Charter Communications has selected Nokia to provide key products needed in trial markets as the cable company looks to offload leased MVNO usage of Verizon Communications’s wireless network onto its own infrastructure using Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) technology. 

In its announcement Monday, Dallas-based Nokia didn't reveal the monetary value of its big customer win. But it did say that Charter is buying radio access network (RAN) technology from its AirScale equipment portfolio.

These products include strand-mounted radios for CBRS, baseband units, and a newly developed CBRS-based strand-mount small cells all-in-one portfolio. The strand-mounted small cells will leverage Charter's existing DOCSIS wireline infrastructure and negate the need for the MSO to build additional cell sites. 

According to a report issued last year by MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, the strand-mounted approach can save as much as 90% vs. traditional small cells because they can be hung between poles, nixing the need for permits, a separate power source, fiber backhaul and expensive labor costs for things such as fiber splicing.  

Charter spent $465 million nearly three years ago to purchase 21 CBRS priority access licenses. At the time, the company said that 80% of Spectrum Mobile traffic was being delivered over its Wi-Fi network. But the aim was to drive even more wireless traffic away from pricey leased Verizon network usage that eats into margins. 

Spectrum Mobile is currently the fastest-growing wireless service in the U.S. with nearly 6 million service lines. Moffett said he expects the wireless service to account for more than 7% of Charter's revenue by 2025. 

“Incorporating Nokia’s innovative 5G technology into our advanced wireless converged network will help us ensure that Spectrum customers in areas with a high concentration of mobile traffic continue to receive superior mobile connectivity, including the nation’s fastest wireless speeds,” Justin Colwell, executive VP of connectivity technology at Charter, said in a statement. 

“This news builds on our more than 20-year relationship working with Charter to enhance its network,” Shaun McCarthy, president of North America sales at Nokia, added. "We are excited to expand its current trial to additional select metropolitan markets in the U.S., enabling an enhanced user experience for Spectrum Mobile subscribers. This win strengthens Nokia’s leadership position in the MSO space for 5G wireless deployments.”

Nokia is in the process of rolling out a line of Android TV-powered smart TVs, as well as an OTT device powered by the Google video operating system, in Europe. 

Pricing hasn’t been announced yet. But according to AndroidAuthority, the smarts TVs will be “affordable.” Another online enthusiast hub, Nokiamob, said the Austria-based Nokia will be rolling out the devices in its home country, as well as  Germany and Switzerland. 

Nokia previously only sold its smart TVs in India. 

The news is interesting, given that Roku, through its partnership with Chinese manufacturer TCL, is also making a play for European smart TV dominance in the fourth quarter. Google, meanwhile, is making a concerted push to bolster Android TV’s global market position as an OTT device ecosystem. (Google is also in the early phases of rebranding the video OS as “Google TV.”)

Nokia's "StreamView"-branded smart TVs reportedly arrive in 43-inch - 75-inch iterations, they’re 4K/HDR-capable, and there’s a degree of “interoperability” with Nokia smart phones. The Android 9-powered sets are reportedly equipped with four HDMI inputs and “game-friendly” response times of 9.5ms. 

There’s also a super-affordable 32-inch 1080p model

“Affordable” means the product line doesn’t include high refresh rtes (they’re capped at 60Hz).

In addition to smart TVs, Nokia is also importing its Android 10-powered 4K device, the Streaming Box 8000, which reportedly includes remote control shortcut buttons to Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube and Google Play. 

“Bringing the Nokia brand to Smart TV products in Europe is a significant milestone and we are excited to have StreamView representing our brand in these categories”, said Vipul Mehrotra, VP of Nokia Brand Partnerships, in a statement. “StreamView will enable new experiences for new audiences across Europe by building on the Nokia brand experience principles and people’s expectations of a Nokia branded product.”

Canadian tech company Vecima Networks has announced the purchase of a large portion of Nokia’s cable access product portfolio.

The acquisition, terms for which weren’t announced, includes Espoo, Finland-based Nokia’s EPON and DOCSIS Provisioning over EPON (DPoE) products. Also included are Distributed Access Architecture technologies Nokia took over when it purchased startup Gainspeed in 2016.

Nokia will retain cable-related products including mobile, routing, transport, fiber, and fixed wireless access technology, along with network operations and customer experience-related solutions.

Vecima’s newly acquired DOCSIS DAA and EPON/DPoE technology and product portfolios will be integrated with its existing Entra-branded Distributed Access product suite.

Nokia employees associated with these technologies will be shifted to Vecima Networks, although it’s not clear as to how many of them will take the British Columbia-based company up on the offer.

“Our cable access solutions have played a very important role in helping to redefine next generation cable solutions and our customers' strategies for addressing evolving network demands using distributed architectures,” said Sandra Motley, president of fixed networks at Nokia, in a statement. “However, the industry continues to go through significant shifts, and we believe the timing is right to transition our cable access business to Vecima Networks. Vecima has the focus, resources and complementary product portfolio needed to support these changes and help operators move toward a Distributed Access Architecture.”

Added Sumit Kumar, president and CEO at Vecima Networks: “Nokia’s portfolio to be acquired aligns perfectly with Vecima Networks’ strategy to provide open, independent, and future-proof cable access solutions that support a multi-vendor ecosystem. The addition of these products and world-class talent broadens our DAA platform and adds 10G-EPON products to our portfolio. In addition to expanding the products and services we are providing to existing customers, we look forward to partnering with service providers around the globe we don’t currently do business with.”

5G tech supplier Nokia told Congress Wednesday (March 4) that the suggestion that non-Chinese vendors can't match the breadth and quality of 5G tech simply isn't true.

That was according to testimony from Michael Murphy, CTO, Americas, for Nokia at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on supply chain security.

