Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Nokia has recently been beset by claims from rivals that its commitment to Open RAN is only skin-deep and that it has failed to open up its baseband units and radio units for anyone except Rakuten Mobile. The Finnish vendor hopes to allay such fears with a new trial with NTT Docomo, arguably a more challenging customer than Rakuten because of its legacy systems, and an operator that is claiming to be winning the Open RAN race (see Wireless Watch December 6 2021). One of the Rakuten’s early victories, as its CTO Tareq Amin hailed it, was to persuade Nokia to open up its radio units to work with third party basebands (Altiostar software running on cloud hardware). However, this…
The UK government made several Open RAN announcements last week, taking a cautious line on mandating the emerging technologies, but offering funding for 15 new projects focused on open network innovations. The Johnson administration issued its policy statement on vendor diversity, the result of a significant review by a taskforce set up for the purpose in the wake of the UK decision to bar Huawei from 5G networks and some other infrastructure. However, the final statement was considerably diluted, compared to the recommendations of that taskforce. The government set a target that 35% of UK mobile traffic should travel over “open and interoperable” RANs by 2030. Not only is this a cautious timescale compared to those set by the more…
Japan is on the verge of setting up an experimental wide area network to test 5G Open RAN equipment and ensure complete interoperability among a group of select vendors, in a bid to forge a coherent ecosystem. This follows successful interoperability testing for radio units (RUs) from different vendors over a 5G Standalone (SA) network conforming to Open RAN interface specifications. This interoperability test used a software upgrade to introduce SA capability to NEC’s 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) baseband (centralized unit and distributed units or CU/DU) operating on the commercial network of Japan’s largest MNO, NTT Docomo. The objective now is to build on this effort by setting up a full-scale experimental network, probably at Yokosuka Research Park near Tokyo, in…
Special Report: Open RAN latest Direct intervention by politicians in matters of technology rarely ends well. Of course, government funding to help develop technology and support new vendors can be very valuable, but it needs to be channelled through funding bodies that have a deep understanding of what is required. Politicians making broad statements about complex platforms like virtualized RAN is at best irrelevant, and at worst, can set false expectations and the inevitable backlash. Open RAN is suffering from this somewhat. Having been many government’s favorite silver bullet to fire at the twin issues of squeezing Huawei out of 5G networks, while also building up local 5G industries, there is now open disappointment that the technology will not be…
AGL Energy has struck a deal with hydrogen-leaders Fortescue Future Industries, to transform its Hunter Valley coal fired power station into a major hydrogen and industrial hub. The Liddell coal generator at the project is set to close in early 2023, and will then be replaced with wind, pumped hydro, solar thermal storage, and grid scale batteries, according to initial plans. Pending feasibility studies, the project is expected to include 250 MW of renewable power capacity, as well as 30,000 tons of annual hydrogen production. German chemical company BASF will sell a 25.2% stake in the 1,500 MW Hollandse Kust Zuid offshore wind farm off the Netherlands to Allianz Capital Partners, for an undisclosed price. BASF initially bought a 49.5%…
After last week’s article on the use of flexible thin-film modules in the Solar@Sea II floating solar pilot project in the Netherlands, we had a chat with Wim Soppe, a senior scientist at research firm TNO and the project’s manager. The project is a pilot for an offshore solar concept, but is located in a nearshore artificial lake with brackish water. The first question to address is of course – what changes does thin film enable compared to other offshore floating approaches? Soppe explained that the thin-film modules only weigh 2.5 kilograms per square meter and have a very low wind profile because they are positioned horizontally. Further, the flexible floaters take up little wave energy since they mold to…
Europe’s second largest utility, Iberdrola, has kickstarted plans for a commercial-scale plant to produce green steel. Tapping Swedish start-up H2GS, for its process that replaces natural gas with hydrogen in the production of direct reduced iron, the move sounds the firing pistol for an overnight switch in investments towards clean approaches to the industry. The plan outlines the world’s largest green steel production plant to date – a record that will surely be broken in coming months, given the acceleration of the industry. With a total budget of €2.3 billion, funded through a combination of public funding, green project financing and equity, Iberdrola and H2GS will spearhead the creation of a 1 GW plant to produce green hydrogen using renewable…
