Ericsson paying Nokia $96M in bribery damages

Ericsson paid $billion to the US for 17 years of bribery in at least 5 countries. (Below.) Ericsson was different from other companies; it got caught. It's ironic that Nokia is collecting almost $100 million. Nokia's Alcatel branch was responsible for a huge multinational bribery scandal, including the President of El Salvador. ZTE has been implicated in the Philippines and probably other countries. Cisco is relatively clean and avoided prosecution in a Russian scandal. Samsung's CEO went to jail. Huawei has been very rarely accused, although there was an incident in Algeria. 

Huawei was competing with Ericsson in far more countries than Nokia. It would presumably be entitled to substantially more compensation. Other companies should also be entitled. 

Few of the implicated managers have suffered. The sums involved were large enough that most senior people at the company surely knew. The most prominent was Hans Vestberg, who rose through the ranks to CEO. He was pushed out for disappointing financial results, not corruption.

 The Verizon board had no qualms about making Vestberg the CEO.

Read more ...

100+ Mbps Mbps cable ** upstream ** ready to take off

Faster cable upstreams are in field tests and ready to deploy widely within a year. Because there is little construction, a large cableco can be mostly upgraded in 2-3 years. The cost should be about $200/home, a very small fraction of the cost of running fiber.

Cablecos need to choose between dedicating 85 MHz or 204 MHz to the new upstream. 85 MHz provides 440 Mbps shared and 204 MHz provides 1.4 Gbps shared. Sharing works very well in cable. Either choice will generally support 100 Mbps upstream for almost all users most of the time.

CommScope CTO Tom Cloonan believes that the upstream improvement will, "Allow the operators to move very deep into the future without issue for a long time because that gives them a lot of extra bandwidth capacity for the upstream." The proponents of the new infrastructure plan agree. Some want to specify 100/100. Others believe government should subsidize up to 100/20. (Cable downstream across most of the US is already 900 Mbps down. That could be inexpensively doubled if customers demanded it.)

DOCSIS 4.0 triples the possible bandwidth, to 684 MHz.

Read more ...

Adtran: "Highest product bookings for any quarter in our history"

The fiber boom, led by England, Germany, France, Spain, 4M at AT&T, and US regionals, is leading to remarkable results at suppliers. Adtran CEO Tom Stanton warns, "Supply chain constraints do present risk in the near-term or midterm. We continue to see lead times extend and expect that this will continue for some time into the future. "

Construction companies are raising prices, in some cases withdrawing bids and resubmitting at a higher figure. Government projects have to plan a 3-5 year ramp or waste an enormous amount of taxpayer money. The word is starting to get around Washington that spending more than $5-10 billion the next three years will be a very bad mistake. 

Adtran seeing demand for 10 Gbps fiber symmetric units. Some of the smaller regional carriers have made 10G their standard. The price is so close to the GPPON price they are going 10G in hopes of future demand. Adtran also has an order for 10G from a big cable company for backhaul. 

Read more ...

LoRaWAN gains traction for in-building & campus

LoRa (Long Range) networks are optimized for low power, low-cost connections for the Internet of Things. The initial deployments were regional for applications like meter reading and pipe management. It works, but the takeup has been far less than hoped.

Adtran sees a better market serving individual buildings or campuses. It has just introduced the very small 7310-08 LoRaWAN IoT Gateway that can be mounted on a wall and powered over Ethernet. It can be managed by an iPhone using Bluetooth.

It should be able to transmit throughout most of a building, where 5G might need several units. The price hasn't been released, but it should be a heckuva lot less than 5G.

(Irrelevancy. The name comes from Harald Bluetooth, a king of Denmark in the 10th century. Some engineers have a sense of humor.)  

LoRaWan uses 900 MHz spectrum, free to use in many countries. The speed is only 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps, enough for even battery-operated devices to occasionally phone home. The protocol is optimized for, yes, long range. At low baud rates, it can be highly reliable.

There's a 60-minute video Everything you need to know about LoRaWAN if you want an introduction to the technology.

Read more ...

India giant Jio, slower but profitable growth Q1

 Selling a 30-gigabyte plan for US$4, Jio grew at ~10 million subscribers per month for three years. Q1 2021 added "only" 5 million per month to 428 million. Incumbent Bharti is invigorated and the pandemic is strong in India. (The pandemic in April and May is horrifying, with a toll that may match the Bengali famine of 1943.)

Perhaps even more amazing, Jio claims a generous profit of ₹ 3,508 crore, about US$500 million, up 47%. Some think a low depreciation rate has inflated the profitability, but that's still a remarkable achievement.

No figures were released for Jio Fiber. That's been actively promoted but the take rate apparently remains very low.

The next task is growing Jio Platforms: Movies, music, JioMart, and more coming.

Read more ...

Robin Mersh passes Broadband Forum on

Robin Mersh has been central to the industry as head of the Forum since it was still the DSL Forum. He's now moved on to be SVP Sales for Virtuosi at QxP. 

Ken Ko is the new Managing Director. He was for many years a senior engineer at Adtran and Paradyme.

Dozens throughout the industry have commented on the change.

Tom Starr, for many years Chair of the Forum and ITU-T WP1/15 Chair

"Four Billion thanks to you Robin, for leading the BBF's effort to build the broadband network. The four billion people connected to the internet are benefiting from the BBF's help in making the internet better and connected to more people. Thank you and best wishes."

Read more ...

G.Network raises £1bn to fibre London

1.4 million premises - about half the city - are set for fibre over the next five years.  100 Mbps goes for  £22 ($30) and900 Mbps symmetric £48 ($65.) 10 gig will also be available. 1,250 workers will tear up around 4,500 km of streets.

G.network - also the company's web address - received a permit from OFCOM in 2017. Mark Jackson reported in 2018 it had raised £60 million to run fibre to London businesses. For the consumer build, G.network is getting £295m from a big pension fund and the rest from banks. 

BT is rapidly becoming the sick man of European telecom, with half a dozen well-funded companies running fibre and soon taking millions of customers. Unlike the French and Spaniards, the Brits didn't run fibre home, relying on DSL (including G.fast) and the absence of cable across half the country.  It is paying a very high price and doesn't have a good turnaround strategy.

Marc Allera of BT thinks he can raise prices 3% above inflation.

Read more ...

Are 20% of Comcast Gigabit Homes Actually Not Gigabit?

Tyler Cooper of BroadbandNow checked claims of gigabit service from the FCC. He founded that the carriers did not actually sell "gigabit" to a quarter of the claimed homes. Only 56% of addresses listed as "gigabit" could be served at over 900 Mbps.  I reviewed the findings with him. For certainty, more than 75 addresses need to be tested but his methods were sensible. 

Joe Biden wants to spend $20B to bring broadband to unserved rural areas and others in DC are talking $50-80 billion. Given that the recent FCC auction promises to bring 100 Mbps to about 98% of the country, that's a mistake - unless all the data we have being used is mistaken.

95% of the kids without connections could have one if the money is there. Comcast and Chicago are connecting all the kids for ~$10/month.  Charter, T-Mobile, Cox, Verizon, and AT&T have similar programs. This is a "just do it."

Read more ...