We attended the Open19 Foundation Summit 2019 in San Jose, CA.  The key message of the leadership team of the Foundation was that it expects 2019 to be the year where Open19 systems begin shipping.  Yuval Bachar, President of the Foundation explained that there are 8-10 companies that are deploying or seriously considering, including two mega data center operators in process of evaluation and at least 6 adopters in advanced evaluation/deployment.  Open19 does not specify what technology will be inside the systems; it only defines the form factor.  Interestingly, GPU and ARM designs are included and we heard about AMD CPU more often than we did Intel.  
 
VaporIO made a presentation about its edge data center systems.  Matt Trifiro, CMO of VaporIO explained that its systems nominally consume up to 165 kw in a 9 foot round datacenter.  It claims that Vapor IO is deploying in 6 cities, 3 to 4 data centers in each city.

ASUS and a new company, German Edge Cloud, both made interesting presentations.  Salim Fedel, Associate VP Enterprise Solutions Business Group, ASUS, presented a few of the company's Open19 oriented products, Alps19, Brick and its Network Switch.  Jason Rylands, VP of Data Center Strategy & International Sales, German Edge Cloud, made a very interesting presentation about its company's activities in Germany on how it is participating in the manufacturing industry in Germany.  There is reticence on putting manufacturing data and control on the cloud, but there is a desire to build a German-only computing system, driven in part by GDPR and part by the nation's focus on manufacturing - that's the opportunity.  German Edge Cloud has decided to use Open19 systems - accessing only the front of the racks is a big deal, it believes.

German Edge Cloud shared many examples of how it is engaging with manufacturers for real-time error tracking during the manufacturing process, using analytics, and sharing information between various companies in the German supply chain.

​We attended media briefings at the Keysight World conference held near San Francisco, California, yesterday.  Keysight World San Francisco showed a more integrated Ixia as well as a further push towards 5G, automotive and energy, and data center and telecom.  Much of the companies conversations during the event related to synergies between these technologies.  Such as how to push the automotive industry forward using 5G and the need for edge computing in 5G.  As Keysight is involved at the beginning of the launches of many new cellular technologies, it has good insights into the timeline and progress of the 5G market.

One of our key takeaways from the show is the increased pervasiveness of Ethernet in the telecom and automotive industry as well as the significant increase in constant data creation.  All this data will need robust, and more intelligent networks to transport it.  We were also impressed that Keysight World will actually take place in 10 cities around the world, with San Francisco being the first.

Another interesting observation was just how global Keysight was in looking at products, for example in one session that we attended, much of the automotive effort in the company was located in Germany.

Huawei hosted 700 analysts and media participants in Shenzhen China last week to attend its annual analyst summit, nick-named HAS2019.  The company's high-level message was simple - the company is an innovator and is moving down the stack into semiconductors and is partnering with and funding university projects to develop basic research.  This year’s message was different from than the prior-year meeting, but several transformative events have occurred between this meeting and the prior year's, most notably the 2Q18 shipment ban on ZTE, the US / China trade dispute and US efforts to thwart Huawei’s participation in the 5G infrastructure of its allies.  Interestingly, during HAS2019, the Apple and Qualcomm announced their chip-supply and patent settlement, Samsung announced its foldable phone (which has been met with criticism), and Ericsson & Swisscom announced that the operator went live with its 5G network.  All three of non-Huawei events highlighted the importance of Huawei’s chips and innovation announcements.

The company made announcements in its main keynote presentations on day one about seven different chip projects delivered recently or planned shortly.  Chip-level is unusual for what are typically high-level presentations from a keynote-level presentation.  These chips (seen in accompanying pictures) are:

• Ascend 310/910.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) chip for cloud (leads to its Data Center Ethernet Switch iLossLess cloud service)
• OptiXtreme H6 oDSP.  Optical transmission Digital Signal Processor (DSP).
• Hi 1822.  FC/IP chip used for products including Solid State Drives (SSDs)
• Atlas 200 AI acceleration for AI computing intended for September 2019 announcements at Huawei Connect
• Tiangang 5G Basestation chipset
• Balong chip series intended for 5G smartphones and other Customer Premises Equipment (CPE)
• Kungpeng ARM chips for computing

The company shared more details about other chips in breakout sessions on the second and third days of the conference, as well.  The point we are making, though, is that upper-level management provided significant detail about semiconductor developments at Huawei.

