650 Group
  • Home
  • Programs
    • WLAN Infrastructure
    • Telecom Core Networks
    • Ethernet Switch Programs >
      • Ethernet Switch - Total
      • Ethernet Switch - Data Center
      • Ethernet Switch - Campus
      • Ethernet Switch - Carrier Ethernet
      • Campus Networks
      • Ethernet Switch - SMB
    • Application Delivery Controller (ADC)
    • Merchant Silicon in the Data Center
    • Market Intelligence Reports
    • Consumer IoT
    • Disaggregated Routing Report
  • News
    • Press Releases
  • Blog
  • About
  • Employment
  • Contact
  • Clients

650 Group Blog

View my profile on LinkedIn

Six Groups of Companies That Benefit From FCC's Vote To Open Up 6 GHz

4/23/2020

0 Comments

 
Today's big news from the FCC is that it will open up 6 GHz to Wi-Fi and other unlicensed uses.  The FCC authorizes "1,200 megahertz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band (5.925–7.125 GHz) available for unlicensed use," and further explains that it authorizes "standard-power devices in 850 megahertz in the 6 GHz band. An automated frequency coordination system will prevent standard power access points from operating where they could cause interference to incumbent services."  We see that this vote is very beneficial to Wi-Fi chip and systems companies that serve both consumer and enterprise markets.  We also expect that outdoor systems that take advantage of this new spectrum may benefit wireless ISPs (WISPs) and their equipment suppliers.  And, also, the FCC's statement that an automated frequency coordination (AFC) system will be used to prevent interference from existing microwave transmission systems.  With that background, we have compiled a list of companies that will benefit from the FCC's vote.

WLAN Semiconductor companies Broadcom, Qualcomm, ON Semi, Celeno, and Intel.  In our research of the WLAN Infrastructure semiconductor market, these are the vendors we expect to sell Wi-Fi radio chips to devices such as Access Points, Broadband Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) with WLAN, and Consumer Routers.  A new class of Wi-Fi that takes advantage of 6 GHz is now called Wi-Fi 6E.  Broadcom and Qualcomm have already made statements about Wi-Fi 6E in the past month or two, and others somewhat more recently.  Historically, Broadcom and Qualcomm have enjoyed significant market shares of the enterprise WLAN Access Point market, while players in the consumer AP/router/CPE have included a wider list of players including Broadcom, Qualcomm, ON Semi (formerly Quantenna), Celeno, Intel, Realtek, Mediatek and others.

Enterprise WLAN companies Cisco, HPE Aruba, Commscope, Extreme Networks and Juniper.  While each of these companies has launched Wi-Fi 6 products over the past couple of years that operate in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, we expect this group of companies to release Wi-Fi 6E products that connect over 6 GHz over the next year.  We expect initially that 6E enterprise products will sit at the high end of product portfolios, selling at higher prices than 5 GHz and lower products.  The FCC commented in today's press release that "The notice also seeks comment on increasing the power at which low-power indoor access points may operate," which means that there is still some work to do in figuring out whether these Wi-Fi 6E devices can operate at powers levels more common in enterprises without needing to connect to an AFC.  We are sure there is more to come on this topic.

Consumer WLAN Infrastructure companies NETGEAR, Commscope, Technicolor, Amazon and Google.  We expect NETGEAR to be an aggressive player in Wi-Fi 6E, just as it released super high-end Wi-Fi 6 products in its Nighthawk product line.  We expect Broadband CPE vendors such as Commscope (through its Arris brand), Technicolor and others to benefit as they seek to capitalize on the new spectrum, which should allow the delivery of Wi-Fi at higher speeds and to more devices in the home.  We wouldn't be surprised to see consumer mesh vendors such as Amazon (through its eero acquisition) and Google to offer Wi-Fi 6E products, but these probably come a bit later than traditional router and Broadband CPE devices.

