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
    • Industrial Switching Report
    • Multi-Cloud Workloads Forecast and Research Report
    • Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Forecast and Research Report
    • 800 Gbps Report
    • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Hyperscaler SWOT Report
    • SONiC Report
    • Single Pair Ethernet Forecast Report
  • News
    • Press Releases
  • Blog
  • About
  • Employment
  • Contact
  • Clients
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Hyperscaler SWOT Report

650 Group Blog

Mavenir Hightlights is RAN Progress at its Analyst Meeting

11/10/2021

0 Comments

 
Mavenir held its annual analyst event this week and highlighted some important information highlighting its progress in transitioning to a maturing ecosystem player in the telecom equipment industry.  The company highlighted its recent Koch Brothers $500M investment; existing investors include Intel/Nvidia and Siris Capital, who remain majority equity holders.  The company highlighted that it grew revenues and bookings in the mid 20’s percent year-over-year in its Fiscal 2020, an impressive figure.  Two main themes came from the show.  First, the company’s RAN portfolio is picking up steam.  Second, the company’s portfolio now spans very wide, from telecom core to RAN.
 
The RAN portfolio has made significant progress.  The company claims over 20 deployments in 14 countries.  And, Mavenir has demonstrated the capability to deploy on AWS, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud, and VMWare.  The company spent a great deal of time reviewing definitions of various Open RAN terminology, to address confusion, spanning from vRAN, O-RAN, C-RAN, Cloud-RAN, and Open vRAN.  We’ve seen many public statements from Mavenir, its competitors, operators and pundits, alike, espousing the various benefits of some or all of these systems.  We think the point Mavenir was making at its conference is that Open vRAN is the most open, interoperable system.  When operators enable open systems, of course, it allows Mavenir and other vendors to bid on deals for networks that have existing equipment from traditional vendors like Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, and ZTE.  We see Mavenir’s efforts to work with various infrastructure companies and systems like AWS and VMWare as a means of gaining a foothold with operators who are trialing or in the early stages of deploying these various infrastructure systems.  Speaking of partners, the company claims it has relationships with nearly 15 Remote Radio Unit (RRU) players.  The company says it can deliver Massive MIMO capabilities to customers, which means that its RAN systems can satisfy what would be considered mainstream 5G use-cases; this represents very significant progress over last year’s RAN capabilities. 
 
Mavenir’s portfolio is extensive.  The company made separate presentations about the following topics: RAN, OSS, Radio, Packet Core, Mobile Core, BSS/Digital Enablement, Security, Private Networks, and Enterprise over three days.  With over 5,000 employees spanning the globe, exposure to the most relevant parts of the mobile infrastructure industry, Mavenir is a serious contender for deals.  The company also highlighted that its telecom core technology uses modern programming techniques that enable it to operate on cloud infrastructure; among these are fully containerized micro-services design.  The company shared that most microservices file sizes are under 25 Mbytes, evidence that the systems are designed as microservices (and can load fast). 
 
The fact that in April 2021, well-known Koch Bros made a $500M “strategic minority” equity investment in the company is an important validation of Mavenir’s place in the telecommunications industry.  We see the investment as a reinforcement of the company’s balance sheet and an opening to new customers. 
0 Comments

And then there were 10 (RAN VEndors)

7/30/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture


Before the consolidation in the Mobile Radio Access Network (MRAN) market that occurred in the past decade during Huawei’s ascendancy, there were a dozen major RAN vendors.  They included Motorola, Lucent, Alcatel, Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, NEC, Fujitsu, Samsung, Nortel, Huawei and ZTE, and they hailed from the US, France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Japan, Korea, Canada and China. 


As Huawei entered the market, using a price aggressor strategy, it catalyzed mergers, resulting in the elimination of Motorola, Lucent, Alcatel, Siemens, Nortel, plus a reinforcement that led to the Japanese and Korean players to sell primarily to their home markets.  The result is that in many markets during recent years, there were only two vendors left, and that left operators with little choice but to look elsewhere. 

The punchline is that going forward, due in part to Open RAN, and in part to the response of operators looking outside their traditional supplier base, we now have 10 RAN players who can bid on projects.  And there is a multiplier on top of the 10 players, because going forward,  operators can buy radio heads from different vendors than their primary RAN baseband vendor, essentially doubling the number of choices an operator has when making mobile RAN vendor decisions.

