Networking

Dell Technologies saw strong third quarter growth from its commercial and consumer PC units as well as solid demand for its data center gear. The company delivered the best third quarter in its history with revenue of $28.4 billion, up 21% from a year ago, with earnings of $3.9 billion, or $4.87 a share. Non-GAAP earnings were $2.37 a share. Analysts were expecting Dell to report third quarter revenue of $26.82 billion with non-GAAP earnings of $2.18 a share. Dell’s client solutions group revenue was $16.5 billion in the third quarter, up 35% from a year ago. Operating income for the third quarter was $1.1 billion. Commercial revenue was $12.3 billion, up 40% from a year ago. Consumer revenue was $4.3 billion, up 21%. The company said it saw strong PC demand for commercial systems, high-end consumer units and gaming. HP also delivered strong quarterly results. On a conference call with analysts, Jeffrey Clarke, vice chairman of Dell Technologies, said:In client, we are pairing Windows 11 with our Dell Optimizer built-in intelligence to deliver the most personalized productive computing experience on the world’s most intelligent business PCs. We believe the introduction of Windows 11 will continue to drive demand in PCs.On the infrastructure side, Dell delivered third quarter revenue of $8.4 billion, up 5% from a year ago. Storage revenue was up 1% with server and networking sales of $4.5 billion, up 9% from a year ago.×dell-technologies-strategy.png

Chuck Whitten, co-COO for Dell Technologies, said:Demand for our solutions remains strong as global economic recovery and widespread digital transformation reset IT demand to higher levels. Against that backdrop and despite the difficult supply environment, we again delivered great performance in Q3, with strong growth in all 3 business units, all regions and broad strength across our commercial PC, server and notably, most of our storage portfolio. We gained share in servers, storage and PCs, according to the latest reported IDC results. As we look forward, all signposts point to continued strong market demand, and we intend to continue winning in the consolidation and gaining share over the long term. Our strategy is not just to win in the consolidation but also to modernize our business, and our APEX-branded solutions are important to that future. Though it is still early days, we’re pleased with our technical progress and the momentum across our family of as-a-service offerings, which will continue to expand going forward.×dell-q3-2022.pngRecent Dell headlines: More

A number of market forces are shaping dramatic changes in the edge, internet of things (IoT), and networking triad. These forces include demand for greater sustainability, closing the digital divide, the ongoing chip shortage, and, at a broader level, the COVID-19 pandemic. Our 2022 predictions for Edge, IoT, and networking take all of these forces into account and focus on the three technologies’ role in either addressing the issues or being hampered by them. Here is a look at three of the bold calls we’re making for Edge, IoT, and networking in 2022: Edge and IoT will drive new solutions for scope 3 emission reduction: Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions that come from assets an organization doesn’t directly own or control and form most of the carbon footprint in most industries. Emerging technology can help address these issues. In 2022, demand for sustainability-related services powered by edge and IoT will grow for energy efficiency and resource management. High-demand use cases will include environmental monitoring, resource management, and supply chain processes. Satellite internet will challenge 5G as the connectivity of choice: The advent of satellite internet will help address the digital divide in 2022. Forrester predicts that 85% of satellite users will be in rural locations, with remote worker initiatives and remote facilities benefiting significantly from satellite internet next year, as well. But will it rise to be a challenger for 5G? 5G at scale has the potential to influence all walks of life and tremendously influence every industry vertical. The practical timeline of 5G and logistical challenges, however, will temper the enthusiasm. The massive infrastructure needed to realize all touted 5G use cases has created the elephant in the room that no telecommunications manufacturer or network provider wants to address. The chip shortage will impede overall IoT market growth by 10% to 15%: The global chip shortage won’t ease soon. Forrester predicts that this dilemma won’t be resolved until mid-2023. Since chips form the backbone of every intelligent device, this threatens the growth of other emerging technologies, as well. IoT devices will feel the pinch particularly hard because they generally use a mature sensor, microcontroller, and communications technologies that have significantly more availability issues than advanced chips like CPUs and GPUs. We predict that the IoT chip shortage will shave 10% to 15% off of IoT growth in 2022. Learn more about Forrester predictions here.This post was written by Analyst Abhijit Sunil, and it originally appeared here.

