BROWSING: Opinion

Reality Check: How analytics, cognitive & automation will propel the mobile enterprise in 2018

The physical workplace as we know it has changed. Mobility and on-demand access to data and services have dissolved the four walls of the enterprise. Connected endpoints, location technology, and leading-edge visualization technology have blurred the lines between the virtual and the physical. The...

Telecom Tweets of the Week: Broadband on the brain

Broadband access in underserved or unserved communities is one of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's major priorities. This week he gave a preview of an FCC action in the works to add $500 million in funding to rural broadband initiatives (not much in...

Unlimited data plans will permeate wireless market but leave many consumers behind (Reality Check)

Thanks to the explosion of streaming services, social media, and a boon in interactive mobile experiences, there has been a rapid evolution in the way that today’s consumers engage with content on their mobile devices. With one-third of consumers checking their phones the moment...

Beyond Beacons: The future of indoor location (Reader Forum)

  The use cases for indoor location services continue to grow—every industry from manufacturing and logistics to law enforcement to healthcare to retail, and dozens of others, can benefit from the ability to determine an object’s precise location indoors. New applications are emerging every day...

CAT-M and NB-IoT adoption — a global view (Reader Forum)

Battle for adoption As the demand for worldwide IoT rapidly rises, so does the need for low power, low-cost and low throughput cellular devices. CAT-M and NB-IoT, the two cellular technologies leading the cellular IoT era, are competing for position and adoption around the world. When...

Kagan: Frontier helps small business grow

Frontier Business, the business services side of Frontier Communications, has a significant growth opportunity in 2018, by helping small- and mid-sized businesses grow using their advanced cloud-based communications services. Let’s face it, the SMB market is looking for help, so they can lead. They...

Line of Sight – What’s wrong with Gigabit wireless access? (Reality Check)

  Spoiler Alert:  Obstructions. Ask anyone you meet how they feel about their current broadband service, and you’ll usually get an earful of complaints. Except for the rare few who have been blessed with fiber to their homes or facilities, the most common issue — and...

Debunking 5 common myths about 5G (Reality Check)

  When the industry talks about 5G, there is a level of excitement and optimism about what it will enable. From “up to 100 times increase in user data rates” to “up to 100 times more connected devices” — there is certainly a lot of...

Analyst Angle: How to provide Gigabit LTE cheaply when you don’t have the spectrum?

  Deploy LAA. Consumers are only beginning to use LTE in unlicensed spectrum. So far chatter has mostly been about operator trials, commercial chipsets and sales of devices to seed the market before anyone is to be able to use the new service feature. Nevertheless, the...

Kagan: Wireless and pay TV industries converge in 2018

Walk through CES 2018 and you can see the wireless industry continues to expand its footprint and grow in other industries. All of a sudden, we see pay TV is entering the wireless world. They are following the move of top wireless players like...

Fiber Deep: Syncing the back office is key to success (Reader Forum)

  Bandwidth usage of access networks (or the last mile) continues to grow as service providers migrate to all-IP services (IP Video, 4K Video, and other business services). Traffic from on-demand services also continues to skyrocket while total Internet usage increases 50 percent year over...

Telecom Tweets of the Week: #CESblackout steals the show

What will people remember from this year's Consumer Electronics Show? The biggest electronics show of the year always has a dizzying array of hundreds of shiny gadgets that may or may not ever make it into large-scale production and/or mainstream adoption. The tech eye...

Let’s keep answering the calls for rural broadband (Reader Forum)

  In the push to deploy ever-faster broadband across America, no one should be left behind. The need for faster broadband is particularly acute in rural America, where the speeds are slower, and state-of-the-art facilities are not deployed as quickly as rural Americans need. During the...

Competition – not regulation – is the way to a stronger internet for all (Reality Check)

  Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Mignon Clyburn issued a memo on the agency’s new Restoring Internet Freedom rule, essentially telling consumers their best interests in the digital age are in the backseat. In reality, consumers are better positioned under the new rules, which ensure...

Avoid the disruptors: retaining IoT market share in the face of attack from OTT providers (Reality Check)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is fueled by the abundance of reduced cost infrastructure of compute, storage and networking, with a myriad of service integrations from device management to data analytics. As the cost of entry for IoT continues to fall, coupled with competing...

Analyst Angle: Why mobile apps are driving the future of the MacOS

  Over one billion people now use the iOS interface. It is often the user interface that most young people first come to know. They know it is a screen made up of colorful icons with the name of the app underneath it. There are...

Kagan: Will users still trust Apple after iPhone slowdown?

There should be quite a bit of embarrassment at Apple in the last couple weeks since they admitted to the iPhone slowdown. But is there? I wrote about this problem several times in recent years. What happens next--as Apple pushes three new iPhone models-- now...

The biggest headlines of 2017… and 2018 (Reader Forum)

  As 2018 kicks off, it’s important to consider what’s in store for telecommunications in the New Year and also understand what the industry did — or didn’t — accomplish last year. From the Broadcast Incentive Auction to carriers’ ongoing efforts to become content providers, the...

Commercial buildings: The evolution from intelligent to smart (Reader Forum)

For commercial buildings in 2018, four trends define the evolution of networking technology that will drive buildings from just being intelligent to being smart: mobility, cybersecurity, low voltage power and workplace efficiency. These trends continue to influence the types of network infrastructure and devices...

Wonky wireless wishes for 2018 (Reader Forum)

Demand for uncapped broadband providers reaches a fever pitch 2018 can feel a lot like 1998 when your broadband provider is making you suffer with 200 GB data caps. And while originally designed to block a small group of BitTorrent bandwidth hogs, data caps are...

Moving computing to the edge a must for converged networks (Reader Forum)

  The networking and communications industry service providers — mobile, IoT, Internet, cable, and telecom technologies — are combining into a “converged network” because of the common infrastructures being implemented. Things are changing dramatically in the world of these converged networks. Not long ago, the cloud was...

Telecom Tweets of the Week: Pai bows out of CES after death threats

If you were planning to look for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai at the Consumer Electronics Show, you'd be out of luck. Pai, who has been a regular attendee of the CES show for the past few years, cancelled his scheduled appearance less...

Congress needs to end the internet battle once and for all (Reality Check)

  Judging by what feels like the 25th Star Wars sequel (or is it prequel?) that debuted in theatres this holiday season, it appears that battles in the galaxy are never quite settled. For those keeping track of the dispute in Washington over net neutrality,...

Analyst Angle: The hidden value of 5G innovation and its impact on economic growth and consumers’ lifestyles

Cellular technology innovation has been instrumental in creating wealth in recent years and has contributed significantly to global economic growth, either directly or indirectly. Each mobile network generation, including 2G, 3G, and 4G, has transformed consumers’ lifestyles and has enabled businesses to deploy new...