Month: December 2013

NSN Analyst Summit: Rethinking Applications at the Network Edge and Avoiding Creepiness

by Peter Jarich, posted in Net Transformation, Vendor Transformation
Peter Jarich
Peter Jarich

Summary Bullets:

  • NSN’s Liquid Applications gives operators an opportunity to site applications and content at the edge of the mobile network.
  • If these applications are seen to run up against consumer privacy concerns, operators must be careful in how they message them.
  • If the applications cannot be rolled out universally across the operator’s network, the potential for an uneven user experience must be considered.

Despite what many people think, the life of a telecom industry analyst isn’t all about fancy dinners and travel to far-flung conferences.  Luckily, sometimes it is. Continue reading “NSN Analyst Summit: Rethinking Applications at the Network Edge and Avoiding Creepiness” →

SDN/NFV, Domain 2.0 and (Some of) the Guidance the Market Is Looking For

by Jason Marcheck, posted in Net Transformation, SDN/NFV
Jason Marcheck
Jason Marcheck

A refrain that we’ve heard often over the past few months related to the current SDN/NFV hype is that operators are looking to their equipment suppliers to help them inform their virtualization strategies.  Conversely, we’ve also heard that vendors are looking to their customers for guidance on how to prioritize their SDN and/or NFV solution development roadmaps.   Chicken, meet Egg. Continue reading “SDN/NFV, Domain 2.0 and (Some of) the Guidance the Market Is Looking For” →

Small Cells: Will Operators Be Willing to Share?

by Ed Gubbins, posted in Het Nets, Ultra Broadband
Ed Gubbins
Ed Gubbins

Summary Bullets:

  • Conventional wisdom says operators won’t share small cells.
  • There’s reason to believe that could change in some areas.

“Operators don’t like to share.”

We hear it all the time.  If small cells are the hot new toy this holiday season, we’ve already been warned that operators are not going to want to share them.  There are some good reasons to use common, shared infrastructure (whether small cells or backhaul or something similar): to distribute deployment and installation costs; to overcome the resistance of municipalities and other site owners to clusters of hanging boxes; and, for indoor/enterprise deployments, to address operator neutrality preferences.  However, we’re told that operators want to control their own fate.  They want their small-cell networks optimized for their unique needs.  So – at least initially, while they’re trying to climb the learning curve of small-cell networks – they don’t want to have to play nice with anyone else to get what they need. Continue reading “Small Cells: Will Operators Be Willing to Share?” →

Altiostar + Cisco: Where’s the Connection?

by Peter Jarich, posted in Het Nets, Net Transformation, Vendor Transformation
Peter Jarich
Peter Jarich

Summary Bullets:

  • What Altiostar is working on, much less its connection to Cisco, will only become clear when the company comes out of stealth mode.
  • Cisco’s interests in new LTE RAN R&D would align well with C-RAN architectures.

We’ve all heard of Ötzi, right?  No?  Well, here’s what you need to know:

  1. He lived around 3,300 BCE.
  2.  He was found – naturally mummified – by tourists off a walking trail in the Ötztal Alps (Austrian-Italian border).
  3. He had a number of tattoos.  Brad Pitt has a tattoo of him.
  4. An arrowhead lodged in his left shoulder and bruises/cuts on his hands led researchers to speculate on the cause of his death.
  5. Some people claim that Ötzi is cursed, with people involved in his discovery mysteriously dying.
  6. When I build my next tech startup, it will be known as ÖTZIcom until it comes out of stealth mode.

Beyond some engaging discussion points for your next holiday party, what’s the point here?  Ötzi reminds me a lot of your average stealth-mode startup.  We don’t know a lot about them.  Absent solid knowledge, a mythology builds up around them.  They really aren’t impacting daily lives, but people get obsessed trying to figure them out.  Which leads us back to Altiostar. Continue reading “Altiostar + Cisco: Where’s the Connection?” →

Who Is Altiostar?

by Peter Jarich, posted in Het Nets, Net Transformation, Vendor Transformation
Peter Jarich
Peter Jarich

Summary Bullets:

  • Altiostar is a stealth-mode company focused on the LTE RAN; per an SEC filing, it has raised over $50 million and seems to have a connection to Cisco.
  • What, exactly, the connection between Cisco and Altiostar is remains to be seen, particularly in light of Cisco’s acquisition of Ubiquisys earlier this year.

Everyone loves a stealth-mode company.

Okay, we may not all love the companies, but we like talking about them.  We like being a part of the “in crowd,” the people who are connected and have some knowledge that isn’t shared by everyone else.  We like the intrigue and challenge of trying to figure out what the company is up to, particularly if it could be disruptive to our own business.  And if it looks to be disruptive, we might even think we need to understand the company in order to stave off a future competitor.  Continue reading “Who Is Altiostar?” →

How Far Can Orga Systems Drive Billing-as-a-Service?

by Ron Westfall, posted in OSS/BSS/CEM
Ron Westfall
Ron Westfall

Summary Bullets:

  • Orga Systems leads billing-as-a-service (BaaS) development and alliance within the EASI-CLOUDS project framework.
  • Orga needs to demonstrate it can influence channel partners to coordinate cloud standardization efforts in order to drive BaaS adoption.

Orga Systems recently hosted a meeting of the international EASI-CLOUDS project with over 30 project partners from Germany, France, Finland, Egypt and South Korea.  The EASI-CLOUDS project is being developed within Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA2), a pan-European research program.  Orga developed a ‘billing-as-a-service’ (BaaS) application for the project that can be reserved and used in the cloud as a variant on software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology and services.  Naturally, Orga can derive marketing clout from steering the BaaS initiative within the framework of the EASI-CLOUDS project, but does the company wield the channels to drive BaaS adoption across a meaningful cross-section of the service enablement ecosystem? Continue reading “How Far Can Orga Systems Drive Billing-as-a-Service?” →