Internet of Things More

Life360, a family-oriented location-sharing app, plans to acquire Tile for $205 million, the companies announced Monday. The deal is expected to close in Q1 2022. By acquiring Tile, which makes Bluetooth-enabled finding devices trackers, Life360 will gain access to a broad swath of customers. Tile’s technology is embedded in more than 50 different third-party devices, like wireless earbuds, headphones, laptops and dog collars. More than one million third-party devices already have activated Tile technology. Meanwhile, Tile devices are sold directly to consumers via more than 27,000 brick and mortar stores. Additionally, both companies have significant paid subscription services, and the acquisition is expected to increase Life360’s paid subscriber base by about 45% to around 1.6 million people. “Life360 is on a mission to simplify safety so families can live fully. With the acquisition of Tile, we will now be able to provide a unique and all-encompassing solution for finding the people, pets and things that families care about most,” Chris Hulls, Co-Founder and CEO of Life360, said in a statement. “This acquisition marks a key step forward towards Life360 achieving its vision of being the world’s leading platform for safety and location services.” The deal will also help Tile, months after Apple became a direct competitor with the AirTag tracker. The Apple device leverages the Find My network to privately crowdsource the location of tags. Tile’s network works in a similar fashion but falls short of what Apple offers with the Find My network. However, Life360 said its global footprint will significantly expand the reach of Tile’s Finding Network. The addition of Life360’s network of 33 million smartphone users is expected to increase the reach of Tile’s Finding Network by about 10x.After the deal closes, Tile will continue to operate with its own brand identity under the leadership of Tile CEO CJ Prober, who will also join the Life360 Board of Directors. The Tile team is expected to remain in place. More

StarHub has unveiled a five-year business transformation plan that will see the Singapore telco focus on becoming a “full-on digital life” and digital services provider. It also is aiming for a further cost savings of SG$280 million ($205.54 million) and SG$220 million ($161.5 million) in gross profit growth cumulatively between 2022 and 2026. Coining it “DARE+”, StarHub said Monday it concluded the first phase of its DARE transformation journey last month, which yielded cost savings in excess of SG$270 million ($198.2 million) and was higher than its original target of SG$210 million. It also slashed its operating expenditure by 15%. The telco now would look to attain “sustainable revenue growth”, “potential growth” in dividends, and product margins with the introduction of 5G products and services. It also was aiming for further operating cost savings with its digital transformation efforts and migration from legacy systems. 

These efforts would drive its target of achieving SG$280 million in cost savings as well as SG$220 million in gross profit growth over its fiscal years of 2022 to 2026. StarHub said its five-year “transformation and growth” roadmap would see the telco become a company “that connects digital lives” for customers. “DARE+ anchors on doubling down on digital across everything StarHub does, accelerating value creation, realising growth without frontiers, and delivering an endless continuum of experiences that enrich customers’ lives,” it said. CEO Nikhil Eapen said: “StarHub is changing, going beyond telco to becoming a full-on digital life and digital services provider of the most enriching connectivity, entertainment, and other lifestyle experiences, as well as innovative business solutions for our customers, with frictionless digital engagement at our core.”With DARE+, StarHub said it would offer over-the-top (OTT) streaming entertainment, cloud games, and digital services. For consumers, this would see the telco “meshing” its products and services into all-in-one offerings. For instance, shows and movies could be accessed on TVs, phones, tablets, and web browsers through its hybrid linear-OTT platform StarHub TV+. 

It pay TV business also has been rebranded to Entertainment to encompass other complementary services, such as 5G cloud games, and new products and verticals that the telco planned to introduce in future. In the enterprise market, StarHub pointed to plans to beef up its play in cybersecurity and the region’s ICT industry through Ensign InfoSecurity, its joint venture with Temasek Holdings, and subsidiary Strateq, as well as planned acquisitions of MyRepublic Broadband and HKBN JOS in Singapore and Malaysia. StarHub added that it would explore further potential acquisitions to further grow its footprint, but did not specify market segments it was looking at.The telco is the latest amongst local players to embark on a business transformation plan in recent years, following similar announcements from M1 and Singtel. All three telcos also saw leadership changes in the last three years, with StarHub’s Eapen taking on the CEO role last December, after a months-long search. Singtel’s group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon assumed his position in January this year, while M1 CEO Manjot Singh Mann took over the helm in December 2018.RELATED COVERAGE More

