Here’s a recap of last week's industry news that is worth noting:

Companies and Products

Broadcom reported revenue and earnings for fiscal Q4 of 2016. Wireless revenue was $1.35 billion, a jump of 34 percent above the prior quarter and 98 percent over the year-ago quarter. Listen to CEO Hock Tan's summary and Q1 outlook:

The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating profile of Huawei, its hard driving culture and 72-year-old founder Ren Zhengfei. Formed in 1987, Huawei has overtaken Ericsson in base stations and is #3 in smartphones, behind Samsung and Apple.

IDT introduced a 75 Ω, 5 MHz to 3 GHz SPDT switch designed for DOCSIS 3.1. With 77 and 110 channels, linearity is −90 dBc CTB and CSO with 44 dBmV output. At 1200 MHz, insertion loss is 0.32 dB, isolation 68 dB.

Keysight and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) demonstrated a 300 m data link at 60 GHz, achieving greater than a 2 Gbps data rate with a 32-element array. Changing the link distance, the system achieved 4 Gbps at 100 m and 500 Mbps at 800 m. DC power consumption was under 4 W. The companies said this is the world’s longest bidirectional phased-array link in the 60 GHz band.

MACOM has opened an office in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, which will be a “center of excellence” for RF energy applications. The firm's European footprint already includes offices in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the U.K.

Targeting EW and test and measurement applications to 28 GHz, Microsemi released six broadband MMICs: four LNAs and two switches. Also, the company received the Best Quality Partner Award from Huawei; Microsemi supplies Wi-Fi PAs and front-end modules to Huawei.

Filter startup Resonant secured another development award with an existing first-tier customer, this one to develop temperature-compensated SAW (TC-SAW) filters — the first TC-SAW filters Resonant will design.  

Markets and Technology

Cellular — According to data released by Ovum, LTE penetration in North America during Q3 reached 79 percent of the 360 million population, i.e., 284 million people. The next highest, Western Europe, had 43 percent penetration. LTE networks are making 62 percent of the mobile connections in North America, compared to 38 percent for the region including Oceania, Eastern and Southeastern Asia.

5G — AT&T is expanding its 5G millimeter wave demo at the Texas Wireless Summit to field trials at both 15 and 28 GHz. The demo, using Ericsson equipment, streamed 4K HD video and reached speeds of nearly 14 Gbps.

Guy Daniels of Telecom TV compares the 5G strategies of AT&T and Verizon, based on comments from their CEOs at a recent investor conference. He characterizes Verizon as “the rebel.”

Broadband — Verizon began taking orders for Fios fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) hookups in several Boston neighborhoods. Since April, when Verizon announced plans to serve Boston, the company has deployed 160 miles of fiber.

A week ago, Altice, the #4 cable operator in the U.S., announced it would deploy 10G fiber throughout its U.S. network. Doug Dawson questions the announcement: is it fiber all the way to the home?  

Semiconductor Technology — Leti, an institute of French R&D organization CEA Tech, demonstrated vertically stacked nanowire MOSFETs, the first functional devices with a SiGe source and drain that induce strain in the channel to boost performance and an inner spacer to reduce parasitic capacitance. Leti says these are required for using a nanowire architecture to achieve a 5 nm node.

Defense and Space — Construction is underway of Jeff Bezos' 750,000 ft² Blue Origin rocket factory at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The facility will manufacture the New Glenn launch vehicle.

SpaceX delayed the next launch of the Falcon 9 rocket until January, to allow more time to investigate a launch pad explosion that occurred in September. The delayed launch will carry Iridium NEXT satellites into orbit.  

Speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum, the Pentagon's chief arms buyer, Frank Kendall, said he is “hopeful” that a three-year block buy of F-35s will be approved. The block will comprise more than 400 aircraft for the U.S. and other countries. The argument for the large quantity is to gain economies of scale that will lower the unit cost of the aircraft.

China — China reported November imports and exports: imports increased 6.7 percent and exports were up slightly at 0.1 percent, netting a trade surplus of $44.6 billion The growth was unexpected, with imports growing the most in more than two years.

Technology and Society — Salo, a Finnish city that grew with the success of Nokia, is seeking a rebirth through innovation and startups, drawing upon the void left by Nokia and Microsoft. Read the Wall Street Journal article.

Ericsson released their annual prediction of the top 10 consumer trends for the coming year. Among them: motion sickness will increase as we adopt autonomous vehicles and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR).

Your feedback about the weekly report is always welcome. If you have a topic you’d like to see included, please send it to me at glerude@mwjournal.com.

Have a good week.