neXt Curve: Contributing Analyst – Foong King Yew: Ericsson has just announced its acquisition of Vonage, valuing the latter at an enterprise value of around $6.2b. This is clearly a push into the enterprise and communications applications programming interface (API) markets, partly driven by activist shareholders who are hankering for growth.
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There were many highlights in the recently concluded Nokia Global Analyst Forum. Nokia shared its vision and strategy (Reset—Accelerate—Scale), and showcased its product leadership, R&D commitments, and focus on customer experience. Nokia also showed how its strategic plans map to market trends, and how the company contributes to environmental sustainability through technology leadership and innovation. The ability to meet communications service providers (CSPs)’ needs for simplification (reducing complexity) and monetization of assets is key. Value will increasingly be created from partner ecosystems.
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Mobile World Congress Los Angeles 2021 was the first in-person industry event for neXt Curve in 20 months. It felt good to be out of the house. Expectations for the massive turnouts of yesteryear were duly subdued given that the global COVID-19 pandemic is still in effect. Nevertheless, the smaller scale was a welcome introduction back to what we can hope is a return to normal. For the operators in the Americas, it looks like the pandemic has meant back to a pre-pandemic mindset. Back to connectivity.
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the future of transportation. What do we mean by that? It is not to say that the car is the future of transportation, rather the future of the car will depend on how the broader transportation system digitally evolves. The digital transformation of transportation infrastructure will have profound influence on how and how quickly the digitalization of the car will play out as will the stitching between the intelligent car and the intelligent infrastructure – 5G connectivity.
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Last week, the US Senate passed the USICA (The United States Innovation and Competition Act) which includes the CHIPS for America Act. Despite what the title of the USICA and its sub articles might suggest, the policy is largely a manifesto for dealing with a rising and highly competitive China with particular concern for the Western rival’s ambition to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency and Huawei’s ascension as the leading 5G technology vendor. The Act presents several concrete policy measures to diminish China’s access to US semiconductor technologies and 52 billion USD in federal funding to build a more resilient semiconductor supply chain. But will these policies help the US achieve what the title of the USICA suggest; improve US semiconductor supply chain resiliency and competitiveness in 5G? Will it stop the technological advancement of China and its digital economy long enough for the West to tame it?
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5G is about vertical industries. It promises to connect things beyond the smartphone in new ways and at a scale that was not possible with previous generations of mobile wireless technology. The auto industry has long been considered one of the frontier industries ripe for 5G reinvention. On May 19th, France Brevets hosted a virtual conference to discuss the importance of incubating a healthy regional innovation economy. The goal? To foster technological leadership in transformative technologies such as 5G to help secure a competitive future for the European auto industry.
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The Pandemic changed everything. Musicians, artists around the world, big and small, who largely depend on live performances for their livelihood saw their primary medium of expression and monetization shutdown almost completely for months going on more than a year. Necessity has forced the industry to pivot hard to online channels but artists and audiences alike miss the vibe of live music events. neXt Curve attended SXSW 2021 to gain insights into how music artists and producers are looking to recreate the vibe virtually and remotely on top of the 5G networks of today and tomorrow.
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The spotlight continues to shine more brightly on 5G on the global geopolitical stage as it becomes increasingly apparent to the US and European nations that 5G technological leadership is of strategic economic importance. While the race to deploy 5G networks is a global competition, mobile wireless technologies of today have been a result of cooperation and collaboration across standard setting bodies, operators and technology companies across the globe. 3GPP, the engineering organization that sets the technical specifications that are the basis of mobile wireless technology standards, recently held their election for one of the more prominent of its Technical Specification Groups (TSGs), the RAN TSG. The election happens at time when 5G technology leadership is hotly contested and the merits of technological unity is increasingly challenged geopolitically.
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When the FCC held the first auction of CBRS (Citizens Band Radio Service), it raised hopes that novel neutral host models will emerge that improve the economics of indoor cellular networks and bring some of the promise of 5G into venues of all sizes. What is the neutral host opportunity presented by CBRS and what are the economic considerations for the business of establishing and running a neutral host network.
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neXt Curve attended Huawei’s Analyst Day (HAS) 2021 which was hosted in-person and virtually from Shenzhen, China. This event shortly followed Huawei’s Annual Report which presented the state of their business during a difficult year for the company as it faced a wide range of sanctions by the US and the global Coronavirus pandemic. HAS 2021 gave us an holistic overview of the progress that Huawei has made in evolving and executing its “survival” strategy over the last two years since the company became the focus of deteriorating relations between the United States and China.
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