Monday, May 31, 2010

IDC: Strong Growth in Ethernet Switch and Router Sales in Q2

In the second quarter of 2010, the enterprise Ethernet switching business grew 32.7% compared to a year earlier and the Ethernet router market expanded 11.0% year-over-year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Networks Tracker. The strong performance was seen across all regions and key product segments.


From a vendor perspective, Cisco's Ethernet switch market share increased to 65.8% in 2Q10 from 62.8% in 2Q09, but was down from 68.3% in the exceptionally strong 1Q10. Cisco performed on par with the Service Provider router market and now accounts for 46.1% of Service Provider router revenue (same as in 2Q09).


"The second quarter performance was very good, following on the heels of exceptional first quarter results for the Ethernet switch market," said Rohit Mehra, director, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC. "As seen in previous years, the second calendar quarter builds on the performance of the first, which is what the market delivered, showing strong year-over-year growth from the slowdown the market witnessed in 2009. The continued adoption of PoE (Power over Ethernet) and gigabit ethernet is also being helped by the underlying networking drivers -- the growth of voice and video over IP applications, network-attached devices, virtualization, and cloud computing."



IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Networks Tracker provides global Ethernet switch coverage, including manufacturer revenue and port shipments by vendor, layer, speed, form factor, power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities, and average pricing. The router coverage shows manufacturing revenue and unit shipments by vendor, product class, deployment, connectivity, and average pricing. Ethernet switch and router market results are delivered in a pivot table seven weeks after the close of the calendar quarter.

"The second quarter performance was very good, following on the heels of exceptional first quarter results for the Ethernet switch market," said Rohit Mehra, director, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC. "As seen in previous years, the second calendar quarter builds on the performance of the first, which is what the market delivered, showing strong year-over-year growth from the slowdown the market witnessed in 2009. The continued adoption of PoE (Power over Ethernet) and gigabit ethernet is also being helped by the underlying networking drivers -- the growth of voice and video over IP applications, network-attached devices, virtualization, and cloud computing."

IDC's update report found that the worldwide router market showed moderate strength in 2Q10. The enterprise router market was marginally lower compared to 1Q10, but had an 8.0% year-over-year gain. This segment continues to be soft and off by around 25% from the record levels seen in 2007 and 2008. Service provider router revenue now accounts for 73.9% of the router market and includes both core and edge routers.

"The continued market recovery in 2010 is very encouraging with all regions and market segments making a contribution," said Cindy Borovick, vice president, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure and Datacenter Networks. "IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Networks Tracker shows a strong 87.9% year-over-year increase in 10GbE switch revenue in 2Q10 and for the first time there were more than 1 million 10GbE ports shipped in the quarter. The 10Gb adoption was driven by datacenter, cloud, and campus buildouts."

From a vendor perspective, Cisco's Ethernet switch market share increased to 65.8% in 2Q10 from 62.8% in 2Q09, but was down from 68.3% in the exceptionally strong 1Q10. Cisco performed on par with the Service Provider router market and now accounts for 46.1% of Service Provider router revenue (same as in 2Q09).

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Networks Tracker provides global Ethernet switch coverage, including manufacturer revenue and port shipments by vendor, layer, speed, form factor, power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities, and average pricing. The router coverage shows manufacturing revenue and unit shipments by vendor, product class, deployment, connectivity, and average pricing. Ethernet switch and router market results are delivered in a pivot table seven weeks after the close of the calendar quarter.
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22463310http://www.idc.com

Vodafone Returns to Growth with Smartphones and Mobile Data

For the three months ended 30-June-2010, the Vodafone Group reported revenue increased by 4.8% to £11.3 billion and Group service revenue increased by 4.9% to £10.6 billion. On an organic basis, service revenue increased by 1.1% -- an improvement of 1.7 percentage points on the previous quarter -- as each of the regions delivered improved service revenue trends.


"These are the first quarterly results to show service revenue growth since the global recession impacted. We have achieved these results through our continuing commercial approach in key European markets, focusing especially on data, and from strong growth in emerging markets, with India now cash positive at an operating level and our highest ever quarterly revenue in Turkey. The financial outlook for the current year is confirmed," stated Vittorio Colao, CEO.


