• Qualcomm acquires edge AI specialist
• Virgin Media O2 debuts Open RAN 
• SFR tests Open RAN, 100G FTTP with Nokia

In today’s industry news roundup: Qualcomm is adding to its IoT-related portfolio with the acquisition of a company that enables developers to add AI smarts to industrial edge devices; UK operator Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) switches on its first Open RAN sites; French operator SFR is exploring new network capabilities with key vendor partner Nokia; and much more

Qualcomm is bolstering its internet of things (IoT) capabilities with the acquisition of San Jose, California-based Edge Impulse for an undisclosed sum. Edge Impulse has spent the past six years developing a platform that enables developers (170,000 to date) to “easily create, deploy and monitor AI models on a wide array of edge devices – with support for varied microcontrollers and processors, featuring AI accelerators from multiple semiconductor providers,” noted the companies in this announcement. Though, once the acquisition is complete, Qualcomm “anticipates giving developers on Edge Impulse’s platform the ability to target Qualcomm Dragonwing processors” – more on this in a minute – “which feature superior on-device AI inference, computer vision, graphics and processing capabilities”. I wonder how the developers will feel about that?  According to Nakul Duggal, group general manager for automotive, industrial and embedded IoT and cloud computing at Qualcomm Technologies, the tech giant is “thrilled about the opportunity to significantly enhance our IoT offerings with Edge Impulse’s advanced AI-powered end-to-end platform that will complement our strategic approach to IoT transformation. We anticipate that this acquisition will strengthen our leadership in AI and developer enablement, enhancing our ability to provide comprehensive technology for critical sectors, such as retail, security, energy and utilities, supply chain management, and asset management. IoT opens the door for a myriad of opportunities, and success is about building real-world solutions, enabling developers and enterprises with AI capabilities to extract intelligence from data, and providing them with the tools to build the applications and services that will power the digital transformation of industries.” Edge Impulse has about 70 staff and has raised about $54m since it was formed in 2019, mainly from a $15m Series A round in May 2021 and a $34m Series B round in December 2021. IoT is one of Qualcomm’s focus growth markets – in its most recently reported quarter, Qualcomm generated IoT product sales of $1.55bn, up 36% year on year. And swinging back to Dragonwing for a minute… In case, during the information overload that proceeded and continued throughout last week’s MWC25 event, you missed the wireless chip giant’s pre-Barcelona event branding announcement, Dragonwing is the name now given to Qualcomm’s “industrial and embedded IoT, networking and cellular infrastructure solutions,” while the Snapdragon brand refers to the chips used in mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops etc).  

Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) has just switched on its first Open RAN site, the UK operator’s CTO Jeanie York told TelecomTV last week during MWC25. VMO2 is co-owned by TEF and Liberty Global, both of which believe Open RAN has a role to play in next-generation mobile networks. As a result, VMO2 has been exploring the potential of Open RAN for a while and in early 2023 it selected Mavenir, which is perceived as the Open RAN technology leader by the telco community, as its Open RAN lead technology partner. And, after some time, Open RAN technology is now part of VMO2’s network. “We just went live with one of our first locations… brownfield Open RAN is certainly a lot more of a challenge than greenfield – anybody that’s in the space of testing that technology will tell you that. Disaggregation is certainly the path forward, there’s no question about that, whether that’s virtual RAN or Open RAN. The continued opening up of software and decoupling of hardware – we’ll continue to push that, from a technology perspective and a VMO2 perspective. We’ve learned a lot from Open RAN and it’s continued to be an important part of our strategy. I think… when you’re dealing with other incumbents in the network, it gets a little more complex to do that at scale. So watch this space – we will continue to invest in this and it’s important for our strategy. But full-scale Open RAN tomorrow? Probably not the case.”  

SFR (aka Altice France) has been testing the potential of Open RAN options for its mobile network and 100Gbit/s fibre broadband technology for its fixed network with Nokia, the French telco noted in this announcement (in French). For the Open RAN trial, SFR deployed radio units from unidentified third-party vendors to work with a Nokia Airscale commercial base station, which is “widely deployed on the SFR network”, to enable services running over the operator’s 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 3500 MHz spectrum. “Open RAN technology will offer [SFR] greater flexibility in building its network and will thus facilitate innovation,” noted the operator. It added: “The full-scale test made it possible to create a 5G SA [standalone] connection between a commercial terminal and the 5G SA commercial core by aggregating the three frequency bands to achieve speeds close to 2 Gbit/s.” SFR’s enterprise services unit launched 5G SA-enabled services in late 2023 (using the term 5G+).    

