Analyst Angle

It took the industry 30 years to consolidate mobile communications developments into a single 4G standard with the introduction of LTE and the demise of WiMAX.  That attainment—also in 5G—should be cherished; but it is imperiled by geopolitical developments. While …

Greetings from Kansas City, Nebraska and Louisiana.  Pictured is one of the stops on Jim’s broadband tour of the Cornhusker state, Buck’s Bar and Grill in Venice, Nebraska.  Terrific food and amazing service (and, while not personally witnessed, the live music also …

Earlier this week I have a very interesting and I think important conversation with Steve Berry, who is the President and CEO of the Competitive Carriers Association. We discussed the CCA Mobile Carriers Show coming up in April in Tampa …

Have you noticed this? We all used to spend plenty of time attending various trade shows, conferences and corporate meetings. Then suddenly everything shut down over the last couple years. Industry conferences were cancelled and those that went on were …

T-Mobile US has been an amazing growth story over the last few years. They were dead last competing with Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and Sprint, and after several years of hard work they fought their way up to number two. …

A couple years ago T-Mobile US acquired Sprint with the help of Dish Network who wanted to get into wireless themselves. Word was, Dish was going to become the fourth largest wireless provider. We expected to see them rapidly building …

After being badly battered by the global pandemic, Mobile World Congress (MWC)—the mobile industry’s biggest show, is back to its old glory. It will again be the place where futuristic technologies and products are revealed as well as market trends …

Greetings from Kansas City and Nebraska.  Pictured is our colleague, Bob O’Keefe, surveying the Omaha landscape during one of the coldest days of 2022.  Trust us – under that grin is one nearly frozen individual.  We had a terrific time …

A single cellular site has never been this noteworthy and a milestone across multiple dimensions. I am talking about the recently launched Open RAN site in the UK by Vodafone and Samsung Networks. This was the first such commercial site …

The talk of the outsized role of cloud players in Open RAN is as old as talk of Open RAN itself. After prolonged anticipation, the collaboration between traditional telco and cloud players is finally coming to fruition. The recent HPE …

If you think the successive generations of Wi-Fi are coming far more quickly than before, you are not wrong. While Wi-Fi 6E is relatively new, and Wi-Fi 6 devices are ramping up now, the industry is already readying the next …

Let me start by saying a sincere and heartfelt thank you! Someone just said to me that I have been an industry analyst and columnist for nearly four decades. How, over that time I have been sharing thoughts, analysis and …

Turn of the decade calls for revitalized global climate action The ongoing global warming and climate change are now exposing humanity to future threats, and their consequences are already impacting many regions of the world and affecting hundreds of millions …

Well, the automotive industry has done it again. They shot themselves in the foot more than a decade ago and now they are doing it again. I am talking about the navigation systems on cars today. This is when you …

When the Super Bowl fever is gripping the country, and everybody is looking forward to the first major public sports event coming out of the Omicron wave, the timing couldn’t have been better for Verizon to showcase its preparedness and …

It is no easy task picking the right laptop from a plethora of options that consumers and enterprises have today. But if you are looking for a mid-tier, nice-looking, and cost-effective option for everyday productivity tasks, be it a consumer, …

The 5G industry has seen phenomenal growth over the past few years, but it is only just at the beginning of its journey. With the evolution toward 5G Advanced, there is still much to be done to fully unlock the …

Many MWC Barcelona attendees are learning they don’t need to be there to get value from the global wireless trade show. Virtual attendance is growing while actual attendance is still struggling to recover two years after COVID-19 hit. Since the …

With the advent of 4G and the start of the data era, subscribers have been increasing the total amount of data usage significantly year after year. ABI Research has found that the total global mobile data traffic usage, consisting of …

Greetings from Kansas City and Delray Beach, Florida (pictured), where the Brief staff are taking a mini-corporate retreat before next week’s 2022 Metro Connect conference in Miami.  Looking forward to seeing many of you there and hopefully celebrating a third consecutive AFC …

The world-wide automobile industry has been going through wave after wave of change in recent decades. Now, they are transforming the cars we drive into digital, high-tech devices that look and act like computers or smartphones. Take a closer look …

5G will have a seismic impact on the network. At the end of 2021, there will be 507 million 5G subscriptions, showing a growth rate of 92% Year on Year (YoY). By the end of 2025, ABI Research forecasts that …

As a Wireless Analyst, I have followed the wireless industry and all the challenges and hurdles it has faced and overcome for decades. The way 5G C-Band technology may interfere with aircraft altimeter controls is just the next step in …

Beginning of year greetings from Las Vegas and Kansas City (picture is of the LG “booth” which many of us fondly remember as one of the must see displays at CES).  This was a news-generating two weeks, so we will …

Two years ago, when Covid-19 hit the world like a sledgehammer and everyone was staying isolated, telemedicine got a huge shot in the arm. We all thought this was the next generation for the healthcare industry. Now, we see that …