He said that thanks to Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung collectively, the U.S. can claim a bunch of firsts, including "the first country in the world to launch 5G in the fourth quarter of 2018, followed by more significant launches in April of 2019; the first country in the world to launch 5G based on mmWave; the first to launch 5G on low band frequencies nationwide; the first to deploy a virtualized solution; and [it will be] the U.S. will also be the first globally to launch what is called a Standalone 5G core network, and the first to launch a technology called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing or DSS."

Given that, it told the Hill, "it is factually incorrect to say non-Chinese vendors are incapable of leading in 5G." Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Committee, said he thought that point was an important takeaway from the hearing. 

But what Chinese vendors do have, Murphy said, was aggressive financial policies to help "support its indigenous suppliers."

(One argument smaller carriers being asked by the U.S. government to replace existing Chinese tech in their networks is that the tech is there because it was lower cost (subsidized by the Chinese government) and they were bidding on government subsidy money that went to the carrier who could build out at the lowest price.)

Nokia encouraged the U.S. Export Import Bank to focus more on telecommunications so that Nokia's customers could get the same kind of lengthy, low-interest payment terms.

It said the bank, along with the International Development Finance Corporation, could provide billions of dollars in "grants, direct loans, loan guarantees, and insurance to exporters of 5G technology with its origins in the U.S, including to Nokia."

Nokia said today that Telefónica Spain will use its Deepfield Cloud Intelligence tools to troubleshot its Fusión-branded network.

Using Nokia's Cloud Genome technology, which tracks more than 50,000 popular cloud applications and over-the-top services, the solution provides real-time data on network traffic. This enables the telecom to program automated automated responses.

Nokia notes Spain’s 5.9 million online video users as the driver for its product.

"A detailed knowledge of network and service performance, in real-time, is required to truly achieve the benefits of automation,” said Javier Gutiérrez, director of strategy and network and IT development at Telefónica Spain. “The Nokia Deepfield solution gives us the necessary network visibility and actionable analytics that will allow us to automate our operations and continue to improve our network and service capabilities.”

Added Kevin Macaluso, general manager of Nokia Deepfield: ”By correlating the Deepfield Cloud Genome ‘map of the internet’ with telemetry network data, Nokia provides operators with visibility into video services and cloud applications performance throughout their network, all in software—without the need for expensive probes, taps and monitors in the network itself. This allows Nokia customers to insightfully drive automation for greater network efficiency to help assure quality and enhance security."

C Spire announced the formation of a consortium including Microsoft, Nokia, Airspan Networks and Siklu, intended to better deliver broadband services to rural areas.

Ridgeland, Miss.-based C Spire said that “real-world testbeds” will be established in Mississippi and Alabama, regions in which a third of residents don’t have broadband access, to test and deploy a variety of broadband technologies and service models.

The consortium will advance blueprints for new broadband adoption models that will be shared with regional fixed and wireless internet service providers, utilizes and other operators.

C Spire will kick off the its rural broadband initiative by hosting an International Wireless Industry Consortium’s event, “Enhancing Rural Connectivity: New Wireless Opportunities and Deployment Scenarios” at a New Orleans workshop Jan. 29-31.

"Access to and adoption of broadband technology is critically important to economically move rural communities forward and ensure they are not left behind in today's new digital economy," said C Spire president Stephen Bye, in a statement.

"Our nation's broadband adoption gap is a solvable problem that will not be limited in the next few years by the coming breath of new technologies themselves, but rather how well we facilitate them to scale at the edge," added C Spire Chief innovation officer Craig Sparks. "Hyperlocal collaboration and highly automated tools combined with these easy-to-deploy network technologies are going to be key enablers," he added. "C Spire's intent is to bring the thought leaders in this consortium together to disrupt our own thinking in these areas." 

The CBRS Alliance and the Wireless Innovation Forum announced this week that Ericsson, Nokia and Sercomm have joined Arris’ Ruckus Networks unit as the first technology vendors to achieve certification for new CBRS band devices.

Last month, Ruckus said that it had been given FCC certification for its entire portfolio of “OpenG”-branded access points designed to work in the 3.5 Ghz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum.

Related: Ruckus Gets CBRS Certification for Access Points

Cable and wireless operators are exploring opportunities for the Citizens Broadband Radio Service Device band, a 150 MHz-wide portion of largely underused spectrum existing between 3.55 GHz and 3.7 GHz. CBRS will ultimately be used for private LTE networks such as airports and industrial campuses.

Having the telecom industry’s major vendors certified is a major step in the broader plan to have CBRS commercial deployments achieved by the end of the year. Earlier today, Federated Wireless said that it has asked the FCC for permission to move forward with commercial CBRS deployments as soon as October, the company announced.

“This major milestone in the commercialization of the CBRS band represents the first of what we believe will be many more certifications announced over the next few months as the industry moves towards Initial Commercial Deployment,” said Lee Pucker, CEO of the Wireless Innovation Forum, in a statement.

By the end of the year, the CBRS Alliance said it expects to have nearly a dozen labs set up around the world to conduct testing for what it has branded as its “OnGo” certification of CBRS technology.

“We see immense value in leveraging OnGo technology for private LTE and neutral host environments and are seeing growing interest across industry sectors, including public venues, smart cities, enterprises, healthcare and more,” said Chris Stark, head of North American business development at Nokia and chairman of the CBRS Alliance.

“Ruckus Networks believes this innovation band will open up compelling new use cases by enabling LTE technology to be deployed and operated in a cost effective and scalable manner,” added Mehmet Yavuz, CTO of Ruckus Networks. “As one of the first companies to achieve FCC & OnGo certification for 3.5 GHz indoor and outdoor access points, we have been seeing extraordinary results in more than 20 OnGo trials across different verticals that are ready for initial commercial deployment and range from connectivity to automation use cases.”

India has joined the growing list of countries shutting the door on Chinese technology vendors Huawei and ZTE, excluding the companies from upcoming 5G trials over security concerns, according to a local report.