Celona founders, from left, Rajeev Shah, CEO, Ravi Mulam, founding engineer, Vinay Anneboina, founding engineer, and Mehmet Yavuz, CTO. 
Celona
The common conception of 5G wireless service is as a faster radio connection for laptops and smartphones, multiple gigabits over the air. But you may need to revise most everything you think about 5G to understand its true significance.  For enterprises, which are increasingly interested in using 5G indoors, as a networking technology, one of the most important aspects of 5G is that it is about structuring the network for defined service in a way that could never be done before. That aspect of the matter, which is largely about software, means that 5G is much more than a radio upgrade.  It could, in fact, bring significant change to the way that software runs networking for corporate LANs. “Nokia and Ericsson and Cisco are in the middle of an interesting transition,” said Özer Dondurmacioğlu, who is vice president of technical marketing for two-year-old startup Celona, in an interview with ZDNet via Zoom. “For them, transitioning to 5G feels just like a radio transition, but the software architecture is completely changing,” says Dondurmacioğlu. “They are in the middle of this big, invisible software architecture revolution.” That software revolution is how Celona expects to make an end-run around Cisco and others. The startup is a young contender in a broad movement to bring 5G to enterprises as a supplement to, and sometimes a replacement for, WiFi-based wireless LANs. Celona has received $40 million in venture capital financing from top funds, including Lightspeed, Norwest, In-Q-Tel, Cervin Ventures, the venture capital arm of wireless chip giant Qualcomm, and the venture capital arm of Japan’s giant telco NTT. 