The company shared more details about other chips in breakout sessions on the second and third days of the conference, as well.  The point we are making, though, is that upper-level management provided significant detail about semiconductor developments at Huawei.  Another relevant semiconductor-related point to make is that the company is de-emphasizing its reliance on Intel-based architecture and instead is focusing on devices such as ARM-based processors, as well as GPU, FPGA and NPU semiconductors.
We would be remiss if we did not mention some of the system-level announcements and observations related to 5G that were made at the HAS2019 conference, which include:

• MU-MIMO.  Of Huawei’s 70,000 shipments of 5G base stations as of the show, 97% were MU-MIMO based.  The company expects MU-MIMO to be deployed not only in urban areas but also in rural areas.
• SingleRAN Pro.  The company is taking an architectural approach that is different from what some service providers in the world want; it is delivering an integrated product approach where multiple frequencies and base stations are integrated into the same enclosures.  This converged approach is different from the architectural approach being promoted by some smaller vendors like Altiostar, Mavenir and Parallel Wireless, which uses the O-RAN standard and features a disaggregation between various components like antenna and base band processing.  Huawei’s rationale is that it is less expensive on capital spending and operational spending to use the integrated approach.
• Converged Mobile Packet Core.  The company plans to have 1H19 commercial availability of its 2G/3G/4G/5G NSA/5G SA packet core system.  In slides depicting this product, it prominently features chip systems such as GPU, FPGA, NPU, and ARM but specifically excludes x86 references. 
• Huawei expects to deliver its first 5G phone in November 2019

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​Our big takeaway from its recent global analyst meeting was that Nokia is formalizing its enterprise business.  Of course, the company’s primary business, which focuses on telecom service providers, is undergoing major product updates, including towards 5G, Fixed Wireless Access and towards network slicing.  We have published about these topics in other posts relating to Nokia in the past several months, having attended other Nokia events, so we focus on topics we haven’t discussed recently.

The company acknowledges that telco capex is expected to be unexciting and is redoubling efforts to gather enterprise customers.  In 3Q18, Enterprise represented 5% of revenues.  The company expects 8% CAGR for Enterprise Networking.  Of course, the company covered many topics beyond enterprise, including its view on megatrends, the importance of spectrum instead of differentiation between 4G and 5G, residential WiFi and Fixed Wireless Access, its recent wins at major telcos, the impact of the recent re-organization, the impact of the trade war and other topics. 

Enterprise market, Private cellular and WiFi.  The company’s view is that private LTE will challenge WiFi for certain applications in its “strategic” enterprise markets, including for verticals such as logistics and transportation.  Considering the Nokia view, we expect private LTE and WiFi will co-exist in the future.  We think that Nokia can succeed with its private LTE strategy, because this is mostly a “greenfield” opportunity.  Many of the cases Nokia explains it is seeing success are outdoor, not indoor, where WiFi is so popular.  A number of industries are likely to adopt private LTE (mining, logistics are good examples), and later 5G, but we expect most every industry will maintain their reliance on WiFi.  We keep in mind that in light of the fact that 802.11ax (which began shipping 3Q18) incorporates many more cellular-like capabilities, WiFi will have a seat at the table for some time to come even in these critical industries.  Interestingly, by leveraging service provider channels, the company has plans to enter the “branch” enterprise network market, using SD-WAN as its “Trojan horse” to enter.

Megatrends.  From a strategy standpoint, Nokia sees megatrends: Ubiquitous connectivity, multi-cloud, deep analytics, industrial IoT and regulatory.
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Spectrum takes on new importance.  On mobile radio, the company focuses on spectrum differences as much as the difference between 4G and 5G.  The company’s view is all macro basestations should have mmWave.  Describing its 5G ramp, Nokia’s factory capacity related to 5G infrastructure has quadrupled this most recent quarter; and the company “went to volume shipments” on its new, in-house Reefshark chips in 3Q18. 