"We have written to Cisco, Samsung, Ericsson, and Nokia, and telecom service providers to partner with us to start 5G technology-based trials, and have got positive response from them," telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan reportedly told The Economic Times.

"We have excluded Huawei from these trials,” he added.

Related: ZTE, Huawei Are Excluded from Government Contracts

Responded Huawei in a statement: “We are in regular touch with [India’s Department of Telecommunications] and concerned government officials. The Indian government has always supported Huawei and has been appreciative of our path-breaking technologies and solutions.”

India is only the latest country to shut out the two Chinese tech companies, which are accused of gathering information for the Chinese government.

In the U.S., the Trump Administration is working with Congress to pass legislation that would ban the Chinese electronics makers.

And last month, the Australian government issued a restriction on Huawei and ZTE participating in the Down Under 5G rollout.

"The Australian government's decision to block Huawei from Australia's 5G market is politically motivated, not the result of a fact-based, transparent, or equitable decision-making process,” Huawei said. “It is not aligned with the long-term interests of the Australian people, and denies Australian businesses and consumers the right to choose from the best communications technology available.”

"Interpreting Chinese law should be left to qualified and impartial legal experts,” the Chinese company added. “Huawei has presented the Australian government with an independent, third-party expert analysis of the Chinese laws in question: Chinese law does not grant government the authority to compel telecommunications firms to install backdoors or listening devices, or engage in any behavior that might compromise the telecommunications equipment of other nations.” 

Deepening its reach into the growing whole-home WiFi market, Nokia has reached a deal to acquire Unium, a U.S.-based maker of WiFi mesh technology.

Financial terms were not announced, but Nokia expects to close the deal in Q1 2018.

Founded in 2002, Unium is based in Seattle and has raised at least $26.7 million in funding, according to CrunchBase. TechCrunch reports that Google Fiber is among Unium’s known customers.

Nokia is integrating Unium’s software into its home WiFi products to provide a wireless mesh that reaches into all corners of the home alongside a management system that measures wireless performance in real-time and uses that data to improve the home network’s coverage and capacity.

RELATED: Whole-Home WiFi Heats Up (subscription required)

In tandem with the acquisition announcement, Nokia introduced a new whole-home WiFi platform that includes meshed WiFi gateways and beacons that utilize Unium’s software, along with a WiFi Home Portal offering for service providers.

With the acquisition and product launch, Nokia is amplifying its focus on a part of the market that has become a higher priority for cable operators and ISPs and opened the door to other vendors that specialize in whole-home WiFi equipment and software, including eero, AirTies, Arris, Plume, Netgear and Linksys, among others.

RELATED: Comcast Launches ‘xFi,’ Invests in Plume

Federico Guillén, president of Nokia's Fixed Networks business group, said: "We look forward to having the Unium team join us. The home networking market is booming and whole-home Wi-Fi is a key enabler for this.

“Today's Wi-Fi solutions still have serious issues with sticky clients, interference, coverage gaps and capacity issues,” Federico Guillén, president of Nokia's Fixed Networks business group, said  in a statement. “With Unium inside, our Nokia Wi-Fi solution will deliver an unmatched user experience, going beyond what standard mesh Wi-Fi solutions deliver today."

Nokia denied a CNBC report that the company was preparing to make an offer to acquire Juniper Networks for $16 billion. 

Nokia noted that it doesn’t typically comment on market rumors, but said it was compelled to do so amid the report of M&A chatter, which caused shares of Nokia and Juniper to rise in after-hours trading. Nokia issued this statement:

“Nokia is not currently in talks with, nor is it preparing an offer for, Juniper Networks related to an acquisition of that company."

CNBC had reported that Nokia, which acquired Alcatel-Lucent in 2015 for $16.6 billion, would be looking to shore up in areas such as security and routing through an acquisition of Juniper, and would be paying a hefty premium for the company. Juniper’s market cap sits at about $11.1 billion.

Nokia recently scaled back its VR camera and software business, but likewise expanded into the cable access network sector following the acquisition of Gainspeed.  

RELATED: Nokia Touts Versatility With Virtualized Distributed Platform for Cable Operators

Offering another big indicator that the virtual reality (VR) market isn’t moving as rapidly as some companies would like, Nokia announced Tuesday that it will halt development on new versions of its Ozo VR camera (pictured) and other hardware products in the Ozo family.

Instead, Nokia will put more focus on technology licensing opportunities.

Nokia stressed that it will maintain comments to existing Ozo customers, but said “slower-than-expected development of the VR market” was the culprit behind the decision.

Among recent announcements, Accedo teamed with Nokia on a VR initiative to help pay TV operators and broadcasters develop and publish content in the format, and Nokia and NeuLion struck up a VR partnership last year.

Nokia also disclosed that the decision will affect as many as 310 of the 1,090 employees in Nokia Technologies, who are mostly based in Finland, the U.S. and the U.K.

Amid the slowdown on the VR front, the company said it will boost its commitment to digital health, which stems in part to its $191 million acquisition of Withings in 2016.

"Nokia Technologies is at a point where, with the right focus and investments, we can meaningfully grow our footprint in the digital health market, and we must seize that opportunity," Gregory Lee, president, of Nokia Technologies, said in a statement.

WideOpenWest announced that it has begun to deploy a new virtualized Distributed Access platform from Nokia as it looks to mine more capacity from its HFC network in certain scenarios.

WOW isn’t going for a wholesale move…at least not yet. Early on, WOW has identified some legacy brownfield markets (in Chicago and Cleveland, Ohio, according to Light Reading) where it will use Nokia’s Unified Cable Access platform (including the Gainspeed Controller and Gainspeed SC-2D Access Node and Gainspeed Video Engine) to help it pack on more capacity.

