Why did Nokia acquire Juniper's RAN Intelligence and team?

You might have seen the headlines, Nokia announced on October 2nd the acquisition of Juniper Networks' RAN Intelligence team.

If you are not fully familiar with the space, here is a little perspective on this announcement and its impact on the market.

Juniper Networks had long looked to expand its footprint in operators networks beyond pure networking. Particularly, the RAN was a domain that was growing and of significant importance as it traditionally consumes up to 80% of the Capital Expenditure of a new telecom generation. It would have been costly and long to start an organic product development in the RAN radio or software (CU / DU) so the company smartly opted to attack a greenfield environment: the Open RAN RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) space.

There are different flavours of RIC and Juniper selected the "easiest" and least controversial to start with, the non real time RIC. The company licensed source code from Turkcel's Netsia subsidiary and started development in 2021. The non RT RIC represents the evolution of Self Organizing Networks (SON), Element Management Systems (EMS) and of traditional Operational Support Systems (OSS). OSS is a market segment that has been dominated by AMDOCS and Netcracker, and represented two great opportunities for new entrants and traditional telco vendors:

1. A 20+ billion $ market segment that is ripe for disruption (entrenched legacy vendors, aging, proprietary technology, emerging cloud native standards and interfaces)
2. An "easy" entry into the (open) RAN market segment, with high control value, without having to develop the expensive, risky and difficult bits (radios and radio software). 

Juniper Networks executed beautifully and even became an early leader in the RAN intelligence ecosystem in 2023. The market looked at this point like it was going to favour independent generalists such as Juniper and VMWare for early commercial launches, but HPE announced its acquisition of Juniper and Broadcom its acquisition of VMWare and the market took a pause to reconsider its options, unsure of HPE's and Broadcom's commitment to this space.

Meanwhile, traditional telecom vendors have caught up and Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung have announced different offering in the space. Nokia's strategy, in my mind wasn't very competitive, opting for near RT RIC rather than non RT RIC to start with. I have expanded my perspective on the market opportunity here. 

With the acquisition of Juniper Network's RAN intelligence team and technology, Nokia is reinforcing its product offering with a leading technology team. It will be interesting to see how much progress has been made since the HPE's acquisition and how much effort will be necessary to integrate the capabilities within the larger Nokia product portfolio.

PayTV vs. OTT part VII: 6 OTT Strategies

Pay TV vs. OTT:

Part I: The business models
Part II: Managed devices and services vs. OTT
Part III: CE vendors and companion screens
Part IV: Clash of the titans

Part V: Appointment vs. on-demand

Part VI: 5 MSO strategies

More developments will be presented at Monetizing OTT services - London - March 24/26

enter the discount code OTT_CORE here for a 20% discount

The internet is a perfect medium for content distribution. Storage, access, distribution is inexpensive, allowing the smallest content owners and producers to offer their wares with a small starting investment. For OTT vendors, this is both an opportunity and a threat. The long tail of the content usually find its audience through social media. Specialty content is at home on  the internet, thanks to the advances made in term of search and recommendation engine. The short tail content is pushed by advertising, rather than social interaction. The type of budget necessary to launch a new content can be staggering, as illustrated in the advertisement campaigns preceding new movies and video games. Content is king in OTT and there are a few strategies put in place by the different players in this segment to secure customers and revenue.

1.     Pay-per-view, rental, on-demand

Apple’s iTunes and Amazon on demand are perfect examples of OTT services. Without subscription, any consumer with a credit card can rent and stream content to almost any screen in minutes. Revenues are generated from the transaction. They are collected by the OTT player, which then apportion it to the studio / content owner and so on. It is the literal translation of the pay TV model on the internet. Here again, the control resides in the distribution. Apple and Amazon have been successful because they have an existing customer base that they had been able to convert. This captive audience is the equivalent of the MSO’s set top box.

Brands with a smaller footprint in term of device penetration have struggled to emulate this strategy. Sony’s “Video Unlimited”, available on its PlayStation and selected devices, has struggled to reach its audience, for instance.

2.    Subscription VOD

Inaugurated by Netflix, it has become the reference for OTT video. A monthly subscription allows consumers to watch as many shows as they want. Success in this model relies in both the depth and the range of the catalogue. Netflix had to have headline content to attract new users and enough of a long tail to keep them there. Most SVOD strategies are monthly subscription without commitment, so they traditionally experience high churn.

3.    Free to air

YouTube is the most successful OTT player with a free-to-air strategy. Acquired by Google in 2006, the web phenomenon attracts over one billion unique users each month ^[2]. Monetization of this strategy has been slow. Advertising is currently the main contributor, using Google ad platform, but YouTube has recently launched premium channels, allowing any channel with over 100,000 followers to go premium for as little at .99c per month. It is not yet apparent whether that strategy will be successful.