Residential WiFi and Fixed Wireless Access.  The company’s new mesh WiFi will be made available at its first service provider customer’s stores in the month of November.  This mesh technology is from the recent acquisition of Unium. The company’s first Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) customers have begun deployments, for both 4G cellular and WiGig (60 Ghz 802.11ad).  We understand that the 4G cellular projects are largely at mobile service providers working to leverage existing investments in their mobile infrastructure, while WiGig is in demand at enterprises and traditionally fixed-line service providers. The company expects 5G FWA infrastructure will be ready to ship in 2019.

Recent wins at service providers.  New wins announced €2B around this event include “frame wins” at major Chinese service providers

• China Mobile: radio access, core, passive optical networks, IP routing and optical transport, SDN, network management and professional services.
• China Telecom to improve country-wide 4G LTE coverage and hot spot capacity. Nokia will provide its end-to-end portfolio and solutions for China Telecom including FDD-LTE radio access, home CPE solutions, core routers, multi-service edge routers and optics as well as its services expertise.
• China Unicom deploy technologies across the country including Nokia FDD-LTE radio access, Multi-access Edge Computing, virtualized IMS, SDN, IP routing and optical transport, and fixed network equipment.

The company also emphasized its multi-billion dollar deal recently signed with T-Mobile US.  Neville Ray, CTO of T-Mobile US presented at the event.  Additionally, AT&T’s Chris Penrose, SVP IoT, discussed its relationship with Nokia using the WING service; this is a global IoT service that uses revenue co-sharing between AT&T, Nokia and the many regional service providers in non-AT&T locations.  AT&T made the point that IoT is a business service.  Telia, headquartered in Nokia rival’s Ericsson’s home country, Sweden, made a compelling presentation at the meeting, as well.

The impact of the recent re-organization.  On the day of its recent earnings call, the company announced a planned re-organization, along with some reductions in force, to reduce spending so the company can hit its year 2020 financial targets.  The importance of this re-org, from our standpoint, is that the Software division of the company will be in charge of managing several products that used to be part of the Mobile division beginning Jan 1, 2019.  Products moving from Mobile to Software include IMS CSCF and TAS.  We have verified that Packet Core (including EPC/4G and 5G Core) will remain in the ION (IP and Optical Networks) division, where it has been for years.
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Trade war.  According to Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia, Australia, UK, Korea, Japan, possibly Canada all may ban Chinese telecom gear.  Suri expects that Nokia’s “working assumptions” are that: (a) around 20-25% Chinese market share is available for foreign vendors, and (b) potentially, ZTE will take more share in China, and that (c) foreigners (like Nokia) will still be able to play. Suri explained that Nokia hasn’t seen Chinese vendors get more aggressive in Middle East and Africa (MEA).

We attended Mobile World Congress Americas (MWCa) in Los Angeles, CA this week, as well as the AT&T Spark event in San Francisco.  Since 5G is launching first the US, these two events became the public events where significant 5G-related announcements happened.

• Verizon.  Will launch 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) on October 1 in four markets: Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento.
• AT&T.  The company reiterated its own 5G plans (mobile 5G by year-end 2018 in cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Raleigh, Waco, Houston, Jacksonville, Lousville, New Orleans and San Antonia), plus it made some announcements like that it is beginning 5G-ready CBRS equipment testing (using Samsung CBRS equipment and CommScope as SAS provider).  Also, at the Spark event on Monday, the company announced three strategic telecom equipment suppliers, Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung. 
• T-Mobile.  Announced that it had completed a Cisco vEPC system (upgradeable to 5G Core) carrying traffic for 70M users that was from Cisco.  It also announced that it signed a $3.5B 5G agreement with Ericsson.  This is in addition to the July 30 announcement made earlier with Nokia for $3.5B, as well.  Generally, the company has set expectations as recently as September 10 that it will provide nationwide 5G by the year 2020.
• Sprint.  Announced that it had demonstrated a 5G NR connection of Massive MIMO with Nokia equipment.