Here is how we arrive at the conclusion that there were only two players per major geography.  Just a couple years ago, the state of affairs was quite different; we had only Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE as players, and last year, it became clear that in the US, only two major players were left.  In China, the same could be said, with Huawei and ZTE as main suppliers (Ericsson has won business there and Nokia ceded the market in 2019).  And in 2020, we’ve seen much of Europe and English-speaking Asia whittle down to two suppliers, as well.

And here is how the procurement teams at operators have much choice in the future.  The “Open RAN” vendors are now deemed viable given the success at Rakuten and the push by operators to demand Open RAN compliance, and these include Altiostar, Mavenir and Parallel Wireless.  Nokia and Ericsson are invited to most, if not all bids worldwide. 

Huawei and ZTE are invited to many, but a declining number of bids in markets that are siding with the US viewpoint.  We saw a turning point in late 2018 when AT&T announced it will buy from Samsung, who has now gotten a strong foothold in both India and the US.  And, more recently, we have seen two Japanese players, NEC and Fujitsu, in some way filling in the void left by Huawei and ZTE’s woes in the US/China spat, as they get wins (Fujitsu recently won DISH) and get invited to bid (NEC and Fujitsu are being asked to bid on UK projects).  Add these up and we have Altiostar, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless, Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, NEC, Fujitsu. 

There are other factors at work that are adding to more RAN choices, as well.  Two such trends are Facebook’s efforts, ONF’s efforts and the variety of radio head vendors who are now viable with Open RAN/FB/ONF efforts.  Facebook has promoted projects such as Telecom Infra Project (TIP) that have many goals, including one that supports the goal of $1,000 radio heads (these cost much more from the major vendors). 

The Open Network Foundation (ONF) supports projects such as SD-RAN and Aether. 
Radios can be purchased from non-traditional sources, as well because with all three projects we have mentioned above (TIP, ONF SD-RAN and Open RAN), these allow radio purchases to be made separately from baseband purchases, literally doubling the choices that operators have when building out a roster of vendors.

The trends in mobile RAN have changed significantly.  Vendors with little to lose (startups and players entering new markets) are getting aggressive to grow their businesses.  Incumbent vendors are at risk, as their business practice of selling baseband and radio simultaneously to captive operators is coming to an end.  We may look back at this early 5G era and say there was a lot more to it than just the upgrade to 5G, and it begs the question, who will acquire whom to consolidate the market once again and get pricing under control.

0 Comments

Qualcomm MWC20 announcements include Updates on 5G, Wi-Fi 6E and mmWave

2/25/2020

0 Comments

 
Qualcomm made many wireless-related announcements today from its San Diego, CA headquarters, in place of making a presentation at #MWC20 in Barcelona.  Top announcements included its FSM100xx 5G small cell chips customer announcements, RF-chip availability, Wi-Fi 6E demonstrations, and 5G smartphone customer announcements.
​
FSM100xx 5G RAN endorsements.  Qualcomm announced its FSM 5G RAN platform in May 2018, targeting small cells and remote radio heads and enabling bothmmWave and sub-6 GHz spectrum using 10 nm process geometry.  The company listed multiple vendors and operators in its press announcement relating to FMS100xx chips.  Each of the vendors shared some interesting statistics, the most important of which we share here:
  • Airspan is using FSM products in developing its small cell products and base stations.  The company’s CEO said, “we are on track to deliver tens of thousands of 5G base stations in [the] field in 2020.”
  • Altiostar, an Open vRAN software maker well-known for its win at Japan’s competitive mobile operator, Rakuten, announced a year-ago at #MWC19, said that the performance of its vRAN and Qualcomm’s 5G RAN platform will allow operators to build carrier-grade high performance RAN. 
  • Baicells plans to use Qualcomm’s 5G RAN platform chips to serve “vertical industries” using small and easily deployable infrastructure.
  • Corning has a working relationship with Qualcomm on 5G mmWave RAN and plans bring “open platforms” to indoor spaces.
  • Radisys, Rakuten, Small Cell Forum endorsed Qualcomm, as well, without too many specifics.
  • Samsung has expanded its 5G product set, using Qualcomm 5G RAN platform, to “in-building and outdoor hotspots.”
  • Sercomm plans to use Qualcomm 5G RAN platforms in its products to serve mobile network operators with 5G small cells.
  • T&W has used the FSM90xx and FSM99x to deliver “over 100,000” 4G RAN small cells for leading operators.  Using FSM10xxx, T&W expects to provide Tier 1 operators with its 5G small cells on both sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands.
  • Verizon endorsed the use of Qualcomm based small cells, as well as the “incorporation of virtualization and open interfaces.”
Picture
Qualcomm and Facebook speak about VR on Feb 25, 2020
​Qualcomm ultraSAW Filter.  Expect availability in 2H20.  Hit parity in performance in 2019 and now claims that its ultraSAW Filter will exceed performance of competitors, especially in high-bands.