Wireless ISPs such as 
Etheric Networks and Common Networks (both located near the 650 area code that we used to name our company, 650 Group) will likely benefit as they will be able to offer new WISP services over the new 6 GHz spectrum.  Since the spectrum is new, essentially unused and there's lots of it, we expect that these, and other WISPs in the US market, can benefit by expanding beyond the current unlicensed spectrums commonly used today, such as 60 GHz, 5 GHz, 2.4 GHz and 900 MHz spectrums.  We think it might take a year or two before the WISPs can capitalize on these spectrums, but we see it as a windfall.

​WISP suppliers such as Ubiquiti Networks, Cambium Networks, Airspan, and others will be likely beneficiaries.  These suppliers sell to WISPs and other operators to enable "last mile" services that compete with fixed-line broadband services such as cable modem, DSL and PON.  As we alluded to above, the 5 GHz spectrum is quite crowded, and thus, as 6 GHz becomes available for outdoor use, we expect that a new class of equipment will take advantage of this ample spectrum to deliver broadband to a more significant number of business and consumers.  The FCC has a "goal of making broadband connectivity available to all Americans, especially those in rural and underserved areas," according to its 6 GHz press release today, and we see WISPs as one of the main constituents of serving this goal.

Mobile network operators AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular.  Similar to WISPs, we expect that mobile operators will eventually leverage 6 GHz to deliver Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services (and potentially mobile services) to consumers and businesses.  In suburban and rural areas, we have already seen some operators, notably Verizon, deploy FWA in licensed mmWave spectrum (in 20 GHz and 40 GHz ranges) - we have seen operators pare back on plans to deliver services, though they haven't stopped deployments or anything.  But, we see 6 GHz could puff some new life into FWA plans because this is a lot of new frequency and since it is lower frequency than mmWave, does not suffer as much from immovable obstacles such as tree leaves, windows and precipitation.  Additionally, we see mobile services could benefit as well, as we have already seen operators such as AT&T leverage 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum in delivering mobile service on its small cells in locations such as New York City, so we would expect mobile operators to eventually take advantage of 6 GHz in a similar fashion.  But, incumbent services (point to point microwave systems) are more likely to interfere with mobile operators' plans in urban areas, where paradoxically, there is more need for this extra bandwidth, so we think operators will take some time to sort this interference out.  

AFC services operators such as Federated Wireless.  Given that the FCC announced a specific need for AFC services in its media blitz today (see above), we point out that 
Federated Wireless has already announced an AFC service.  Just as Federated has competition in its CBRS SAS service from players such as Commscope, we would not be surprised to see new competition in AFC services.
0 Comments

WiFiNOW London conference themes were WiFi-6, 6 GHz and 802.11ah

11/14/2019

0 Comments

 
Big themes at the show were WiFi-6, 6 GHz, and 802.11ah. We share some comments about the following organizations: WiFi Alliance, Commscope, Newracomm, Celeno, Cambium, Juniper Networks, On Semiconductor, Extreme Networks, Webb Search, Facebook, UK's Ofcom, Huawei, and 650 Group.

The WiFi Alliance and a handful of other speakers commented that WiFi-6 has lower latency than 5G, but the Alliance conceded that cellular had better mobility.  We think the WiFi community is not doing enough to promote WiFi-6’s low latency capabilities

Commscope expects 6 GHz 802.11ax products to be shown at the CES show in January 2020 and that FEM and filters are not available today but will be by year-end or early 2020.

Newracomm is an 802.11ah (900 MHz WiFi) chip company that had won an award at the show. It claims to be an early leader in the market and based on comments made during presentations, we expect by 2H20, we will see systems and IoT services based on these types of chips.

Celeno, a stand-alone WiFi chip company, demonstrated radar on WiFi chip capability - the company won multiple award at the show. The company expects that a year from now, its Doppler on WiFi will emerge in products from SPs such as BT, Orange, and Comcast. The Doppler service only consumes about 3-5% of throughput capability when using Doppler and enables some very interesting capabilities such as fall detection, proximity detection, people counting and arm gestures.
ON Semiconductor's Quantenna group won an award at the show.  
Cambium, in a presentation, explained that it is looking at an expansion to CBRS, 5G FWA backhaul, and 60 GHz.