Some highlights:


  • In Europe service revenue fell by 1.7%, a 0.7 percentage point improvement on the previous quarter. Northern European businesses experienced an improvement in economic conditions, but southern European businesses continued to experience a weaker economic environment and poor consumer sentiment.


  • Both Germany and the UK delivered a third successive quarterly improvement in organic service revenue trends and returned to positive service revenue growth, with each generating faster data revenue growth rates as a result of our focus on smartphones and data plans and, in Germany, on netbooks.


  • Spain delivered a small improvement in organic service revenue trends, despite an increasingly competitive market.


  • In Italy, significant price competition led to organic service revenue declined.


  • Enterprise revenue returned to growth in Europe, increasing by 0.2% with improved roaming activity and customer wins by Vodafone Global Enterprise.


  • In Asia Pacific and Middle East, service revenue increased by 10.5%, a 5.5 percentage point improvement on the previous quarter. The improvement was driven by continued strong customer growth and better usage trends in India where there have been no recent significant price reductions by market leaders.


  • Capital expenditure was £1,041 million reflecting continued European network investment, enhancement of the network in Turkey and continued network rollout in India, albeit at a slower rate than in the first quarter last year. In addition, the Group invested £3.0 billion in spectrum licences in India and Germany.


  • Free cash flow was £1,767 million and was broadly stable year on year after adjusting for foreign exchange.
http://www.vodafone.com

T-Mobile's HSPA+ Network Operational in 50 Markets

T-Mobile USA announced that its HSPA+ network is now operational in 50 markets across the country and that the company is on track to deliver HSPA+ speeds in 100 major metropolitan areas with backhaul in place, covering 185 million people in the U.S. by the end of this year.


In addition, 16 of T-Mobile's current 3G devices, including more than a dozen smartphones, can benefit from the HSPA+ network, including the newest smartphone available from T-Mobile--the Samsung Vibrant. And later this summer, T-Mobile will unveil its first HSPA+-capable smartphone.
http://www.t-mobile.com

Video: Network Monitoring for 4G





http://www.vssmonitoring.com

VSS Monitoring Targets 4G/LTE Monitoring

VSS Monitoring unveiled a new framework for monitoring traffic and services across 4G/LTE networks.


Service providers have traditionally employed a flat architecture of probes and testers for monitoring their 2G and 3G network traffic locally. To handle more complex 4G networks, VSS Monitoring is developing a hierarchical framework capable of providing a network-wide view of traffic in real-time as well as packet-level visibility at any network node. The company said its "Network Monitoring 2.0" adopts a systems approach with no single point of failure. The system promises low-latency and scales to a worldwide distributed network.


Essentially, by decoupling the monitoring infrastructure from the core network, the traffic capture system can act as a universal access layer for all monitoring tools. The traffic capture layer is possible because the network taps are distributed and intelligent.


"Mobile operators clearly need a solution optimized for 4G monitoring," said Andy Huckridge, VSS Director of Marketing.


VSS Monitoring's Optimizer 2016 is an intelligent traffic capture device for networks from 10 Mbps to 10 GigE. It provides session-aware load balancing, a technology that maintains network session integrity to the monitoring infrastructure, allowing users to deploy multiple one Gigabit analytical tools to monitor a 10 GigE line, ensuring full coverage and maximizing monitor ROI. Hardware-based filtering allows users to filter traffic at line rate by address and protocols; users can also create custom filters. It supports VSS' intelligent stacking technology, "vStack+", which enables traffic capture devices to be deployed in a redundant, low-latency mesh for total, dynamic, fault-tolerant visibility that scales to even the largest networks.
http://www.vssmonitoring.com

Clearwire Expands 4G in 3 More Markets: Wash DC, Baltimore, Kansas City

Clearwire Communications launched its 4G service in parts of the Washington metro market with expanded coverage to surrounding areas expected in the months ahead. Within this central D.C. area, CLEAR covers nearly 1 million people in communities as far north as Chevy Chase and Silver Spring MD, south to Alexandria VA, west to Falls Church, VA, and east to College Park MD.