​Wi-Fi 6E.  Qualcomm demonstrated 6 GHz operation between its Networking Pro Series (Wi-Fi 6 chips for Wi-Fi infrastructure like access points and routers).  Qualcomm was not specific about the timetable for delivery of 6 GHz systems, but the company hinted that the 6 GHz demonstration “underscores Qualcomm’s readiness to extend its successful Wi-Fi 6 portfolio into the 6 GHz band for a transformative Wi-Fi 6E performance, pending regulatory approval.”  The company expects that mobile devices using its Snapdragon 865 Mobile chips (intended for user devices like smartphones) can operate more than 3 Gbps when using the new 6 GHz spectrum, or 1.8 Gbps when using existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz available today.  Qualcomm said its Networking Pro Series (Wi-Fi 6 chips) have been “deployed in more than 200 designs shipping or in development.”

Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform.  The company announced that its chip system for mobile phones that features its second-generation 5G Modem-RF system, the Snapdragon X55, has been “announced or are in development” in over 70 designs, including those from top vendors such as OPPO, Samsung, Xiaomi and ZTE.

​Additionally, the company made VR devices and Personal Computer (PC) announcements including partners such as Facebook (VR) and Microsoft (PC).

0 Comments

Mobile World Congress Americas Themes: ORAN, CBRS and Unlicsned

11/4/2019

0 Comments

 
ORAN and CBRS were the main themes at Mobile World Congress Americas, held in Los Angeles. I have to say, though, that unlicensed was the third most important theme, though it will emerge to the main stage in future years.

ORAN encompasses several topics woven together. ORAN is a set of common interfaces that describe how various devices in mobile RAN work together. ORAN may also represent a new way of building radio networks. Recently, new vendors are being invited to bid on major mobile network projects, including Mavenir, Altiostar, Parallel and others. And, the major market share players in mobile RAN, which include Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, and ZTE are being asked by operators to support ORAN. The incumbent vendors are responding in various ways: Samsung, a challenger in the market, has whole-heartedly embraced ORAN, while Huawei has only recently acknowledged the existence of ORAN. Ericsson and Nokia have embraced ORAN with the view to embrace and extend - in the sense that Microsoft used this term in the 1990s. Based on presentations made by Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung, we expect that the incumbents, Ericsson and Nokia,will embrace ORAN but will establish a path to continue serving customers with the same vertically integrated business models of today. We are eager to see the results of mobile network operator bidding to observe how many startups win projects for wide scale deployment.
 
CBRS. Today, CBRS is available in the US market and has been so for about a month. We had an interesting opportunity to moderate three panels on the stage at MWCa and found some very interesting indoor/campus uses for CBRS, including WiFi backhaul, secure/critical communications, surveillance, IoT/sensor monitoring. Since CBRS indoor spectrum generally allows for more output power than for WiFi, the range is better. We see this as a key advantage for CBRS users, though enterprises who take advantage of the so-called OnGo service must pay various monthly fees such as those for the SAS and potentially other ongoing services. We expect that CBRS will be successful in certain verticals.
​
Unlicensed.  We believe the existence of CBRS could uncork the value of unlicensed spectrum at 900 MHz, 5 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and 6 GHz. We are conducting significant research into each of these and other spectrums.
0 Comments

Huawei's revenues are at risk as US puts Chinese Tech giant on its "Entity List"

5/15/2019

0 Comments

 
According to news reports and press and social media announcements by high-ranking members of US government, the US government has put Huawei on its so-called "Entity List" of the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).  Our read on this is it similar to what happened with ZTE during C2Q18 last year, a move that severely curtailed ZTE's shipments and revenue until ZTE made concessions and was removed from the list.  Many, but not all, Huawei products use technology only available from US suppliers. US-made semiconductors are the most significant Entity List target that Huawei needs to ship its products.  Significant US semiconductor suppliers to Huawei include Intel, Xilinx, and Broadcom.  

Huawei is such a significant vendor in many of our coverage areas, including Mobile Radio Access Networks (RAN), Ethernet Switching, and Servers, for instance, that we feel it is a good time to point out that 2019 market-level estimates may be at risk.  Additionally, since Chinese cloud services players, like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent cannot delay their capital infrastructure build-outs, alternate suppliers may benefit.