Juniper Networks has been hiring in Europe as it expands its enterprise sales capabilities. It’s recently hired team made a positive impression on the audience. We tweeted about how great and fun the presentation by recent hire Jussi Nivikiemi’s presentation.
Extreme Networks presented its view that Artificial Intelligence won’t replace IT workers - it will just make them better.
A spectrum consultant - Webb Search -  said that DFS is not working in the UK in 5 GHz and wastes a lot of bandwidth - most WiFi products don’t bother trying to operate one the spectrum covered by DFS. He advocated for using a database in the sky approach similar to what is being proposed for 6 GHz.

UK's Ofcom representative, Christina Data, explained that it is researching both 5 GHz and 6 GHz as a comprehensive solution.  Ms. Data acknowledged that DFS may have some challenges and was diplomatic in response to questions about how 6 GHz will emerge.
Huawei advocated for an unpopular viewpoint (at a WiFi show) that 6 GHz device makers should register for IMT designation. In a panel that included German WiFi equipment vendor Lancom and Commscope, the other two vendors made counterpoints, including that this move to IMT will delay the rollout of 6 GHz by at least four years.
Facebook is advocating a non-AFC approach to low power 6 GHz in the US market. We have learned through multiple sources that it has recently a demonstrated a prototype of an AFC, however.
​650 Group. The Chris DePuy presentation hit on three topics: unlicensed and shared spectrum impact on WiFi, WiFi and WiFi-6 shipments, and WiFi semiconductors.
0 Comments

Extreme Acquiring The Last Pure-Play Enterprise WLAN Company, Aerohive

6/26/2019

0 Comments

 
Extreme Networks announced plans to acquire Aerohive, which has most of its revenues in Enterprise WLAN.  The deal was a surprise, as evidenced by the 40% price premium paid on on HIVE.  After this deal closes, Extreme's WLAN business will be the combination of three WLAN businesses - the traditional WLAN business from Enterasys (Ottawa based team), the Motorola Wireless WLAN business (acquired by Zebra, then sold to Extreme) and Aerohive.  Each of these three businesses had strengths, for instance, the Ottawa team had designed a product line that had high performance in crowded venues - Extreme has enjoyed a long relationship with the NFV; the Motorola team had designed systems that were effective in retail and logistics (as a consequence of Motorola's ownership of Symbol Tech, a bar code scanner company); and Aerohive, which was as of 1Q19 the #2 revenue player in cloud-managed WLAN services and with a strong presence in the US K-12 vertical.  While there is certainly some risk that Extreme does not integrate the Aerohive business effectively, there are some interesting aspects to this deal.
#1: Aerohive's cloud-managed WLAN services is a significant player in the market.  We expect many small and medium businesses will adopt cloud-managed WLAN, and Extreme had a less mature offering here.  We see this as the primary benefit of the Aerohive acquisition.
#2: Aerohive's vertical market exposure in US K-12 (education) market and the managed care part of the health care industry are a nice addition to Extreme.  These markets are additive.
#3: Aerohive had a SD-WAN product that while not a big revenue generator will be important for Extreme in selling to small and medium sized businesses.  We expect the SMEs and branch offices will be upgrading using a SD-Branch approach, where upgrades to WLAN, switching and SD-WAN will be done at once.  Extreme had a hole here and Aerohive fills it.
#4: Aerohive had a new product, A3, which we categorized as Enhanced Network Access Control.  The front end of this product is very modern.  Extreme also had its own NAC product.  Our hunch is the company will merge the two, taking the best of both.  We see larger enterprises as demanding this type of support.  HPE Aruba sells its Clearpass product in a wireless+wired+ENAC bundle to larger sized business, just as Cisco sells its ISE and wireless+wired bundle.  
#5: Aerohive has 802.11ax products.  We expect that increasingly, as customers adopt 802.11ax, with its expected throughput under high loads exceeding 1 Gb/sec, this will drive an upgrade cycle to switches with MultiGigabit support.  Extreme cited "cross selling" in its announcement of this deal, and we agree that customers in the 802.11ax world will be increasingly buying new switches when they adopt new wireless.