A Series B round of funding last year brought in $30 million in one fell swoop. Also: Dish makes deals with Equinix, Cisco to build out 5G network Celona started selling equipment a year ago. The Cupertino California-based company this past year opened a small engineering facility in Bangalore. The company employs 85 people in total at the moment.  What is key for Celona is that rather than sell telco software, it is offering software with an enterprise focus, software meant to be used by CIOs and sys admins. The company views itself as righting the wrongs of both WiFi wireless LANs as well as traditional private networks built on cellular spectrum. “The private LTE market has been around for a while,” Dondurmacioğlu observed, “and they have been doing one thing quite wrong.” Those traditional parties have tried to “just sell their existing infrastructure” to enterprise with no accommodation for how enterprises run.  To Dondurmacioğlu, who is of Turkish descent, that is the equivalent of “putting some yogurt on a burger” rather than creating “proper Mediterranean food.” Dondurmacioğlu, and Celona’s chief technologist, Mehmet Yavuz, who took part in the same interview via Zoom, are veterans of the enterprise LAN and telco domains. Dondurmacioğlu was a vice president with Aruba, the wireless LAN unit of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for fourteen years. Yavuz, who started his career at telco equipment giant Nortel, was vice president of engineering at Qualcomm for almost fifteen years. Celona’s CEO, Rajeev Shah, was also an Aruba exec for eleven years.  Both Dondurmacioğlu and Yavuz see what WiFi and what private cellular each failed to achieve. While improving the corporate wireless LAN, Celona’s technology aims to fulfill the premise of private cellular, namely, more selective control of the network, the same way that a carrier is able to structure their wide-area network for quality of service. Celona’s 5G access points.
Celona
Also: 6 things businesses can do right now to leverage 5G “It’s just designed to equate to WLAN,” said Yavuz of the company’s 5G LAN. “There is LAN, there is WLAN, which is WiFi, and there is 5G LAN, and they are all part of the enterprise LAN family.”  Switch equipment from Celona will use 5G frequencies below 6 gigahertz, a part of the so-called S Band of spectrum that is licensed by the FCC for broad commercial use, known as the CBRS, or Citizens Broadband Radio System.  With Celona’s access points, companies can carefully structure their networks so that individual network services will have a kind of guaranteed private lane to operate with quality of service assurances. The switch registers with what’s known as a spectrum access system, or SAS, a cloud-based server that manages access to the spectrum by CBRS client devices.  The SAS server is a hosted service provided by Google and others including Arlington, Virginia-based cloud provider Federated Wireless. Celona management console.
Celona
Prior to operation, the SAS service has to be certified by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Celona ships its products bundled with a SAS license from either Google or Federated. When the products are installed, a Celona network then requests authorization from the SAS service for private spectrum access for all the access points. As a result of the SAS approach, the cellular frequencies of CBRS, like cellular networks generally, have freedom from interference that was never assured with wireless LANs using WiFi.  “I worked on some pretty interesting WiFi deployments at Aruba,” recalled Dondurmacioğlu. “I always had to contend with interference from my neighbor networks, and from within the network itself,” he said. “I would deploy 28 devices in a hospital, I had to make sure they don’t interfere with each other through some terrible channel planning, and then that my neighbors don’t interfere with me.” Also: 5G’s biggest benefits will arrive where you’d least expect them “I don’t have that problem with cellular — by design,” he said. Cellular schedules all traffic flows between all devices on the network. “The concept of radios stepping over each other is gone.” Not only is interference banished by the SAS, but the QOS for every service is rigorously enforced with cellular. What that means, and what is lost in the many press releases from Cisco and Dish and others, is that 5G is not just about speed, a faster radio. More important than speed, 5G is about latency, the longest delay in sending a bit of data from point A to point B. In his Aruba projects, “We never were able to guarantee a service level,” Dondurmacioğlu recalled. “I could say that this video traffic goes before this data traffic,” but he could not guarantee a certain number of megabits would be actually given to the video stream. That kind of allocation of bits is, again, by design available in cellular. When Celona talks to enterprises about lack of interference and about rigorous QOS, “They go, yeah, we were never able to do that,” he said, “and they want to talk about how they can start doing that.” CBRS is just one band at the moment, approximately 3.5 gigahertz to 3.7 gigahertz. The 150 megahertz of spectrum afforded in that band is more than enough to cover the needs of most corporate offices, said Yavuz.  “I worked on some pretty interesting WiFi deployments at Aruba,” Özer Dondurmacioğlu, Celona’s vice president of technical marketing, recalls. “I always had to contend with interference from my neighbor networks […] We never were able to guarantee a service level […] I don’t have that problem with cellular — by design.”
Celona