Additionally, discussions about spectrum in the US market were very active discussions.  Some points we picked up on:

• No new mid-band auctions will occur in the US market for another 2-3 years, so this means that new capacity is going to come from LAA (just announced on the iPhone Xs this week, as well) and from CBRS (discussed above).
• The "who has the fastest 5G throughput" battle will be won at the millimeter wave.  In other words, using millimeter was, speeds as high as 10 Gbps are possible, but with mid-band (1-6 Ghz), where LTE is currently deployed, cannot go much over 2 Gbps.  So, to beat the Ookla Speed Test, the mobile operators who deploy mmWave early will get a leg up.  However, in order to deploy mmWave, these have to be small-cells that are within 100 meters of users.  Since it is so difficult to get real-estate rights and backhaul for small cells, this is going to be a big challenge.  Nevertheless, this is how the battle will be won.
• T-Mobile's 600 Mhz rollout is now in 1,250 cities.  The company will eventually enable 600 Mhz 5G.  600 Mhz should dramatically improve T-Mobile coverage because it is low-band spectrum.

Yesterday, Ericsson and Juniper announced plans to partner to tackle 5G transport challenges together.  Additionally, Ericsson announced a partnership with optical transport company, ECI.  The companies said that Ericsson's Router 6000 product family will focus on fronthaul and backhaul and edge compute and will be complemented by Juniper MX, PTX and SRX Series portfolios providing edge, core and security capabilities.  Additionally, in today's presentation to analysts, Ericsson showed that the overall transport capability from Ericsson will also include Optical Transport from both ECI Telecom and Ciena.  The Ericsson Network Manager will be capable of managing not only Ericsson products, but also the three families of products from Juniper.

ECI will be used for Metro, and will be completely integrated with the Ericsson OSS platform.  The company conceded that it is de-emphasizing its in-house metro optical product line and focusing on ECI.  Ciena will be used for long-haul transport predominantly, mainly the Ciena 6500 product.  Ericsson concedes that both ECI and Ciena products can move to other domains.

To enable automation for 5G, Ericsson can only guarantee that networks working with Ericsson and its partners can successfully be automated.  This automation / partnership topic illustrates just how complex it will be to make 5G networks work properly.

Recall that Ericsson and Juniper had a close partnership that goes back many years.  In fact, the Juniper router predecessor to the MX was used as the underlying hardware for Ericsson's very important GGSN/SGSN and later EPC capabilities. Ericsson eventually replaced the Juniper product for EPC with its own Router 6000.  Subsequently, Ericsson announced a partnership with Cisco, which was more general in nature.  That relationship did not result in much tangible progress, from what we have learned; and the relationship was done under previous management teams for both Cisco and Ericsson.  Ericsson explained today in its analyst briefing that Cisco and Ericsson compete in several areas.  So, this new Juniper relationship is important in that it re-kindles an old relationship and plays to both companies' strengths.

​The main theme of the the Huawei HAS 2018 meeting keynotes was Artificial Intelligence and, secondarily, nearly ubiquitous networks connections across the world.  Huawei expects 86% of enterprises to have experimented with AI by 2025 (<5% in 2018).  It is leveraging AI across nearly all its products and will offer a full stack AI solution to all Huawei partners at its @Huawei Connect 2018 conference (Oct 10, 2018).

More specifcially, Huawei is using AI to elevate products & solutions to new levels: cloud, networks, devices, EI, SoftCOM AI, and Intelligent phones.  The company's strategy has changed over time and is now AI-focused:

2006-2011: Single strategy: All IP
2012-2017: SoftCOM: All Cloud
2017+:     All Intelligence: SoftCom AI (autonomous networks / services 2.0) - this reduces operating and maintence costs

The company expects that networks will be 10x more efficient in the operation of equipment as a result of AI.  

By 2025, Huawei expects 440M AR/VR users, 40% of cars to be 'connected," 80% of users with access to mobile broadband, usage of 1 Gbps / user / day (versus .03 in 2018) and 20B connected devices worldwide.


Connected Devices Forecast (Huawei) by 2025: 40B sensors and 100B connections.  This thinking is based on data including that there are: 

• 4B livestock in the world
• 300m streetlights
• 1.8B utility meters
• numerous bike programs in major cities
• numerous greenhouses

The company's product lines are very diverse; to wit, the company introduced a helmet for the blind, which will be available soon.  