Adult content is the second largest OTT player in this category, monetizing premium content through subscription. A small percentage of their viewership base subscribes to premium and generates close to 4.9 billion dollars revenue globally.

4.    Securing content

If content is king, content rights are the crown’s jewel. Securing content that will attract and retain consumers is the principal occupation of OTT players. Studios and content producers now have new avenues for the distribution of their content, but as traditional Pay TV weakens in viewership, it still dwarfs OTT revenues. The most popular content can spur a viewership addiction synonymous with subscription and advertising revenue. It has become necessary for the likes of Netflix to secure access to content. In 2012, Netflix lost rights of diffusion of Starz, Encore and Sony catalogues over broken negotiations. Clearly, having your core value (content) submitted to third party control and threatened on a regular basis by the whims of negotiation is not a very good strategy for long term success. Increasingly, OTT players and channels have started acquiring and producing content exclusively in order to guarantee access, control and ultimately monetization of popular content.

HBO has, for instance, developed the series “Game of Throne”, which became an overnight critical and popular success, drawing fans to the network and becoming one of the most pirated series of 2012 ^[4].

Netflix has secured later a deal with Disney, valued at close to $300 million per year for Disney. This deal sees Netflix get exclusive access to Disney’s movies after their theatrical release. In 2013, Netflix doubles down and sign a follow on deal for exclusive Disney content “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”.

5.    Favoring binge watching

Consumers buying habit have changed durably, we have seen, but their viewing habits are also undergoing transformation. With the availability of whole back catalogue seasons of a series, binge watching has become a solid trend. Many viewers, when watching a streaming TV show are increasingly watching more than one show per seating. Detecting the trend early, Netflix strategy for the release of “House of cards” has been to release the full season at once, as opposed to a fixed schedule, favored by traditional TV. Netflix has since released a survey with Harris interactive showing that 61% of Netflix series viewers are binge watchers.

6.     Costs reduction

In the same vein as Verizon, Netflix has undertaken to control its delivery network. Unlike Verizon, it is not an acquisition but organic development that sees Netflix launch its own CDN called Open Connect in 2012. Recognizing that delivering massive amounts of video over the internet can be costly and unreliable at scale, major OTT players look at controlling the end to end user experience and leverage economy of scale from a dedicated network infrastructure. Common CDNs are perfect for general purpose internet content but their business model and quality start to be stretched to their limit when it comes to massive video delivery.

PayTV vs. OTT VI: 5 MSO strategies

5 MSO strategies

If you haven't read the other posts in this series, you can find them here for context.

Pay TV vs. OTT:
Part I: The business models
Part II: Managed devices and services vs. OTT
Part III: CE vendors and companion screens
Part IV: Clash of the titans
Part V: Appointment vs. on-demand

More developments will be presented at Monetizing OTT services - London - March 24/26

enter the discount code OTT_CORE here for a 20% discount

There are a few strategies that have been enacted by MSOs to counter the erosion of their margin and viewership brought forward by OTT.

1.     Vertical integration

As control of the value chain shifts from distribution to content, it is only natural that some MSOs start to look upstream and concentrate channels, studio and production with distribution in order to regain a dominant position in the value circle. As an example, Comcast owns NBC Universal, which owns the MLB network (in a joint venture with MLB) and the Philadelphia Flyers. In one company you find premium content, production, channel and distribution.

This strategy allows to control the content, with either exclusive or preferential rights for distribution, which enables a captive audience and in return higher advertising revenues, as long as the content remains popular.

2.    Multiscreen

This strategy allows MSOs to offer a portion of the live and on-demand TV programming available to mobile devices (smartphones, Tablets, Phablets…) and hybrid devices (hybrid set top boxes, video game consoles, PCs,  smart TVs…). In this context, while the medium of delivery is still the internet, it is not a true OTT play. To access the content, the user must authenticate herself as a MSO subscriber. This strategy enables MSOs to “spill out” of the traditional TV screen and to offer programming on a growing medium that is favored by younger generations. Verizon’s FiOS is, for instance available on cable, internet, on ipad, on LG, Samsung TVs and on Xbox and Playstations. This strategy is one of retention, where, recognizing that consumers want to watch in a more flexible manner, it is made available on a variety of new devices, included in the regular subscription. This is about keeping people loyal to the MSO programming, countering pure OTT by offering an OTT-like experience. The strategy has not proven to increase revenue, as it is usually included in the regular subscription. It is used to reduce churn and increase loyalty.

3.    Social TV

As Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media become part of our daily life, new usage patterns have emerged. Social TV is such a trend, where content success relies on recommendations, likes and sponsoring.

