Jeremy Spencer

Lumen: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Lumen is enjoying a Renaissance under new CEO, Kate Johnson. She recognized the hard truth that Lumen had too much debt and managed to sell the South American and European assets above fair value to Colt and one other player. Less widely known is that Lumen sold off its ILEC business to Brightspeed for $7.5 billion. In addition, she is focusing on fibre-to-the-home deployment as opposed to trying to protect legacy twisted copper wire assets. Many telecom CEOs are unable to make the hard choice of cannibalizing or selling slow growth PSTN services like POTs and DSL in order to deploy new, technologically more advanced services. But the stock market approves the strategy as far sighted. Furthermore, Johnson has recognized that Lumen should finally integrate its five networks into one. These five networks reflect purchases of distressed assets that previous CEOs made over 15 years ago, including Qwest Communications, Time Warner Telecom, Global Crossing, and others. Integration is estimated to slash network expenses by a billion USD a year. If Lumen has integrated these assets in a timely fashion, Lumen's shareholders would be about $15 billion dollars richer today. It would still have its international assets and be a global player. Kate Johnson is making Lumen's focus the AI industry. This is good marketing and investors are likely to buy it short term. Nonetheless, AI has all the marking of a gigantic bubble as the revenue potential of generative AI is limited and certainly not great enough to justify the massive investments in the sector. Large language models are simply gigantic nonlinear statistical models that ape whatever language samples are used to estimate them. Reasoning ability is extremely limited. If a model was estimated using Donald Trump's tweets, it would insist that the 2020 election was stolen and that he is the most oppressed man on the planet. This so-called AI is basically regurgitation. It will be sensible if trained on the Wall Street and New York Times or downright crazy if trained on the proceedings of the Flat Earth Society. It is likely Lumen will benefit from being a partner of the Digital Titans, but I suspect the growth benefit will peter out in a few years when AI undergoes its own crisis just like the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000. I would focus more on reducing head count as transport and transit services can be profitable, but only if the company is lean and mean. I wish Lumen the best of luck. #lumen #renaissance #integration #leverage #katejohnson #ai

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While I’m not as focused on #OpenRAN trends & technical minutiae as some of my analyst peers, I’ve noticed one particular thing here at #FYUZ24 - the potential for programmable RANs to host applications for “spectrum agility”. This fits in with the evolution of RIC platforms for various RAN applications. But while a lot of focus is on energy management and also network-sharing / neutral host, there’s also work ongoing on more direct links to spectrum management. I found out about two different angles here - and there may be others to track down as well. 1) Turning the RAN into a #spectrum sensor at a fine-grained level. This is particularly useful for detecting incumbents (mobile or non-mobile) for sharing scenarios. In particular it might be better to sense radar signals locally, rather than rely on complex dedicated infrastructure like CBRS’s ESC for detecting ship-borne radar. There are lots of angles to this I’ll cover another time 2) Potentially enabling aspects of the #6G vision relating to physical sensing (ISAC and JSAC) which uses RF signals to detect motion, presence etc. Nobody is quite sure how that will relate to spectrum licensing & usage rules, so having flexible control / reporting functions in the RAN could be very useful I can also think of various other spectrum + RIC functions that could be created as an “app”. Either way, it seems that a benefit of Open RAN - irrespective of number of RU / CU / DU vendors - could ultimately also involve “spectrum agility”, as per the rather fuzzy screenshot below. That also fits with my idea of making #5G Advanced and 6G “sharing-native”, especially given unknowns about spectrum policy over the next 10 years. (Also I think that RAN APIs might actually be more important and strategic than 5G core NEF APIs, but that’s for another post).

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At UScellular, we are seeing increased interest in private cellular networks, especially from utilities and manufacturing companies. We collaborate with these companies every step of the way to ensure their needs are met - it's what differentiates us. Check out this blog from Dr. Lori Dawson for Wireless Infrastructure Association about the many benefits of private cellular networks. https://lnkd.in/g-HYt5rf #usccemp #technologyleadership