Huawei expects NB-IoT (LTE-based IoT capability) to reach almost full coverage in China in 2018.  Additionally, the company expects NB-IoT to reach 100 networks by the end of 2018 (versus 39 in 2017) and to be available on 1.2M base stations (from 0.5M in 2017) and to be connected to 150M connections (versus 10M in 2017).  

The company boasted about several developments:

1. Chipsets for cloud data center systems.  The company highlighted its internally developed Atlas (intelligent cloud hardware).
2. The company expects its cloud services will become one of major 5 clouds.  Uses smart NICs for CPU optimization and is 'open.'
3. The cloud service from Huawei will be low cost because Huawei makes all the equipment necessary to build this cloud
4. Internet of Vehicles system was was built for Group PSA (French auto company known for the Peugot brand)
5. 5-An example of the company's "Intent-Driven Network" was its AI-based premium home broadband for a better user experience on Chinese based PON systems in use today.  Real time data collections allows 40% reduction on door-to-door service and fault prediction of 85% of Wi-Fi faults and 30% of all network faults.
6. AI-enabled, software-defined cameras are now available that perform low-light feature extraction (e.g. facial detection/comparison) over 85% of the time.  And, using the Huawei AI chip, it can outperform CPUs by 25X and GPUs by over 6x.
7. VR/AR will create a $2.7 trillion ecosystem in the future.  The company reminds the audience that it demonstrated teh first CloudVR Proof of Concept at the March 2018 MWC conference.

Q&A after keynote:
Mr. Eric Xu, Rotating Deputy Chairman of Huawei dodged several important questions relating to trade tariffs, cloud business unit revenue targets, growth rates of each major business units, specifics about AI full-stack claims made during the keynote, and instead focused generally on the AI theme.  Xu did, however, however, answer a handful of questions that were quite interesting:  Huawei won't acquire DRAM, Flash companies; and that 5G is not so revolutionary - it is just an evolution following LTE. Additionally, Xu mentioned that in 2H18, Huawei will launch end to end 5G solutions  and by 3Q19, it will launch 5G capable phones.  Xu said Huawei will continue to work with Intel on x86 for the foreseeable future.

More Q&A specifics:
Trade Tariffs and ZTE.  (In a moment of levity, however, Eric Xu smiled when the words ZTE were mentioned - recall that a day earlier, ZTE was penalized by the US).  We will focus on our customers and will ultimately survive. 

Cloud 1.5B by 2020, will you hit the target?  Will offer cloud services to telco service providers.  Huawei smartphones will leverage the Huawei cloud.  Enterprise customers will consume cloud services such as video, computing.  In future, trend will be enterprises will move to hybrid cloud and public cloud will take a major share.  Huawei cloud provides compute/storage/networking to enterprises and government.  200K x86 servers in Huawei cloud.  Revenue with external customers - won't share it with you - maybe .  

AI chipset question:  We don't position chipset as a standalone business - won't sell to external customers.  Will be used to differentiate Huawei products.  Smartphone - we use multi-vendor strategy always; in other worlds; have multiple Qualcomm, NTK and others.  Remain committed to multi-vendor strategy.  Don't want vendor lock-in, however.  If we only have one vendor, what might happen to our smartphone business, Xu asked.  

Enteprise business growth? Declined to comment on specifics, but said he encourages each to grow rapidly.  

How do customers get to 86% AI usage (the question was asked by an audience member by incorrectly referring to the statistic that was made during the keynote - specifically, Huawei said AI experimentation will be 86%, not AI usage)?  Will give clearer answer at Huawei Connect 2018.  For now, can share that we will use AI on ourselves first, then help customers on various functions such as finance, human resources, networks, etc.  

Supply chain - will you acqire your suppliers?  We do joint innovation with suppliers to meet Huawei's needs; push multi-source strategy, however.  Will not invest in DRAM, display, flash.