Popular content can, in days become viral and amass millions of views. Psy, a South Korean rapper became an overnight internet celebrity, with over a billion views in six months on its YouTube channel with the release of “Gangnam style”. The virality effect is hard to predict or influence, but live TV, particularly sports and game shows are well suited for audience social interaction. By creating interactivity, content becomes simultaneously more popular and more “sticky”, as consumers watch more and longer shows when there is an emotional connection. MSOs have started to try and integrate apps for social networks in their managed devices in order to reinforce this engagement with users. The lack of standards across platforms has hindered this integration to date and Social TV remains more an experiment than a service at this stage. The strategy relies on the assumption that engagement drives viewership, which drives revenue.

4.    Going OTT

If you can’t beat them, join them. There are a couple of sub strategies here. The first one is to create a web site to serve content exclusively over the internet. For instance, Hulu plus, the joint venture between Comcast (NBC Universal), Disney and News corp. (Fox) allows its customers to watch ad-sponsored current and back catalogue TV show for a monthly subscription.

A second strategy is to package a channel as an internet content provider. For instance, it was announced in October 2013 that Comcast is launching a new plan for cord-cutters and cord-nevers, offering Xfinity Streampix, HBO and HBO Go together with broadband for $39.99. A US Comcast customer will be able to watch HBO over the web on their broadband subscription without having to be a cable customer. The FCC (US regulators) mandates that premium channels have to be bundled with basic broadcast, so that's in it as well, but this is a clear tipping point moment. For the first time HBO is going head to head with Netflix, going pure OTT. The implications are profound and it is a floodgate moment. On one hand, Netflix has now more subscribers than HBO, which prompts Comcast to start the self cannibalization. If you are losing subscribers, you might as well lose them to yourself and a friendly content provider rather than a competitor.

Verizon’s Redbox instant is another example of a Netflix me-too strategy relying on monthly subscription.

5.    Cost reduction

The last strategy implemented lately has been about creating the infrastructure necessary to deliver a massive amount of video, securely with high quality. While MSOs have traditionally relied on third party infrastructure, Verizon has recently innovated with the acquisition of EdgeCast in January 2014. By purchasing the CDN, the MSO will be able to reduce its delivery costs, while controlling user experience and offering wholesale service to other MSOs and OTT alike.

Intel and Samsung partner for open OS in smartphones and connected devices

As you will remember, Intel had decided to leave the connected TV space to ARM back in October, after failing repetitively to gain any significant market share.Its Atom chips failed to convince and deliver a significantly better cost performance ratio to their prospective OEM and ODM.


Samsung told Informa telecoms that they are planning to merge their homegrown operating system BADA with Intel's opensource Tizen. The move will be gradual and will first affect handsets, with low end devices staying on BADA for a while and high end smartphones and tablets moving to Tizen as early as Q2 2012.


Smart TVs should follow shortly there after. 


An interesting move, that allows Samsung to free themselves from the cumbersome Google-Android relationship and to stay clear of the current patent war between OS / app / device vendors.
At the same time, it allows Intel to take a prominent place in one of the fastest growing segments in consumer electronics, connected devices, as we have seen here.

Pay TV vs. OTT part III: CE vendors and companion screens

CE vendors
It is not just the content owners that are going direct to customers, now connected devices vendors offer content directly on their platforms, over the internet.Game platforms have long offered OTT content and are the single major contributors to Hulu's success. Now CE vendors offer OTT apps on their connected TVs, blue ray players, projectors...Samsung, the market leader in TV shipments has created a complete ecosystem, with an app store, a catalogue of pre-integrated OTT apps, some complementary some competitive with service providers. This is offered on their Connected TVs, Blu Ray players, projectors, smart phones, tablets... LG, Panasonic, Philips, Sharp, Toshiba, Vizio have now a similar offering.
It will not be long before Google TV's second attempt brings a complete soup to nuts ecosystem as well with set top boxes and  connected TVs running android and a complete TV app store.
I am willing to bet as well that the next Apple TV will actually be a connected TV, not a net box that will be fully integrated with iCloud and iTunes store and Air.

Companion screens

Lastly, on the device front, there is a new trend developing that I will call companion screens. More and more people, while watching TV are  doing something on their tablet, smartphone or laptop that is related to what they are watching. Whether it is chatting, playing, texting, blogging, twitting or posting, these interactions have emerged spontaneously and  are still very much in a separate silo from the TV experience. Most vendors, and service providers are trying to figure out how social media, connected devices and OTT fit together.
I have seen many cross-screen applications and services at IBC last month and I will present a few in my next post about innovations in the Pay TV / OTT space.



In conclusion, the industry is transitioning from a model where Pay TV content was predominantly accessed through managed devices on managed networks, to a model where content and services will predominantly be accessed through unmanaged or hybrid devices, on unmanaged or hybrid networks. This, as you can imagine creates many threats and opportunities for content owners, service providers and device vendors that we will examine in the next post.