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We got a random price increase for cross connections in a datacenter today and the note they sent just sounds disingenuous to any serious market participant. I'm constantly wondering, do product folks think their customers don't understand the cost structures? Cross connections are nearly 100% margin and folks know this, meanwhile the circuits riding these cross connections are going down in price nearly every year. Power increases and other costs are handled by normal mechanisms in most colo contracts and cross connections are independent of that, conflating them means double-dipping since I can't imagine this vendor would be foregoing annual increases elsewhere in their agreements. Trends like this in datacenter industry pricing are creating super weird economics where folks like (ziply) us are spending engineering effort to meet others in the street instead of within buildings. We have already shifted to not agreeing to share cross connect billings with other carriers in the expensive sites and telling our peers we will share costs for street meets or let them pull into buildings we own. My thesis is that the market is broken for cross connections if it is cheaper to build something in the street than to run a jumper inside a building. I predict a long term breakdown in the ability to hold the line on this pricing, I've been proved wrong so far, but at some point users won't go into spaces with this level of markup and the actual outside plant owners will figure out how to connect to one another elsewhere. In the northwest, in the spirit of diversified interconnection we offer others the ability to pull into our owned COs for interconnection on fixed terms with up to 20 year term lengths. We figure it is mutually beneficial to allow folks to meet in a non-exploitive cross connection environment and as the telco we have offered that since 1996.

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Cord Cutters not seeking live TV certainly should be a red flag to cable companies. But more importantly, it should be a harbinger of doom for the off-air stations that broke the CATV market to begin with by demanding higher than justified rates. With the limited coverage area of UHF digital signals, local TV stations need the CATV and streaming markets to retain their customer base. Without that added base, advertising dollars will go down, resulting in increasing costs to the remaining CATV and streaming platforms; a continuing death spiral. Rural areas will be hurt the most, as they will lose reliable local news and weather sources. https://lnkd.in/g8P7Ae6b

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My organization, Frontier Internet, has released our 2024 Q2 earnings! We delivered another solid quarter and grew revenue for the second quarter in a row. Read the details using the link below or connect with me to learn more about our unique fiber assets!

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Secure those streaming apps early...

User generated content, like live streams, and XR is tipping the scale for 5G and making uplink performance more critical for customers. With America’s leading nationwide 5G standalone network, T-Mobile is integrating new 5G Standalone uplink features to help deliver the necessary performance improvements. 👉Higher power-class 👉Uplink MIMO (UL-MIMO) 👉Uplink Carrier Aggregation (UL-CA)   According to Signal Research Group, LLC, “These features provide another compelling reason for operators to transition their 5G networks to SA.”

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This week's Brief is out. In a hat tip to yesterday (May 4), we discuss T-Mobile's Lumos transaction - why it makes a lot of sense. Also, many other items in the market commentary... More inside #sundaybrief

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5G Americas has just unveiled a groundbreaking white paper that delves into the potential of the 7-8 GHz spectrum in shaping the future of wireless technology. 🌐 This spectrum is projected to be a cornerstone of 6G, offering up to a 10-20 times increase in capacity compared to current 5G networks. The implications are far-reaching, as this spectrum could facilitate faster data rates, superior coverage, and unparalleled capacity, making advanced technologies like AI and XR more feasible. As mobile data traffic is expected to experience exponential growth in the coming years, the 7-8 GHz spectrum emerges as a critical enabler for meeting the demands of future applications. Moreover, the paper underscores the necessity of global collaboration to harmonize spectrum use, reduce manufacturing costs, and support international roaming, ultimately benefiting operators and consumers. The convergence of these advancements in wireless technology is set to revolutionize connectivity and drive the next wave of innovation. How do you envision faster data rates and increased capacity impacting industries like AI and XR? Share your thoughts below! #6G #WirelessInnovation #FutureConnectivity

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With power comes responsibility, and as T-Mobile continues to shine and transform the industry, we know our actions have an impact. Which is why we make it our responsibility to be a force for good in our business and communities.    Here are a few of my favorite Corporate Social Responsibility accomplishments from 2023: https://lnkd.in/gYmzZrsD