Clearwire announced the launch of service in Kansas City, Kansas, and the expansion of its 4G network in Baltimore. CLEAR now covers 725 square miles and approximately 1.7 million people in the Baltimore metro area. Regionally, service extends as far north as Bel Air, as far south as Annapolis and southwest as Columbia, west to Owings Mills, and east to Dundalk and Essex. In Kansas City, CLEAR covers 670 square miles and more than 1.1 million people in areas extending as far north as the Kansas City International Airport, south to Belton, west to the Kansas Speedway, and east to Blue Springs.
http://www.clearwire.com

Qualcomm Debuts Dual-CPU Snapdragon Chip

Qualcomm has begun sampling its first dual-CPU Snapdragon chipsets designed for smartphones, tablets and smartbook devices. This represents Qualcomm's third generation in the Snapdragon series.


The MSM8260 for HSPA+ and MSM8660 for multi-mode HSPA+/CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. B feature two enhanced CPU cores running at up to 1.2GHz for high levels of Web application and multimedia performance, including a powerful GPU with 3D/2D acceleration engines for Open GLES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1 acceleration, 1080p video encode/decode, dedicated low power audio engine, integrated low power GPS, and support for 24-bit WXGA 1280 x 800 resolution displays.


"Qualcomm's first-generation Snapdragon chipsets set a new standard for advanced smartphones and smartbook devices, and our second-generation solutions are already shipping in volume," said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.
http://www.qualcomm.com

Windstream Completes acquisition of Iowa Telecom

Windstream completed its acquisition of Iowa Telecommunications Services, Inc. in a transaction valued at approximately $1.2 billion.

As of March 31, 2010, Iowa Telecom provided service to approximately 249,000 access lines, 96,000 high-speed Internet customers and 27,500 digital TV customers in Iowa and Minnesota.

Windstream said the deal will provide it with increased scale and annual synergies of approximately $35 million in operating expenses and capital expenditure savings. The transaction also includes tax assets with an estimated net present value of approximately $130 million.

Iowa Telecom Chairman and CEO Alan Wells was appointed to the Windstream board of directors effective with the closing of the transaction.
http://www.windstream.com29062

Internet Initiative Japan Acquires AT&T's Local Outsourcing Business

Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ) has agreed to acquire AT&T's local network outsourcing service in Japan. Through this acquisition, IIJ will be providing WAN services to approximately 1,600 domestic corporate customers. IIJ's own client bases has over 6,500 corporate customers. Additionally, IIJ will also provide international services through business tie-up with AT&T Japan. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.iij.ad.jp/en/

Broadcom Announces 3x3 MIMO 802.11n

Broadcom introduced a single-chip 802.11n dual-band 3x3 wireless solution aimed at multimedia content distribution in their homes.


The company said its BCM4331 Wi-Fi chip, which uses three transmitting and three receiving streams of data in either the 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz frequency bands, achieves 450 Mbps data rates in client devices and over 600Mbps throughput (TCP/IP) in 3x3 AP/router configurations.


The BCM4331 is now sampling and will be demonstrated at this week's 30th annual COMPUTEX in Taipei, Taiwan.
http://www.broadcom.com

European Commission: Telecom Markets More Competitive

EU telecoms markets have become more competitive, however a single EU telecoms market is still far from reality, according to a new report from the European Commission.


The Commission's recently launched Digital Agenda for Europe calls for swift and consistent enforcement of existing telecoms rules and indicates that the Commission intends to propose appropriate steps to reduce the cost of the absence of a Single Market in telecoms services.


Problems include different national regulatory approaches to tackling competition issues, such as regulating access to fibre networks. The new report also warns that regulatory uncertainty could hamper the roll out of investment-intensive infrastructure projects like Next Generation Access (NGA) networks, one of the flagships of the Digital Agenda for Europe.


Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes said: "Commission guidance to national telecoms regulators has guaranteed a level of consistency and predictability that gives investors confidence. However, we need more coordinated regulation to ensure harmonised implementation and proper functioning of a single EU telecoms market."


The Commission report claims that, on the whole, its efforts have led to less and better regulation across EU telecoms markets. However national telecoms regulators continue to apply diverging solutions to cases where there are similar competition problems. These include:

  • Treatment of fibre access products in the wholesale broadband markets - e.g. in a number of cases, although fibre was included in market definitions, telecoms regulators proposed not to impose regulatory remedies or to limit these to fibre networks.


