Here’s my weekly summary of interesting industry news:

Companies and Products

While Broadcom proposes to take over Qualcomm’s board, CNBC reported that Microsoft and Google are concerned Broadcom’s acquisition would favor Apple and reduce Qualcomm's 5G investment. CNBC reported that Qualcomm asked the companies to remain quiet about their concerns, hoping Broadcom would increase its $70 per share offer.

It was a good week for Ericsson: Verizon selected the company to provide the networking equipment for Verizon’s 28 GHz, pre-standard 5G fixed wireless access service, scheduled to be deployed in several U.S. communities during the second half of 2018. Ericsson also won a five-year deal with Deutsche Telekom to modernize the existing 2G, 3G and 4G equipment across half of Germany; Ericsson will upgrade the network to be ready for 5G.

Finisar received a $390 million “award” from Apple to boost VCSEL (vertical-cavity self-emitting laser) manufacturing capacity at a mothballed plant in Sherman, Texas. VCSELs enable Face ID and the TrueDepth camera in the iPhone X. Finisar clarified the nature of the award, stating “Apple has not made a debt or equity investment in Finisar. The amount referred to by Apple represents anticipated future business between the companies over a period of time.”

Kymeta and Intelsat formally launched the KĀLO mobile internet service, which combines Kymeta's flat panel, electronically-steered satellite terminals with Intelsat's satellite network. The service, available in most regions of the globe, offers 4 Mbps priced “by the gigabyte.”

Marvell announced three 802.11ax access point SoCs designed for enterprise, retail, service provider and set-top box applications. Features include up to 8 x 8 MIMO with eight spatial streams, uplink and downlink OFDMA, 2.4 and 5 GHz, integrated Bluetooth and precision location capability.

Markets and Technology

Semiconductors — Fujitsu Laboratories reported researchers bonded a single-crystal diamond to a SiC substrate at room temperature. Once commercialized, the diamond bonding process will enable GaN on SiC power transistors to achieve higher power density and lead to higher power systems.

Cellular/5G — SMS (short message service), the texting app that surprised operators by its popularity and profitability — and riled so many parents of teenagers — marked its 25^th anniversary on 3 December. Its popularity is waning, however, replaced by over-the-top messaging apps like iMessage, Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

Zahid Ghadialy, author of The 3G4G Blog, wrote an interesting review of mobile patent activity, including 5G. Considering 5G RAN, modulation/waveforms and core networking, Qualcomm seems to have the best IP position.

At the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) meeting last month in Santa Clara, California, Guy Daniels of Telecom TV interviewed the co-chairs of the millimeter wave project group, Salil Sawhney, the manager of connectivity technologies and ecosystems at Facebook, and Andreas Gladisch, the VP for technology innovation at Deutsche Telekom. They shared the group’s goals, targeted use cases, scope of the group’s efforts and why they are focusing on 60 GHz.

Ericsson published the Microwave Industry Outlook for point-to-point radio, which covers future capacity requirements, microwave and fiber backhaul, trends in spectrum, 5G evolution and SDN for microwave. A free Ericsson webinar on 20 December will provide a summary of the report’s findings.

Verizon opened a 5G incubator in New York City to explore new uses for Verizon’s pre-commercial 5G technology, particularly those requiring high data rates and low latency. Six start-ups and two academic groups were invited to be the initial participants.

Broadband — AT&T is conducting two field trials of its Gbps broadband over power line technology, dubbed Project AirGig. One trial is in Georgia, with Georgia Power, the other at an undisclosed location outside the U.S.

The FCC voted, 3 to 2, to roll back the Title II classification of internet service providers and adopt what chair Ajit Pai calls “light touch” regulation. Watch the commissioners’ statements and votes, thanks to C-SPAN, beginning at 1:10:56. An informative historic discussion of what led to the concept of net neutrality and Thursday’s FCC decision was one of the stories on The Daily podcast (use below player), starting at 8:19.

The FCC vote seems not to have settled the issue, rather to have thrown gas on the flames, sending the battle to the courts and states. If you're still digesting the topic, these six essays compiled by the editorial team at Medium will add to your knowledge.

Autonomous Vehicles — This is not your father's Renault: Renault says its demo electric car, named SYMBIOZ, is capable of level 4 autonomous driving. The exterior lights turn blue when the car is driving itself, so you can get off the road if you see it coming.

Aerospace and Defense — President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, announcing a foundation to return U.S. astronauts to the moon and “an eventual mission to Mars.” The president said he was “reclaiming America’s proud destiny in space.”

Technology and Society — IBM is offering early access to quantum computing to 12 organizations, letting each "play" with IBM's 20 qubit quantum computer in the cloud. So far, error rates are too high for these computers to be useful. Do you understand how quantum computing is supposed to work?

Women dominated computer programming at the dawn of the computer age, yet they are a fraction of programmers today. Why? A discussion with historian Marie Hicks at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California addressed the history of women in technology and the continuing presence of sexual harassment. According to Hicks, “It’s not about the skills, it’s about who’s doing the work. The work gets valued in different ways depending on who is doing it.” Read more and watch the discussion here; the video discussion starts at 6:00.

Thomas Marzetta was awarded the Industrial Innovation Award by the IEEE Communications Society for originating the concept of massive MIMO. His paper, Noncooperative Cellular Wireless with Unlimited Numbers of Base Station Antennas, was published in 2010.

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