RELATED: Nokia Touts Versatility With Virtualized Distributed Platform for Cable Operators

“We have a couple of markets where we’re launching [Nokia] in locations where we are at exhaust on particular nodes and particular CMTSs [cable modem termination systems,” Cash Hagen, WOW’s chief operations officer, said. “The initial deployment allows us to go in and get immediate relief for those…Ultimately, the goal is to get to a point where this proves itself out and potentially could be [used] on a go-forward basis.”

WOW has been rolling out 1-Gig service on HFC using DOCSIS 3.1 and Arris E6000 CCAP chassis.

Hagen stressed that the work with Nokia isn’t a test or a trial, as WOW has had the company’s equipment (initially from Gainspeed, a startup acquired by Nokia last year) on its network for about two and a half years.

“It’s been through the paces…and we’re ready to go,” he said, adding that WOW plans to identify more brownfields to deploy Nokia’s solution next year, as well as some greenfield opportunities.

Though WOW’s DAA-focused work centers on fidelity and capacity gains as utilization of the DOCSIS network continues to rise and as the operator continues to split nodes and shrink down the size of individual service group, Hagen said a secondary benefit will be the relief it gives for power and space requirements at the headend.

Nokia’s new platform can run in Remote PHY or Remote MAC/PHY mode, as functionality has been reduced to a software element. Hagen said WOW is in the Remote MAC/PHY camp.

There’s been a debate roiling in cable engineering circles about the pros and cons of Remote PHY and Remote MAC/PHY, options being weighed as operators mull new Distributed Access Architectures (DAA) that aim to boost capacity while also reducing their power and space requirements in the headend or hub.

Nokia holds that the debate has been rendered moot following the debut of a new virtualized DAA platform that features a “universal” cable access node that can be configured to run as a Remote PHY (RPD) device or Remote MAC/PHY (RMD) device.

In addition to reducing space and power requirements, cable operators are also looking for DAA to improve the fidelity of the outside plant and to help them drive more capacity for DOCSIS 3.1 and set them up for Full Duplex DOCSIS, an annex for D3.1 that will support multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds and require a node+0/deep fiber network in which there are no amplifiers between the node and the home.

The new node, Nokia claims, can turn the MAC portion on or off, because it’s been reduced to an independent software virtual network function that can be controlled remotely by the cable operator.  

“We believe we’ve ended the debate,” Jeff White, head of cable strategy at Nokia’s fixed networks group, proclaimed, holding that the dividing line between the two options is now “quite small” and that this is the sort of breakthrough that makes this part of the architecture decision a secondary one for MSOs.

He added: “It’s a piece of software” that can run in a server, in a traditional CCAP [converged cable access platform] chassis or in the node itself.

Nokia, whose work in this area stems from its 2016 acquisition of Gainspeed, plans to show off its new platform at next week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

RELATED: Nokia Nabs Gainspeed

The product set and features for Nokia’s virtual DAA platform include a virtualized CMTS (that includes the DOCSIS MAC), the aforementioned universal node, and an access controller that can support both Remote PHY and Remote MAC/PHY.

Nokia’s move will also put some completive heat in other vendors that have launched or are developing DAA products, a group that includes Arris, Cisco Systems, Casa Systems, Harmonic and Huawei.

The toggling capability represents a new approach for Nokia, as Gainspeed had previously been pushing a technology agenda that centered on Remote MAC/PHY. White said the “light bulb went off” about this more flexible approach as operators started to think more critically about their network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) strategies.

White said Nokia has found that operators are looking at both options, as one or the other might work better under circumstances, scenarios and conditions.

If space in the headend is major issue, he said, a Remote MAC/PHY approach might make more sense, and allow operators to reduce or eliminate hubs. Remote MAC/PHY might also be better suited for a strategy in which an MSO is looking to centralize and virtualize the bulk of the command and control mechanisms from a centralized system or data center.

Remote PHY, he added, might be a better option if power is limited in the cable operator’s outside plant, as a Remote MAC/PHY node is likely to require between 5% to 10% more power than a Remote PHY node, which requires less processing horsepower.

White said operators are looking at a “cap and grow” approach to DAA as well as some specific use cases, such as a “hotspot” on the network or in contested MDU environments. Still others might go at it hub-by-hub as they look to consolidate those.

Nokia hasn’t announced any deployments, but Comcast, Liberty Global and WideOpenWest were among the MSOs that praised Nokia’s acquisition of Gainspeed last year. At the time, WOW said it was “well down the path" with testing and "preparing for deployment" of Gainspeed's vCCAP.

“Nokia is revolutionizing the cable industry with an innovative new cable solution that gives operators the flexibility to implement a distributed access architecture without being handcuffed to a specific approach,” Cash Hagen, WOW’s chief operations officer, said the release issued Monday. “Virtualizing the DAA not only simplifies the network and drives cost savings, it also allows us to accelerate the delivery of new services that ultimately provide a better customer experience.”

Despite a week of upbeat virtual reality developments, promises and encouragement -- the first Disney-backed Marvel VR game, six Emmy nominations for VR "experiences," an endorsement from a top streaming media packager plus a big (albeit temporary) discount from Oculus -- the outlook for the immersive technology continues to baffle media analysts.

The recent string of frothy announcements comes just a few weeks after Ericsson released a generally effusive outlook about VR, especially its value in video programming.

So while technology and programming suppliers continue to proclaim VR's looming role in entertainment (as well as in industrial, medical and other professional applications), media operators are still going slow in planning for the bandwidth and transmission requirements that VR will require. For now, much of the discussion still revolves around the near-VR (but usually not immersive) presentations of 360⁰ cameras, increasingly showing up as thumbnail videos in social media and other online feeds.

Nonetheless, the mid-summer bump of simultaneous VR developments served as a reminder that this technology could still become a $100 billion global industry by 2020 (as Nokia forecasts) and reach 49.2 million American by 2019, according to a report by eMarketer.

At Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, Calif., last weekend, the studio plunged back into the games category (from which it had withdrawn last year) via its subsidiary Marvel. It unveiled "Marvel Powers United VR," which will debut next year. Gamers can play at varying skill levels using Marvel characters such as Rocket Raccoon, Deadpool, Captain Marvel and The Hulk. Disney has partnered with Facebook-owned Oculus.

Related > CTA Projects Record Revenue for VR

A day before D23 began, when the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced nominees for the 69th Emmy Awards, VR was in the running with six projects nominated in the "Original Interactive Program" and "Creative Achievement in Interactive Media Within a Scripted Program" categories (the academy hasn't created a VR category).

In the first category, all three nominations came from Oculus, some with a partner. One of those nominees is The People's House, featuring a White House tour with Barack and Michelle Obama. The second category included The Mr. Robot Virtual Reality Experience from USA Universal Cable Productions, Stranger Things VR Experience from Netflix and CBS Digital, and The Simpsons – Planet of the Couches from Gracie Films, 20th Century Fox Television and Google Spotlight Stories.

More Content, Lower Prices
Separately, Oculus announced that it will put $50 million of the $250 million already committed to VR content into “non-gaming, experiential VR content," according to published reports.

Meanwhile Oculus just slashed its equipment pricing. It has temporarily bundled its Rift headset and Touch controller into a $399 package, about $200 lower than the $598 price announced in March, which itself marked a drop from the $799 Oculus kit price early this year. The company said the summer-long promotional pricing seeks to attract potential customers who "may have been sitting on the sideline because of price," as well as viewers who have been waiting for more apps and games to become available.

Related > VR Equipment Market Mixed: Study

And at a July 18 webinar on "How to Produce, Deliver, Monetize & Experience VR Content,” NeuLion and Nokia executives urged media companies to plunge into VR opportunities.

VR has moved "beyond simple streaming,” said NeuLion executive VP Chris Wagner, because "there’s so much more to do to interact with the viewer” to enhance the video-viewing experience.

“Compelling content is [vital] to make sure that you have that most immersive experience,” added Malachi Bierstein, head of VR sales at Nokia. 

“Without the content, not really much else matters," Bierstein said in published reports from the webinar. "So, really that compelling content is going to be the ultimate driver of VR adoption."

Their pleas for high-quality video content backed up findings from an extensive Ericsson "Merged Reality" study published a few weeks earlier.

That study found that 54% of respondents believe VR devices will become the new screens for video. About the same number (53%) expect video to be one of the most popular uses for VR.

Notably, current "early adopters" were significantly more enthusiastic than survey respondents who "are planning to use a headset," but the overall optimism is promising for a product that currently has a very limited footprint. (According to eMarketer, only 2.9% of Americans now use a VR headset at least once-per-month, a figure that will grow to just 5.2% by 2019.)

Related: Facebook Dives Deeper Into AR

Many analysts still believe that augmented reality -- a more limited, less expensive approach to content enhancement that doesn't require special headsets and other gear -- will make its mark in the mass media well before VR. As an example: During next month's total solar eclipse, the Weather Channel will use AR during its all-day coverage to explain the science of how the eclipse develops.

Perhaps even more pertinent: A Facebook group that has focused on VR for several years this week expanded its name to "Virtual and Augmented Reality."

Frontier Communications is joining the small but building G.fast wave by deploying the technology to some apartments and multi-dwelling units across Connecticut.

G.fast is a new standard that can help ISPs extend the life of DSL networks and position them to deliver 1-Gig speeds without FTTP upgrades while also giving them access to technology that can compete more directly with the performance of cable’s widespread DOCSIS networks.

RELATED: ITU Stamps G.fast

Frontier and Nokia said they’ll deliver “fiber-like speeds” to buildings targeted by the G.fast platform.

"Nokia's field-proven G.fast solution will help Frontier quickly bring ultra-broadband access to customers by using the existing copper twisted-pair wiring that is often found in apartment buildings,” Steve Gable, Frontier’s EVP and CTO said in a statement.” Without it, we'd have to drill holes and pull fiber into each apartment unit we serve, a time-consuming and challenging process that can be frustrating for customers. Nokia's solution allows us to deliver new enhanced services without ever having to enter the place of residence."

RELATED: Windstream Brings G.fast to MDUs

Nokia said it has completed G.fast trials with more than 40 customers and is involved in commercial deployments with 10 partners, including Openreach, Chunghwa Telecom, A1 Telekom Austria and Energia Communications.

Of recent note, Windstream teamed up with Calix to deploy G.fast to MDUs in Lincoln, Neb. Last year, U.K. telecom BT said it wasdelivering up to 330 Mbps in a G.fast trial.

Nokia and AT&T said they have teamed up to test 5G fixed-wireless streaming of the DirecTV Now OTT TV service over a 39 GHz system using the vendor’s commercially-available AirScale radio access platform.

The trial was conducted at the AT&T Labs facility in Middletown, N.J.

RELATED: Verizon Gets a Fix on 5G Trials 

They said the test demonstrates how OTT services can be delivered with new technologies that operate at high frequencies, noting that the 39 GHz and the 28 GHz bands are “particularly attractive” given the large swaths of bandwidth available there.

39 GHz, they added, is a “strong candidate” for 5G, an emerging standard that promises low latency alongside gigabit-class data throughputs. Nokia said it began testing millimeter wave technology with AT&T in 2016.

RELATED: DirecTV Now Drives 200K Pay TV Adds at AT&T in Q4

"With this trial, we're doing something that no other operator has done - regionally or globally,” Tom Keathley, SVP of wireless network architecture and design at AT&T, said in a statement.  “We expect 39 GHz to be an important 5G band in the United States, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with Nokia to further advance 5G technology in this  band. “

During the final days of CES, Guido Voltolina seemed as tired as most everyone who worked the annual tech convention.