5G wasn't mentioned much in the presentation, why?  We don't have as high expectations as some others; 5G is just one of many products we offer and is just a natural evolution from 4G.  You don't have a fundamental difference between 4G and 5G - consumers just see faster speed and lower latency.  LTE already support autonomous driving.  Past couple years, governments have regarded 5G as too important.  June 2018, will only address eMBB - faster speeds.  2019 - will have fully 5G compliant system that does low latency.  4G is pretty robust; we don't see 5G as a national coverage network - it'll just focus on city centers.  However, once one carrier announces 5G, then all others must.  50% of Chinese have wireless connection capable of 4K but there are still no 4K stations.

2H18, end to end 5G solutions available.  3Q19, will launch 5G capable phones.

Share trends for Huawei at operators.  Revenue growth of telecom services is a challenging topic.  This revenue growth topic is why titan operators express concern about moving to 5G; instead, Huawei thinks moving to improved intelligence will assist operators.  Video will become more and more important as telcos become media companies too.  

Will AI become a privacy concern?  Any technology has double-sided effects.  With AI, some believe it can be dangerous.  Xu believes in the wisdom of man.  Look back to history of mankind, and our humanity can do same for mankind.

Will Huawei find alternate suppliers for data center products?  (Xu also smiled about this question before answering).  Today, Intel is dominant player.  Our point of view, we look forward to more diversified landscape; but we work with Intel mainly now.

Arris held its annual investor day late last week on March 28, 2018.  It was interesting: the company said "Everything is going wireless," which is an interesting admission for a company that, until about a year ago, was essentially a pureplay on wired broadband.  To be sure, the company has diversified into wireless with its acquisition of Ruckus and has benefitted from the inclusion of Wi-Fi capabilities to its broadband CPE.  The company sees this wireless future - and is pivoting towards it.

Arris management highlighted that it expect its future to include the following growth avenues:

• Cloud Wi-Fi
• DELL OEM
• CBRS 3.5 GHz LTE Small Cell
• IoT (Residential and Industrial)
• FTTx (10Gb EPON / NGPON-2)
• Consumer Mesh Wi-Fi
• Campus Ethernet Switching

Additionally, the company discussed its expectations for each division, which using its 2017 mix and various projections, calculates to a 4.7% CAGR from '17 to '21.

Enterprise Networking (Ruckus).  Overall, the company's Enterprise Networking division, also known as Ruckus Networking, includes its Enterprise WLAN business (formerly Ruckus Wireless), the Brocade ICX Ethernet Switch product line (referred to by the company as Campus Switching), and other revenue streams such as CBRS 3.5 Ghz LTE Small Cells, as well as IoT radio modules that plug into the Ruckus Access Points like Bluetooth, LoRa and Zigbee.  The company is targeting 20%+ growth for the Ruckus Networking group, which is far above the industry growth rates we expect for Enterprise plus Outdoor WLAN and Campus switching. This aggressive growth rate either implies share-taking, or growth in other products such as CBRS, Bluetooth, LoRa and Zigbee, or the the non-WLAN parts of what used to be Ruckus Wireless, such as Cloud-managed Wireless LAN services (that, for instance compete with Cisco's Meraki, Aerohive services and Mojo Networks).  The company cited an expected Enterprise WLAN revenue growth projection slightly above our projection for the period '17 to '21, even if cloud-managed WiFi services were included.

​Network and Cloud Segment.  The company said this market is growing 5% annually, and described the market generally as the Cable Modem Infrastructure, optical nodes and cable video networks market.  The company generally expects to take share, compared to this market viewpoint, projecting a 4-7% long-term annual growth expectation for this business segment.  It was interesting that the company said that the "mobile device explosion [is] driving offload demand," because it has been several years since "Wi-Fi offload" was a growth driver, but dissecting the comment a bit more, the company is pointing to cable operators as being "well positioned to handle [the] offload."  We think Arris' strong supplier position with the major Cable MSOs in the US, especially, may indicate that there should be a strong build up of WiFi and cable infrastructure coming in the future.  And, this corroborates with our own research and statements from MSOs such as Comcast.  In fact, the company showed a "future" network diagram that indicates it expects its MSO customers will be delivering 5G radio, Remote OLTs (PON) and Fixed Wireless Access instead the of cable modem (DOCSIS) equipment that was indicated in the "now" chart.  This implied shift from DOCSIS to PON/5G/FWA would be a dramatic shift in the company's product portfolio.  Very interesting, indeed.

Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) Segment.  The company claims a #1 Set Top Box (STB) market share, and #2 Broadband CPE market share, with a mix of 60% video CPE and 40% broadband revenues in 2017.  The company expects to grow broadband CPE to a mix of 50%+ by the year 2021, consistent with the market growth rates it cites - 4% CAGR for broadband and -.8% for video.  Generally, the company is projecting long term sales trend of -5% to +1%, indicating that it lacks the direct to market exposure that would get it to a growth expectation in this segment.  The company confirmed it is using NBASE-T (Multi-Gigabit Ethernet) interfaces on its home networking devices and it is planning to release 802.11ax capabilities on its portfolio, as well.  Arris CPE will also include Extenders / Adapters to, at least partially, address the growth now occurring in the Consumer Mesh market.

Nokia was bullish on its technology developments and cautious on telco capex.  CEO Rajeev Suri described the telecom market as having tough market conditions and expects telco equipment market revenues down in 2018.  He said the Swedish competitor pricing aggressively and that it will be difficult to keep share in China with 5G ramp.  He said Nokia is executing on plan to grow non telco verticals – and it will take 3+ years before it is sizable enough to potentially offset telco challenges.  He emphasized a key strength is its focus on cost reductions.  He highlighted success in cable MSO market and that its FP4-based router will ship in a few days.  Suri thinks 5G could roll out in China first, maybe tied with US.  Nokia CEO's comments were quite similar about 5G rollout timing expectations compared to comments made at Huawei’s recent conference (2019 initial deployments; chipsets 2019; broadening deployments in 2020).

Some more details from Rajeev Suri's presentation:
Ericsson.  We were surprised that the CEO of Nokia took the opportunity to take some digs at Ericsson.  He said that Ericsson is pricing aggressively; it also shared some quantitative statistics about competitive take-outs of Ericsson installed base. He argued that it has broadest portfolio in industry (fixed, software are examples).  

China.  Two interesting comments about China – a) will be difficult to maintain share in China as 5G rolls out, b) China might be first to deploy 5G.  
Emphasized that Amazon Web Services is making a presentation at this conference.  Said its new FP4-based routers are more efficient than any competitor and will be so for at least the next year.

Other presenters made comments about 5G mainly.  Here are some interesting comments:
Artificial Intelligence.  The company has a lot of network automation technology that is it working on but would not share details about this technology.  We guess Nokia is more open with its customers and that it'll make announcements at MWC '18 in Barcelona.
5G Radio.  Beamforming is a key technology that will be highlighted in 5G.  Also, the company's separation of Stage 1 and Stage 2 MIMO processing makes the bandwidth needs from baseband to array be much less than competitors.  Additionally, the company explains that its expected systems will have dramatically higher efficiency than competitors - again, the company kept its secrets here under wraps.  Late 2018 will see first 5G deployments, going into 2019.
IP/Optical.  Basil Alwan, President IP/Optical division said the first FP4-based product went to production end of the last week.  Major customers will take shipment before the end of this quarter.  The company will ship its 57 Terabit router during 1Q18.  SD-WAN will replace MPLS VPNs over time, perhaps at a rapid pace.  

Service Provider presentations:
Amazon Web Services IoT.  Satyam Yadav, GM of AWS IoT made a presentation at this meeting.  The presentation focused on how Amazon's IoT software and its services would be used in a partnership with Nokia to deliver Amazon IoT services.  
Sprint.  Ron Marquardt, CTO.  He is not sure how much customers might pay for lower-latency connections available from 5G.  Now that the uncertainty of the T-Mobile US acquisition is beyond us, Sprint says it is rapidly focusing on spending to upgrade its network.  Sprint also said it plans to deal with fewer vendors in the future.
Elisa. The Finnish operator presented data about its extraordinary data traffic growth and its per-subscriber data usage being far above competitors as well as other service providers in the world. 
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