A Canadian-based start-up, FuelPositive, claims that its decentralized green ammonia production will cut the costs of fertilizer for farmers by up to 40%. The technology, which offers further opportunities across the energy sector, could enter the market as early as next year, as heavy polluting production methods continue to lose their sole advantage of cost. FuelPositive is developing a ‘modular, scalable, portable, economic, and transportable system for producing green ammonia.’ With all elements encompassed within a shipping-container-style unit, low-cost technologies, on-site production, and a patented process for combining green hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen, the company hopes to be cost-competitive from its pilot projects throughout next year. Behind sulfuric acid, ammonia is the second most produced chemical commodity across the world.…
Nobody thought very much at the time about the UK branch of the Friends of the Earth saying it would get a judicial review of the UK Government’s decision to approve $1.1 billion of finance for an LNG terminal in Mozambique – but it is right now in progress as you read this. We will go to press just before the result is known, but one thing is for sure – if the UK government can get it off the list of things that is currently embarrassing it, it will do so, and that means that it will not appeal any negative result and it would dearly love to pull out its cash, and go on its way. The UK…
Population: 41.18 million (+2.38% vs 2020) GDP per Capita (PPP): $10,038 (+2.8% vs 2020) Debt to GDP: 68.3% (+22.4% vs 2019) Power Per Capita: 1100 kWh Everyone knows that Iraq is a devastated country, but one might be forgiven for forgetting just how many devastations there have been. To get a view of what the country was like last time it had peace and stability, you have to go back all the way to the 1970s – before the war with Iran, the Gulf War, US sanctions, the Western invasion and insurgency, and ISIS’ brief explosion. Counting ISIS, that’s four wars in four decades. Even the global economic recession caused by Coronavirus lockdowns has been very harsh on Iraq because…
Five years ago this week… Altice pulled its Cablevision Freewheel WiFi-only phone service after only 21 months of operation. Faultline did not see this as the death of WiFi offload, but rather, a sign that people were either drifting to cheaper alternatives, or only wanted the technology with an MVNO back-up. Freewheel was priced at the top end of the market – $30 or $10 a month depending on whether you were an Optimum WiFi sub – while its competitors – Republic Wireless, Scratch Wireless, Freedompop and Google Fi – all offered monthly contracts between $5 and $15, all with a back-up cellular network. — Hold the press. Legacy IPTV Mediaroom customers are migrating certain TV platform components –…
With IBC 2021’s capitulation, Faultline’s radar rues the missed opportunity of picking up countless new company names showcasing potentially disruptive technologies, or in some cases reporting truthfully on products that are the very opposite of disruptive. Desperate to remedy that, our eyebrows raised at the name NeuroMedia Software landing in our inbox – announcing the launch of a new audience measurement analytics platform for media and entertainment. One would think, with a name like NeuroMedia, that the Belgium-based vendor would be taking some kind of neurological approach to audience measurement, to rub further salt in the wounds of the beleaguered old guard of viewer-counting services (Nielsen). Yet the new SaaS platform, called NeuroMedia Analytics, is geared more towards understanding audience…
Leaping into the cloud production market on the back of a blazing IBC demo would have been a rather dazzling end to the year, but alas, for Agile Content CTO Johan Bolin, this was not to be. With two brand new products and a major evolution set to be announced at IBC, Agile Content looks like it would have capped off a rather successful year. Bolin explained that building a cloud production service is perhaps the least expected of the three planned announcements, but stressed that it is still early days. A demo for IBC was planned, and the service is going live with a customer in February, and has limited availability with a few others. Early feedback has been…
