Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Australia’s NNNCo deploys large LoRaWAN for farmers Australian IoT operator NNNCo has deployed a LoRaWAN network across 32,000 square kilometers in Victoria State to provide local farmers with access to monitoring and online services. This low power WAN (LPWAN) was funded as part of the Victorian government’s On-Farm IoT trial. “IoT has a major role to play in Australian agriculture, particularly as the sector works towards its goals of becoming a $100bn industry and carbon neutral by 2030,” said NNNCo CEO Rob Zagarella. “LoRaWAN is ideal for the agriculture sector because it was developed for industries that needed a cost-effective, long range signal with a battery life of many years for IoT sensors, and the ability to meet 100% of…
SiFive is the most high profile of the independent chip designers that are basing their fortunes on the open source RISC-V architecture and last month, the company raised $175m in a Series F funding round led by Coatue Management, bringing its total to date to $350m. The company qualifies as a ‘double unicorn’, with a valuation of over $2.5bn. SiFive may command headlines and investors, but the RISC-V International industry alliance now has more than 200 semiconductor firms, software developers and academic institutions among its supporters, even including Intel. Intel has been linked to acquisition designs on SiFive, but so far has just announced RISC-V activities for its fledgling foundry business. It says it will work with RISC-V International –…
Some six months after Deutsche Telekom pledged its commitment to RDK-Broadband (RDK-B) across its full European footprint, the next generation router software has been brought to life by long term WiFi management supplier Airties. The decision was a no-brainer for the German giant, although with Airties being increasingly associated with EasyMesh, we wondered if this might be the first instance of RDK-B adapting to the standards-based mesh architecture? Based on Cisco’s Common Component Software Platform (CCSP), the modular and customizable RDK-B extends a common architecture across CPUs, giving operators control of WiFi management tools. EasyMesh has been on the future roadmap for RDK-B since at least last year, with plans to adapt RDK-B’s WiFi data elements and multi-access point (AP)…
Telecom Italia (TIM) has been pursuing potential alternatives to acquisition by US private equity group KKR, which submitted a €10.8bn non-binding offer in November 2021 (though formal talks only started last month). As private equity firms get increasingly interested in telcos, the trend raises the question of how far they might change the culture and operational approach of European operators, possibly accelerating break-ups and cost-cutting measures, and encouraging a stronger focus on physical infrastructure (currently highly valued by markets) as opposed to digital services. One alternative for TIM may be to revive a long-standing plan to create a single fiber network in Italy via a merger of its own fixed operations with those of state-backed Open Fiber. Last week, it…
The attempt by UK media and telecoms group Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) to recast traditional SLAs as ‘success agreements’ (SAs) for larger business customers can easily be dismissed as a marketing gimmick, and will certainly not change the calculus upon which its quality of service will be judged. It is really just a change of name to reflect evolution of SLAs in many industries, towards reflecting tangible outcomes for customers rather than easily measurable parameters such as downtime over a year expressed as a percentage, average bit-rate, or scale of compensation paid when terms are breached. A number of other top tier operators have evolved SLAs in similar ways, but without renaming them as VMO2 has done. This move comes around…
The mobile RAN and core were traditionally built as dedicated appliances based on proprietary chips that were designed for the purpose, and as the cellular network vendors consolidated, this was one factor in locking operators into a very limited choice of architectures, which were firmly closed to third parties. As the core, and eventually the RAN, move to the cloud, there is a growing role for merchant processor vendors such as Intel, Marvell, AMD and Nvidia. Not that a demanding technology like a 5G RAN really can run on basic COTS hardware, as the early vision of ‘Cloud RAN’ argued. Commoditized servers running on unadorned Intel processors will not be up to the job of enabling compute- intensive Layer 1…
The application of cloud technologies, and especially edge computing, to telecom networks is producing interesting partnerships, including a new one between South Korean MNO SK Telecom and IT giant Dell Technologies. This could be a fruitful marriage, bringing together an operator that is advanced in 5G architectures, and wants to expand its influence and revenues abroad; with a vendor that has set out a strong strategy to leverage its edge compute platforms and services to gain a dominant role in the 5G ecosystem. Just weeks after Dell made a splash at Mobile World Congress with its strategy to build a powerful Open RAN ecosystem, it has announced a 5G multi-access edge compute (MEC) solution co-developed with SK Telecom. This will…
