disappointed, as reports indicate that all three major MNOs have awarded their first 5G RAN contracts. If these reports are correct, this looks like a win for Ericsson and Nokia, a mixed result for Samsung, and a negative for Chinese vendors, Open RAN challengers and the Indian…
China Broadnet, the new entrant to the Chinese mobile market, claims it will reach national coverage by November, a breakneck speed of roll-out in the huge country, that has been enabled by its extensive network sharing deal with China Mobile. The state-owned cable TV operator only launched its first pilot networks, in 20 provinces, in June this year. The company’s chairman, Song Qizhu, told local media this week that it had kicked off pilots in a further nine provinces and aims to offer nationwide commercial services – by which it means continuous coverage in the top 300 cities and 100 counties – in time for the Communist party congress in November. Broadnet has deployed 200,000 base stations and…
The USA’s Dish Network is a living illustration that it takes more than an innovative network architecture to deliver commercial success. Its mobile business, currently still mainly based on MVNO activities, is struggling alongside its legacy satellite TV operations, and while it invests heavily in its cloud-native, wholesale-first 5G roll-out, there are question marks over how long it will take the pendulum to swing towards growth, and a turnaround that would justify the 5G adventure. In May, when Dish held its first quarter results call, it was under pressure to meet the first of a series of regulatory deadlines to build out some of its spectrum (or risk forfeiting it, or paying large fines). It hit that June 14…
India’s recently concluded 5G auctions confounded expectations by raking in around 45% more than most had predicted. Operators had threatened to be cautious on spending or even refuse to participate, partly because of their financial pressures and regulator TRAI’s much-criticized habit of setting unrealistically high reserve prices for spectrum; but also out of pique over the government’s decision to ignore their protests over allocations of spectrum to enterprises. In the end, competitive instinct kicked in, fueled by the ambitions of thebnaires behind the leading operators – Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio’s parent group Reliance Industries; and Sunil Bharti Mittal, owner of Airtel (the third major operator is Vi, which is majority owned by Vodafone). After 40 intense…
Special Report: New 5G roll-outs As more and more operators start to report 5G as a separate item in their revenue and capex statements, it is easy to think of this being a mature market, in which nearly all operators now have major deployments. But of course, it is only in its earliest stages. While 79 countries now have some 5G services, only a dozen have more than 50% population coverage. While about half of the world’s mobile operators have embarked on 5G, a far smaller percentage have a large-scale network, and only 22 in total, according to GSMA, have already implemented 5G Standalone with the 5G core at scale. This is good news for vendors, which have…
Five years ago this week… While most of the US broadcast industry was fixated on Discovery acquiring E.W. Scripps for $14.6 billion, another equally seismic change was skirting round the headlines. This was Fox’s launch of six-second “bumper” ads, which made their broadcast TV debut on the Teen Choice Awards. Bumper ads seemed to be the first change to a six-decade long tradition of how broadcast advertising was sold, mirroring the ad experiences offered on platforms like YouTube. — Dish Network churned out 257,000 pay TV subscribers in Q2 2022, compared to a decline of 67,000 in the same period last year. It brings Dish Network’s total base to below 10 million for the first time since the operator…
South Korea’s first ATSC 3.0 deployments arrived three years before tests in the US market were eventually promoted to permanent NextGen TV signals. Despite the two nations being trailblazers of ATSC 3.0 technologies in their own rights, cooperation on business models has been an afterthought – arguably slowing down US deployments of NextGen TV. It is only now, two years since the first US network affiliates set ATSC 3.0 in stone across Las Vegas, that Sinclair Broadcast is teaming up with two top Korean broadcasters – KBS and MBC – to jointly develop and implement NextGen TV technology and business models. Touching a nerve, Sinclair Broadcast responded to Faultline’s probing of the announcement by stressing its work with “colleagues in…
Faultline’s stomping ground is rife with loaded terms, and contribution is one that means many different things to many different people. Our sister service, Rethink TV, has published its examination of the new crop of open-internet contribution transport protocols, which it says will reach $2.4 billion by 2027. However, most people tend to assume that any mention of contribution refers to the first step in a three-part chain – the initial contribution from a remote location to a centralized production facility. Most do not put much thought toward the cloud-to-cloud contribution links, which shuffle video feeds from one production environment to another, and then the final contribution step, where the video feed is sent into TV headends and CDNs. To…
Just after we went to press last week, the US Senate finally came to an agreement on energy spending, with $369 billion allocated from a $739 billion plan. Democrats want to hold a Senate vote this week, but the budget reconciliation process will allow Republicans to stage delays and propose amendments. The bill, renamed from Build Back Better to the Inflation Reduction Act, is a mere shadow of the $3.5 trillion, then $2.2 trillion, then $1.75 trillion stimulus package proposed last year, which was to have included $555 billion for clean energy and climate change. The Inflation Reduction Act instead offers $369 billion for “Energy Security and Climate Change,” making energy the one category which largely survived. The rest of…
Baicells Technologies partners with Parley Labs on decentralized wireless Baicells Technologies, a provider of LTE and 5G cellular components for enterprises and communities, is collaborating with Parley Labs, a developer and reseller of Blockchain systems supporting IoT and LTE connectivity, to tackle the Decentralized Wireless Network (DeWi) arena. Such DeWi networks are emerging as an alternative to traditional services that provide advanced wireless coverage, indoors and outside, to communities and enterprises across the USA. Baicells is already a leading provider of DeWi systems to operators like FreedomFi with its 430H and 436H small cells that come pre-provisioned with gateway software designed for quick and easy setup. These DeWi networks are open for participation to any provider that can readily purchase…