Huawei

Ericsson and Nokia Celebrate Their Anniversaries; What Makes for Vendor Longevity?

April 25, 2016May 25, 2016 by David Snow, posted in Vendor Transformation

David Snow - Principal Analyst, IP Services Infrastructure — David Snow – Principal Analyst, IP Services Infrastructure

Summary Bullets:

Nokia and Ericsson both celebrated company anniversaries; company longevity in telecoms is rare
The last decade has been particularly tumultuous and maybe Huawei is demonstrating a “third way”

A humorous tweet from CMO Barry French of Nokia a few weeks back referred to Ericsson as being “the new kid on the block” as Ericsson celebrated “140 years of innovation”. Nearly a year ago, Nokia also had an anniversary; “Nokia at 150: from pulp mill to the programmable world”. This drew attention to a game that is periodically played between competing companies – the game of longevity. Continue reading “Ericsson and Nokia Celebrate Their Anniversaries; What Makes for Vendor Longevity?” →

INFOGRAPHIC: Key Findings from Current Analysis’ 2015 Carrier SDN/NFV Survey

February 5, 2016 by Jason Marcheck, posted in Net Transformation, SDN/NFV

Summary Bullets:

In 2015, Current Analysis surveyed 100 decision makers at network operators regarding challenges facing network deployments, what they need most from their vendors, and which suppliers they view most favorably.
Although a key focus of vendor messaging in 2015 was helping operators to operationalize SDN/NFV, operators are facing more fundamental questions standing in the way of their decision to fully embrace network virtualization: uncertain ROI.
When asked what one thing operators feel the SDN/NFV supplier community is not adequately addressing, VNF performance dominated the responses. A word cloud below summarizes the key responses, with the size of each word corresponding to the frequency in which they appeared in the response results.
Cisco and Huawei have topped SDN/NFV vendor perception results for the past several years. However, IT-oriented suppliers – namely HP and IBM – made up considerable ground in 2015, now ranking closely behind Cisco and Huawei as top perceived SDN/NFV suppliers.
Ericsson also made a considerable jump in perception to round out the ‘Top 5’ in terms of best perceived vendors in the survey.

Continue reading “INFOGRAPHIC: Key Findings from Current Analysis’ 2015 Carrier SDN/NFV Survey” →

C-RAN Is About to Get More Serious, but No, the RAN Will Never Disappear into the Cloud

December 11, 2015 by Ed Gubbins, posted in Het Nets, Net Transformation, SDN/NFV

Summary Bullets:

C-RAN’s adoption is likely to grow significantly soon, thanks in part to evolutions in the underlying technologies.
Long term, future RANs will see a dynamic mix of centralized and distributed functions.

In 2016, we’re likely to hear even more about C-RAN than we already have. It’s not a new concept, and plenty of operators have deployed mobile access network architectures in which the baseband processing units are centralized, stacked or pooled, linked to remote radio units elsewhere. As portions of the network become increasingly virtualized, baseband processing will become virtualized, too – thus, centralized RAN will evolve into cloud RAN. This won’t happen everywhere, of course, but its use is likely to spread thanks in part to some significant advancements in C-RAN technology coming soon. Continue reading “C-RAN Is About to Get More Serious, but No, the RAN Will Never Disappear into the Cloud” →

The Omni-channel Opportunity: How OSS/BSS Suppliers Can Unleash Operator Capabilities

December 9, 2015 by Ron Westfall, posted in OSS/BSS/CEM, SDN/NFV

Summary Bullets:

OSS/BSS suppliers need to enlist third parties, such as enterprise and SMBs, to partner on attractive use cases that demonstrate near-term return on investment (ROI) opportunities associated with using digital storefront business rules that aid operators in their drive to manage the omni-channel customer experience and advance their goal of monetizing digital service offerings.
Through embedded API incentives, OSS/BSS suppliers can boost operator goals to drive partners to adopt digital storefront business rules that remove technical and business logic barriers in creating consistent omni-channel customer experiences.

Operators are poised to invest more resources in finding ways to differentiate their services further while also streamlining their overall costs in areas such as operational expenditure (OpEx) reduction. Through defining and developing the omni-channel experience of their customers, OSS/BSS suppliers can strengthen the operator potential to drive the overall management of the customer experience. However, accomplishing these twin goals presents distinct barriers for the suppliers and their operator customers. Continue reading “The Omni-channel Opportunity: How OSS/BSS Suppliers Can Unleash Operator Capabilities” →

Mobile World Congress Shanghai: RAN Innovation – From Drones and Small Cells to Massive MIMO

July 24, 2015 by Peter Jarich, posted in Net Transformation, Ultra Broadband, Vendor Transformation

Summary Bullets:

Across conference sessions and vendor exhibits, Mobile World Congress Shanghai showcased a myriad of wireless network technologies along with deployment traction.
Of the technologies showcased, RAN innovation and solutions took center stage.
Many of these RAN innovations focused on regional network demands.
Where the innovations showcased an ability of nimble vendors to develop new solutions, the onus is on larger rivals to highlight the value of end-to-end capabilities and proven operations.