We think it comes as no surprise to Huawei that the US is putting it under pressure.  Just over a year ago, we attended the Huawei analyst summit (April 16, 2018) and its then-chairman said in response to the question "Will Huawei find alternate suppliers for data center products, "Today, Intel is the dominant player.  Our point of view, we look forward to a more diversified landscape; but we work with Intel mainly now."  Additionally, at Huawei's most recent analyst summit (mid-April 2019), the three main keynote speakers, all high-ranking executives of the company spoke about how much progress Huawei has made in developing in-house semiconductors and what its plans are to continue developing more.  We do, however, think that despite Huawei's diversification efforts that it still has significant reliance upon key US chip companies.

0 Comments

Huawei's Chip Projects Front and Center at Analyst Summit (HAS2019)

4/22/2019

0 Comments

 
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.
Huawei's Ascend 310 AI chip
Huawei Innovation 2.0 presentation slide at HAS2019
Huawei's Kirin 980 HiAI smartphone chip at HAS2019
Huawei HAS2019 presentation about Moore's Law and Shannon Limit
Huawei OptiXtreme H6 oDSP for optical transmission at HAS2019
Huawei ARM server TaiShan presented at HAS2019
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.
Huawei Hi 1822 FC/IP chip at HAS2019
Huawei Ascend NPU / AI chip and Kunpeng ARM chips at HAS2019
Huawei highlights its 5G 40 commercial contracts and 70,000 basestation shipments at HAS2019
Huawei Tiangang 5G base station chip at HAS2019
Huawei Balong 5000 chip for smartphones at HAS2019
Huawei 5G baseband, 5G Core and antenna product line at HAS2019
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







​
Huawei emphasis on NPU, GPU, FPGA and ARM chip components at HAS2019
Huawei Balong 5000 5G Modem at HAS2019
Huawei Kirin 980 and Balong 5000 7nm 5G chipset for smartphones at HAS2019
Huawei 5G device roadmap at HAS2019
even more follow on
0 Comments

Amazon Acquisition of eero Impacts Google, NETGEAR, Linksys, Ubiquiti and TP-Link

2/11/2019

0 Comments

 
Today, Amazon announced that it will acquire eero, a consumer mesh WiFi equipment company that as of 3Q18 had 13% revenue share.  In 3Q18, the  consumer mesh WiFi market measured just over $150M, which was up just over 34% Y/Y.  The number one player by revenue was NETGEAR in 3Q18, followed very closely by Google, who had retained the number one spot for the 5 quarters before 3Q18.  Now, with Amazon's acquisition of eero, just three players will have well over 3/4th of the consumer mesh WiFi market.  What's interesting here is that two Internet titans, Google and Amazon, are attempting to disrupt the consumer networking market that up till 2015 was dominated by hardware players such as NETGEAR, Linksys, TP-Link, D-Link  (consumer WiFi vendors) and adjacent players such as Technicolor, Arris, Huawei, ZTE and Nokia (Broadband Customer Premises Equipment vendors).

So, what does it mean that now both Amazon and Google are battling for primacy in the home networking market? 
​
It is complementary to their interactive speaker business.  Both Amazon and Google have introduced various hardware products for the home, but most successful have been both of their interactive speaker products, which for Amazon has been the Echo and Dot and for Google Home.  These speakers are generally in an "always-on" mode, which allow them to listen to all sounds nearby, and which also means they are generally always connected to the WiFi devices in the home.  By always being connected, these speakers consume much of the available WiFi bandwidth in the home, deteriorating the available spectrum for other devices.  One obvious solution, which is being made available by wireless chip giant, Qualcomm, is to integrate WiFi chips with speaker chips.  That's the direction that both Amazon and Google may pursue - to integrate Home with Google WiFi and Echo with eero.  This will mean that multiple WiFi mesh devices will also represent multiple interactive speakers in the home, all while combating the over-use of WiFi spectrum in the home.
These Internet giants can, and probably will, attempt to overwhelm the market with low prices, subsidized by primary businesses.  We already see that Google's price for a 3-pack is 37% lower than eero's comparable system.  Our working theory is that Google has been selling close to no margin and that eero has been experiencing a 30's percent margin.  This is probably not good news for the following companies who either do have gross margins above 30% or we assume do, like NETGEAR, TP-Link, D-Link, and others mentioned above.



