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The third year in a row of capex cuts in China!April 02, 2018After the 2015 LTE rollout peak that pushed China’s total capex to the roof at RMB439B—including RMB162B for LTE alone, the three service providers made it clear that they would slow down their spending dramatically, and indeed they slammed the brakes! The end goal is to bring capital intensity (e.g., capex-to-revenue ratio) somewhere between sustainable levels of about 24% and healthy levels of 15%; those benchmarks come from western telecom companies, of course, and became fundamental to driving the recovery after the telecom crash of 2000. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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MWC18: What the C-level service provider suite says about 5GMarch 09, 2018As usual at this time of year, I did my pilgrimage to Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress, which according to the GSMA was attended by 107,000 people—1,000 fewer than last year. Was this due to the cold front that hit the entire European region all the way to the south? Many people did not manage to land in Barcelona due to flight cancellations. Meanwhile, this event is branded as the world’s largest of its kind, at least in the not-so-vibrant mobile industry. To provide some perspective, I like to remind people that Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff brought 170,000 people to the Dreamforce event in San Francisco last year; that is one-fifth of the city’s population, and cruise ships were provided to address insufficient hotel room supply. More importantly, I conducted my usual C-level service provider tour, a mix of formal and informal discussions. Some were scheduled, and others were just on the run. And, of course, it was all about 5G. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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The mysterious case of a rising IndiaFebruary 01, 2018While Brazil and Russia were in recession in 2015 and 2016, IHS Markit found that India’s economy was chugging along, pushing the nation’s real GDP growth rates at 8% and 7.1% for those years, respectively. As a result, India moved into seventh place in 2015 after passing Italy and Brazil and kicking out Russia (which allowed Canada back into the top 10). Last year, IHS Markit expected India’s real GDP to grow 6.5%, which should have moved India into sixth place after passing France. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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China sets its sights on the optical components marketJanuary 18, 2018In January 2018, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released its Optoelectronic Devices Industry Technology Roadmap, a five-year plan to improve China’s capabilities in the optoelectronics industry. Although the plan spans a wide range of fundamental technologies in the optical domain, there is a strong focus on optical communications devices, which will have a significant impact on the global optical components industry supporting optical transport and networking. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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The 2018 telecom capex forecast is looking upJanuary 12, 2018As mentioned in the IHS Markit 15 November 2017 Service Provider Revenue and Capex Biannual Market Tracker, all regions will experience some level of moderate capex growth this year (see Exhibit 1) with US-led North America in the driver’s seat Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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As data is the new oil and AI the engine, service providers rejoiceDecember 05, 2017Sell your subscriber data and make big money! That’s literally what NTT DOCOMO did. The first of its kind, Telco Data Analytics USA was held in Palo Alto from November 28 to 29. The event featured a broad roster of experts from various fields ranging from service providers such as AT&T, Bell Canada, Charter, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Sprint, and T-Mobile US to data scientists from Apple, Google, IBM, and LinkedIn, as well as all sorts of equipment vendors, all sharing the same thing in common: data and artificial intelligence (AI). The attendance was close to 100 people, and it’s worth mentioning that Huawei was the lead sponsor, followed by Gold Sponsors Dell EMC and Nokia and Silver Sponsor NetScout. Other Bronze and Associate Sponsors were mainly data specialists like Cardinality, CellMining, and Subex. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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Connected cows are the new cash cowNovember 29, 2017That’s what Huawei Deputy Chairman and Rotating CEO Ken Hu said at the Chinese vendor's Global Mobile Broadband Forum in London on 15 November 2017 during the opening keynote. He told the crowd of 1,400 attendees (up from 1,200 last year in Tokyo and 900 in 2015 in Hong Kong) that in north-western China, dairy farmers are using smart collar technology to track everything from the grazing habits of their herds to the specific body temperature of individual cows. In doing so, they are dramatically increasing milk yields and raising profitability. And that is what I call the Internet of Animals (IoA), a significant component of the massive IoT opportunity, also seen as a chief 5G driver. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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US 2018 Capex Forecast Is Looking UpNovember 10, 2017I’m not yet saying Sprint has turned the corner, but what we know for sure is that after talks to merge with T-Mobile US fell apart over the weekend, the company is moving forward as a standalone entity and said Tuesday, 7 November 2017, that it would increase spending on its network. In fact, according to Sprint Chief Financial Officer Tarek Robbiati, the merger had little to do with this capex hike; rather, it’s coming from the Altice partnership, which would have happened anyway. Announced Sunday, 5 November 2017, US cable operator Altice USA will sell mobile service on Sprint’s network under a new multi-year agreement. Now the high expectation has clearly shifted overnight from a failed merger to the Altice partnership, which is suddenly putting pressure on Sprint to install new antennas as soon as possible. As a result, Sprint plans to raise money to fund its network investment by avoiding expensive traditional debt and using its airwave licenses as collateral. Clients, please log in to read the full content.Subscribers Only
