Category: Communications Networks

Clearfield’s upgraded Clearview Blue Cassette proposition will oblige key fiber management rivals, Commscope and Corning, to allocate increased portfolio development and marketing resources to counter the new 48-port option. Futurum’s Ron Westfall discusses the update and the impact on Clearfield’s fiber management portfolio, along with the challenges he anticipates ahead.
The Biden administration’s tightening of restrictions on 5G related technology sales to Huawei could be seen as a move toward a more uniform application of prohibitions, rather than the prior administration’s more inconsistent application and management of restrictions against Huawei. For technology companies, there are pros and cons to this, which are covered here by Futurum’s Olivier Blanchard, along with what is likely ahead.
Futurum’s Olivier Blanchard discusses Gogo’s plan to bring 5G connectivity to air travel, scheduled for 2022. The promise of faster internet and more bandwidth in flight opens up a solid opportunity for Gogo to reframe the value of in-flight connectivity.
The $100 billion high speed broadband bill reintroduced by Rep James Clyburn is aimed at closing the digital divide. This is both timely and significant, as the FCC estimates at least 21 million Americans currently may not have access to high speed internet, including as many as 1 in 4 rural households and 1 in 3 households on tribal lands. This puts students and workers in those areas at a severe disadvantage through no fault of their own. That is the digital divide that H.R.1783 aims to correct over the next five years.
With the launch of T-Mobile WFX unlimited 5G plans, it’s clear that T-Mobile is taking on Verizon and AT&T in the enterprise. Futurum’s Olivier Blanchard walks through the T-Mobile offering and T-Mobile’s clear move to take this opportunity to reduce friction and provide businesses with a relatively pain-free alternative and an enterprise-grade unlimited data plan.
HPE CTG sharpens HPE’s overall Open 5G proposition aimed at the CSP and enterprise realms. HPE CTG offers the broad 5G portfolio, professional services, and telco portfolio pedigree and expertise needed to power ecosystem-wide adoption of open, cloud-native 5G implementations on a secure, confident basis across cloud environments. In combination with in-house resources such as HPE GreenLake/Ezmeral, HPE CTG now has the competitive foundation to consistently differentiate its solutions against both 5G infrastructure suppliers and public cloud providers. I anticipate and look forward to HPE CTG and Open 5G prospects gaining momentum and advancing during the course of 2021.
Marvell enlarges its OpenRAN ecosystem credentials by providing a 4G/5G OpenRAN design for Evenstar. The move boosts its OpenRAN support credibility with both OEMs and operators, which is critical for Marvell to win both mind and market share in the already hotly contested OpenRAN segment. The Evenstar initiative is key to Marvell’s overall competitiveness as the company reported in its Q4 2020 results that its quarterly growth mostly came from its Networking business, which benefitted from accelerating 5G builds and Cloud’s continued strength. The overall growth for the Networking business was 22%. As such, I expect Marvell’s goal to support having Evenstar equipment ready for network operator trials by next year takes on more importance in assuring the company’s long-term competitiveness.
The European smartphone market is down 14% year over year in 2020, and Xiaomi and Oppo appear to be gaining on Samsung. Futurum’s Olivier Blanchard takes a look at the numbers, the market, and what’s ahead.
HPE is in a distinct position to upset the competitive balance in the open 5G space, including the Open RAN market segment. Futurum’s Ron Westfall discusses the specifics of the launch of HPE’s Open RAN Solution Stack and the fact that he believes it poses a serious competitive challenge to Open RAN specialists, as well as sets the stage for HPE to duel long-term with the incumbent RAN and mobile infrastructure players in determining the destination of the overall Open 5G ecosystem. Factor in HPE assets such as the formation of HPE CTG, HPE GreenLake/Ezmeral, and HPE 5G Core Stack, HPE is now in a strong position to become a prime influencer across the entire 5G ecosystem.
Juniper’s debut of Paragon Automation demonstrates the ability to execute on its Experience-First Networking strategy. The formation of Paragon Automation indicates Juniper has the blueprint to bolster its portfolio through a well-executed acquisition strategy that most recently includes 128T and Apstra. Futurum’s Ron Westfall views the formation of Juniper Paragon Automation as boding well for Juniper’s prospects in further assimilating its 128T assets to make deeper inroads into the AI-driven enterprise realm as well as successfully integrating its Apstra assets to alter the competitive dynamics within the automated cloud DC realm. Through Paragon Automation, Juniper is ready to win new mind share and move the needle across the automated WAN, AI-driven enterprise, and automated cloud DC market realms.
Futurum’s Olivier Blanchard takes a dive into Qualcomm’s new Fixed Wireless Access platform, which is expected to bring mmWave 5G performance to the network edge in 2022. Until now, the prevailing expectation surrounding mmWave cell deployments was that network operators would focus mostly on high density markets like urban centers, stadiums, airports, highly industrialized areas, and so on, and that therefore, suburban and rural areas would mostly miss out on ultra-fast mmWave 5G performance. Qualcomm’s introduction of its new mmWave 5G FWA CPE platform changes things. By extending mmWave 5G performance to the network edge, many suburban and rural markets that until now fell just out of reach of the best that 5G has to offer will soon have access to mmWave 5G performance just like densely populated markets.
Verizon Business and Cisco are meeting the growing enterprise demand for SD-WAN services and easing their adoption path or improving the overall agility of their existing SD-WAN implementation, particularly across multi-cloud environments. I anticipate both Verizon and Cisco are now better positioned to meet growing enterprise SD-WAN demand and drive SD-WAN adoption on a more secure and agile path, also providing the foundation for SASE assimilation as workforces become ever more distributed and virtual.

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