MWC kicks off this week, a show working to transition itself to relevance in a market that’s trying to do the same. The questions are first whether either of the two transitions are possible, and second whether there’s a single direction that accomplishes both. For the show, relevance means embracing social networks, handsets, developer programs,…
The M&A in network equipment continues, but it also continues to involve primarily specialty firms being picked up by the giants. The latest is Cisco’s buy of optical specialist Lightwire, a company that’s specializing in creating optical interfaces whose low power dissipation (heat) means they can be packed more densely. That’s a pretty solid indication…
HP’s numbers, like those from rival Dell, disappointed the Street, and this raises the question of whether tech capital spending might be showing an impact from the “project” issues I outlined in Netwatcher this month. Projects that advance IT overall just aren’t being launched as much, so spending is stagnating. The explanations offered by…
Continuing our media ramp-up to MWC, Ericsson announced it’s buying WiFi player BelAir, a step that follows a previous Alcatel-Lucent move in the WiFi direction. As I said at the time, WiFi is a kind of collateral success, pulled through by a combination of bandwidth-hungry appliances like smartphones and tablets and the inevitable truth that…
F5 is buying a signal networking player Traffix, who specializes in the DIAMETER protocol used often in mobile IMS networks, a move that signals that the company is going to launch an attack on the backhaul and mobile-service infrastructure space in earnest. What Traffix provides create what us effectively a signaling overlay network, and we…
The LightSquared drama continues with news that the company has failed to make an agreed payment to satellite provider Immarsat, and that some investors in the hedge fund that launched the venture were suing the fund. There are also indications that some vendors may be under pressure from the likely failure of the venture, NSN…
Net neutrality has been a thorny issue for the industry from the first, and the importance of finding a rational policy increases as network operators come closer to the point of “ARPU turnaround”, when the revenue-per-user curve flattens and then falls. Since traffic per user is increasing, this turn-around point spells the time when future…
The FCC has reportedly (finally) said it won’t approve the LightSquared broadband-in-the-sky plan because of interference with GPS services. I’ve never been a fan of the whole notion (two years ago I shocked one of the equipment vendors by telling them I didn’t think it would ever happen) because I don’t think the service would…
I’ve been speculating on the role that WiFi might play in the future mobile broadband ecosystem, and Alcatel-Lucent has apparently been doing the same. The result is their latest enhancement to their lightRadio line, which they call “lightRadio WiFi”, a development that addresses the reality of mobile broadband—it’s not all about 3G and 4G but…
The speculation on Apple’s and Google’s plans for entertainment products seems endless, but it also seems to be ramping up. As is always the case with rumors and speculation, it’s far from clear that there’s any substance behind the stories, but there are at least some grounds to wonder a bit. After all, there aren’t…