0 Comments

Nokia Analyst Meeting UPdate; A Focus on Enterprise

11/7/2018

0 Comments

 


​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.
​
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.
​
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).
0 Comments

Huawei Analyst Meeting Recap - a Big Focus on Artificial Intelligence and a Downplay of 5G

4/16/2018

0 Comments

 
PictureEric Xu, Rotating Deputy Chairman of Huawei addressing audience questions at the Huawei Analyst Summit 2018
​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.


0 Comments

    CHRIS DePUY
    &
    Alan weckel

    Technology Analysts

    Archives

    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    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
    1&1
    112 Gbps SERDES
    12.8 Tbps
    14.4 Tbps
    200 Gbps
    2.4 GHz
    25G PON
    25GS PON
    25GS-PON
    28 Ghz
    3.5 GHz
    3GPP
    400 Gbps
    50 Gbps
    50 Gbps SERDES
    50G PON
    5.5G
    56 Gbps SERDES
    5.925
    5G
    5G Americas
    5G Core
    5G Fixed Wireless Access
    5 Ghz
    5G SA
    5G Taxi
    600 Mhz
    60 GHz
    6G
    6 GHz
    7.125
    800 G
    800 Gbps
    802.11ac
    802.11ad
    802.11ah
    802.11ax
    802.11ay
    900 MHz
    A3
    Acacia
    Accelleran
    Accton
    Actility
    ACX6360
    Adam Selipsky
    ADC
    Aerohive
    AFA
    AFC
    AFF A800
    Affirmed Networks
    AI
    AI-on-5G
    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
    Anthos
    AOI
    AP530
    AP550
    AppDynamics
    Apple
    Application Performance Management
    AppScope
    Apstra
    Aptilo
    Aquto
    Arista
    ARM
    Arris
    Artificial Intelligence
    Aruba Central
    Ascend 310
    Asic
    Asics
    Askey
    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
    Benu
    BGP
    Big Switch
    BIS
    BLE
    BLE5
    BLE Beacon
    BLINQ
    Bluetooth
    Boingo
    Borje Ekholm
    British Telecom
    Broadband
    Broadcom
    BT
    Bureau Of Industry And Security
    Cable Modem
    Cambium
    Campus Switch
    Campus Switching
    Capex
    Capital Light
    Carrier
    Cat 6500
    Catalyst 9000
    C-Band
    CBRS
    CDN
    Celeno
    Centralized Unit
    Centurytel
    CEOS
    Charter Communications
    Chatbot
    Check Point Software
    Chef
    China Mobile
    China Telecom
    China Unicom
    Chungwa Telecom
    Ciena
    Cisco
    Cisco ICE
    Cisco Live
    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
    Cribl
    Crosswork
    Crowdstrike
    CSCF
    CSP
    Cumulus
    CUPS
    CX 6200
    CyberX
    Dan Rabinovitsj
    Dark Reading
    Dartmouth
    DAS
    Data Center
    DataDog
    David Hughes
    DCI
    DD QSFP
    DD-QSFP
    DDR4
    DELL
    Delta
    Deutsche Bank
    Deutsche Telekom
    DISH
    Distributed Unit
    D-Link
    DOCOMO
    DOCSIS
    DPDK
    DPU
    DRAM
    Dritan Bitincka
    Dropbox
    ECI Telecom
    EdgeConnect
    Edgecore
    EdgeQ
    Eero
    Elasticsearch
    EMC
    ENAC
    Encore
    Entity List
    EPC
    EPON
    Ericsson
    Ericsson Router 6000
    Eric Xu
    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
    FWaaS
    GAA
    Gainspeed
    GCP
    GENBAND
    Geofencing
    GeoLinks
    German Edge Cloud
    Google
    Google Orion
    GPON
    GPU
    Graviton
    Greenlake
    H3C
    HAS2018
    HAS2019
    HAS2020
    Hashicorp
    HDD
    Hong Kong Broadband
    Hotspot Tracking
    HPE
    HPE Aruba
    Huawei
    Huawei Analyst Summit 2021
    HWMBBF
    Hyperconverged
    Hyperscaler
    IaaS
    IBM
    IBrowse
    ICD
    IMS
    Infinera
    Infovista
    Innoeye
    Intel
    Intersight
    IoT
    IoT Control Center
    Ip Access
    Ipanema
    Italtel
    ITU-T SG 15
    Ixia
    JMA Wireless
    John Roy
    Juniper
    Junos
    Kandy
    KDDI
