Saturday, March 13, 2021

Money Moves: February 2021

Here are some of the most prominent venture capital and merger and acquisition news items from the past month. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s VC or M&A activity in our monthly Money Moves section, or if you have any tips on that activity, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya (ssawaya@sdxcentral.com).
           

Friday, March 12, 2021

Security Continues to Seek Developers

Cloud-native security is gaining traction as a new vector for vendors trying to tackle both the growing use of cloud native platforms and the increased attention those platforms are getting from hackers. However, a challenge remains in getting the developer community that is vital to the cloud-native landscape to better buy into the security needs of that market.
           

Holograms and X-ray vision help Marines move equipment

Members of the U.S. Marine Corps are in line to be some of the first users of holographic imaging technology on a private 5G network. Marine Corps Logistics Command in Albany, Georgia, is the site of the 5G testbed the DoD is developing using CBRS spectrum in partnership with Federated Wireless. Some of the first applications to launch on the network will enable Marines to see inside crates without opening them and navigate the warehouses using 3D imagery. 
           

India’s spectrum auction is opening opportunities — Putcha

On March 1, India concluded its first spectrum auction of 2021. India’s Department of Telecom (DoT), through a Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) issued in January 2021, had put up spectrum for auction in multiple bands, including 700, 800, 900, 1800, 2100, 2300 and 2500 MHz bands. These frequencies cut across 2G, 3G and 4G service bands and included both FDD (paired) and TDD (unpaired) bands.
           

AT&T to spend up to $8B on C-band deployment

At one point last year, it looked as if AT&T’s balance sheet was going to impede its ability to get the C-band spectrum it needs to compete in today’s 5G world. Some questioned whether AT&T had the wherewithal to invest in the C-band auction and then actually use the spectrum.  
           

Telecom equipment market posts best year in almost a decade

Noting that its report is based on preliminary estimates, Dell'Oro Group said that in 2020 the telecom equipment market had its best year since 2011, with annual revenue growth of 7%. Mobile core networks and RAN both increased above expectations, and the analysts noted that both Ericsson and Nokia improved their RAN positions outside of China.
           

Consultant buys Ericsson’s MWC floorspace to host ‘cloud city’

Some people have grand ideas, and apparently consultant Danielle Royston is one of them. When she heard that Ericsson had pulled out of Mobile World Congress 2021, she thought that it’s a shame to leave such a nice venue empty, and wouldn’t it be great if it were filled with cloud vendors such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. And so, she’s set the wheels in motion to do exactly that.
           

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Can Defenders Break Up the $1.5 Trillion Cybercrime Market?

Cybercrime is a lucrative industry. According to Atlas VPN’s latest research, it pulls in $1.5 trillion in revenue annually. For comparison: that’s three times more than Walmart’s annual income, and it’s even more than Tesla, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Walmart’s annual revenue combined, which totals a paltry $1.28 trillion.
           

AT&T Cops to ‘Third Place,’ Trims Outlook for 5G Mid-Band

AT&T executives copped to its mobile realities, but the carrier’s mid-band 5G strategy pales in comparison to T-Mobile US and Verizon. “We are the third-place player in wireless,” AT&T Communications CEO Jeff McElfresh said during the operator’s analyst event today.
           

Oracle’s Ellison Digs at SAP; Investors Not Impressed

Oracle Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison left little doubt over his feelings toward rival SAP, using a majority of his breath during the vendor’s latest earnings call with investors touting Oracle’s numerous customer “victories” over its German competitor. However, the diversion tactic failed to sway investors away from what was a disappointing quarter for the vendor.
           

T-Mobile Defies 5G Mold, Stirs Growth in Tight Spaces

T-Mobile US weaved a series of seemingly incongruent projections into a marathon presentation for analysts and investors. The operator is somehow lowering investments on its 5G network by 2023 while ramping up the pace of deployments, saving more money on its merger with Sprint than originally anticipated, increasing forward-looking revenue guidance, and shutting down Sprint’s network a year ahead of plan. 
           

Podcast: Which DOCSIS are we on anyway?

Alan Breznick joins the podcast to discuss which topics will be covered during the Cable Next-Gen event and provide insight into challenges and business opportunities facing the cable industry.
           

