Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
While consumer 5G roll-out in India will lag behind that of many other leading nations, operators are seeking to capitalize on private enterprise network opportunities sooner. There is also the impact of the ‘Make in India’ program to consider, where operators are encouraged to deploy locally sourced technologies, leading towards adoption of Open RAN for public and private networks. The two largest operators, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, have, respectively, 37% and almost 30% of the market by wireless subscribers according to recent data from regulator TRAI. They have also been making the running in the enterprise sector. The latest move has come from Airtel, launching an initiative to demonstrate a range of enterprise-grade use cases over 5G networks, in…
The total exclusion of Ericsson and Nokia from China Mobile’s latest $1.15bn contract for converged 4G/5G core infrastructure marks a further significant step in the Balkanization of global mobile telecoms between Chinese and American axes. Until now, Ericsson and Nokia have continued to pick up crumbs from such contracts, winning 2% and 4% respectively of the even bigger $5.9bn contract awarded in July 2021 for 700 MHz equipment, involving China Mobile and new mobile entrant China Broadcast Network (CBN). It is true that the country’s domestic suppliers have picked up the lion’s share of mobile contracts in China for years, but Huawei also enjoyed significant 4G growth in Europe and elsewhere, and at home, the continued presence of the Nordic…
It is not just chip providers that need to diversify their revenues as traditional mobile growth declines (see separate item on Qualcomm). Operators, too, are looking for new revenue streams to offset pressures on ARPU, which are only slightly alleviated, in most countries, by 5G. The ever-challenging gulf between the investment needed in new networks such as 5G, and the incremental revenues they enable from existing users, is driving most large operators to attempt a double whammy of dramatic cost reduction and expansion into new markets, such as enterprise 5G or digital services. Both trends have been particularly visible within major European operators in recent years, helping to drive the wave of consolidation that has reshaped that region’s telecoms industry,…
Special Report: Latest financial results Geopolitics and supply chain issues limit 5G gains throughout the chain The most recent financial results from Ericsson and Nokia were overshadowed, to varying degrees, by the twin clouds of geopolitics and supply chain shortages (see Wireless Watch October 25 and November 1 issues). These challenges are being felt by vendors throughout the telecoms value chain, with knock-on effects for their customers. Those with particular exposure to Chinese markets and/or requirement for advanced semiconductors are especially challenged, as the recent wave of quarterly results calls has highlighted. This week, we cover a selection of those results, looking at how current challenges are affecting operators, vendors and chip providers just when they would have hoped…
Photon Energy has announced it has secured 12 square kilometers at an unspecified location in South Australia for a 300 MW, 3.6 GWh complex using RayGen’s “Concentrated Solar Photovoltaic” technology. RayGen has been interviewed by us before, and got a mention in our Concentrated Solar Power report as perhaps the single most unusual CSP design. Photon Energy also says it is developing multiple additional sites across Australia for RayGen’s technology, while this 3.6 GWh complex should begin construction in 2023, as permitting and grid-connection is underway. Read the linked article for a full description of the technology, but suffice to say RayGen’s approach puts solar cells at the CSP receiver, cooling them with a constant flow of sub-boiling water which…
Yet another “alternative” chemistry battery player has emerged this week, called Enlighten Innovations, which previously operated in low Sulphur fuel oil markets – and it is pushing a Sodium Sulfur system, similar, but not identical, to the technology used in Japan by NGK. The key to this new system (which is called NaSICON) is a catholyte that contains sodium and sulfur ions dissolved in a solvent and using a special NaSICON separator which contains the sodium. Enlighten says that the engineering phase of the product is now complete and a protype unit is under construction rated at several hundred KWh, which should be in operation by H1 2022 after which it will move to commercial-scale cells and seek potential strategic…
