Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
The resolution of COP26 has caused a rift between those trying to determine its success. There is no doubt that the conference, which scrambled to a last-minute deal on Saturday night, fell short of putting the world on a pathway to keeping climate change below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Nor has it put an end to coal or fossil fuel subsidies. But with politics playing an ever-diminishing role in global decarbonization, the monumental shift in rhetoric has kept the door open for a just transition to green energy. Dismissing COP26 as a failure would be an unfair assessment. Under the Presidency of the UK’s Alok Sharma, the conference was always bound to be a difficult procedure, in difficult geopolitical times. Indeed,…
*IBC 2021 UPDATE* – Despite IBC organizers announcing “determined industry support” for the Amsterdam show kicking off in a fortnight, companies are pulling out thick and fast due to the Dutch government’s Covid-19 restrictions. Among the video technology vendor community are notable dropouts Synamedia, Viaccess-Orca, Irdeto, LiveU, and Xytech. SmartLabs is gearing up to showcase its first RDK-enabled set tops at IBC 2021, together with improved dynamic ad insertion capabilities, and its churn-reducing SmartCare analytics program. The RDK-based STB-5045 will be firing off the production line from Q2 2022. Broadpeak will be on the IBC show floor (as of writing), strutting the latest in dynamicity, elasticity, and openness of its CDN offerings and multicast ABR flare. A new streaming…
Hisense smart TVs powered by the Vidaa Linux-based OS have been ported with Intertrust’s ExpressPlay DRM XCA content protection technology for broadcast TV. The primary driver behind the deployment is to stamp out HDMI strippers – which sidestep HDMI security vulnerabilities – by shifting the content protection technology from external devices into the smart TV itself. This advancement in revenue protection techniques renders external devices redundant as content remains encrypted until it reaches a smart TV’s built-in SoC, where content is safely decrypted in a controlled environment. With the great broadcast unbundling happening before our eyes as operators and broadcasters pivot to streaming alternatives to keep viewers engaged, smart TVs are being targeted as the primary screen, and rightly so.…
Taking the best part of 19 months to expand AV1 support from select titles on Android mobile devices to select TV sets, as Netflix has just done, is not the greatest advertisement for the Alliance for Open Media-backed video compression technology. This is of course a hardware issue, with AV1 hardware decoders taking significantly longer to develop than the software decoders which have enabled Android handset users to stream Netflix at reduced mobile data rates. In all fairness to Netflix, the SVoD titan has explained the long wait in great detail, citing four core technical challenges in bringing AV1 support from palm of hand to living room wall. Figuring out the best AV1 encoding recipe for Netflix streaming was challenge…
Firstlight Media, the OTT technology reincarnation of Quickplay Media, has won a deployment at aha, a one-year-old Indian VoD streaming service. This is an opportunity for Firstlight Media to flex its skillset for promoting niche regional platforms to a league above, with the next phase of aha’s growth resting on the shoulders of Firstlight’s end-to-end cloud-native technology. The strategy is being coined aha 2.0, to signal the streaming service’s shift to 100% Google Cloud-based infrastructure with a so-called “glocal” approach (presumably an elision of global/local) – that it says will deliver localized services in discrete markets. In other words, aha 2.0 wants to win the eyeballs of overseas Indian content lovers, with availability in 190 countries as well as throughout…
Gracenote has integrated Media Distillery’s EPG Correction technology into its Global Video Data offering to carve out more accurate replay and DVR functionality for pay TV operators, broadcasters and direct to consumer streaming services. What the press release doesn’t tell you is how the joint offering actually works, or how it came to being, or that there are already two tier 1 operator customers deploying it. Thankfully, Faultline has exclusives on all the above. Earlier this year, following an interview with Media Distillery CEO Roland Sars, Faultline described how, on paper, Nielsen-owned Gracenote looks like the type of metadata giant that Media Distillery might aspire to topple, one day. Sars disagreed, responding with a plan for synergies and potential partnerships…