Verizon boosts LTE speeds in Philly via CBRS spectrum

Verizon spent $1.9 billion for priority access licenses (PALs) in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) auction last summer, and it’s already putting the spectrum to good use. Verizon acquired 557 PALs of the 3.5 GHz mid-band spectrum in 157 counties.
           

Verizon answers some of those big C-band questions

The enthusiasm executives showed on stage during Verizon’s virtual investor meeting Wednesday? That’s cascading through every engineer working on the C-band deployment, according to Verizon's Adam Koeppe, senior vice president of Technology Strategy and Planning.
           

Cisco expands Silicon One device family

Cisco Systems announced new additions to its Silicon One unified routing and switching silicon architecture family, including what it called the industry’s first 25.6 Tbps routing chip with a 1.6 Tbps interface.
           

ServiceNow unveils telecom order management tool

ServiceNow unveiled the latest release of its cloud-based Now Platform, which includes a new order management tool for telecom providers that will help the vendor evolve beyond its roots as a service management and network performance management enabler.
           

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

5G is here, now what?

After making videos about 5G all over the world, video producer Tien Fu found out he has a 5G phone and has great coverage everywhere he goes – there’s just one problem: He doesn’t know what to do with it.
           

CrowdStrike, Trend Micro Face Off on XDR

The battle over best-of-breed security versus a platform approach has officially made its way to the industry’s favorite new acronym: XDR. The ongoing debate will undoubtedly continue playing out on the blogosphere, and recently it reached a fever pitch between competitors CrowdStrike and Trend Micro.
           

Verizon Details $10B Mid-Band 5G Network Upgrade

Verizon is throwing a lot of money at 5G. The operator spent $52.9 billion to acquire and clear an average of 161 megahertz of C-band spectrum in the recent record-high auction and intends to increase its capex by a cumulative $10 billion through 2023 to expand its 5G network.
           

Disaggregating routed and optical networks

SPONSORED: Findings from Heavy Reading's Open and Disaggregated Packet and Optical Networks Market Leadership Study suggest 2021 is a milestone year for disaggregation in packet and optical transport networks.
           

AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile detail their 2021 capex spend

The four big wireless operators in the U.S. will spend a bit more on capital expenditures in 2021 than they did in 2020, according to a Fierce analysis of their 10K annual reports and year-end financial statements. Click through our story (below) to see what T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T and Dish have said about their 2021 capex spends.
           

FTTH investment to surpass $60B next five years: RVA

North American broadband providers will invest more than $60 billion in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) projects over the next five years, a figure about twice the amount invested in FTTH buildouts during any previous five-year stretch, according to a new forecast from RVA Market Research and Consulting.
           

Charter's hourly minimum wage reaches $18

Charter Communications said in a company statement that all of its current and newly-hired salaried and hourly employees will now earn at least $18 an hour, a significant step toward the company’s goal of raising its minimum starting wage to $20 an hour next year. 
           

Tuesday, March 09, 2021

Intel Execs Discuss the Future of Supply Chain Security

In the digital age, supply chain security has taken on a new meaning. It’s no longer just about protecting and ensuring a ready supply of critical goods, but ensuring those goods are secure from cyberthreats long after they reach the customer, Jackie Sturm, VP and GM of global supply chain operations at Intel, said during the Supply Chain Security Summit.
           

HBO Max lands on Cox boxes

WarnerMedia's premium subscription streaming service has been integrated with Cox's Contour 2 boxes and the Contour Stream Player, devices that tie into Cox's X1 syndication deal with Comcast.
           

10 APT Groups Exploit Microsoft Exchange Security Flaws

At least 10 different advanced persistent threat (APT) groups in addition to China-linked Hafnium have been actively exploiting the recent Microsoft Exchange security flaws since Microsoft started fixing these email server vulnerabilities, according to threat researchers.
           

HPE Surfs Wave of GreenLake Adoption, Barrels Out Updates

Change is in the air at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) as the vendor today unleashed a flurry of updates to its GreenLake platform, including new cloud services for bare-metal management and expanded portfolio support for virtual machines (VMs) and containers workloads.
           