Day one of COP26 came with arguably the most significant announcement of the conference so far: India to reach net zero by 2070. While immediate criticism was thrown at the target – which sits behind the expectation that a 2050 deadline is the only appropriate one within Paris limits – across the board pledges for 2030, along with those from other countries, have nearly knocked one degree off some projections for long-term temperature rise. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the target as part of his opening National Statement at the COP26 conference in Glasgow. His ‘gift of five elixirs’ were the following: India will increase its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030 India will fulfill 50% of…
Population: 98.32 million (97.41 in 2020, +0.93%) GDP per capita: $2,786 ($2,715 in 2019, +2.6%) Electricity usage per capita per annum: 2,234 kWh Total Electricity: 284,352 GWh (2021) Government Debt to GDP: 48.5% (2020) If you only listened to the policy announcements of the government in Vietnam, you would be convinced that the future for this hugely energy hungry country is primarily fossil fuels – but there is a significant amount of information to contradict that. This is because if the government could carry on with its existing strategy without outside influences, it would. But this is a country of promise and promises – it has little money of its own, and reaches out to Japanese, South Korean and Chinese…
Comcast’s new smart TVs, XClass in the US and Sky Glass in the UK, were the stars of the show during the US operator’s third quarter earnings late last week – sugarcoating the loss of more than 400,000 video subscribers to bring Comcast’s TV customer base down to 18.5 million. That brings Comcast’s year on year video hemorrhaging to more than 1.5 million subs, and at this rate will see the operator enter 2022 with close to 18 million, nearing 16 million by the end of next year. Comcast’s smart TV strategy will not be an overnight miracle cure, yet the company’s executives are treating it like the best thing since sliced bread. Technologically, XClass and Sky Glass appeared to…
For a company with the word technology in its name (since being recast from thePlatform in 2016), Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) is a stickler for avoiding talking about its core technology, much like its parent company. Faultline’s first introduction to CTS at a trade show shortly after its formation five or so years ago was a car crash, when a bamboozled junior salesman was assigned to lead the press briefing and walk us through some demos. We have tried to push this unfortunate first impression to the back of our mind, but unfortunately, every time our paths have crossed since, things have hardly got any better, as CTS precedes its reputation for pussyfooting around the details of its product portfolio.…
Swedish media transport specialist Net Insight, which sold its video synchronization unit Sye to Amazon in early 2020, has bizarrely won a synchronization deal that must be leaving Sye’s new parent company scratching its head. Net Insight has secured a contract worth $25.5 million with Turk Telekom, its largest single deal to date and not far off Sye’s entire valuation of $37.2 million – in another reminder that Net Insight is a company continually ahead of the curve and one that you just cannot afford to write off. This deal doesn’t just break Net Insight’s single order record, but blitzes it, for a company that is used to receiving orders no larger than about $3.5 million at a time. The key…
When covering the world of OS for smart TVs and connected TV (CTV) devices, it can be convenient to lump things into two camps – Android-based OS and OEM-led Linux-based OS. However, Faultline’s discussion with white label OS vendor Foxxum this week reminded us that things are not quite this simple. Speaking to the company’s CEO, Roni Lutzi, we heard how Foxxum is hoping to stand its ground in the lower end of the market, optimistic that OEMs will eventually begin to turn on Android TV once it saturates the market. If we had say $100 for every time a company made some sort of Android-based mutiny prediction, we would be hosting one hell of a party. This was the…
Verizon and Amazon launch partnership for rural and remote access Verizon has announced a collaboration with Amazon to integrate its own mobile network with the cloud giant’s Project Kuiper, which is creating a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite network. The partners will work on connectivity solutions for unserved and underserved communities. They have begun to develop technical specifications and define preliminary commercial models for US consumers and global enterprise customers in rural and remote locations. Project Kuiper is an initiative to build a constellation of 3,236 satellites and Amazon has committed an initial $10bn to the program. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said: “Project Kuiper offers flexibility and unique capabilities for a LEO satellite system, and we’re excited about the prospect…
