FCC Recommends Public Safety Network Leverage Commercial Rollouts

The FCC issued a detailed report recommending that the public safety network for first responders that is called for in the National Broadband Report be built alongside next gen commercial networks rather than as separate infrastructure. This approach would cost approximately $6.5 billion over 10 years, significantly less than the projected $15.7 billion in capital costs associated with building a stand-alone public safety network.


In addition, the FCC's analysis indicates that to build and operate a stand-alone public safety network would be substantially more expensive than a network constructed under the FCC's recommended incentive-based approach. The study projects $12 to $16 billion in network costs for upgrades and operations within the first 10 years of the network's existence, while the cost for a stand-alone public safety network over the same 10-year period is projected at $25 billion.


"It is vitally important that we move forward with our plan to solve the public safety communications crisis that was exposed on 9/11 and during hurricanes Katrina and Rita," said Jamie Barnett, Chief of the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau.
http://www.fcc.gov

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FCC Establishes New Emergency Response Interoperability Center

The FCC has established a new Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC) under the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB) with the mission of promoting nationwide operability and interoperability in
wireless broadband communications for America's first responders.


Operating under the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB), ERIC will work closely with industry, commercial providers, manufacturers and standards setting groups to ensure interoperability and operability on the new network.


The FCC's recently released National Broadband Plan recommended a framework to create a nationwide interoperable wireless broadband network for public safety. ERIC's mission is to adopt and implement:

• Technical requirements and procedures for ensuring a nationwide level of interoperability;



• Mechanisms to address operability, roaming, priority access, gateway functions and interfaces, and interconnectivity of public safety broadband wireless networks; and



• Authentication and encryption requirements for common public safety broadband
  applications and network usage.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will be instrumental in the functions of the ERIC.http://http://

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Ericsson's Q1: Network Sales Decline as Global Services Rises

Ericsson's Group sales in Q1 2010 declined 9% year-over-year with lower sales in Networks but with an increase of 3% year-over-year in Global Services. Sales for comparable units, adjusted for currency exchange rate effects and hedging, declined -16% year-over-year. Gross margin, excluding restructuring, improved year-over-year to 39% (36%) due to efficiency gains and product mix.


Ericsson's share in earnings of joint ventures, before tax, amounted to SEK -0.3 (-2.2) b. excluding restructuring charges, compared to SEK -0.4 b. in the fourth quarter. Sequentially, Sony Ericsson improved sales and margins significantly due to efficiency programs and new products, while ST-Ericsson's loss increased mainly due to lower sales and seasonality. Restructuring charges in joint ventures were SEK 0.1 b in the quarter.


Some highlights for the quarter:

• Networks' sales in the quarter declined by -14% year-over-year, positively impacted by CDMA sales.
  However, tight industry component supply conditions affected sales in the quarter. This was more than
  offset by the acquired CDMA operations.
  
  
• Voice related sales, such as 2G access and core continued to decline. Increased mobile broadband
  (3G) sales, including radio, mobile backhaul and packet core, partly offset this impact.
  
  
• Global Services sales grew 3% year-over-year and declined -22% sequentially. Professional Services sales
  increased 4% year-over-year and in local currencies growth amounted to 12% year-over-year. Managed
  Services sales in the quarter increased by 17% year-over-year.
  
  
• Network Rollout sales increased 3% year-over-year.
  
  
• There is a continued good demand for services targeting the operational efficiency of operators, such
  as managed services, systems integration and consulting. Services related to 2G voice sales
  developed unfavorably.
  
  
• Multimedia sales in the quarter decreased by -29% year-over-year and -31% sequentially, due to continued
  slower sales of revenue management solutions in regions Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and South
  East Asia and Oceania. Sales in multimedia brokering (IPX) were also somewhat slower.
  The TV business continued to show good development with strong demand for compression technology and
  IPTV solutions.
  
  
• Sony-Ericsson shipped 10.5 million units in the quarter, a decrease of 28% year-over-year. Sales in the quarter were EUR 1,405 million, a decrease of 19% year-over- year.
  
  
• ST-Ericsson's net sales in the quarter showed a -18% decrease sequentially, due to the impact of the ongoing
  portfolio transition, to seasonal effects as well as the number of days in the quarter.