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When AI and SON Meet, We Have a Self-Driving NetworkNovember 01, 2017As usual this time of the year, I chaired KNect365’s Self-Organising Networks World, which was rebranded last year. Held in London where it started in 2010, this eighth annual SON conference was well attended with more than 120 delegates, which is about the same number as last year but a different crowd that reflects another interesting vendor dynamic. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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5G has triggered a fiber hunt and investment spikeOctober 10, 2017Since its invention by Corning Glass researchers Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz in 1970, it was clear that optical fiber would eventually become the nerve of telecommunications networks. The fiber-optic cable race started in the 80s for long distance transatlantic communications systems and moved to long haul terrestrial links in the late 90s during the Internet bubble. The run up ended in March 2000 with a fiber glut that marked the beginning of the great telecom crash. Since then, the fiber-optic business has become very cyclical with significant ups and downs and is now sustained by Google and Facebook building their own undersea and terrestrial fiber-optic networks to link data centers, as well as China, which spent $182B between 2015 and 2017 to build its own network. Now with 5G on the horizon, all service providers and governments are looking for fiber. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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Quantum Networking: A Novel Art of Transmitting Zeroes and OnesJuly 31, 2017Although quantum physics is not a new field, we’ve increasingly been hearing about the potential of using the laws of quantum physics for processing, transmitting, and distributing information. Also known as quantum mechanics, including field theory, quantum physics deals with the fundamental theory of small-scale, low-energy level objects that share some properties of waves such as a specific frequency and wavelength, some spread over space, and some properties of particles—they're generally countable and can be localized to some degree because quantum mechanics cannot predict the exact location of a particle in space, only the probability of finding it at different locations. Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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On the Extreme Edge, a Double Triple: AT&T Domain 3.0 and Google Cloud 3.0June 22, 2017The “software-defined” focus of telecom means not only separation of the control plane and the data plane with a centralized view of the whole network or its major parts but also a distribution of intelligence—read compute—in stepping stones toward the extreme edge of the network. We hear “edge compute” embodied in such efforts as MEC, at first in “Mobile Edge Compute,” morphing into “Multi-access Edge Compute”.Subscribers Only
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TM Forum Talk Was All About Digital Transformation, but the Reality Is DifferentJune 01, 2017Once again I attended the TM Forum, held in lovely Nice from May 15 to 17, just a week before the commencement of the Cannes Festival and two weeks before the Grand Prix de Monaco. Needless to say, the French Riviera was very busy during the event, which was marked by a strong focus on digital transformation, whatever that means! Clients, please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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Commercial 5G Is Coming Fast, but Forget Mobility—It’s Just a mmWave-based Fixed Wireless Access Service Like LMDSMay 02, 2017Although this is far less sexy than the usual eye-catching 5G use cases discussed every day like autonomous cars, augmented and virtual reality, massive IoT, and remote robotic surgery, the way 5G developments are rapidly unraveling suggests point-to-multipoint (PMP) networks running on millimeter waves for fixed wireless access services will go live next year, if not in 4Q17. 4 recent major facts lead to this conclusion. Please log in to view the full content.Subscribers Only
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Yet Another Round of Deep Capex Cuts in China This Year!March 30, 2017When does this stop? Well, if you are a loyal subscriber of our Mobile Infrastructure Market Intelligence Service, it’s no surprise and you already know the story: China fueled the LTE market in 2015, which in turn reached its peak and, as anticipated in our 31 March 2016 Analyst Insight Expect Deep Capex Cuts in China This Year, 2016 saw a 19% decline. The outlook looks bleak this year with another double-digit YoY decline! Please log in to read the complete insight.Subscribers Only
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The Economy’s 5G ProblemMarch 22, 2017As 5G research and development and the race toward a 5G standard accelerate, there is no shortage of discussion about potential use cases and economic benefits. In a way, you’d better have a good idea of what you’re trying to achieve by launching a new G. And at the very least, you need to develop a business model that leads to some return on investment at some point in time. But the very basic question is why are we moving to 5G so fast when most subscribers don’t even have a 4G service yet? Getting out of the current mobile industry funk is a chief reason—finding something that can contribute to better economic growth is another. Please log in to read the complete insight.Subscribers Only
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The US Is the Wild Card in Capex FlatlandJanuary 10, 2017Happy New Year everyone! And of course, we cannot start a new year without providing an outlook of what lies ahead in the land of telecom spending: it appears to be very flat at best! Little has changed since last year, and in our most recent biannual Service Provider Capex, Revenue, and Opex Market Tracker – Regional report, released in November 2016, we still expect worldwide capex to barely budge from $341.5B last year to 342.8B by year end—just 0.4% YoY growth. Please log in to read the complete insight.Subscribers Only
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RESEARCH NOTE - Telecom Capex Growth Hamstrung by Regional Investment DecouplingDecember 21, 2016Following is information and insight from IHS Markit about our H2 2016 Telecom Trends and Drivers Biannual Market Report, which includes data for the half-year ended June 30, 2016.
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As Network Outages Persist, Big Money Goes into Network TransformationDecember 13, 2016Each time I meet with a service provider these days, I hear the buzz words network transformation, big data analytics, the shift to software, and automation. And yet we still have network outages! The question is how much can we do, and how much investment do we need to eradicate or at least minimize those network outages? Whatever is being done does not point to network outage eradication. Far away and down under, Australia and New Zealand, among other countries (e.g., Germany during the week of November 27), have had to cope with major embarrassing network outages. And the response has always been to throw more capex at the issue—good news for vendors!Subscribers Only
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Navigating the Trumpian Telecom Brew!December 09, 2016I have to admit that this is the very first time in my 2 decades or so of being a telecom industry analyst that I have received inquiries about the potential outcome of a US presidential election! And I’m no crystal ball on this one because what the new administration plans to actually do versus the campaign rhetoric remains a complete mystery at this point. Nonetheless, FCC leadership, net neutrality, and set-top boxes (STBs) are 3 sure bets we can get right.Subscribers Only