Vodafone has appointed Nokia as its sole supplier of software-defined network manager and controller (SDN-M&C) systems for its multi-access fixed network, meaning the core of coaxial cable and telco DSL provision. The companies are engaged in proof-of-concept trials in Europe, which if successful will lead to wider deployment across Vodafone’s global network for automation of all core network operations. The immediate target are Vodafone’s 143m marketable next generation network (NGN) broadband homes within reach of its existing network. The SDN management and control functions will simplify, automate, visualize, optimize and enhance the carrier’s broadband networks, according to Nokia, as well as bolstering its network-as-a-platform (NaaP) services. “We are driving simplification and automation throughout our network and IT systems across Europe and Africa to further improve…
Ecosystems are forming around emerging 5G enablers such as Open RAN and edge compute and while some of these will be anchored by traditional large equipment vendors, others are being spearheaded by chip providers (Intel), IT vendors (Dell or HPE) or operators. In the last category, a few operators are investing so heavily in their own platforms and partnerships for 5G that they see an opportunity to monetize that by offering it to telcos round the world, generating new revenue streams from sales or consulting. Rakuten, with Symphony, is the most obvious example, but other contenders may include SK Telecom (see separate item below), NTT Docomo or Reliance Jio. Jio has been working with its close-knit set of partners throughout…
Special Report: The new 5G ecosystem The latest release of 3GPP standards for 5G, Release 17, has been frozen, heralding the generation of ‘5G-Advanced’ (see Key Issues section). But the biggest changes in the networks are coming not from the radio and core specs – radical as some of the new introductions are compared to 3G and 4G – but from the migration to underlying architectures based on cloud infrastructure, with associated technologies that were also pioneered in the data center, not the network. Those include the application of AI/ML to networks, and the implementation of full automation, software-defined networking (SDN) and edge compute. Building networks based on these IT-centric principles will inevitably shake up the ecosystem. The progress…
Five years ago this week… Intertrust acquired Indian content distribution platform Kiora Media to further boost its already established presence in South Asia. Kiora provided a nifty system for securely delivering studio-quality material from a hotspot without using 3G or 4G bandwidth, instead relying on a micro cloud architecture to convert a telco’s WiFi zone into a CDN of sorts. Users could access content without eating into data plans – ideal for emerging markets with poor data coverage. — Netflix’s password sharing dilemma has been fueled by survey results that show 33% of US households share Netflix credentials with friends and family outside their household. The wholly unsurprising revelation comes from Leichtman Research Group, suggesting that 67% of the…
Some six months on from Deutsche Telekom’s undying commitment to RDK-Broadband (RDK-B) across its full European footprint, the next-generation router software has been brought to life by long-term WiFi management supplier Airties. The decision was a no-brainer for the German giant, although with Airties being increasingly associated with EasyMesh, we wondered if this might be the first instance of RDK-B adapting to the standards-based mesh architecture? EasyMesh has been on the future roadmap for RDK-B since at least last year, with plans to adapt RDK-B’s WiFi data elements and multi-AP data model for the EasyMesh controller, yet we have not seen or heard anything to suggest this has been ticked off the agenda, or if development has even started for…
While we are still waiting patiently for Zappware to reinvent itself away from the TV screen, as was promised when the Belgian video software developer was acquired in April 2021, the company is still landing big-money TV deals. Zappware’s latest deployment at Orange Belgium might sound like a rudimentary, run of the mill operator-supplier relationship, but – if we squint hard enough – we can just about make out a few clues to the company’s evolution under private equity ownership and its worth to the operators of tomorrow. Orange, a long-term Zappware customer, has just launched a new Android TV Operator Tier platform in Belgium powered by Zappware’s NeXX 4.0 multiscreen user experience. Hosted on AWS, the cloud-native, microservices-based back-office…