While we sympathize greatly with IBC organizers having to pull the plug with just days to go, we are frankly embarrassed for IBC Digital. We expected IBC 2021 to be set up as a hybrid event, allowing those who couldn’t attend to feel part of one of the industry’s most important shows, yet the fully virtual fallback has turned out to be a pitiful affair – serving up a content program comprising just five video sessions across a full week. Faultline felt obliged to tune into at least one, choosing an interview (if you can call it that) with HBO Max’s Head of International, Johannes Larcher, from the slim pickings on offer. We were not surprised that this was pre-recorded…
Update: Broadpeak wanted to clarify that there is not a commercial agreement in place between DAZN and itself, but that is the first time that an OTT content provider like DAZN has used multicast ABR in such a manner. The Italian broadband market is politically delicate, and Broadpeak intends to remain decidedly neutral. – French firm Broadpeak was rather looking forward to IBC, which would have been a nice stage on which to broadcast a customer win in Italy, with DAZN signing up for its nanoCDN offering. With hindsight, this comes off the back of Technicolor’s September win for its Android TV set top at TIM, which features Broadpeak’s M-ABR stack. These dots were joined in a conversation with Broadpeak’s…
Reduced iPhone 13 production may still oustrip demand At its last quarterly results discussion, Apple was forced to reduce its predictions for iPhone 13 shipments in the current holiday quarter by 10m units, because of semiconductor shortages. But the latest reports from Wall Street are more concerning still, as they suggest that demand for the high end iPhone, unveiled in September, is already slowing down. According to sources who spoke to Bloomberg, consumers have tired to seeking out “hard to find” iPhones, and there are fears that even the reduced production target of 80m units will be higher than demand. On the October results call with analysts, CEO Tim Cook said customer demand for the iPhone 13 series was “very…
Although the expansion of 5G and edge compute are central to the strategies of companies that support video delivery, they are still work in progress in many markets, while a more urgent issue is how to support high dynamic range (HDR), an important technology for improving video quality and realism. Our sister service, Faultline, which provides weekly analysis of digital video technologies and trends, recently caught up with Remi Beaudouin, the chief strategy officer of Ateme, which offers the Titan Live platform for live video content delivery. This platform now incorporates the HDR10+ technology, one of several options. Ateme has also rebranded the Anevia assets that it acquired a year ago and adopted a new logo and identity that covers…
Rakuten has certainly blazed a trail for deployment of cloud-native, open 5G networks, but its larger Japanese rival, NTT Docomo, is claiming the real Open RAN credits for itself. While Rakuten’s network is multivendor, much of it is heavily customized and hand-crafted, while Domoco head of RAN development, Sadayuki Abeta, claims to be building a full Open RAN-compliant network. “Our RAN is fully multivendor interoperable – that means even in the same geographic area we use different vendors’ equipment for the CU/DU (centralized unit/distributed unit) side and the RU (radio unit) side,” he said, speaking at Light Reading’s Open RAN Digital Symposium last week. He said Docomo has deployed more than 10,000 base stations in its Open RAN and is…
With many operators facing flat revenue from consumers in the 5G era, they have been looking to the enterprise sector for growth and on the surface this strategy looks to be working as private mobile networks are booming, if still at an early stage. This has been confirmed by the cellular infrastructure vendors, especially Huawei, with its recent assertion that there are now around 10,000 5G B2B projects globally, a substantial proportion of which it is involved with, including pilots, trials and early deployments. Ericsson has somewhat more modestly claimed involvement in “hundreds” of private wireless customer engagements, including pilots. Nokia claims to have 380 private wireless customers with this segment just now gaining revenues again, after declining year-on-year in…
In recent years, India’s main operators have been too preoccupied with the challenges of their own huge market, and with surviving the pandemic, to be highly active in other markets. Vodafone Idea, of course, is part of the global Vodafone group (for now at least) but is run in an arm’s-length way by its UK-based majority parent. Bharti Airtel has operations in Africa, having acquired businesses in 15 countries from Zain in 2010, but it has sold some of these to Orange. But there are more ways than one to assert scale and influence beyond one’s borders, and Reliance Jio and Airtel are both active in international initiatives, many connected to the emergence of new network architectures, such as O-RAN…