“The way we look at it is, sub-6 [gigahertz] is a really solid solution in enterprise for both indoor and outdoor coverage,” said Yavuz. “It can cover a large range.”  Also: 5G isn’t quite there, and MixComm believes it has the millimeter wave fix For specific use cases, said Yavuz, one can supplement S Band with higher-frequency millimeter wave technology, an area of the electromagnetic spectrum that some believe will be very important for 5G over time.  As much as cellular transforms wireless LAN, on the flip side, Celona believes it can be enterprise-friendly in ways telcos never could with LTE. Yavuz spent years at Qualcomm working with the carriers. “My passion was to bring that cellular technology to enterprise” when he ran the so-called small cells effort at Qualcomm, Yavuz recalled. “From the hardware perspective, Qualcomm did a lot of work to make SoCs [systems on chip] to make that base station into a small cell.” He observed the intransigence of an entrenched industry that couldn’t adapt its ways. “We worked really hard with cellular operators to get them to embrace” small cells. “We said, There’s hundreds of billions of square feet of enterprises, worldwide, why don’t you use this solution to bring cellular inside the enterprises.” Instead, the telcos used the technology as a backhaul offering, to carry traffic from the campus back to the carrier’s core network. The result was “a distributed antenna system that was totally separate from enterprise,” explained Yavuz. “They sent their own field engineers, with their own firewalls and cabling, and before you knew it, enterprises said, Am I going to have one from Verizon, and one from AT&T, and one from Sprint? This doesn’t work.” Also: DISH partners with IBM for new cloud-native 5G network Qualcomm cooperated with the network operators’ byzantine processes of document writing and approvals, to little avail. “After years and years of trying, I just gave up,” said Yavuz. That’s when Yavuz began talking with Celona co-founder Shah, musing about a new kind of venture. Instead of sell the same old stuff, Celona started life two years ago with a “new software architecture from scratch” to run 5G access points that it sells to smoothly plug into corporate LANs. That means the technology uses existing DHCP servers and firewalls and policies. “When we talk to CIOs, they just get it,” said Yavuz. “They see, Oh, I can incorporate this into my network, I know how to manage it, I know how to connect my devices, and it becomes part of my solution, instead of a shadow solution, yet another network.”  “That’s how we really differentiate ourselves.” The applications of enterprise 5G will be things such as robotics systems, and video feeds from numerous cameras, the kinds of applications that can benefit from low latency and guaranteed quality of service.  “Many of these applications are driven by the enterprise verticals,” said Yavuz.  Also: Verizon and Microsoft team up to offer 5G edge cloud computing for businesses “We were surprised,” said Dondurmacioğlu. “We thought we would start with projects where the iPhone was the client device, and we do see those sorts of things, but now we are in the middle of supporting automated, guided vehicles in outdoor spaces in a mining site, to robots in a warehouse.” Those vertical-market applications ultimately need greater software smarts, said Dondurmacioğlu, given that they involve technology from multiple vendors that may be customized to an enterprise operation. “Two different factories in the same city might be using two different robotics technologies, and they have different underlying traffic flows” in the pattern of wireless traffic. Enterprise engineers, versed in Cisco network operations, for example, understand that, said Dondurmacioğlu.    As much as Celona lies outside the fold of traditional telecom and private cellular offerings, the company has been nimble in finding partners to use its technology. It has a partnership with Aruba at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. NTT, which has a North American operation for managed network services, is using the Celona equipment, as is SBA Communications. Large customers include the St. Luke’s Hospital complex of Boise, Idaho. The company has 35 customers in all. “I think it would be nice to have more validation of our approach” from carriers to go after enterprise. “Our message to them is, Hey, you can actually go after a very sizable market opportunity here, and very fast, if use an architecture that serves them, rather than the same old garbage from the past.” Conversations with carriers are ongoing, he said.  As for the traditional network suppliers, they will be challenged by the continuing software revolution, said Dondurmacioğlu.  5G is not only about latency and rigorous QOS, he said, it is about the entire move of infrastructure to cloud technologies. “4G required certain network functions, and 5G comes in and says, change all of that, make it more like cloud software,” said Dondurmacioğlu. “Put your network functions into containers, and micro-services.” “The software architecture is completely changing,” he said. For Cisco and other traditional vendors, that means “hundreds more people trained, a lot of software re-written, support upgraded,” and many more variables. Cisco and fellow legacy vendors talk about having multiple antennas, but “you ask them about the software, they’re not as forthcoming.” If the value proposition of those traditional vendors is “just add a lot more radios,” without software innovation, “I wonder if they will have an easy time as much as we will in that transition,” he said. More