Market Observations and Milestones

• Global mobile data traffic has surpassed voice traffic.



• In addition, 3G/WCDMA traffic has surpassed GSM traffic.



• Ericsson's findings show that mobile data traffic globally grew 280% during the last two years
  and is forecast to double annually over the next five years. The data traffic growth is contributing to
  operator revenue growth as more and more consumers use data traffic generating devices, such
  as smartphones and laptops.



• Mobile subscriptions grew by 184 million in the quarter to a total of 4.8 billion, returning to higher growth levels.



• Global mobile penetration is now 70%.



• China and India alone accounted for 44% of net mobile additions in Q1 2010 with 28 and
  53 million respectively.



• The global number of new WCDMA subscriptions grew by 39 million in the quarter to a total of 490 million, of
  which 225 million are estimated to be HSPA. In the fourth quarter 2009, fixed broadband connections
  grew to 457 million, adding 19 million subscribers.

http://www.ericsson.com

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SES-1 Successfully Launched from Kazakhstan

SES-1, a hybrid C- and Ku-band spacecraft that will provide coverage over the United States, was successfully roared into space on board a Proton Breeze M booster from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation and is owned an operated by SES WORLD SKIES. The spacecraft is poised to be the 42nd satellite in SES' global fleet.


The spacecraft carries 24 active C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders of 36 MHz capacity each. Six of the channels in each band can be cross-strapped to the opposite band, enabling new service capability.
http://www.ses.com

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Equinix Opens Second IBX Data Center in Amsterdam

Equinix is ready to open its new Amsterdam (AM2) International Business Exchange (IBX) data center, which has been under development since November 2009. The first phase represents an expected investment of approximately $40.0 million and provides 480 cabinets equivalents. The second phase is targeted for completion during the third quarter of 2010 and is expected to provide an additional 520 cabinets equivalents. A third phase, to be timed to meet market demand, will provide an additional 500 cabinet equivalents.


Equinix noted that its new AM2 IBX data center represents its fourth facility in The Netherlands, including two IBX data centers located in Enschede and Zwolle, and is part of the company's $2.0 billion investment to expand operations between 2007 and 2010.
http://www.equinix.com

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Voltaire Enables Virtualized 10 GbE Data Center Fabric

At this week's Interop in Las Vegas, Voltaire will demonstrate the industry's first end-to-end, virtualized, scale-out data center across a multi-vendor 10 Gigabit Ethernet fabric.


In the demonstration, Voltaire's recently introduced Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) 3.0 software orchestrates physical and virtual switches delivering guaranteed levels of service per application. The demonstration will include 10 GbE networking products from Voltaire, BLADE Network Technologies, HP ProCurve, Intel and Emulex, and virtualization software from VMware.


Specifically, the demonstration includes the Voltaire Vantage 8500, a low latency 10 GbE Layer 2 core switch, which provides CEE capabilities such as lossless traffic, as well as the BLADE RackSwitch G8124, HP ProCurve 6600-24XG switch, Intel Ethernet Server Adapter X520-DA2, Emulex OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs), and VMware ESX 4.0. The converged fabric also tunnels storage traffic over 10GbE with virtualized connectivity to Fibre Channel storage.


"The dynamic and shared nature of today's virtualized data center and cloud computing environments is creating new challenges in maintaining security and service levels," said Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. "Resolving these challenges requires a new kind of fabric orchestration solution that translates service or application requirements to data center fabric policies in real-time. Voltaire's UFM software for Ethernet essentially functions as the data center fabric operating system and automatically configures fabric resources as services are added or mobilized across the data center."http://www.voltaire.com

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Mindspeed Offer Signal Conditioning for Enterprise Applications

Mindspeed Technologies released its "Amplif-Eye" line of signal conditioners designed specifically for enterprise storage, computing and networking applications.

Optimal performance in PCI Express, SATA/SAS, RXAUI, Fiber Channel and Ethernet applications is often difficult to achieve because signal integrity could not be maintained across the systems' backplanes and cabling media.