This deal was a surprise because Extreme already has WLAN in its portfolio, but if Extreme executes on this business transaction effectively, it can solidify its position in the mid-market by offering cloud services and SD-WAN (through a SD-Branch bundle) and potentially move both up market (with ENAC) and if it choses, downmarket by maintaining a business practice that Aerohive rolled out well over a year ago that can be described as a "freemium" model for its cloud-managed WLAN services.

0 Comments

THOUGHTS from Extreme NEtworks analyst day

2/13/2019

0 Comments

 
Today I attended the Extreme Analyst day at the NASDAQ in New York. 

Extreme’s 4Q18 switch revenue grew over 10% and in our preliminary view of 4Q18, it took  share.  The company highlighted over 30,000 customers and over 6,000 partners in a one-Extreme approach that has integrated the acquisitions of Avaya and Brocade.

The company also highlighted that in 4Q18 it saw nearly 20 deals over $1M which is indicative of a rebound in its' business from large enterprises.  We believe  the company is  maintaining a good portion of its' Extreme and Avaya installed based.

Extreme  emphasized software as a driver for higher margin sales. We agree, software is the general direction of where campus switching is going with vendors looking to get incremental revenue from software instead of hardware.  We have maintained for over two years now that campus switching would be a positive growth market led by software to help manage a more converged (Unified Access) market.  We also see IoT and the inclusion of securing and monitoring IoT traffic as an additional growth drive for the campus market.
 