Cisco Systems announced its FY22 Q1 earnings this week. ZDNet posted this story covering the report, but as is often the case, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. On the surface, Cisco reported what would be considered by most analysts to be in-line first-quarter numbers, because the company’s revenues were at the midpoint of its guidance and a shade below consensus estimates. Revenue growth remained steady, up 8% year-over-year, which was certainly positive. Second-quarter guidance was also slightly below expectations as the company indicated revenue growth of 5% to 7%. 

One might look at the quarterly results and see a company that’s struggling to meet its own targets, but as mentioned previously, the numbers can be misleading — particularly in this current macro environment. Here are the most important points gleaned from Cisco’s quarterly report:Cisco’s business has never been stronger. Despite the “meh” revenue numbers, Cisco’s business is stronger than ever. It is being held back by ongoing component shortages. Although revenue was up only 8%, order growth hit a decade-high record of 33%, up from 31% last quarter, meaning growth is accelerating. Other indicators are that annual recurring revenue (ARR) was $21.6 billion, up 10% year-over-year, and remaining performance obligations are now $30.1 billion, also up 10%. During the Q&A section of the call, CEO Chuck Robbins said: “With that RPO and the backlog that we have, the stuff (Cisco products) is going to ship. Short term, this doesn’t feel great. What we are seeing is that the customers are making decisions right now to choose our technology across the board,” indicating that Cisco’s portfolio approach is working but the component shortage is holding the company up. One more note: Cisco, despite the lower guide, did reiterate full-year guidance, indicating the back half of the year should make up for the current slight miss. A margin rebound is coming. One of the metrics that investors watch is Cisco’s margins. Gross margin this quarter was 64.5%, down 130 basis points from a year ago. It’s important to note that a 64.5% gross margin is remarkable, particularly for a company that sells products that experts said would be commoditized by now. But the fact is margins are lower, which could indicate increased competitiveness or price pressure. The reality is that Cisco has been overpaying for components, delivery, shipping, and anything else it can do to get products into its customers’ hands faster, and this has acted as a drag on margins. The company did announce it had raised prices to offset the higher costs, and customers seemed to be fine with this as they understand the current challenges. CFO Scott Herren explained that it takes a few quarters for the higher prices to make their way through the channel and procurement processes, and he indicated margins will return to normal in a couple of quarters.  Cisco has revamped its webscale business. Cisco has long been known as the 800-pound gorilla and de facto standard in networking for companies of all sizes. The one exception was webscale. In that industry, Cisco was not just a laggard but for years, not even a serious contender for the business.  A few years ago, Cisco got closer to the cloud giants by working with them to develop products, rather than assuming it knew what they wanted and developing apps without them. In a relatively short time — just a couple of years — it has turned this business around; this quarter its webscale business grew by 200%. Cisco’s differentiation in this space is in its Silicon One chips. The 11th processor in this family, the P100 chip, is capable of routing at 19.2 TB. Their custom-versus-merchant silicon debate has been an ongoing one, but Cisco has always obtained a performance advantage because it can customize a chip to a specific use case versus merchant silicon that’s more general-purpose. Its product revenue in this area was up over $1 billion year-over-year, showing Cisco’s strength in this area. Cisco is a massive software company. The company is best known for its market-leading hardware, but Cisco ranks among the biggest software companies in the world. This quarter, it delivered a whopping $3.7 billion, with 80% sold as subscriptionware. This annualizes to almost $15 billion in software revenue. At that number, Cisco is the fourth-largest software company in the world, ranking just ahead of Adobe. Software revenue comes from every part of Cisco’s business, including networking, collaboration, security, application performance, and data center. Expect Cisco to continue to push more innovation into software in the future.  Work to be done in security. Cisco’s security business was up 4% year over year and given the size of this business, that’s a healthy number. Looking back though, Cisco’s security business had a growth number of 18% in 2019, which declined to 12%, then 7%, and now 4%, indicating a deceleration of the business. Meanwhile, the security pure-play companies have been seen growth in the teens — and even 20% — range. This is partially explained by the shift in the business, because the traditionally purchased perpetual products are in decline, acting as a headwind for growth. The subscription-based business from products such as zero-trust and unified threat management grew a healthy 15%, so there’s a careful balancing act Cisco has been doing. Also, some of its security hardware products have been affected by the component shortage, which also has an impact. This partially explains the deceleration, but the reality is that the security industry is tending to a platform purchase model. In today’s network-centric world, Cisco’s dominant share in networking should enable it to dominate security — perhaps not as it does in networking, but in that ballpark. The business is transitioning to software, which is certainly impacting the company, and Cisco does have some work to do here. Robbins will make sure the work gets done. More

The orange is shrinking
Image: ACCC
The latest edition of the NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has revealed the number of connections on NBN’s 250/25Mbps Superfast and 500-1000Mbps/50Mbps Ultrafast plans has dropped by nearly 200,000 lines. Combined with users continuing to leave 12Mbps and 25Mbps plans, it has left 58% of the network now on 50Mbps plans. Over the September quarter, almost 45,000 lines moved off 12Mbps plans leaving 924,000 connections, 122,000 moved off 25Mbps with 945,000 now on that speed, 171,000 lines switched from Superfast leaving 389,000 active connections, and 24,700 dropped Ultrafast tiers for under 62,000 to remain. Almost 353,000 lines shifted to 50Mbps with the total number now at 4.9 million, and over 50,000 took up 100/20Mbps plans taking the total to over 423,000. These shifts are sometimes instigated by users, but often times it can be the telcos purchasing cheaper bandwidth at higher tiers and “gifting” speed increases to customers. In the December quarter, for instance, TPG Telecom had 468,000 fewer connections on 100Mbps speed plans, but it saw an extra 335,000 lines move onto 250Mbps, and 113,000 extra 50Mbps plans. For this quarter, the telco had 282,000 fewer 250Mbps connections, 43,000 fewer Ultrafast lines, and 292,500 more 50Mbps connections and almost 63,900 100/40Mbps lines. “The 50Mbps and 100Mbps speed tiers have been very popular with consumers recently, which is understandable as extended lockdowns in several states and territories have resulted in millions of people working and learning from home,” ACCC commissioner Anna Brakey said.