Yet the head of virtual reality capture for Nokia, makers of the professional-grade Ozo VR camera and VR production ecosystem, still managed to sound excited about the state of the VR industry, and not just about what his company is doing in the space.

“The trend we’re seeing is, the quality of content has become really appealing and entertaining,” Voltolina said. “The fact is, there’s a business growing, it’s just not mature. [And] although virtual reality is new and novel, the availability and quality of experiences are becoming mature.”

To date, there’s been “lots of trying” and “lots of demos” for first-adopters of today’s VR technology, he said, but added that after everything he saw during a week at CES, “the [cinematic VR] content is really appealing and entertaining, and it’s [getting] better and better.”

Specifically, Voltolina pointed to what Hollywood studios are doing in the VR space, such as 20th Century Fox debuting VR experiences for both its “Alien” and “Planet of the Apes” franchises. He noted that Sony Pictures has partnered with Nokia to produce VR content as well.

VR had been treated as a marketing gimmick -- something to tie into the intellectual property of franchises, Voltolino said.

“It was just a commercial, a marketing item,” Voltolina said. “Now it’s a complimentary piece to the content."

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Roughly two months after salting away its acquisition of Gainspeed, Nokia has unveiled a virtualized version of the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) that spans support for HFC- and PON-delivered services and applies a vision for the industry’s all-IP future.

Nokia timed the announcement with this week's SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia. 

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Nokia’s vCCAP, which factors in a shift toward energy- and bandwidth-efficient distributed access architectures that push transport electronics toward the edge of the network, is comprised of a mix of products that incudes elements acquired via Gainspeed and developed previously by Nokia. They include the Gainspeed-branded, software-driven Access Controller, Video Engine, and access nodes that support DOCSIS 3.1 and DOCSIS 3.1 (the SC-2D), and another access node that supports 10G EPON (the SF-4X). Nokia said the new solution will be commercially available later this year, with the SF-4X slated for launch in early 2017.

Currently in a number of customer lab and field trials across North America and Europe, the new unified cable access solution will be available commercially later this year with the SF-4X following in early 2017.

“We’ve been aggressively working together and integrating Gainspeed into the Nokia family, both the people and the products,” Jeff White, head of cable strategy and business development at Nokia, who joined the company from Gainspeed following the acquisition,” said, noting that the system is capable of managing and orchestrating not just CCAPs but other types of media and devices on the network and accelerate the deployment of new services.

While remote PHY architectures are becoming popular among some vendor products, Nokia’s approach is to distribute both the MAC and PHY elements. The platform’s Video Engine will help MSOs adapt their video services to the new Ethernet-powered network while keeping their legacy components intact.

White said Nokia’s angle will help MSOs reduce power and space requirements at headends that are outfitted with centralized, “big iron” CCAP chassis as capacity demands continue to rise. It can also prolong the need for MSOs to pull fiber to the premises, or at least put them in position to do so further down the road.

“As capacity grows at a fast clip, doubling every two years, they [cable operators] are literally running out of space in the headends,” White said.

Nokia will be using the new vCCAP product line to compete with cable access rivals such as Arris, Cisco Systems, Casa Systems, Harmonic and Huawei.

“The virtual CCAP is a legitimate phenomenon,” Jeff Heynen, consulting director and analyst at SNL Kagan, said in an interview for a feature story on this topic that will be featured online and in Cable-Tec Expo dailies that will be distributed this week by Multichannel News (link to preview edition). “I think this is an opportunity with vendors without share to get some traction.” 

White said Nokia is pursuing a wide range of deployment scenarios, including those specific to multiple-dwelling units (MDUs), as operators consider alternative architectures as they split nodes and go “fiber-deep,” and even putting its new platform side-by-side with legacy platforms. Yet another option, he said, is the notion of removing an existing CCAP and converting headends and hubs to virtual and distributed systems.

Nokia has not announced any specific trials or deployments with MSOs, but said it is in multiple customer lab and field trials with “major” operators in North America and Europe.

When the Nokia-Gainspeed deal was announced, Comcast, Liberty Global and WideOpenWest all praised the acquisition, with WOW noting that it was testing Gainspeed’s platform and “preparing for deployment.”

Gainspeed, based in California, was founded in 2012 by Shlomo Rakib, a DOCSIS pioneer and co-founder of Terayon  Communication Systems (sold to Motorola in 2007). Nokiaannounced its agreement to acquire Gainspeed on June 9.

NeuLion and Nokia have inked a partnership whereby NeuLion will help to distribute virtual reality and video 360 content captured with Nokia’s OZO VR camera and player software platform. 

Working with content owners and content rights holders, they will offer a jointly integrated platform that allows for a single stitched live video feed from OZO cameras to be sent directly to NeuLion MC Encoders for packaging and delivery to VR apps via the Internet using NeuLion’s Digital Platform.

They said they will demo the integrated offering at next month’s IBC show in Amsterdam.

Nokia’s OZO is a spherical camera with eight sensors and eight microphones for the capture and post-production of 360 video and VR content. NeuLion and Nokia noted that they recently captured a live event using OZO, which was positioned inside the arena.

“We are excited to partner with NeuLion to provide their customers with an integrated solution to deliver 360 and VR experiences over-the-top,” Tarif Sayed, director of business development for Live VR & the OZO Player SDK for Nokia, said in a statement.

“Now that live 360 video and virtual reality are hitting the mainstream, you need an end-to-end platform that includes production and delivery to make it happen. We are excited to be working with Nokia on this new capability,” added Roy Reichbach, president and CEO of NeuLion. 

As part of its multi-year partnership with The Walt Disney Studios, Nokia has helped create yet another virtual reality experience for a new theatrical release from the studio, this time for Pete’s Dragon.

