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[freddie01] 10/5/2018 07:57

Take some time out of your day to just walk and breathe. London, UK



Trafalgar Square under a snow blanket, London.

[mbhesms] 09/5/2018 08:38

Headline: Vodafone and Liberty Global strike €19bn takeover deal

Link:

Commentary: This deal seems to be about the importance of operators being able to combine mobile, TV and cable broadband products

[mbhesms] 08/5/2018 22:37

(Caveat: I have been away from this business for some time now)

Hi Alex, I too remember the home gateways which I think were predicated on the benfits of a single box bundling storage, the network interface (e.g. DOCSIS), Audio/video transcoding and protocols such as DLNA which would allow you to watch a programme broadcast in ultra-HD to be scaled & trans-coded for viewing on your tablet, or using your smart-phone to select a recording from storage and to show it on your smart TV or mini-stb. I think the Horizon box by Samsung / Liberty Global came close to this.

In contrast, some years ago I attended a presentation by a CEO of a Scandinavian network (mainly FTTP) who said he hated *7%$#@ set-top boxes (something may have got lost in translation) and their strategy was to fit an Ethernet port in the customers home and let the customer buy the smart TV, wi-fi adaptor or set-top box as commodity items off the high street.

The difference between these two models are more than appear at first. The success of Netflix and Amazon Prime works with the latter model for places with high speed internet access, Sky Q is closer to the former model and helps eke out the most from limited network bandwidth. You could get something similar to a gateway by buying separate devices (NAS, DOCSIS modem, Wi-Fi router, smart-TVs) but who is going to fix this when things go wrong and how many content subscriptions will you need to buy to service multiple displays?

So a question was asked about edge-computing. The same question has been asked before about varying technologies. Where do you put your horses? MPEG was designed to require the most computing power at the encoders (broadcaster) and the least computing power at the decoders (CPE) to save total system costs and CPE costs. Where do you put your storage? DVR and VOD give you similar functionality but the costings are quite different, you have to build ($$$ out) a VOD network before you can earn a buck by selling the service ($ in) but customers can buy or or rent ($$$ in) a DVR and hopefully they are only manufactured as they are sold. Hard disc drives have not followed Moore's Law when they where magnetic but SSDs will, for a while, just as Moore's Law may stop applying due to physics, so the economics will shift again.

Semiconductors do follow Moore's law and the amount of computing power even in a £100 smartphone leave me gob-smacked when I remember I learnt programming first on an 8-bit 2MHz CPU with 32KB RAM and did some of my best work on a 25MHz ARM attached to 4MB RAM. The point of this nostalgia is to emphasise that we have reached the point where there is so much computing power at the edge the need for transcoding at a gateway has pretty much gone, but at the same time global warming means there is still an imperative to encode video to minimise power consumption of the CPE.

So based on this rambling, I would say edge computing will be applied where it is economic, or it creates new opportunities. It will be important in industrial applications, especially for remote sites (limited bandwidth) or distilling complex sensor information to enable local control of systems. I haven't yet imagined a domestic application other than to point out it is already happening when you make a video with a phone and upload it to Youtube (where further encoding takes place) or use Garage Band on your tablet and upload an MP3 file to share your compositions.

This infographic from HPE gives some ideas

Something I do think is driving bandwidth will be the need to regularly download software feature and security updates for all the computing devices in the home.

TL;DR Relationship with IT status: It's complicated.

[alexmcdonald] 08/5/2018 09:18

Hi Andy - I recall my time with Pace prior to 2003, it was assumed that the IOT would be aided by STBs or as Pace used to call them, Home Gateways. Pace had the functionality for IOT in prototypes as early as 2002. I recall watching a demo of items from the fridge or from shopping having their barcodes read and sent off for processing or for 're-order. Meters for gas and electricity were connected to the web so that meter readings could be done remotely. However, the reading of meters remotely is now common practice, but sadly, not through stbs!!!

[freddie01] 08/5/2018 07:49

Big Tub Lighthouse in Tobermory, Ontario, Canada under the milky way and auroras.



Sunrise - Canmore, Alberta, Canada



“Cologne main station at night”



“Harbour exit”

The exit of the Cologne Rheinau port with the Malakoff tower to the left and the chocolate museum to the right




This is the Sunken Alcove Garden in New Zealand.

[andyble] 07/5/2018 23:16

Thought for the day - and for you IT experts - will the uber growth in and demand for edge computing for IoT and so much more mean an extended use for CPE (set tops and gateways) - will this new role see a comeback in demand and new growth opportunities?

[freddie01] 07/5/2018 07:00

Spring in Japan | Kazuhiro Yashima







Migrating to their winter range, caribou of the Western Arctic herd cross the Kobuk River in northwest Alaska.

Photograph by Michio Hoshino



Mount St. Helens Aftermath: The Mountain That Was–and Will Be.

Photograph by Steve Raymer



Labrador, Canada’s Place Apart

[1carus] 03/5/2018 17:16

I'm going to stop looking at this until next tax year when I can choose to do something about it again. It's my only US Stock and my worst performer in the last 12 months.

[andyble] 03/5/2018 15:47

... and now it's walked into a market slide - c'est la vie

[freddie01] 02/5/2018 20:39

Taverna by the sea | Limeni, Mani, Greece



orange clouds ~ by cmoon view



Castelluccio di Norcia, Umbria, Italy.

[andyble] 02/5/2018 18:22

Link www.lightreading.com Alan Breznick :-

[andyble] 02/5/2018 18:00

We have seen this before after results - a jump at open then sell on the news and a momentum led surreal dive with no meaningful chart points other then carry on selling with no turning points - then later that day else a couple of days later the price respects the results - today looks like lemming trading and last ones out the door get burnt.

[bashor] 02/5/2018 17:34

Well the market seems to have spoken

[freddie01] 02/5/2018 12:23

42nd Street, NYC by Chandle Lee









Reflections at dawn



Maples



Purple Dreams



What a wonderful, colourful world …



by Jamie MacPherson



The Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls









Côtes-d'Armor France

[sikhthetech] 02/5/2018 11:27

Thanks Andy.

[andyble] 02/5/2018 10:12

... do we ever have xmas targets here!

[1gw] 02/5/2018 09:56

I agree. Very positive. US video cpe the noticeable weak spot I suppose, where it would appear they're starting to feel the drop off in volume associated with X1 rollout as penetration increases. But more than offset by strength in network and cloud and nice to see they've got a third 10% customer. And even on cpe they're guiding back up in revenue terms for 2Q (back to $1bn+ revenue).

In terms purely of the eps guidance for the year, I thought this was pretty clear;

"And if you look at the guidance range on EPS that we have, if you add in the tax benefit, et cetera, it probably moves you closer to the top end of that guidance for the year. "

Extract from Seeking Alpha again, link in Andyble's post above.

[andyble] 02/5/2018 07:04

Worth reading all of the transcript as usual and the slides are a good summary. My view is that they are still setting themselves up for beats but now which beat the beats before. Revenue should also march forward and this all leaves me on a beat of expectations.