As viewers flock to connected TV in droves, many content creators are realizing the need to have a native outpost on the relatively new medium. One vendor holding creative hands along the way is Delaware-based VlogBox, which offers full stack development for creating CTV channels and apps, as well as advertising services and audience analytics. Speaking to the company’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, Anna McMichael, we quickly learned that VlogBox regular opts to work with Roku, as it provides a hospitable OS for new CTV entrants. McMichael notes that Roku offers the best category breakdowns in its UI for better channel discovery – “we focus on the platforms that promise discoverability.” VlogBox also regularly works with Amazon Fire and Google…
The four-week countdown to NAB 2022 has commenced – and among the early buzz of pre-show marketing mailers are any technologies enabling low-latency video. Being a broadcast event at heart, the streaming camp has long been outdone in the latency department – with broadcast transmission typically in the 5-second range, while IP-based delivery still – despite the strides made in low-latency steaming protocols – lags at around 40 seconds. Our attention was piqued by a whitepaper on the topic of removing the final barriers to low-latency video from French encoding vendor Ateme, hot off the press. The reason being is a snappy and honest introduction that confesses how using the example of your neighbors cheering during a live sporting event…
The recent spate of operators offloading their tower assets has bemused Faultline for some time. Towers are old hat for video delivery, and it feels like less and less TV is consumed via terrestrial broadcast. So why are tower portfolios now commanding historic prices, and what skin does pay TV have in that game? The short answer seems to be that the current market greatly values towers, as a speculative asset that it expects to increase in value as MNOs struggle to upgrade their networks to support 5G capabilities. For operators that have struggled with cashflow, and that are not in the business of mobile networks, offloading towers to ditch a burden and inject some much-needed cash is a no-brainer.…
Faultline has only covered campaign analytics specialist MarketCast on a handful of occasions, yet we always find ourselves returning to a similar narrative – sensing a fierce yearning to break out of its father’s shadow and into a business built on a powerful combination of data science with primary research. Six acquisitions later (that we know of), MarketCast is making massive strides towards business diversification that rivals can only awe at. The latest item on the US firm’s shopping list is Phoenix Marketing International, which adds an advertising analytics flavor to MarketCast’s research broth. Together with the acquisitions of a virtual audience analytics testing suite from Invoke (2021), smart TV and set top data science firm Deductive (2020), Turnkey Sports…
China has unveiled a set of updated targets to its hydrogen strategy, with plans to increase production of green hydrogen to 200,000 tons by 2025. The Medium and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Hydrogen Energy Industry (202 to 2035) is likely to support electrolysis capacity of around 1.3 GW, although we expect to see this target surpassed by the ambition of individual provinces and companies such as Sinopec. Beijing also aims to see about 50,000 hydrogen-fueled vehicles on roads by 2025, up from about 7,500 today. Global wind power additions hit a new record in 2021, according to new research from BloombergNEF, with installations hitting 99.2 GW. This marks a 0.7% increase from the 98.5 GW installed in 2020,…
Mainstream Renewable Power and Aker Offshore Wind have completed their acquisition of an 50% stake in an 800 MW floating offshore wind project in Japan being developed by Progression Energy. The deal was first announced in August last year, while financial terms remain undisclosed. Nordex will supply 314 MW of its wind turbines across two of Valorem’s wind farms in Finland. The projects are expected to enter construction within the next two months, with delivery expected in 2024. The US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has announced that it will hold an auction on May 11 for two lease areas offshore the Carolinas that could host up to 1,300 MW of offshore wind capacity. Orsted…
Vodafone has been going through significant structural changes at group level recently, to adapt to the requirements of modern software-based networks and service architectures. Its changes include the insourcing of many developer activities from partners to a new group-wide team, as well as significant changes to its procurement processes and personnel. Now the changes to internal and partner relationships are filtering down to country level also, particularly in the UK. Here, chief network officer Andrea Dona plans to create a “one tech team” culture to develop new partnerships and revenue streams, enabled by the move to more open networks. New revenues will only flow if Vodafone develops a new partner ecosystem, and that will only happen if legacy processes are…