Earlier this week, we called out a Mobile World Congress Shanghai panel and presentation focused on network virtualization. Outside the conference sessions, we can debate how big the event truly was; it’s unclear how many people came to see smartphone cases (and smartphones) vs. cutting-edge network R&D. What is clear, however, is that the networks R&D and deployments that seemed most visible (in announcements and show floor exhibits) were focused on the RAN. Given the dominant role that the RAN plays in operator CapEx, this focus wasn’t surprising – neither were the RAN themes on display at the event, with a few exceptions. Continue reading “Mobile World Congress Shanghai: RAN Innovation – From Drones and Small Cells to Massive MIMO” →

CCAP: Taking Cable Operators to an IP Video & Gigabit Future

June 18, 2015 by Erik Keith, posted in Ultra Broadband

Summary Bullets:

Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) solutions, which consolidate formerly discrete CMTS (data) and EdgeQAM (video) cable headend hardware, will pave the way for cable operators to deliver mass-market Gigabit broadband and IP video services.
Current Analysis will provide in-depth, qualitative analysis of CCAP solutions from five different vendors in the coming months, specifically, Cisco, ARRIS, Casa Systems, Harmonic and Huawei.

As video services become more sophisticated and bandwidth-hungry, Gigabit connectivity to every home is getting a lot of hype these days. The problem is that very few consumers in the U.S. and worldwide actually subscribe (or have access) to Gigabit services at present. Nevertheless, there is an undeniable sense that the Gigabit future is now. Just this week, U.S. cable giant Comcast announced that its 2 Gbps GigaPro service will be available in several new markets, while AT&T announced that its GigaPower service will be offered in additional major metro markets (17 total) and the operator will expand its target GigaPower customer based to include multifamily residences – i.e., apartments and condominiums – known as multi-dwelling units (MDUs) in industry jargon. Continue reading “CCAP: Taking Cable Operators to an IP Video & Gigabit Future” →

TM Forum Live! 2015: NFV MANO ‘Thick Lines and Thin Interfaces’

June 16, 2015June 16, 2015 by David Snow, posted in Net Transformation, SDN/NFV

Summary Bullets:

The ETSI NFV MANO model currently suffers from too rigid functional decomposition and too light interface definition; however, there’s plenty of innovation around to help.
Vendors shouldn’t be naïve in claiming vIMS multi-vendor interoperability based solely on 3GPP conformance; NFV introduces a very challenging vertical dimension.

One of the main takeaways from our coverage of TM Forum Live! 2015 in sunny Nice earlier this month was around the (im)maturity of the ETSI NFV MANO stack. In short, the ETSI MANO model has been described as having “boxes which are too thick” (defining some functions and omitting others) and “interfaces which are too thin” (lack of implementable interfaces to support multivendor interworking). Continue reading “TM Forum Live! 2015: NFV MANO ‘Thick Lines and Thin Interfaces’” →

HKT and Huawei Do 450 Mbps LTE-A: The 10 Details That Matter

April 25, 2015April 25, 2015 by Peter Jarich, posted in Net Transformation, Ultra Broadband, Vendor Transformation

Summary Bullets:

At Mobile World Congress this year, Huawei and HKT demonstrated 300 Mbps LTE-A thanks to two-carrier CA. This week, they upped the stakes with a three-carrier 450 Mbps demo.
More important than the data rates demonstrated is the fact that the demo delivered these rates across two sites and two spectrum bands – and without C-RAN.
As we move from 4G to 5G, the demo provides a reminder that backhaul and core innovation will be as important as RAN innovation.

The last day of Huawei’s Global Analyst Summit saw the vendor hold a carrier aggregation (CA) demonstration in Hong Kong with HKT. Like most LTE-A demos, the media has picked up on the super-high data rates being delivered. The real story is bigger than data rates and bigger than the demonstration on the 23rd. Continue reading “HKT and Huawei Do 450 Mbps LTE-A: The 10 Details That Matter” →

Five Things You Should Know About Huawei’s 2014 Annual Report

April 14, 2015 by Peter Jarich, posted in Net Transformation, Ultra Broadband, Vendor Transformation

Summary Bullets:

Though privately held, Huawei produces an annual report (audited by KPMG) that provides insights into its operations, strategy and performance.
While Huawei’s revenue growth is well understood, its latest report highlights the importance of China to its bottom line and a continuing search for cross-business synergies.

Once a year, a good share of the industry analyst community makes a trip to Shenzhen for Huawei’s Global Analyst Summit. At Current Analysis, we’re sending our entire service provider infrastructure team, along with analysts from our enterprise and consumer teams.

Why dedicate so many resources? One answer is simple. Over a relatively short period of time, Huawei has transformed from a company seen as selling low-cost telecom gear to a reputable seller of telecom solutions with fast growing enterprise and consumer businesses. In the process, it’s grown its overall revenue base significantly to the point where (in total) it’s larger than almost all of its nearest competitors. Understanding the company, then, is critical to understanding the telecom market in general; its analyst summit is one of the best opportunities to discuss and learn of its plans, strategies and messaging for the year to come. Continue reading “Five Things You Should Know About Huawei’s 2014 Annual Report” →

Small Cells & Location-Based Services (LBS) – Why Vendors Will Have to Push Harder

April 6, 2015 by Ed Gubbins, posted in Het Nets

Summary Bullets:

Mobile access infrastructure vendors are increasingly pushing location-based services for indoor/enterprise networks.
It’s a logical concept but one that hasn’t shown much traction yet.
Such services face serious challenges, including finding killer apps despite a somewhat fractured market.

Enterprise small-cell deployments haven’t exactly spread like wild fire yet (the latest market information from the Small Cell Forum shows most shipments are still residential). Yet, vendors are talking more than ever about applying location-based services (LBS) and analytics to indoor enterprise networks including small cells and WiFi access points. Continue reading “Small Cells & Location-Based Services (LBS) – Why Vendors Will Have to Push Harder” →