Editor’s Note: RCR Wireless News goes all in for “Throwback Thursdays,” tapping into our archives to resuscitate the top headlines from the past. Fire up the time machine, put on those sepia-tinted shades, set the date for #TBT and enjoy the memories!
Nokia buys Withings
A little more than a month after announcing the pending purchase of Withings, Nokia today announced closing on the $190 million deal. The result is Nokia’s new Digital Health business unit, which “combines the talented employees from Withings and experts from the preventive health and patient care teams,” according to the Espoo, Finland-based company. “The new business unit builds on the pioneering work of Withings, offering a family of award-winning digital health products designed to fit seamlessly into people’s lives, empowering them to make smarter decisions about the health and wellbeing of themselves and their families.” Withings sells scales, activity trackers, thermometers, blood pressure monitors, home and baby monitors, and other health-related products that use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to connect to smartphones. Withings has proprietary apps for Apple iOS and Google Android devices, and has made its application programming interfaces available for free to developers who want to create apps designed to work with Withings devices. There are already more than 100 apps compatible with Withings devices, according to the company. … Read more
T-Mobile US nabs top spot for smartphone sales
According to technology market research firm Counterpoint Research, T-Mobile US for the first time passed Verizon Wireless as the leading sales channel for smartphones in the first quarter of 2016. The researchers found T-Mobile US captured 22.9% of the domestic smartphone market while Verizon Wireless took 22.2%, followed by AT&T Mobility with 20.2% and Sprint with 16.7%. “The U.S. market has undergone significant shifts in the power of the different sales channels with the move to unsubsidized plans,” said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint Research. “The growth of T-Mobile through its different ‘Un-carrier’ moves, the removal of subsidies and enticing subscribers with ‘Simple Choice’ and ‘JUMP’ plans, has helped the operator to become the top smartphone sales channel in the USA.” T-Mobile US last year passed AT&T Mobility, and in 2014, the growing carrier passed Sprint, Shah said. The T-Mobile US sales metrics includes smartphone sales associated with its prepaid brand MetroPCS. “Samsung and Apple together captured almost two-thirds of the total smartphone shipments share at T-Mobile, with Samsung leading,” Shah added. “However, it will be an uphill task for T-Mobile to maintain this lead ahead of Verizon and continue to attract millions of subscribers to its network. The move to unsubsidized and unlocked has also boosted demand in the open channel, which continued to contribute close to 10% of the total shipments in Q1 2016.” … Read more
T-Mo seen as takeover target
An asset management firm predicts further consolidation among the four major U.S. carriers, and sees T-Mobile US as the most likely acquisition target. According to Gabelli & Co., potential acquirers of T-Mobile US could include Comcast, Charter Communications/Liberty Media and Dish Network. Longer term, the Gabelli analysts think SoftBank and Sprint could revisit SoftBank cofounder Masayoshi Son’s ambition to acquire T-Mobile US. SoftBank said this week it will raise almost $8 billion in cash by selling part of its stake in China’s Alibaba. Although Gabelli is not expecting anyone to launch a bid for T-Mobile US in the near future, the firm thinks the market in time will consolidate, and sees the carrier as “essentially the only way for a domestic or foreign company to enter the U.S. wireless market in a meaningful way.” T-Mobile US is 65% owned by Germany’s Deutsche Telekom. AT&T tried to buy the carrier for $39 billion in 2011, but the U.S. Justice Department blocked the deal in an effort to maintain a competitive marketplace. It’s unlikely anyone could have predicted just how competitive the market would become in the years following the failed deal, or that T-Mobile US would be the primary disruptor. Under the leadership of CEO John Legere, the “un-carrier” has moved the industry away from long-term contracts and subsidized devices, and has won customers by pairing creative content offerings with a steadily improving network. This week, Counterpoint Research said the carrier sold more smartphones than any other carrier during the first quarter, and the telecommunications report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index found consumers are happier with T-Mobile US than with any other carrier. … Read more
Takeaways from PCIA’s last Wireless Infrastructure Show
PCIA completed its last Wireless Infrastructure Show. From now on, the annual event will be a production of WIA – The Wireless Infrastructure Association. PCIA has rebranded itself as The wireless Infrastructure Association to better reflect the nature of its membership.