Pay TV vs. OTT part II: managed devices and networks vs. OTT

It is really interesting to me to see that as Google acquired Motorola, it has become the market leader in video head end and set top boxes overnight without many hardly noticing. It means in my mind that the previous attempt from Google to invade the pay-TV market will be much stronger the second time around when Google TV will be relaunched.

This market looks just like the mobile market 8 years ago, when device vendors all had proprietary operating systems (this is the case with set top boxes middleware and connected TVs, game consoles, net boxes...) and everyone wanted to "own" the customer.

Managed devices, Managed networks
Pay TV is traditionally delivered through a set top box to a home. Because the set top box has until recently been built upon a service provider specifications,because it was sold, rented or subsidized by the service provider, because the service provider decided what services (PVR, Electronic programming guide, search...) would go into that box, for all these reasons the set top box is seen as a managed device. A managed device runs on a managed network, as opposed to unmanaged network (e.g. the internet).
The network is called managed because the service provider controls the backbone, core and delivery, therefore guaranteeing digital rights integrity to content owners and quality of service to content aggregators and subscribers.

What happened in the last year is that managed devices such as set top boxes have become less and less managed and have offered access to OTT content via the internet. These devices are called hybrid, as they offer both cable/satellite managed services and internet access, together with OTT apps access (Hulu, Netfix...).


Unmanaged devices, OTT

Smartphones, tablets, laptops, game consoles, net boxes, connected TVs have made their appearance.These devices are by definition unmanaged or hybrid, since they are all connected to the internet.

Strategy Analytics predicts that over a billion connected devices will be shipped in the next three years, with managed devices being a very small 20% portion of the total.
This is without counting the billions of smartphone and tablets that will be sold at the same time.

OTT apps are flourishing, offering video content to consumers, without the need for a pay TV subscription, in some cases complementing the current offering (for instance, YouTube fills a need that wasn't properly served by PAY TV services) , in other cases, cannibalizing or replacing traditional Pay TV services (for instance, video on demand from the service provider is seriously threatened by Netflix, Hulu...).
Additionally, the content aggregators whose only channel was TV are now addressing directly the customer through OTT. For instance, HBO, a very successful payTV channel is now offering HBO Go, so that its subscriber can watch live, catch up and on demand programming from connected devices. For the moment, in the US, the consumers have to sign up with Comcast, Time Warner Cable... credentials to get access to the service, so the service provider revenues streams are protected, but nothing prevents HBO to go direct overnight, or to offer its programming outside the US directly to consumers...

We will see in the next post that CE vendors are also joining the fray, and we will examine an interesting new trend: companion screens.

Google / Moto: your TV is the next battlefield

Goodbye Moto!

many out there look at Google`s acquisition of Motorola as a defensive step to ward off patent trolls and competitors aggressively pursuing Google and Android licensees. With 17,500 granted patents and another 7,500 filed, there has to be some value from Motorola`s pioneering technology in wireless networks. Whether this is worth $10.5B after the cash retained by Motorola remains to be seen.

While this is undoubtedly a key aspect of the transaction, I would like to look at the impact of this acquisition on the mobile and TV market.

Would Google entertain a rebirth of their handset strategy? While the attractiveness of the Android ecosystem is largely as a means to have a more open alternative to Apple`s iStore, nothing prevents Google to look at a more vertical, better experience on Google devices than on the OEMs. Lets not forget additionally, that part of the transaction is Motorola Set-top-box and connected devices business. Motorola, according to a study published by The Multimedia Research Group is ranked worldwide market leader in Video head-end and set top boxes shipments.

Why is that important? The next battle room for video is your TV screen. According to Strategy Analytics, TV industry generates $392Bn per year in revenue, half from advertising, half from subscription, payTV...
These revenue flows back approximately 1/3 to content owners, 1/3 to aggregators and channels, 1/3 to service providers.

The next frontier in TV, is OTT (Over The Top). In an OTT model, content providers and aggregators share the revenues 50/50, with nothing left for the operators. As Samsung, connected TV market leader, has created their vertical environment, with SmartTV, creating essentially an app store and a suite of apps that can run on their connected TVs, set-top-boxes, tablets and phones, I am willing to bet that we will see an Apple TV pretty soon (not the little box that connects your TV to iTunes, an actual Apple branded TV).

From then on, it is not difficult to see that the next OS and app store battlefield will be in your leaving room.

Will Google revive GoogleTV, with a new Android environment that can be ported by Consumer Electronics (CE) giants on their connected TVs, set-top-boxes, tablets and phones?
Will CE vendors choose to use Android, now that Google is also a competitor, with Moto`s acquisition? Or will they try to emulate Samsung and create their closed ecosystem?


I will examine in future posts some of the defensive strategies operators are putting in place to retain some value in this changing ecosystem.
I don`t know you, but for me, it spells interesting times for the future. Let me know your thoughts....