As more operators embark on trials or limited deployments of Open RAN, inevitably a more realistic tone is entering conversations about the fledgling technology, with a careful balancing of the opportunities with the potential drawbacks. A particularly downbeat assessment comes in a new report commissioned from analysts at CCS Insight by cellular intellectual property firm InterDigital, entitled ‘Open RAN: the long journey from supporting act to lead role’. “Open RAN remains at an early stage of development and, given the time needed to evolve into a more integrated ecosystem of solutions, will probably play no more than a supporting role in global 5G deployments,” said report author Kester Mann, who sees Open RAN becoming a default option only in the…
Recent deployment of a private LTE network in the USA’s CBRS band (3.55-3.7 GHz), for the Stanislaus campus of California State University, is notable on to counts. First, the network, supplied by Celona, indicates the growing interest in shared CBRS spectrum specifically for private cellular deployments because it combines many advantages of licensed and unlicensed wireless. Second, it shows that private cellular will not be confined to industry settings but will branch out into numerous other campus environments where it will complement WiFi and sometimes replace it for more demanding applications. In such cases, the combination of low latency, more deterministic performance, high availability and enhanced security, is propelling private cellular. Two other advantages of cellular cited in this case,…
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners will deploy €100 billion in green energy investments by 2030 it said this week, at a pace of some €10 billion a year between now and 2030 and has more or less all of this in its extended pipeline of mostly solar, wind, energy storage, building energy islands and in power transmission and advanced biofuels. If you count lending, it will come to over €20 billion a year. China and the G20 countries have pretty much stopped supporting new coal projects overseas, says research from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center which released its results just prior to the COP26 conference, which showed that 99% of all development finance institutions are committed to cutting coal investment and…
Denmark and Costa Rica have launched the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance (BOGA) at the COP26 Summit. Full members of the Alliance will completely stop issuing oil and gas exploration licenses, while mere associates will cut production. Countries joining the Alliance are listed on the next page, including their shares of global production in 2019 (2020 figures were atypical due to the pandemic), for those that produced any at all. Scotland isn’t displayed on the list as its local government doesn’t control oil and gas licenses, the UK does. Several of the countries have no production of their own, and besides sovereign states there’s Wales, Scotland, California, and Quebec – perhaps an Australian state will be the next to join?…
The dying days of COP26 have brought a new wave of tension throughout the negotiating halls. As Boris Johnson flew back to Glasgow to urge world leaders not to “sit on their hands,” there is a growing unease that negotiations will linger into the weekend, and that much of COP26’s planned resolutions will be kicked down the road to COP27 in Egypt next year. The problem is that, for much of this action, we have run out of road to kick it down. Following a blitz of announcements in the first few days, promising to limit: deforestation, methane emissions, coal use, and overall CO2 output, there was almost a jovial optimism among those looking to critique the agreements made. While…
Five years ago this week… Qualcomm looked to take a lead on 60 GHz WiFi, a market which had been at an effective standstill since 2005. After acquiring 60 GHz chip maker Wilocity in 2014, Qualcomm was trying to fuel belief in the technology with a webinar, promising 15 GHz of available spectrum, a basic PHY rate of 4.6 Gbps and greater energy efficiency than 5 GHz per megabyte delivered. But Faultline’s own concerns surrounding the inability for the waves to pass through walls were brushed over with some ‘what about’-isms, and the vendor was unable to convince us that 60 GHz would find any utility outside of docking stations in enterprises. We are still waiting to be proved wrong.…
Readers may recall Faultline’s coverage of the MovieLabs ontologies, as part of the Hollywood studio darling’s 2020 vision for streamlined cloud-based production. Well, this week welcomed The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Annual Technical Conference (ATC) 2021, which kicked off with an on-set virtual production fanfare based around the recently introduced Rapid Industry Solutions (RIS) initiative. Don’t let the dreaded S-word put you off, because the RIS is actually a quite important moment in what SMPTE does best – providing tools, standards and education to the media and entertainment industry – while by the same token being something of a maverick initiative by SMPTE’s usual standards of working. Unless you’ve been living under a rather large stone…