Meanwhile, in its labs in Vélizy, SFR has tested Nokia’s 100 Gbit/s passive optical network (PON) fibre broadband technology and was able to achieve download speeds of 82Gbit/s. SFR already offers 10Gbit/s broadband services using the Finnish vendor’s XGS-PON, having launched a service three years ago, and is already testing 25Gbit/s connectivity on its fibre access network, which it says reaches 40 million French premises. Many in the industry would ask why SFR (or indeed any other operator) feels it might need such high-speed fibre broadband connections at all: The operator notes that “while the speeds offered today satisfy the vast majority of uses, the prospects offered by these tests provide reassurance regarding the future developments of the fibre network, which is becoming the main very high-speed access network in the coming years and will remain the most efficient.” Incredibly, SFR managed this generalised explanation without even mentioning AI, which is usually trotted out as the reason for any company to do anything these days.  

A storm in a teacup has blown up in the UK, where The Telegraph newspaper has reported (subscription required) that BT Group CEO Allison Kirkby has decided to “save” the BT brand “from the consumer scrap heap” and has shelved plans to drop the use of the name BT by the telco’s consumer division, which predominantly uses the brand EE. The Telegraph report has spawned countless headlines across all sorts of media outlets, but BT itself has a different take on the situation. It explains that when the telco announced in April 2022 that EE would become the “flagship” brand for consumer services, it stressed that the BT brand would be dropped from most (but not all) of its consumer branding, so it wasn’t being dumped completely or totally shelved. But has Kirkby, who is stamping her authority on the UK national telco and who hired Claire Gillies as the new CEO for the consumer division to replace out-of-favour Marc Allera, mandated a U-turn and a greater use of the BT brand again? TelecomTV is told this is not the case and that there hasn’t been a change of strategy – Kirkby has, according to the BT press team, simply “been clear that the BT brand will be part of our consumer-facing brand portfolio indefinitely.” Having said that, there’s certainly a change of tone from BT in its statement to the media today about its consumer branding: “EE is our lead consumer-facing brand for converged mobile and broadband customers but there will always be a big role for BT as one of our most highly valued brands by our customers. BT will, therefore, continue as part of our portfolio of well-loved consumer brands alongside EE and Plusnet.” A big role for the BT brand? I guess us Brits will find out what that means in time. Meanwhile, Gillies has only recently started her role at the Consumer division and will no doubt be looking to make her mark soon – let’s see if there are any changes coming down the pipe from her in the near future… TelecomTV understands that the New EE positioning and strategy unveiled by Allera in late 2023 might be revamped or scrapped.    

There was much excitement when in early 2023, after a couple of years of planning and preparation, the administration of US President Joe Biden announced that $42.45bn was to be pumped into US fixed broadband infrastructure under the aegis of the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) programme. The idea was to invest in Made in America technology products to help close the digital divide by connecting 25 million hard-to-reach US citizens. But the process has been painstakingly slow and just over two years after the federal funding and its associated terms and conditions were unveiled, none of the BEAD funding has resulted in new broadband connections, though progress has been made as the process ticks along with many checks and balances. But Biden is gone, Donald Trump is in the White House and the BEAD programme is getting an overhaul, as announced late last week by the US Department of Commerce in a tone that is becoming uncomfortably commonplace in US political circles (it seems to this writer at least). “Because of the prior administration’s woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations, the programme has not connected a single person to the internet and is in dire need of a readjustment,” stated US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who at least managed not to use the term ‘snowflake’. “Under my leadership, the Commerce Department has launched a rigorous review of the BEAD programme. The department is ripping out the Biden Administration’s pointless requirements. It is revamping the BEAD programme to take a tech-neutral approach that is rigorously driven by outcomes, so states can provide internet access for the lowest cost. Additionally, the department is exploring ways to cut government red tape that slows down infrastructure construction. We will work with states and territories to quickly get rid of the delays and the waste. Thereafter, we will move quickly to implementation in order to get households connected. Under the revamped BEAD programme, all Americans will receive the benefit of the bargain that Congress intended. We’re going to deliver high-speed internet access, and we will do it efficiently and effectively at the lowest cost to taxpayers.” If you can get past the childish banter, the aim to speed things up is surely one that everyone would welcome. However, the “tech-neutral approach”, which in itself is also a sensible idea, is set to open a can of worms because this kicks down the money-making door to the benefit of one of President Trump’s besties and political allies, Elon Musk, creating a clear conflict of interest. Musk, currently steering Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), owns SpaceX, part of which is Starlink, the low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation that offers satellite-delivered broadband connectivity to anyone who lives in a market where such services are legal and licensed, which includes the US. Other LEO constellations are available, of course, but who can make assurances that, if satellite broadband is the optimum way to reach some US citizens that fall under the BEAD programme, a fair selection process will ensue? Could the individual in charge of making value-based federal financial decisions potentially gain from a federal drive to make the BEAD programme more efficient and less wasteful? You can’t blame anyone for assuming that objectivity and fairness might be treated with similar contempt to the ‘woke’ mandates that Lutnick so despises. And if that happens, wouldn’t it be ironic if broadband service provision under the BEAD programme was held up by legal challenges resulting from the messy relationships now associated with US decision-making practices. Such is business life…  

– The staff, TelecomTV