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# Comcast Puts More Computing Power Closer to Consumers: The company will deploy Qwilt’s Open Edge platform, creating the most distributed content delivery network (CDN) in the U.S. “We’re tapping into the incredible power of edge compute to build a leading content delivery network that provides incredible benefits to our customers and to the providers who distribute content across our network,” said Elad Nafshi, Chief Network Officer, Comcast. As entertainment moves to live streaming, and demand for delivery quality continues to increase, an optimized CDN is foundational to supporting the best user experience, one that is faster, more responsive and in the highest quality possible. Qwilt represents another step in Comcast’s efforts to transform content delivery quality through innovation. Earlier this summer, the company launched enhanced 4K from Xfinity, a first-of-its-kind viewing experience for X1 customers that combines 4K video delivered over Comcast’s network at its highest bitrate, Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos spatial audio, and ultra-low latency only seconds behind live action. Additionally, for content providers, Comcast’s implementation of a standardized delivery platform increases efficiency, reliability and security of content delivery, all at scale. "We're incredibly excited to collaborate with Comcast, a pioneer of technology innovation in the industry. By leveraging Open Caching, Comcast utilizes its strengths as a major network operator, actively shaping efficient content delivery and broadening avenues for new opportunities within this value chain," said Alon Maor, CEO, Qwilt. “This initiative enhances our expansive global edge network, a pivotal stride toward our aim of delivering top-notch digital experiences to every corner of the world, meeting the high expectations of consumers.” Open Edge in Action The first-of-its-kind deployment, comprised of Qwilt’s Open Edge platform software and services, provides Quality-as-a-Service content delivery by performing content caching and delivery functions in edge compute and caching clusters deep within Comcast’s network. Qwilt’s solution is based on Open Caching, a set of open specifications developed by the Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA) through an extensive, nine-year collaboration across the entire streaming value chain enabling the best quality of content delivery seamlessly. Comcast joins nearly 200 service providers and content providers that have partnered with Qwilt, enabling the Open Edge. With this deployment, the global coverage of the Open Edge will now uniquely enable local delivery to the majority of US broadband subscribers—a critical milestone in the world’s largest federated, all-edge CDN, supported by a global, unified edge cloud footprint that benefits content publishers, service providers, and customers.

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74% of all federally funded U.S. broadband providers rely on the Calix Platform to win and maintain their funding 💰 With billions of dollars from once-in-a-generation funding opportunities on the line, the Calix Platform has enabled broadband service providers to navigate the complexities of performance testing. In just three years, over 2 billion total tests have been performed, helping support customers on their funding journey and simplifying their business while growing value for communities across rural America. John Durocher, chief customer officer, emphasizes the value: “Innovations to the industry’s only end-to-end platform have made testing effortless for our customers, especially those who lack the resources to dedicate time to demanding quarterly mandates when they need to focus on growing their network.” Explore how Calix continues to support customers on their funding journey. 🚀 🔗https://ow.ly/NiVI30sBvy1 #PerformanceTesting #Innovation #Broadband

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This one is a decent point I've not seen get much attention for the incident yet. With proper bmc you can correct boot issues much faster and more reasonably than without. You could even automate the fix via bmc.

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It's been a very long time since I wasn't under some kind of agreement like this. This holds true for during this period for all of my subordinates, peers and bosses. I'd always been told though by lawyer friends that these were really meant to be more of a deterrent, were rarely enforced by companies and that even when they were, judges tended to side with defendants, leaning in the camp that thinks more competition is better for everyone. That said, it's hard to imagine that this won't scramble things up quite a bit in tech and other "inventive" domains. I've always been on the fence about non competes. I can see the side of the proprietary property holder who wants to know he can hire employees without them dropping out any time to work for a competitor (or compete with them directly). On the other hand, the point the FTC is making about agreements like this stifling competition is a not a bad one. It will be very interesting to see what effect this has! (Not rewritten by AI) https://lnkd.in/gwRD_3H9

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Network slicing is a key feature of the 5G Standalone rollout and a way of improving the reliability and performance of connectivity in certain situations where there is congestion or mission critical operations are in play. T-Priority by T mobile is a great use case.

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Today, Calix unveiled groundbreaking capabilities for broadband service providers with the industry’s only on-demand optical network terminal (ONT) speed and latency testing. With the latest updates to the Calix Platform, BSPs can improve the subscriber experience with: ✔️ On-demand ONT-based speed and latency testing to quickly diagnose issues ✔️ Automated subscriber alarm reporting and high-value classification for higher CSAT ✔️ Multi-server capabilities enabling speed testing up to 10 Gbps for geo-diverse markets “Our platform enables BSPs to conduct every test needed- be it to secure funding, comply with FCC regulations, or now pinpoint and diagnose subscriber issues at the ONT with just one click,” emphasizes Shane Eleniak, chief product officer at Calix. Learn more about the full set of broadband service testing capabilities only available on the Calix Broadband Platform. 🔗https://ow.ly/HXWp30sCtgy #Broadband #Innovation

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This is a cautionary point for all broadband providers, especially those who are deploying Eero devices in the homes of their subscribers. That is "inviting the fox into the hen house." The good news is that there are many ways that BSPs can differentiate beyond "fast and cheap" by offering value-added services that protect homes, kids, seniors, enable roaming across the backyard and the town, connect small businesses and MDUs will innovations that help them thrive. These are values shared by rural, community-based BSPs. They are not shared by Amazon. Calix https://lnkd.in/eXz8vwYU

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