For SES, the OTT video writing has been on the wall for more years than we care to count; a message that the satellite fleet operator has often preferred to paint over rather than adopt as a maxim to adorn its offices. The unbundling of its HD+ TV platform from satellite, for delivery in parallel via the internet, is therefore a landmark moment in European DBS history. While we have known about the impending arrival of a streaming version of HD+ since August this year, when SES rolled out a TV Everywhere version of HD+ for iOS and Android devices, the signs of a pivot away from satellite were in place long before this. SES revealed that HD+ had 2.1…
Normally, if technology executives preached us strategic goals of driving value and disruption instead of targeting rapid growth towards global domination, we would immediately call their bluff. There is something genuine about this modest message from UK-based id3as, however, as explained to Faultline this week by directors Dom Robinson and Adrian Roe. Positioned purposely loosely as an Advanced Video Pipeline (AVP) provider, Id3as wants to channel its extensive experience across the board of encoding, CDNs, microservices, network analysis, and self-healing capabilities into disrupting the live video streaming space with a penchant for decentralization, rather than scaling to a huge team of software engineers that might well end up twiddling their thumbs. Haters would say this is a weak excuse for…
More than three years have rolled by since Faultline ran the headline ‘Orange to save Molotov from fiery finale?’ – following reports that the French OTT video platform was open to the idea of investments from operators after negotiations with a trio of native broadcasters collapsed. TF1, M6 and France Télévisions were sent running by Molotov’s high valuation of €100 million – which makes the €164.3 million (almost $190 million) figure that US streaming service FuboTV has offered to acquire Molotov all the more impressive. In that time, Molotov has increased its registered user base from 5 million to 17 million across France and French-speaking African nations. Of these, 4 million are domestic monthly active users, split across Molotov’s direct-to-consumer…
Milan-based media delivery software supplier MainStreaming is preparing to land one of the biggest press releases of the much-anticipated IBC show kicking off in just three weeks. Co-founder and CEO Antonio Corrado gave Faultline an exclusive sneak preview of what to expect during a video call this week, the results of which we promise won’t disappoint, as long as MainStreaming gets the green light in time. MainStreaming claims to have “solved” one of the most high-profile live video streaming platforms in Europe right now, one which has been plagued with problems, adding to a list of clients which includes Sky’s signature. Without giving too much away, MainStreaming is hoping this high-profile endorsement of its technology will act as an eventual…
Brazil’s auction tops $1bn in bids on first day In the first day of bidding in Brazil’s delayed 3.5 GHz spectrum auction, bids reached RL7.1bn ($1.27bn), with spending led by the local subsidiaries of Telefónica, Telecom Italia and America Movil, the country’s largest MNOs. Six other companies also won lots during the opening day, including Brisanet, Algar and Sercomtel. In total 15 bidders qualified to take part. Regulator Anatel is targeting total takings of BRL50bn ($8.9bn) though less than 20% will be retained by the Treasury, with the rest to be spent on projects to expand coverage and accessibility of digital services. Vodafone Germany sets 5G Standalone targets Vodafone Germany has set a target to roll out 5G Standalone (SA)…
NEC and Qualcomm are both looking to Open RAN to propel them into new markets – NEC to build a RAN equipment business outside Japan, Qualcomm to re-enter the macro network infrastructure world after a long absence. So it is unsurprising that these two companies have joined forces in an alliance to develop a 5G Open RAN distributed unit (DU). The virtualized DU is one of the most challenging elements of an Open RAN, because it needs to handle very demanding Layer 1 5G network processes such as beamforming, which puts considerable pressure on the processor. Qualcomm is one of the chip companies that is developing specialized accelerators to enable a DU to run effectively on merchant silicon rather than…
Samsung and Ciena have formed an alliance to provide 5G end-to-end networks, to offer an alternative to Nokia and Ericsson. The tie-up mirrors one between NEC and Juniper, which also focuses on open 5G networks including transport, core and RAN. Samsung and Ciena will provide an end-to-end, pre-integrated offering based on the Korean firm’s 5G vRAN, radios and core, with Ciena’s xHaul routing and switching portfolio and its Manage Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller. “It’s about bringing together wireless with wireline,” said Joe Marsella, VP of product line management at Ciena. “Together we can form a pretty strong solution that enables operators a third choice out there in the market, which we think is a combination of best-of-breed components.”…