    Keerti Melkote
    Keysight
    Kloudspot
    Koch Brothers
    KT
    Kubernetes
    KUIPER
    Kungpeng
    LAA
    Las Vegas
    Layer123
    LEO
    LG Electronics
    LG UPlus
    Linux
    LMDS
    Location Based Service
    LogStream
    Logstream 3.2.0
    LoRa
    LTE
    LTE-U
    Lucent
    Machine Learning
    MACSec
    Managed Service Provider
    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
    MSP
    MTN
    Multefire
    MultiGig
    Multi Gig
    MultiTech
    MU MIMO
    MU-MIMO
    MWC
    MWC18
    MWC19
    MWC20
    MWC21
    MWCa
    MX
    NaaS
    NBASE T
    NBASE-T
    Nbn
    NCS 5700
    NEC
    NEC 540
    NetApp
    Netcracker
    NetExperience
    Netgear
    NetInsight
    Netskope
    Network Services Orchestrator
    Network Slicing
    Neville Ray
    Newracomm
    New Radio
    New Relic
    NFV
    Node-H
    Nokia
    Nortel
    NPU
    NTT
    NUWAVE
    NVidia
    NVMe
    NVMeoFC
    Observability
    Observability Lake
    OCP
    Ocp2019
    Ocpsummit
    OFC
    #OFC18
    Ofcom
    OFDMA
    OIF
    OLT
    OmniXtend
    ONAP
    ONFConnect
    OnGo
    On Semiconductor
    ONT
    Ooka
    Open19
    OpenRAN
    Open RAN
    Open Source Wi-Fi
    OpenTelemetry
    OpenWiFi
    OpenWRT
    OPPO
    Optical
    Optical LAN
    OptiXtreme H6
    Optus
    Oracle
    ORAN
    Orange
    Orange Business Services
    Oreedoo
    OSFP
    OSS/BSS
    OTAC
    P2P
    P4
    Packet Optical
    PAL
    Parallel Wireless
    Passpoint
    Password-less
    Plumeria
    PON
    Posture Assessment
    Private 5G
    Private LTE
    Project Denali
    PSE 3
    PSE-3
    PTX
    Puppet
    Pure Storage
    Quad Level Cell
    Qualcomm
    Quanta
    Quantenna
    Quillion
    Radio Resource Management
    Rakuten
    Rakuten Symphony
    RAN
    RBBN
    RCP
    RCP Symphony
    RCS
    Realtek
    Reefshark
    Ribbon
    RIC
    RISC
    Riverbed
    Rivet Networks
    ROADM
    Robin.io
    Rostelecom
    Routed Optical
    Router
    RRU
    Ruckus
    S3
    Samsung
    Sandisk
    SAS
    SASE
    Satellite
    SBC
    SD Branch
    SD-Branch
    SDN
    SD-RAN
    SDWAN
    SD WAN
    SD-WAN
    Security
    Semiconductor
    Semtech
    Sequans
    Sercomm
    Serdes
    Server
    Shaw Communications
    Siemens
    Sierra Wireless
    Silicon One
    Silicon Valley
    Silver Peak
    Single-pane
    SingleRAN
    SingleRAN Pro
    SIP Trunking
    SK Telecom
    Skype
    Small Cell
    Smartphone
    Snapdragon 865
    Softbank
    Sonus
    Sourcing
    Spark
    Spectrum
    Splunk
    Sprint
    Sp Router
    SRX
    SSD
    StandAlone
    Starlink
    STC
    Stellar
    Swisscom
    Symworld
    Tago.io
    Tanzu
    Tareq Amin
    Technicolor
    Telco Cloud
    Telecom Infra Project
    Telefonica
    Telia
    Telit
    Telus
    Tencent
    Terragraph
    Thousand Eyes
    Tiangang
    TIP
    T-Mobile
    TMUS
    Tomahawk 3
    TP Link
    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
    VMWare
    VNF
    Vodacom
    Vodafone
    VoLTE
    VRAN
    VSBC
    Walt Disney
    Wan Optimization
    Water Tower Research
    Way Finder
    WBA
    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
    Zero Trust
    Zigbee
    Zipline
    ZR
    ZR+
    ZScaler
    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
    • Industrial Switching Report
    • Multi-Cloud Workloads Forecast and Research Report
    • Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Forecast and Research Report
    • 800 Gbps Report
    • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Hyperscaler SWOT Report
    • SONiC Report
    • Single Pair Ethernet Forecast Report
  • News
    • Press Releases
  • Blog
  • About
  • Employment
  • Contact
  • Clients
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Hyperscaler SWOT Report