“As temporary promotions wind down and retailers adjust pricing accordingly, we strongly encourage customers to think about their internet needs and pay for a higher speed tier only if their usage demands it.” Fresh off its Exetel acquisition, Superloop has made its first entrance into the report, breaking through to be called out on its own, rather than bundled into others. Sitting around 1.5% market share with approximately 126,700 customers, Superloop has between 33,300 and 36,900 customers each on full fibre, fibre to the node, and cable technologies. “Smaller niche providers have injected competition into the market for broadband services and they now go some way to constraining the big four of Telstra, TPG, Optus, and Vocus,” Brakey added. “Smaller providers give consumers real choice in the service quality and range of products to meet their needs.” As a result of Exetel joining Superloop, the ACCC said Optus saw its wholesale market share drop by 1.1%. Overall CVC capacity across the NBN network now sits at 2.82Mbps per user. Related Coverage More

Shares of Cisco were down on Wednesday, after the company published mixed first quarter financial results. Sales were up across Cisco’s newly-organized product categories, except for “hybrid work” products, which faced tough year-over-year comparisons. Total product order growth in Q1 was up 33% year-over-year, while product revenue was up 11%Cisco’s Q1 non-GAAP earnings per share came to 82 cents on revenue of $12.9 billion, up 8% year-over-year. Wall Street was expecting first-quarter earnings of 80 cents per share on revenue of $12.98 billion.”In Q1, we had robust growth and continued strong demand despite the very dynamic supply environment,” CEO Chuck Robbins said in a statement. “Cisco’s technology sits at the heart of the accelerated digital transformation happening today. Our breakthrough innovation, strong demand, and the success of our business transformation position us well for another year of growth in fiscal 2022.”On a conference call, Robbins elaborated on the impacts of ongoing supply chain constraints.”We are constrained in what we can build and ship to our customers,” he said. We have a world-class supply chain team that works to deliver an incredibly high volume of products given our scale and reach. They continue to execute well in this highly fluid and complex environment.”

The company is taking steps to mitigate the supply shortages, he said, such as working closely with key suppliers and contract manufacturers, paying significantly higher logistics costs, modifying designs and optimizing build and delivery plans. “We are doing this at a breadth and scale that is significantly greater than most in our industry,” Robbins continued. “Of course, all of these steps, while necessary to maximize our production and delivery to customers, add to our cost structure. When combined with cost increases we are seeing from many of our suppliers, these factors are putting pressure on our gross margins. While we thoughtfully raised prices to offset this impact, the benefits are not immediate and will be recognized over the coming quarters.”Cisco’s non-GAAP operating margin in Q1 was 33.3%. Product revenue in the first quarter was up 11% year-over-year, totaling $9.53 billion. Effective for the first quarter of fiscal 2022, Cisco began reporting revenue in the following categories: Secure, Agile Networks; Hybrid Work; End-to-End Security; Internet for the Future; Optimized Application Experiences; Other Products and Services. The change reflects remarks from Robbins, who said at Cisco’s 2021 Investor Day that the future of the business would stand on six technology areas: secure, agile networks; hybrid work; security; internet for the future; optimized application experiences; and capabilities at the edge.For Q1, product revenue was led by sales in Secure, Agile Networks, which was up 10% to $5.97 billion. “Internet for the Future” revenue was up 46% to $1.37 billion. End-to-End Security revenue was up 4% to $895 million. Optimized Application Experiences was up 18% to $181 million. Hybrid Work was down 7% to $1.11 billion. Other product revenue was up 9% to $3 million. Service revenue in Q1 was up 1% year-over-year, reaching $3.37 billion. Deferred revenue in Q1 was $22.1 billion, up 8% in total, with deferred product revenue up 19%. Deferred service revenue was flat.For the second quarter, Cisco expects revenue growth of 4.5% to 6.5% year-over-year.

Tech Earnings More