One of the criticisms of blockchain technology center on power consumption and the cost of mining. The electricity consumed in mining operations is high and continues to grow as mining difficulty increases in response to increasing processing power. Some think that blockchains is wasteful technology that is not compliant with a 21st century outlook for a green economy. Others accept it as the price to achieve consensus and trust in decentralized networks. Following recent work in this space, I like to share a perspective by making a comparison to the energy used in communication systems.
Bitcoin mining vs. mobile base stations
My estimates for bitcoin mining power consumption is around 7,000 MW, a average of a floor of 1,200 MW and ceiling of 12,000 MW. Many external sources point to values in the same range (at the time of writing, this example places power consumption on par with that used in Singapore). By comparison, I estimate that all the mobile base stations use around 12,100 MW, of which around 20% is in China. The power consumption for bitcoin mining has been increasing at a relatively fast pace. On the other hand, power comparison of mobile base station increases at around 2% annual. Based on this, the power used for bitcoin mining is set to overtake that used by mobile base stations this year, by late fourth quarter. Continue reading
This past week, I had the pleasure to moderate a panel on digital transformation and to join my Artificial Intelligence-expert partners at Xona in conducting a 
Cloud players continue to set record revenues and profits while the telcos grapple with stalled revenues. The market cap of three to the top cloud players – Amazon, Google and Microsoft – stand at around $1.9 trillion while the top 4 US telcos – AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint, stand at under $500 billion. The telcos have lost the ‘Cloud 1.0’ battle to the OTTs. But, is there a way for the telcos to be more competitive? More specifically: can edge computing provide the telcos a competitive advantage over the cloud players?
Performance predictability is fundamental to the operation of any service provider. It is the foundation on which processes are built. Processes drive efficiency. So when it comes to deploying wireless technologies on large scale, service providers look for the “cookie-cutter” approach. No matter what a technology is, it will get little if any market traction if it cannot be deployed with relative certainty of performance. 
Blockchain investments have long ceased to be the preserve of the fintech industry, having branched out over the past 2 – 3 years to different industries including health care, real estate, insurance, retail, and education to name a few. The telecom and Internet sectors are no exceptions. Focusing on the telecom space, we find that we are in the very early stages:
It has been a long time since I attended an ‘academic’ conference, focusing instead on industry and finance events. But this week, I had the chance to drop by at 
Blockchains has evolved from a technology for cryptocurrencies to one supporting applications in multiple industries, including telecom. A few leading telcos are investigating the potential of blockchains (
A survey of smart city activities around the world shows that much of the focus of smart city projects remains on establishing the most basic of services such as connectivity. In fact, there is a clear lag in the deployment of technologies and services in smart city applications, versus what technologies enable. We call this the cascading technology trap. 
Applications of millimeter wave (mmWave) technology in 5G fixed access are subject to a few important levers. To start, it’s important to understand that the cost of fixed access networks is directly proportional to the number of houses passed. This provides the advantage of growing the network selectively on geographic basis. But it also means that economies of scale are slower to affect the business case: passing more houses means more expenses. By comparison, mobile networks are designed to cover a wide area from the start which places emphasis on gaining subscribers to load the network and scale revenues. 
Artificial Intelligence is riding the hype curve, again! Pervasive digitization and connectivity, advances in processing power and low-cost storage are making possible what once could only be imagined. AI is penetrating every aspect of business with organizations seeking to build knowledge from data to gain competitive edge, sway customers and increase profits. This created high demand for AI expertise, tools and solutions as organizations ponder their AI strategy. But what to do about AI? How to build an investment thesis based on facts?
We’re mid-way through 2017. That’s only 8 months from the Pyeongchang winter olympics – supposedly a 
Edge computing has been attracting a lot of interest lately. The reasons are many, not the least is the potential for service providers to create and monetize new services and applications. I recently chaired a panel on MEC at the