Mindspeed's products address these problems by correcting for insertion loss, crosstalk, reflections due to impedance mismatches and other channel impairments associated with implementing multi-gigabit signaling between line cards and across their backplanes. The company notes that the signal-integrity problem has been magnified as enterprise data rates have doubled over the past few years to 5 Gbps for the most common server protocol, PCI Express, and 6Gbps for the most common enterprise-storage protocol, SAS. Signal conditioners resolve these problems in two general categories: Re-driving signal conditioners, which use transmit and receive equalization to correct for insertion loss, and re-timing signal conditioners, which add a Clock Data Recovery (CDR) circuit to address issues caused by crosstalk and reflections.


Mindspeed's Amplif-Eye enterprise signal-conditioning product line initially includes six re-driving and re-timing devices, with five other products scheduled to be added later this year. Each device is specifically designed to accommodate SAS, PCI Express, Interlaken and RXAUI protocols. Products in the family are fabricated in low-power CMOS technology to maintain the lowest possible power profile while maintaining best-in-class performance to assist system designers in the difficult task of migrating to the higher data rates.
http://www.mindspeed.com

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Unions Seeks Employment Assurances in Qwest-CenturyLink Deal

The Communications Workers of America voiced its concern over the merger "cost synergies" that were described as a driving factor for the recently announced Qwest Communications + CenturyLink deal.

In a press statement, the CWA said "Our nation is plagued by job cuts and Wall Street terms like 'merger synergies' that are often just shorthand for job cuts or pay cuts. President Obama's job summit and recent legislation put jobs front and center, not just at a conference but in all governmental decision-making.


Just weeks ago, the Federal Communications Commission published its broadband plan. Central to the plan is a one gigabit build-out to anchor institutions in every community, and by 2015, a build-out of 50 megabits down and 20 megabits up to 80 percent of households.


We will work with management, and with the FCC and state regulators, to make sure that this merger offers specific commitments to meet these goals."http://www.cwa-union.orghttp://

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NTT Com to Acquire Major Stake in Emerio GlobeSoft

NTT Communications (NTT Com) will acquire a 70% stake in Emerio GlobeSoft (Emerio), a leading technology services and outsourcing company based in Singapore. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Emerio offers application services, such as application development and maintenance; infrastructure services, such as IT service desks, server operation and maintenance, IT engineer dispatch, and end-user support; and business process outsourcing, such as support center business and account processing. The company employs about 1,400 people and has 14 worldwide bases in Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mainland China, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, U.K., U.S.A. and Vietnam.


NTT Com said the deal will enhance the coverage, cost effectiveness, reliability and quality of its global services and strengthen its ability to meet multinational companies' growing needs for globally seamless and one-stop solutions for networks, applications and servers.
http://www.ntt.com
http://www.emeriocorp.com

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Nokia Builds TD-SCDMA Portfolio for China Mobile

At the World Expo Shanghai 2010,, Nokia is unveiling two new TD-SCDMA devices: the Nokia X5 and the Nokia C5 for TD-SCDMA. Both devices, which are customized for China Mobile, feature a jointly offered mobile application store -- the Mobile Market-Ovi Store.


Connectivity to the Internet is provided through China Mobile's 3G (TD-SCDMA) network. They are offer preloaded applications such as CMCC Music, Mobile Video, Fetion IM, and the Mobile Market-Ovi Store.


"We are also very excited to become a board member of TD Forum after being involved in the forum's activities for years. We have a long-term commitment to TD-SCDMA and we take our leadership role very seriously. We will continue to drive for TD-SCDMA technology and market development as well as evolution towards TD-LTE. And thus will contribute the prosperity of TD-SCDMA in China, with both high quality TD-SCDMA devices and rich applications and services," said Chris Leong, Nokia Senior Vice President, Greater China, Korea & Japan.


The Nokia X5 is the first Nokia TD-SCDMA Symbian based entertainment device. It features a dedicated music key and easy access to CMCC music, a 5.0-megapixel camera, dual LED flash and video recording functions.


The Nokia C5 has a stainless-steel keypad in a compact design. It is pre-loaded with Fetion and 139 mailbox, and offers a 5.0 megapixel camera and a 2.4'' QVGA 16M color TFT display.
http://www.nokia.com

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