Picture
0 Comments

    CHRIS DePUY
    &
    Alan weckel

    Technology Analysts

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017

    Categories

    All
    100 Gbps
    10 Gbps Ethernet
    112 Gbps SERDES
    12.8 Tbps
    14.4 Tbps
    200 Gbps
    2.4 GHz
    25G PON
    25GS-PON
    28 Ghz
    3.5 GHz
    3GPP
    400 Gbps
    50 Gbps
    50 Gbps SERDES
    50G PON
    56 Gbps SERDES
    5.925
    5G
    5G Americas
    5G Core
    5G Fixed Wireless Access
    5 Ghz
    5G Taxi
    600 Mhz
    60 Ghz
    6 GHz
    7.125
    800 G
    800 Gbps
    802.11ac
    802.11ad
    802.11ah
    802.11ax
    900 MHz
    A3
    Accelleran
    Actility
    ACX6360
    ADC
    Aerohive
    AFA
    AFC
    AFF A800
    Affirmed Networks
    AI
    AIops
    Airframe
    Air Pass
    Airspan
    Alan Weckel
    Alcatel
    Alcatel Lucent Enterprise
    Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
    Alibaba
    All Flash Array
    Altiostar
    Amazon
    AMD
    AMIT Wireless
    Amplifi
    Analytics
    AOI
    AP530
    AP550
    Apple
    Apstra
    Aptilo
    Aquto
    Arista
    ARM
    Arris
    Artificial Intelligence
    Ascend 310
    ASR 9000
    Asset Tracking
    ASUS
    Atlas 200
    ATM19
    ATMDigital
    Atmosphere
    AT&T
    Automation
    Avaya
    AWS
    Azure
    Backhaul
    Baicells
    Bai Cells
    Baidu
    Balong
    BEC Technologies
    BELL
    BGP
    Big Switch
    BIS
    BLE
    BLE5
    BLE Beacon
    BLINQ
    Bluetooth
    Boingo
    Borje Ekholm
    Broadband
    Broadcom
    BT
    Bureau Of Industry And Security
    Cable Modem
    Cambium
    Campus Switch
    Campus Switching
    Capex
    Carrier
    Cat 6500
    Catalyst 9000
    C-Band
    CBRS
    CDN
    Celeno
    Centurytel
    CEOS
    Charter Communications
    Chatbot
    China Mobile
    China Telecom
    China Unicom
    Chungwa Telecom
    Ciena
    Cisco
    Cisco ICE
    Clearpass
    Cloud
    Cloud Managed
    Cloud-managed
    Cloud RAN
    Cloud Volumes
    Cognitive Wi-Fi
    Coherent Pluggable
    Comba
    Comcast
    Common Networks
    Commscope
    Consolidation
    Consumer Mesh
    Contact Tracing
    Contrail
    Co-packaged Optics
    Corning
    Coronavirus
    Corvid-19
    CoSP
    COVID-19
    CPaaS
    CPE
    CPRI
    Cradlepoint
    Crosswork
    CSCF
    CSP
    Cumulus
    CUPS
    CX 6200
    CyberX
    Dartmouth
    DAS
    Data Center
    DCI
    DD QSFP
    DD-QSFP
    DDR4
    DELL
    Delta
    Deutsche Bank
    Deutsche Telekom
    D-Link
    DOCOMO
    DOCSIS
    DPDK
    DRAM
    Dropbox
    ECI Telecom
    Edgecore
    Eero
    EMC
    ENAC
    Encore
    Entity List
    EPC
    EPON
    Ericsson
    Ericsson Router 6000
    ESP
    Etheric
    Ethernet
    Ethernet Switch
    ETSI
    Europe
    Extreme
    Extreme Networks
    F5
    F5G
    Facebook
    FBOSS
    FCC
    Federated Wireless
    Fibre Channel
    Firewall
    Fixed Wireless Access
    Flash
    FMS
    Forescout
    Fortinet
    FP-4
    FPGA
    Fronthaul
    Fujitsu
    FWA
    GAA
    Gainspeed
    GENBAND
    Geofencing
    German Edge Cloud
    Google
    GPON
    GPU
    Greenlake
    H3C
    HAS2018
    HAS2019
    HAS2020
    HDD
    Hong Kong Broadband
    Hotspot Tracking
    HPE
    HPE Aruba
    Huawei
    HWMBBF
    Hyperconverged
    Hyperscaler
    IaaS
    IBM
    ICD
    IMS
    Infinera
    Innoeye
    Intel
    IoT
    IoT Control Center
    Ip Access
    Italtel
    ITU-T SG 15
    Ixia
    Juniper
    Junos
    Kandy
    KDDI
    Keerti Melkote
    Keysight
    KT
    KUIPER
    Kungpeng
    LAA
    Las Vegas
    Layer123
    LG Electronics
    LG UPlus
    Linux
    Location Based Service
    LoRa
    LTE
    LTE-U
    Lucent
    Machine Learning
    MACSec
    Managed Services