That membership showed up in full force last week in Dallas for a full agenda of presentations, exhibits, meetings and social activities. Below we outline seven key takeaways from the show. 1. Carriers are spending less on their networks than they have in recent years. Tower company executives portrayed the shift as a cyclical dip rather than a fundamental change, and noted carriers are still keeping crews busy with tower amendments. This activity should continue, and even increase, in the months ahead as towers will need new antennas to support massive multiple-input/multiple-output technology and eventually the 600 megahertz spectrum that is being transitioned from broadcast TV to wireless. Significant carrier spending is shifting to network densification efforts, especially outdoor small cells. Several speakers last week pointed out that small cells often rely on tower base stations, so they are not a replacement for towers. But small cell spending may be replacing some tower spending in carrier budgets. … Read more
mmWave transmission breakthrough
The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF in Freiburg, Germany, has set a new world record in millimeter wave transmission, transmitting at a data rate of 6 Gigabit per second (Gbit/s) over a distance of 36.7 kilometers, on a stretch between Cologne and Wachtberg. This is equivalent to transmitting the contents of a conventional DVD in under ten seconds, beating today’s fastest transmissions by a factor of ten. A breakthrough for satellite-to-earth transmissions, the new record could also have wide-ranging implications for future 5G networks. The Fraunhofer Institute is in fact already in talks with vendors. ”We are in discussion with a couple of companies in Europe and Asia to bring this technology to the market,” Dr. Michael Schlechtweg, head of business unit High Frequency Electronics at the Fraunhofer Institute, told Industrial IoT 5G Insights. The innovation can be applied in multiple areas, including 5G networks, the next generation of satellite communication, rural broadband, as a cost-effective replacement for deployment of optical fiber and ad-hoc networks or in future data-intensive Industry 4.0 applications. … Read more
Huawei subpoenaed by US government
The world’s largest vendor of wireless networking gear is under scrutiny, as the U.S. Commerce Department tries to make sure Huawei did not resell sensitive American technology to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria. A government subpoena sent to Huawei’s U.S. headquarters in Texas and shared with The New York Times demands Huawei turn over all information related to its exports to those countries. Although Huawei has not been accused of violating any U.S. laws or export restrictions, the Commerce Department may have decided to investigate the company because the other major Chinese supplier of wireless infrastructure, ZTE, did try to resell American technology to banned countries through shell companies. Some reports claimed ZTE modeled those shell companies on those of an unnamed competitor, which could have been Huawei. After news of ZTE’s trade law violations broke, some analysts predicted the U.S. government’s next step would be an investigation of Huawei. Huawei has been a fierce global competitor to Ericsson and Nokia, largely because of its low cost structure. … Read more
Huawei works with Dubai police on smart city effort
Huawei signed a memorandum of understanding with Dubai to collaborate on a long-term initiative for the implementation of public safety technology as part of the larger smart city project ongoing in Dubai. Under the terms of the agreement, Huawei and Dubai Police will work together to identify how Huawei solutions can be deployed to aid in crime prevention and reduction as well as improve road safety by reducing incidents of accidents and fatalities. Huawei’s portfolio of public safety solutions for the government sector include high-definition video surveillance, broadband trunking, multimedia dispatching and intelligent analytics. These solutions are split across six main solution offerings: Convergent Command Center, Cloud-Based Intelligent Video Surveillance, Smart Road Safety, 4G Mission-Critical Broadband Trunking, Agile Communication Network and Secured Cloud Data Center solution. … Read more
The outlook for 5G
With early use cases taking shape as carriers begin trials, RCR Wireless News caught up with IBB Consulting Partner Hillol Roy to get his insight into the likely phased commercialization of “5G” mobile networks. Roy was on hand in Dallas for the Wireless Infrastructure Association – formerly PCIA – annual Wireless Infrastructure Show. “When you look at 5G, it means different things to different people,” Roy said. “We are talking about ultra mobile broadband; we are talking about a network which is highly flexible; we are talking about highly reliable communication; we are talking about extremely low latency. When you look at it, trying to fit everything into one piece of network, it’s pretty daunting.” “The first thing that comes to mind is mobile broadband,” roy continued. “How do you increase the speed? Of course, one part is to improve the spectral efficiency.” He said that means infrastructure upgrades, including improving [multiple-input/multiple-output] by adding antenna elements. … Read more
Check out the RCR Wireless News Archives for more stories from the past.
