Tower company Crown Castle this week posted $1.02 billion in revenue in the first quarter, and noted it has an “extended runway of growth” ahead.
According to CEO Jay Brown, the company is expecting to install nearly 25,000 small cells over the next 18 to 24 months. Around 80 percent of those nodes will be built in top 10 markets, with 25 percent in Southern California. The completion of that pipeline of projects will double the number of small cell nodes the company has installed to date, he said.
And there are other positive industry trends flowing in Crown Castle’s favor for the future. As noted by Wells Fargo’s Senior Analyst Jennifer Fritzsche: “CCI increased its 2017 guide, based on increased carrier activity, and importantly does not include any contribution from its Wilcon acquisition, FirstNet, or 600 MHz builds. We fully expect those will come, but believe they will be more of a 2018 story.”
China Unicom is teaming up with Nokia to conduct a live trial of the latter’s Virtualized Service Router for residential broadband services.
According to Nokia, the trial will involve more than 5,000 residential subscribers in Shandong province and enable simplified and accelerated delivery of services using a flexible network based on virtualized network functions. Nokia said the trial will expand to other parts of the country over the next two years as it evolves into subsequent phases. Those will include delivery of IPTV services, Nokia said.
The move comes as part of China Unicom’s push to adopt Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to enhance efficiency, agility, openness, and scaling capabilities, and evolve to a cloud-ready network. Nokia said the trial will increase operational efficiency and enable faster creation and delivery of new services. The trial uses the Nokia VSR as a next-generation, virtualized Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) for residential subscriber management functions and advanced service capabilities. As part of its initiative to transform its metro service edge, China Unicom also plans to migrate massive BNG services to the virtualized platform to leverage the opportunities of the cloud era.
Verizon’s Telematics division continued its Internet of Things push this week with the launch of new Electronic Logging Device (ELD) solutions.
The carrier said the move comes ahead of a December 2017 deadline for compliance with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA’s) mandate. Verizon Telematics said its ELD-ready bundles are designed to conform to certain technical specifications and serve as a one-stop shop for customers who need to meet the ELD mandate requirements before the deadline.
“The impending ELD mandate can cause a lot of confusion and even panic for large enterprise fleets and small businesses – it’s a very complicated and arduous process but businesses required to meet the mandate have to get there by December 18,” Verizon Telematics’ VP of Product Marketing Kelly Frey commented. “By combining hardware and software, plus components that satisfy the needs of the back office and the driver, we not only help customers meet their compliance requirements, but can also help save them a huge amount of legwork on the front end.”
The carrier is offering a number of different bundles for hardware and monthly software subscription pricing, including telematics hardware and installation, onboarding assistance, ELD and driver vehicle inspection reporting (DVIR) software, two-way messaging, in-cab tablet mount, electronic tablet, Mobile Device Management (MDM) software, compliance reporting, and more. Connectivity for the tablet and the telematics hardware also uses the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network.