Using Nokia’s 360-degree Ozo camera, “Pete’s Dragon: Elliot’s Flyover” takes viewers on a flight on top of Elliot, the dragon from the film.

The short was shot on location in New Zealand, uses CGI effects, and is “our most immersive collaboration with Disney to date,” according to Guido Voltolina, head of presence capture for Nokia.

Read more at B&C. 

Watch the 360-degree video via YouTube: 

In a deal that will position it for cable’s shift to more efficient, next-gen access networks, Nokia has inked a deal to acquire Gainspeed, a startup that has been developing a “virtual” form of a converged cable access platform (CCAP) that will help pave the industry’s path toward an all-IP future.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Gainspeed, a Sunnyvale, Calif.- based company founded in 2012, has raised about $55 million thanks to investors that include NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Shasta Ventures, Technicolor and Juniper Networks, which led Gainspeed's "B" round and, until Nokia swooped in, was considered to be among the top potential suitors if Gainspeed sought an M&A exit. 

The deal is expected to close in Q3 2016, with Gainspeed becoming part of Nokia's Fixed Networks business group, which is led by unit president Federico Guillen. Gainspeed presently has about 70 employees, but it’s not yet known how many will be joining Nokia.

For Gainspeed, the acquisition should give its technology and products a much better shot at gaining significant adoption among larger operators, which tend to shy away from making major commitments to startups.  Gainspeed has not announced any trials or deployments with cable operators. However, top execs from Comcast, Liberty Global and WideOpenWest offered quotes in the announcement praising the deal (see below). Among that trio, WOW said it is "well down the path" with testing and "preparing for deployment" of Gainspeed's vCCAP. 

For Nokia, which closed its merger with Alcatel-Lucent earlier this year,  the addition of Gainspeed will complement its current fiber access products and arm it with a vCCAP as MSOs apply more weight to virtualized and more distributed hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network architectures amid the roll out the multi-gigabit DOCSIS 3.1 platform and their migration toward an all-IP service platform.

Nokia’s purchase of Gainspeed will also enable it to compete in a CCAP sector that includes companies such as Arris, Cisco Systems, Casa Systems, Harmonic, and Huawei, among others.

While today’s CCAPs are highly centralized and some vendors, such as Cisco, are pushing for remote PHY approaches, Gainspeed angle with a virtual CCAP will distribute the MAC and PHY to the edges of the network while centralizing the control and management of the network in the data center. These various approaches have formed the basis of a healthy debate in cable engineering circles. 

Gainspeed was founded by Shlomo Rakib, a DOCSIS pioneer and co-founder of Terayon  Communication Systems (sold to Motorola in 2007).

Former Harmonic exec Krishnan Padmanabhan joined Gainspeed as CEO on Sept. 2, 2014. He discussed his vision and near-term priorities for the company with Multichannel News soon after.

In that interview, Padmanabhan acknowledged that operators will not be eager to rip out their networks and start from scratch just to introduce virtual CCAP, offering that interest in the approach is “most likely a cap-and-grow strategy, meaning in a given headend or a city where they already have significant investments of edge QAMs and CCAPs in there.”

He was also confident that Gainspeed could resonate with bigger operators that don’t typically place big bets on products from startups because the technology it brings to the table can solve some important problems.

“If we were walking in selling some commodity and we’re the fourth supplier and the other three are big companies, I think it would be a very difficult task. The reality is, we’re not walking in offering a commodity. We’re walking in helping them solve a massive and pressing business problem with this IP traffic explosion.” 

Here are the statements from MSOs praising the deal:

“New and innovative services in broadband are important to us and to our customers.  We appreciate technology partners who make innovation one of their core values and look forward to Nokia and Gainspeed joining forces to bring new technologies and products to the industry.”

— Tony Werner, President, Technology and Product, Comcast Cable

“Gainspeed is one of the pioneers in the Remote PHY and Remote MAC-PHY architecture development. They have been committed to developing this solution for the cable industry, and I congratulate them on becoming part of Nokia. The combination of Gainspeed’s innovations and Nokia’s scale will be a positive contribution to the access solutions for our industry.”

— Balan Nair, Chief Technology Officer, Liberty Global 

“Gainspeed has been a leader in the broad industry shift toward Distributed Access Architectures to handle increased bandwidth demands and support of the network transformation to all IP. We are well down the path testing and preparing for deployment of Gainspeed’s Virtual CCAP solution and have been using Nokia access products for years. We are excited to see these technology leaders coming together, and view their solutions as a key strategic component in our network evolution and delivery of gigabit services.”

— Cash Hagen, Chief Technology Officer, WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone

Microsoft said Wednesday that it would lay off up to 7,800 workers, mainly in its mobile phone unit, in a restructuring effort aimed at refocusing the software giant on its core businesses.

As a result of the cuts, Microsofft said it would record a $7.6 billion impairment charge related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services (NDS) business in addition to a restructuring charge of between $750 million and $800 million.

This would be the second major restructuring since new CEO Satya Nadella came on board last year. In July 2014, Microsoft said it would jettison about 18,000 workers, again mostly in the phone unit, in an effort to become “more agile.”

Nadella outlined the changes in an email to employees Wednesday.

In a statement, Microsoft said the most recent changes follow moves to realign company priorities, including recent changes to its engineering teams and leadership, plans to transfer the company’s imagery acquisition operations to Uber, and shifts in its display advertising business that allow it to invest further in search.

 “We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem including our first-party device family,” Nadella said in a statement. “In the near-term, we’ll run a more effective and focused phone portfolio while retaining capability for long-term reinvention in mobility.”

The software behemoth purchased Nokia in 2013 and was  one of then-CEO’s Steve Ballmer’s most highly criticized deals. Analysts at the time believed the $7.2 billion purchase ($9.4 billion including acquired cash) saddled the company with an outdated  legacy business.