AT&T will use Fortinet for its managed SASE

AT&T is working with security firm Fortinet to deliver a global managed secure access service edge (SASE) for enterprises. The deal will marry AT&T’s software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technology with Fortinet’s network security functions that are provided through the SASE framework.  
           

Frontier expanded its fiber reach to 60K homes in 2020

Armed with new CEO Nick Jeffrey and incoming Executive Chairman John Stratton, Frontier Communications executives say the company is ready to complete its transformation into a data-focused provider of telecom services. During an update with investors, Frontier executives said that the company expects to emerge from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the next few weeks and is just awaiting one final approval from a state public utilities commission.
           

Lines blur where net neutrality, USF intersect: Entner

The two most significant communications topics among policy geeks these days are net neutrality (NN) and the Universal Service Fund's reform. Both issues are generally discussed inside the beltway as separate and discrete items only affecting telecommunications providers, whereas they are more expansive and interrelated.
           

Monday, March 08, 2021

Ericsson Kills MWC Barcelona Attendance Plans

Ericsson is not attending this year’s MWC Barcelona event scheduled for late June citing ongoing health concerns tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. The move is similar to its decision last year that eventually saw event organizer GSMA pull the plug on the mega-event.
           

Airspan to go public in 2021 via SPAC

Airspan Networks, a 23-year-old private company that provides software and hardware for 5G networks, is merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), which will take it public under the name Airspan Networks Holdings. It will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol “MIMO.” The business combination is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021.
           

Intel will help DARPA tackle data privacy

Intel has joined Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a research partner to help with its Data Projection in Virtual Environments (DPRIVE) program. This program is looking at ways to advance fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). 
           

AT&T says customers are demanding fiber broadband

AT&T will increase its investment in fiber this year and focus on filling in areas where the company already has fiber to a neighborhood but hasn’t yet expanded to fiber to the home. It will also focus on buildings where it might have dedicated access to one customer but can fairly easily add new customers in the building at a lower cost.
           

ZTE Precise RAN Solution Creating Value for Vertical Industry

At present, a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation are emerging around the world. The new generation of digital technologies represented by 5G, big data, cloud computing, and AI are changing with each passing day. The digital and intelligent transformation of traditional industries is the inevitable trend. As the core engine of New Infrastructure Construction, 5G has huge potential in supporting this transformation of social economy.
           

CCA’s Mobile Carrier Show, March 30-31

CCA’s 2021 Mobile Carriers Show will take place virtually this year, March 30-31. Attendees will be able join colleagues and industry peers for a two-day online event, filled with keynotes from Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA), Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, and executives from Ericsson, Interop Technologies, Ligado, T-Mobile, TNS, and Nokia. Virtual exhibitors will feature their latest products and services, and attendees can interact and set up meetings with exhibitors and fellow attendees through the online platform. There is no charge to attend CCA’s Mobile Carriers Show; register here.
           

Monetize new network technologies with Zyxel 5G/4G/CBRS CPEs

Mobile network operators are on the cusp of exciting opportunities, as new technology and spectrum create the potential to serve more customers in more ways. 5G and CBRS will both enable private networks and fixed wireless access, as well as a host of new subscriber services. Mobile operators want to serve customers big and small with these networks, but for some smaller businesses, rural areas, and suburban homes, these new technologies may be hard to access. In fact, some of these customers may not have reliable broadband at all.
           

Sunday, March 07, 2021

Daily Roundup: Qualys Hit By Accellion Hack

In case you’ve been stuck in video conference meetings all day, here are today’s top stories from SDxCentral. Also, make sure to subscribe to our daily newsletters to get these stories in your inbox.
           

Comcast gets down to business with mobile

Move will add a revenue stream for operator's commercial services unit, but pricing model shows that Comcast Business will heavily encourage customers to bundle mobile with its TV, voice and broadband services.
           

Why Remote MACPHY makes sense in APAC

SPONSORED: As service providers in the Asia-Pacific region seek to ramp up capacity to meet traffic surges during the COVID-19 pandemic, they should consider upgrading their networks to a remote MACPHY architecture.
           

Broadband customers increased 190% in 2020

2020 was a banner year for broadband providers in the U.S. With millions working and attending school from home, there were more net broadband additions in 2020 than in any year since 2008, according to Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst with Leichtman Research Group.
           

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