The adoption of wireless technologies for connectivity has shaken up the home automation market unleashing a number of trends: The race to own the gateway. Home automation devices connect to the Internet through a gateway in the home. A standalone hub, cable set-top boxes, xDSL routers, a tablet may all serve as potential gateways. Established… Read More: IoT in the Home: Emerging Trends »
Home automation is an active market with many players approaching it from different angles: Technology giants: Apple (HomeKit, iOS), Google (Nest, Android), Samsung and Microsoft (Xbox, Windows) best exemplify this segment. These companies leverage the operating system of mobile devices, their incumbency in the Internet platform business, and the Cloud infrastructure to expand into the… Read More: IoT in the Home: Market Players »
The home automation market is undergoing a progressive transformation propelled by the proliferation of smartphones and tablets. In addition to cellular technologies, home automation devices integrate different local and personal area technologies to connect among peripherals. This led to a new phase of evolution in home automation systems where wireless technologies enable connectivity for monitoring… Read More: IoT in the Home: Market Characteristics »
The wide-area IoT connectivity battle which has been brewing for a couple of years is heating up. Early last month at CES, Ericsson announced the release of “the first complete cellular low-power wide-area (LPWA) solution” to AT&T. At the same time, the Wi-Fi Alliance branded 802.11ah as Wi-Fi HaLow targeting applications in smart home, connected car, digital healthcare, industrial,… Read More: Is IoT at Risk of Stalling? »
Standardization of 5G is split into two phases. The first phase, which is scheduled for 2H2018, will focus on a subset of use cases and features. The second phase which is scheduled for December 2019, will meet ITU2020 requirements for 5G technology. Phase 1 will also focus on sub 6 GHz bands although carriers in… Read More: Will Operators Deploy Phase 1 5G? »
IoT use case are fragmented with different requirements. To match these requirements, a number of IoT connectivity solutions are available including wide-area low-power (LPWA), cellular wireless technologies (EGPRS, UMTS, LTE of different varieties), and short range technologies adapted to cover wide areas through mesh networking (ZigBee, WirelessHART, etc.) or extension of point-to-multipoint technologies (e.g. 802.11ah/HaLow).… Read More: Which IoT Technologies Will Die Out? »
Is 5G an evolution or a revolution? In an earlier article I said 5G is an evolutionary stage. Many disagreed: 5G is a revolutionary technology. But this is all a matter of perspective. The evolution vs. revolution debate has largely focused on the air interface, or the ‘subscriber interface’: everyone wants to have fast wide-bandwidth connectivity. Naturally,… Read More: 5G: Revolution or Evolution? »
Hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into the low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT connectivity market over the past 2 years alone to kick start a fledgeling ecosystem of companies across a wide range of products and services. In the process of due diligence and research in this market that we undertook at Xona Partners, we find… Read More: Top 3 Drivers of Investments in the LPWA Market. »
The 5G picture is getting clearer by the day. While there is still a lot of fuzziness that will take take time to crystallize the broad outline for 5G is now more clear. Below, is a summary of some of our findings on 5G. Needless to say, 5G developments will have significant ramifications especially as… Read More: 5 Things You Need To Know About 5G. »
Mobile network operators love to compete on performance (a few forget they need to make money!). Throughput takes most attention as does coverage. Other parameters like latency has been gaining popularity as data consumption increases. Not many MNOs talk about the sites they operate, except in financial statements and annual reports. I wanted to see if the cell… Read More: Cell Site Talk! »
Every once in a while a spectrum auction brings big and interesting surprises. The last example is the 900 MHz Thai auction concluded last week which raised close to THB152 billion ($4.2 billion) for the right to use two licenses of 2×10 MHz. This is over 6x the reserve price THB12.8 billion per license, and one… Read More: Can Runaway Spectrum Prices Stimulate New Business Models? »
WRC15 concluded with new spectrum assigned for mobile services: L-band: 1427-1518 MHz is now assigned for fixed and mobile services. The L-Band is used for mobile satellite services. Technical measures need to be developed for co-existence with mobile satellite in 1518-1559 MHz. The 1350 – 1400 MHz was also a target for IMT, but it… Read More: WRC-15: Win Some, Lose Some »
The 700 MHz auction in France closed last week raising a total of €2.8 billion ($3.17 billion). Orange and Free Mobile secured 2 block of 5 MHz duplex spectrum, while Bouygues and SFR secured one 5 MHz block each. The operators will have now to bid for the position of the allocation in the band: they… Read More: How Much is 700 MHz Spectrum Worth? »
The wireless industry is rapidly entering a phase of reduced spending on infrastructure. This is evident from the many operator discussions on their future plans and is inline with analysts forecast of peaking infrastructure spending at $23 billion this year. Deployments in in the US, Japan and Korea have taken their course, but still some… Read More: The Cusp of a New Phase For Mobile Network Operators »
There has never been as much uncertainty about spectrum for a new generation of mobile service technology as there exists today for 5G. GSM was set in the 800 / 900 MHz band and 3G was set in the 2.1 GHz band. Vendors aligned their products with the target bands. There was clear focus and… Read More: The Challenges of 5G Spectrum »