The day after confirming that M&A talks were underway, Nokia said Wednesday that it has struck a deal to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a stock deal valued at €15.6 billion (US$16.6 billion), an agreement that should put the companied company on squarer competitive footing against Ericsson and Chinese telecom giant Huawei.

The boards of both sides have approved the terms of the proposed deal, which they expect to close by the first half of 2016. Under those terms, Alcatel-Lucent shareholders will own 33.5% of the fully diluted share capital of the combined company, with Nokia shareholders owning 66.5%.

The combined company will be called Nokia Corporation and be headquartered in Finland, while maintaining a large presence in France. Risto Siilasmaa is planned to serve as chairman, and Rajeev Suri as CEO.

The aim is to generate a complementary portfolio of fixed and mobile broadband gear, IP routing and core networks products and cloud applications and services, and to target a wide geography with “particular strength” in the U.S., China, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

They expect the combined company, which will  have about 114,000 employees, to generate operating cost synergies of about €900 million (US$953 million) annually by 2019. They anticipate combined net sales of €25.9 billion (US$27.4 billion)

The companies talked up the innovation-facing components of the deal, claiming they’ll be able to take combined advantage of Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs and Nokia's FutureWorks, as well as Nokia Technologies, which will stay as a separate entity focused on licensing and the incubation of new technologies. 

“We have hugely complementary technologies and the comprehensive portfolio necessary to enable the internet of things and transition to the cloud,” Suri said, in a statement. “Together, we expect to have the scale to lead in every area in which we choose to compete, drive profitable growth, meet the needs of global customers, develop new technologies, build on our successful intellectual property licensing, and create value for our shareholders.

“The global scale and footprint of the new company will reinforce its presence in the United States and China,” added Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes.

Analysts said there are pros and cons to the proposed marriage.

“When you consider the strengths and weaknesses of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia and their product portfolios, a merger of the two businesses seems logical,” Ovum said in a statement issued Tuesday about the prospect of a Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent combo. “Nokia is a mobile-only equipment vendor, while Alcatel-Lucent’s strengths are in the fixed network business (especially core network and IP routing). It has long-struggled in the wireless business, and its attempts to become a leading player in LTE have failed. Alcatel-Lucent has also been active in SDN/NFV with CloudBand and Nuage and aggressive with small cells – areas where Nokia is perceived to be lagging behind competition.”

But Ovum said a merger is also rife with risks, as it could “plunge both businesses back into a period of introspection and restructuring” and create “significant duplication in areas such as mobile broadband and small cells.”

On the mobile end, the new company will have a global market share of 35%, behind market-leader Ericsson (40%), but ahead of Huawei's 20%, Reuters said, citing Bernstein Research. Ovum estimates that Nokia and Alcatel Lucent’s combined share of total LTE contracts was at 26% at the end of 2014, behind Huawei (36%) and Ericsson (33%).

J.P. Morgan served as financial advisor to Nokia and delivered a fairness opinion to the Board of Directors of Nokia in connection with the transaction. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Roschier, Attorneys Ltd served as legal advisors. Zaoui & Co is acting as lead M&A advisor to Alcatel-Lucent and delivered a fairness opinion to the Board of Directors of Alcatel-Lucent in connection with the transaction. Sullivan & Cromwell LLP served as legal advisor.

Microsoft plans to cut up to 18,000 jobs in the next year, with most of those reductions tied to the company’s recently acquired Nokia unit.

The coming cuts, representing about 14% of Microsoft’s employee base, would mark the largest layoff in its history. Microsoft said the cuts are necessary to fulfill its plan to “become more agile and move faster.”

“Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies and strategic alignment,” new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees in a message posted Thursday.

He said the decision will affect about 12,500 jobs in Microsoft’s Nokia Devices and Services unit. On the product end, Microsoft plans to shift “select” Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. Today’s Nokia X products, which represent the lower end of the company’s handset lineup, run a version of Android.

“We will be particularly focused on making the market for Windows Phone,” Stephen Elop, Microsoft’s EVP of devices and services, and the former CEO of Nokia, said in an email to employees, also sent Thursday. “In the near term, we plan to drive Windows Phone volume by targeting the more affordable smartphone segments, which are the fastest growing segments of the market, with Lumia. In addition to the portfolio already planned, we plan to deliver additional lower-cost Lumia devices by shifting select future Nokia X designs and products to Windows Phone devices. We expect to make this shift immediately while continuing to sell and support existing Nokia X products.”

Microsoft closed its acquisition of Nokia in April.

Microsoft did not initially spell out how the coming layoffs might affect Microsoft’s Xbox business. In a separate letter sent to employees on July 10, Nadella talked about Microsoft’s commitment to a “mobile-first world,” but also said that Microsoft “will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox.”

Speaking at the Code conference in May, Nadella said he had no plans to sell off the Xbox business. However, Variety reported Thursday that Microsoft is reconsidering its strategy of developing original series for the Xbox platform. Re/code followed with a report that Microsoft plans to shut down its Xbox Entertainment Studios division, though projects already in production will continue as will the company's plans to create a series about the company's popular Halo gaming franchise.

Update: Microsoft confirmed that it will shut down the division, adding that its app partnerships for TV, entertainment, sports and entertainment content will also not be impacted “in any way and remain an important component of our Xbox strategy.”

Microsoft, Nadella said, is already making plans to cut the first 13,000 positions over the next six months. He will “share further specifics on where we are focusing our innovation investments” on July 22, when Microsoft reports earnings.

Microsoft said the plan will be “substantially complete” by the end of 2014, and fully completed by June 30, 2015. It expects to incur pre-tax charges of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion over the next four quarters, including $750 million to $800 million for severance and related benefit costs, and $350 million to $800 million of asset-related charges.