Month: May 2018

Lumina’s Funding Announcement: Big SPs Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is

by Emir Halilovic, posted in SDN/NFV
Emir Halilovic – Principal Analyst

Summary Bullets:

  • Support from AT&T, Verizon, and Rahi Systems is a big thumbs up for both Lumina in particular and hardware-agnostic SDN in general.
  • The fact that Lumina needs external funding to grow shows that growing organically in the SDN business is still difficult.

At its launch last year as Brocade’s networking business spinoff, Lumina Networks’ value proposition focused on building a service-oriented business, catering open-source, hardware-agnostic SDN solutions to telcos and enterprises. Last week’s announcement of the company’s successful $10 million funding round (of which $8 million was from Verizon Ventures) validates this value proposition and underlines the confidence large telcos like AT&T and Verizon have in the company’s solutions and business model. Continue reading “Lumina’s Funding Announcement: Big SPs Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is” →

How 5G Could Kill Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS)

by Ed Gubbins, posted in Net Transformation, Ultra Broadband
Ed Gubbins – Senior Analyst

Summary Bullets:
• DAS will face steep hurdles in evolving to the 5G era.

• Vendors of distributed small-cell enterprise RAN solutions, once content to aim down-market from DAS, are increasingly aimed at competing with DAS head-on, exploiting DAS’s 5G vulnerabilities.

• However, any threat posed to DAS by 5G is likely to take years to have effect, increasing the long-term uncertainty surrounding these trends.

5G — in its early implementations, at least, aimed at mobile broadband, rather than the Internet of Things (IoT) — will be more evolution than revolution, boosting speeds that were already increasing steadily via advances in LTE technology. But in at least one respect, even 5G mobile broadband promises to do something truly disruptive: It could mean the demise of DAS.

That’s no small matter. Some estimates put the global DAS market well north of $6 billion annually. Walk into any stadium, hospital, shopping mall, or big-box store and make a mobile call; odds are you’re using a DAS, a carrier-neutral network that distributes the signals of multiple operators using shared antennas and other gear so that each operator doesn’t need its own separate in-building network. Continue reading “How 5G Could Kill Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS)” →

ZTE’s Forced ‘Hibernation’ Prompts Changes in GlobalData Coverage

by John Byrne, posted in Vendor Transformation
John Byrne – Service Director, Global Technology Telecom and Software

Summary Bullets:

  • In light of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s April 15, 2018 activation of the denial order suspending ZTE’s export privileges for seven years, and ZTE’s May 9, 2018 announcement that it has ceased major operating activities, GlobalData has adjusted all its ZTE Company Assessment and Product Assessment rankings to ‘Vulnerable.’
  • If and when ZTE is able to return to normal operations, we will update these reports and ratings accordingly. However, if the U.S. Department of Commerce does not reverse its ruling, ZTE’s ability to continue as a going concern will be jeopardized.

The ongoing, existential threat to ZTE from the stiff sanctions imposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce last month has required GlobalData to revise its product and company rankings across the board to our lowest rating of ‘Vulnerable.’ The revisions affect ZTE assessments across all of our coverage areas, including Mobile Access, Fixed Multimedia Access, Transport & Routing, IP Services Infrastructure, Service Enablement Ecosystem, and Support & Operation Services. In total, we rank ZTE hardware, software, and services offerings in 20 categories. Continue reading “ZTE’s Forced ‘Hibernation’ Prompts Changes in GlobalData Coverage” →