    MANO
    Marco Rubio
    Marvell
    Massive MIMO
    Mavenir
    MaxLinear
    MEC
    Mediatek
    Megafon
    Meraki
    Mesh WiFi
    Metro Optical
    Michael P. O'Reilly
    Microsoft
    Midband
    Mid-market
    Millimeter Wave
    Millimeter-wave
    Mist
    Mist Systems
    Mixing Bauds
    MmWave
    Mobile
    Mobile Edge Computing
    Mobile RAN
    Modem-E
    Mojo Networks
    Motorola
    Motorola Solutions
    MPLS
    MSO
    Multefire
    MultiGig
    Multi Gig
    MultiTech
    MU MIMO
    MU-MIMO
    MWC
    MWC18
    MWC19
    MWC20
    MWCa
    MX
    NBASE T
    NBASE-T
    Nbn
    NCS 5700
    NEC
    NEC 540
    NetApp
    Netcracker
    Netgear
    NetInsight
    Network Services Orchestrator
    Network Slicing
    Neville Ray
    Newracomm
    New Radio
    NFV
    Nokia
    Nortel
    NPU
    NTT
    NUWAVE
    NVMe
    NVMeoFC
    OCP
    Ocp2019
    Ocpsummit
    OFC
    #OFC18
    Ofcom
    OFDMA
    OIF
    OLT
    OmniXtend
    ONAP
    ONFConnect
    OnGo
    On Semiconductor
    ONT
    Ooka
    Open19
    OpenRAN
    Open RAN
    OPPO
    Optical
    Optical LAN
    OptiXtreme H6
    Optus
    Oracle
    ORAN
    Orange
    Oreedoo
    OSFP
    OSS/BSS
    OTAC
    P4
    Packet Optical
    PAL
    Parallel Wireless
    Passpoint
    PON
    Posture Assessment
    Private LTE
    Project Denali
    PSE 3
    PSE-3
    PTX
    Pure Storage
    Quad Level Cell
    Qualcomm
    Quanta
    Quantenna
    Quillion
    Radio Resource Management
    Rakuten
    RAN
    RBBN
    RCS
    Realtek
    Reefshark
    Ribbon
    RISC
    Riverbed
    Rivet Networks
    ROADM
    Robin.io
    Rostelecom
    Router
    Ruckus
    Samsung
    Sandisk
    SAS
    SBC
    SD Branch
    SD-Branch
    SDN
    SD-RAN
    SDWAN
    SD WAN
    SD-WAN
    Security
    Semtech
    Sequans
    Sercomm
    Server
    Shaw Communications
    Siemens
    Sierra Wireless
    Single-pane
    SingleRAN
    SingleRAN Pro
    SIP Trunking
    SK Telecom
    Skype
    Small Cell
    Smartphone
    Snapdragon 865
    Softbank
    Sonus
    Spark
    Spectrum
    Sprint
    Sp Router
    SRX
    SSD
    StandAlone
    Starlink
    STC
    Stellar
    Swisscom
    Tago.io
    Tareq Amin
    Technicolor
    Telco Cloud
    Telecom Infra Project
    Telefonica
    Telia
    Telit
    Telus
    Tencent
    Terragraph
    Tiangang
    T-Mobile
    TMUS
    Tomahawk 3
    TP-Link
    T&W
    Twilio
    Twitter
    TWT
    Ubiquiti
    UCaaS
    UCPE
    UI
    UltraSAW
    UniFi
    Unified Domain Center
    Unlicensed
    UTM
    UXI-6
    VaporIO
    VBLE
    VDSL
    VEPC
    Verilog
    Verizon
    Versa Networks
    VICTOR
    Virtualization
    VNF
    Vodafone
    VoLTE
    VRAN
    VSBC
    Walt Disney
    Wan Optimization
    Way Finder
    WDC
    Westell
    Western Digital
    Western Digital Corporation
    WFH
    White Box
    White Paper
    Wi-F 6E
    WiFi
    Wi-Fi
    Wi-Fi 6
    WiFi 6
    WiFi-6
    Wi-Fi 6E
    WiFi Alliance
    WiFiNOW
    WiGig
    Wind River
    WISP
    WLAN
    Xiaomi
    Xilinx
    Xirrus
    XRAN
    Zebra
    Zero-Rating
    Zigbee
    Zipline
    ZR
    ZR+
    ZTE
    Zyxel

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Programs
    • WLAN Infrastructure
    • Telecom Core Networks
    • Ethernet Switch Programs >
      • Ethernet Switch - Total
      • Ethernet Switch - Data Center
      • Ethernet Switch - Campus
      • Ethernet Switch - Carrier Ethernet
      • Campus Networks
      • Ethernet Switch - SMB
    • Application Delivery Controller (ADC)
    • Merchant Silicon in the Data Center
    • Market Intelligence Reports
    • Consumer IoT
    • Disaggregated Routing Report
  • News
    • Press Releases
  • Blog
  • About
  • Employment
  • Contact
  • Clients