AT&T revealed new details about its 5G Standalone (SA) deployment, though not the date for live commercial deployment. Speaking at last week’s Brooklyn 6G Summit, hosted by New York University’s NYU Wireless outfit and Nokia, the US operator said it was still in the testing phase of 5G SA. Andre Fuetsch, CTO of AT&T Services, said that the operator is currently testing cloud-native 5G core functions and network slicing but there was no deadline given, even though AT&T had previously said – a year ago – that it would fully deploy its 5G core in early 2021. This puts it further behind T-Mobile USA in terms of 5G SA timelines, though Verizon is likely to be in a similar position.…
Siemens has purchased French start-up Wattsense to flesh out its smart building portfolio and ensure it meets tighter European emissions rules through compliance with the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). The EPBD requires buildings in the service sector to be equipped with control and automation systems that improve energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions, which Wattsense can help the German technology and consumer appliance conglomerate achieve through its range of compliant plug-and-play IoT management systems for small and mid-size buildings. Siemens said it was also attracted by the ability of Wattsense technology to make existing sensors, controls and monitoring devices IoT-enabled with wireless connectivity. Multi-protocol devices can be brought onboard relatively easily, before being connected to the cloud…
While the case for private 5G has been clear some time in manufacturing and engineering, under the Industry 4.0 banner, interest and demand have recently been rising in other sectors, such as healthcare, retail and energy. Demand has been stoked up in some areas by consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic but had been building in any case, especially in situations where WiFi was either largely undeployed, or had proved unable to meet demands for performance and capacity. This has also opened yet another chapter in the ongoing saga over the role of cellular connectivity in PCs, laptops and tablets. Cellular connectivity was promoted with the early tablet models around a decade ago, and before that in some laptops, but the…
In the market for Open RAN network functions (xNFs), there are several prominent challenger vendors, as well as developments by majors such as Nokia. Altiostar stole a significant march over competitors when it won the contract for RAN software from Rakuten Mobile, which has the largest Open RAN to date, and was subsequently acquired by the Japanese operator. That has given the smaller firm a central role in the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP), which will be marketed as a pre-integrated set of elements to operators round the world. However, even this endorsement does not mean plain sailing for Altiostar, which has been replaced in Telecom Italia’s fledgling Open RAN deployment by fellow US provider JMA Wireless. One reason is that…
There are many vendors from the IT sector that see Open RAN as a way to break into the closed world of the RAN. In particular, the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) provides a potential way in, because it abstracts the control functions embedded in the traditional RAN and runs them as apps on a RIC platform. Several vendors have already announced plans to develop a RIC platform, in the hope of making it into a de facto standard that would support third party xApps (for near-real time RIC functions) and rApps (for non-real time). Juniper’s and Nokia’s have been particularly prominent efforts that have moved beyond slideware and into real trials and partnerships. Now VMware has joined the race, unveiling…
Since placing the Rakuten Cloud Platform (RCP) into a separate company, Symphony, the Japanese firm is under pressure to flesh out the offering, and provide a wider choice of vendors and functions that those its mobile operator arm has deployed in Japan. The company is adding elements to RCP via development, acquisition and partnership, in a bid to assemble a full portfolio of pre-integrated elements before other efforts to create an Open RAN platform can make an impact. The aim of RCP is to allow operators to mix and match hardware and software components from different vendors, without the time and cost to integrate them all inhouse, or rely on an expensive systems integrator. Provided the chosen products are RCP-compliant,…
We have often analyzed, in Wireless Watch, the challenges that face operators, if they are serious about moving high performance RAN functions to run on general purpose processors (GPP), as part of the Open RAN drive. Now Vodafone has poured cold water on the idea that the whole 5G RAN baseband could run on standard silicon, at least in the short term. The operator says the more demanding elements of its first Open RANs, which will be deployed in western England, will not be able to run on Intel processors, and it is putting its weight behind development of alternatives based on ARM processor architectures, which would be optimized for far lower power consumption. Intel has incumbent position in first…