BROWSING: Opinion

Kagan: Should Altice acquire Charter or Sprint?

It looks like Altice may become one of the more aggressive growth-oriented pay TV providers. If so, would they be more interested in acquiring Charter to expand their cable television business or Sprint to offer wireless? To tell you the truth, I think the...

The telecom industry gets cloudy (Reader Forum)

Across industries, the cloud has completely disrupted the way people and organizations do business. Nowhere has the impact been more apparent than in the telecom industry, which is in the midst of a major shift to the cloud as it looks to take advantage...

Telecom Tweets of the Week: Waterlogged by Harvey

It was a rough week for southeast Texas, as Hurricane Harvey slammed into the coast and dropped an unprecedented amount of water -- more than 50 inches, in some places. The pictures and video posted to social media by residents and journalists attempted to...

The most important call (Reader Forum)

Google just announced the ability to make telephone calls from its Google Home speaker. At first, calling will be limited to outbound calls. Amazon was first to bring outbound and inbound calling capability to its Echo speaker device. The most important outbound call...

Narrowband IoT – Solving the last-mile problem of the internet of things (Reader Forum)

The internet of things (IoT) has a last-mile problem. While the cloud infrastructure to gather and analyze data is ready today, a robust wireless infrastructure with the range, low-power and low-cost characteristics to connect large numbers of devices to the internet hasn’t been ready...

Kagan: Why Comcast is growing when cable TV is not

If cable TV is on the falling side of the growth wave, why then is Comcast Xfinity continuing to grow, even as others struggle? The growth wave I often talk about always rises, crests then falls. This creates both new growth opportunities and huge...

Analyst Angle: Virtualization or containerization for 5G?

It’s anticipated that 5G networks and services will begin to be operational by approximately 2020, but the preparations and investments in the foundational technologies are still being tackled. Virtualization and containerization are both networking architectures that use common, off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware in order to...

Ensuring network and IT readiness to monetize IoT business services: It’s all about the data (Reader Forum)

The evolution of enterprise IoT services may be in its early days, but it is already clear that business models must be built around technology that can react in real time to quality of experience factors. IoT initiatives will not be successful based...

Kagan: Wireless carriers going different directions

Yesterday, wireless carriers AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile US were all headed in the same direction. However, today they all seem to be heading in different directions. Let’s take a closer look at each and at the industry in general. At the...

Telecom tweets of the week: Total eclipse of … everything

The country has gone eclipse-crazy as it gears up for the big event on Monday. Eclipse glasses are sold out everywhere. Airfares to cities within the "path of totality" have skyrocketed. Mobile carriers are boosting coverage along that path in preparation for the expected...

Why antennas are the workhorse of the connected car (Reality Check)

Connected cars are gathering steam as automakers not only need to provide the latest in infotainment technologies, but also deliver a wealth of useful vehicle data to automobile owners. But these new capabilities come with a new set of challenges — with all the...

Analyst Angle: 2016 macrocell digital baseband unit shipments increase 13% year-on-year

EJL Wireless Research estimates that macrocell digital baseband unit (BBU) shipments increased by 13% in 2016 as compared with shipment levels in 2015. While Huawei Technologies maintained its market leadership position in 2016, we note that Nokia outperformed the overall market and increased market...

How DevOps can help in accelerating innovation (Reader Forum)

Business enterprises across the globe today are looking to embrace digital transformation to help them stay ahead of the curve. Whether you are a startup or a medium sized enterprise or a Fortune 500 company, consumers today seek faster services with growing demands. To...

Kagan: AT&T wins 9th consecutive J.D. Power award

Once again, J.D. Power just announced their award for wireless purchase experience, and, once again, for the 9th consecutive time, AT&T Mobility wins. Also, MetroPCS wins for non-contract, full-service carriers and Consumer Cellular wins for non-contract value carriers. And, at the same time, AT&T debuted...

Analyst Angle: Curated Wi-Fi – going beyond connectivity

During the pre-LTE days, the importance of Wi-Fi infrastructure was on the rise and that created opportunities for aggregators such as Devicescape and iPass to offer the broadest platforms to customers – from enterprises to cellular offloaders to Wi-Fi-first mobile virtual network operators. There...

Besting the 39-month FCC repack program (Reader Forum)

After dominating the wireless industry’s news cycle for over a year, the FCC 600MHZ spectrum auction came to an end. Now the real work begins. The 976 U.S. stations that sold their spectrum rights to the FCC, which in turn auctioned them to wireless...

How network standardization can future-proof connected cars (Reader Forum)

The pace of change in connected car technology could quickly render new vehicles obsolete, especially in the age of the internet of things (IoT). With the number of connected “things” expected to reach 20.4 billion by 2020, ensuring that the cars of today are...

LTE will power the next generation of IoT (Reality Check)

Internet of things (IoT) innovation continues to grow based on demand from both consumers and enterprises, and cellular connectivity is at the heart of the convenience, cost savings and “cool factor” of these rapidly proliferating connected devices. The trend began many years ago when early-connected...

Which team member is your company’s biggest mobile security risk? (Reality Check)

The workforce of the future will be more mobile than ever. By 2020, 40% of the global workforce will be mobile. In the U.S. and Europe, that number will soar to 75%. The changing composition of the modern workforce accelerates the need for mobile...

Analyst Angle: 5G backhaul, microwave exceed expectations

5G is the highly anticipated technology that is expected to change the way we live by connecting everything around us. 5G falls into three main categories. 1) enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), 2) ultra-reliable and low latency communications (uRLLC) for critical machine communications, and; 3)...

For CSPs, sweating the small stuff can pay big dividends

We’ve all heard the saying “don’t sweat the small stuff” – there are hundreds of books, websites, and speeches dedicated to the topic (along with an army of t-shirts and tchotchkes). The philosophy is built around the idea that we shouldn’t be distracted by...

Kagan: What’s coming next in wireless

Recently I was invited to give a speech looking at the changing wireless industry and where we are heading. Wireless is an incredible industry. I’ve been a wireless analyst for 30 years. Over the last four decades I have watched it change time and...

Carrier billing takes big jump into the mainstream

Carrier billing has been available for nearly two decades as an alternative payment option, largely unnoticed yet growing in usage and value. But the recent announcements by Amazon, KDDI and NTT DoCoMo that carrier billing is now available to Japanese customers in the Amazon...

Reality Check: In the data center space, telcos are no longer answering the call

It is an interesting time for companies that choose to house their IT infrastructure in data centers owned and operated by large telecommunications (telco) providers. Over the last decade, many telcos have made material investments in their data center offerings, sensing an opportunity to...