  • Applying different calculations for the charges at which operators offer part of their networks (access) or convey calls for other operators (interconnection). A number of regulators still include non-related cost elements in the calculation of termination charges, such as spectrum costs, which leads to inflated charges.


  • Different regulatory approaches in cases where telecom operators separate the provision of services to other telecoms operators from those provided to end-users (functional separation).


As of May 2011, revised EU telecoms rules will give the Commission additional responsibilities for the imposition and implementation of remedies by national regulators. The Commission is committed to ensure the consistent application of the EU telecoms rules in close cooperation with the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), and to promote further high speed broadband rollout as foreseen in the Digital Agenda for Europe.


The Commission is currently finalizing a Recommendation on regulated access to Next Generation Access (NGA) networks, which builds on the guidance it provided as part of national broadband market reviews. The Commission, with BEREC, is also considering further instructions to telecoms regulators on the consistent implementation of separation commitments and remedies.
http://www.europa.eu

HP Targets New Era in Enterprise Services

Following on from its acquisition of EDS, HP
announced a restructuring to align itself with the "New Era in Enterprise Services." Plans call for investing in fully automated, standardized, state-of-the-art commercial data centers built on its Converged Infrastructure and operated by its industry-leading management software. HP will consolidate dozens of data centers into perhaps half a dozen super centers. The company will also eliminate up to 9,000 positions over several years as it pursues cloud-based services.


HP said its plan is to consolidate Enterprise Services' commercial data centers, management platforms, networks, tools and applications to create a more scalable, modernized and automated IT infrastructure that will better serve its clients' needs.


"Over the past 20 months, we focused on integrating EDS and improving profitability," said Tom Iannotti, senior vice president and general manager, HP Enterprise Services. "Now that the integration is largely complete, we have identified significant opportunities to grow and scale the business. These next-generation services will enable our clients to benefit from the combined technology and services leadership that only HP offers."http://www.hp.com

Whitepaper: Network Monitoring 2.0
















Whitepaper: Network Monitoring 2.0


The journey toward a converged all-IP
network comes with a whole new set of performance and management
philosophies toward which IT organizations must adopt and evolve.
Real-time monitoring, troubleshooting and provisioning of the network
must be implemented strategically and methodically, as they are driven
by the need to maintain and manage the experience of the end user. In
particular, real time monitoring of network traffic is proven to be
essential in diagnosing and analyzing the performance of the network and
the services, and consequently the quality of experience (QoE) of the
user.



It is the purpose of this paper to address the complexity challenges
associated with the existing network monitoring approach, which can be
termed broadly as "Network Monitoring 1.0" environment. As the network
has evolved from 2G to 3G and now 4G, the network monitoring also has to
evolve to a "Network Monitoring 2.0" model -- in which a single,
distributed capture layer creates a simplified and elegant architecture
that many large network operators have begun to adopt today.


Download
the full whitepaper here:




http://www.convergedigest.com/whitepapers/vss-wp.pdf

http://www.convergedigest.com/whitepapers/vss-wp.pdf

Alcatel-Lucent Supplies CDMA/EV-DO Rev. B to China Telecom

Alcatel-Lucent has been selected as the sole equipment provider for China Telecom's CDMA/EV-DO Rev. B network at the Expo 2010 in Shanghai.


Alcatel-Lucent's solution, which has been installed in the United States Pavilion, enables China Telecom to boost its mobile broadband network speeds by up to three times.


The installation follows an earlier trial of the multi-carrier Rev. B technology with China Telecom in three districts of Shanghai.


The Alcatel-Lucent EV-DO Rev. B solution is a software upgrade that builds on operators' existing CDMA base stations and enables a two- to three-fold improvement in the forward link peak data rates (6.2 Mbps for 2.5MHz and 9.3 Mbps for 3.75 MHz); peak data rates for the reverse link are improved proportionally (3.6 Mbps for 2.5 MHz and 5.4 Mbps for 3.75 MHz).


Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Nokia Siemens Networks Appoints Dr. Moiin as CTO

Nokia Siemens Networks has appointed Dr. Hossein Moiin as its chief technology officer.


Moiin is currently responsible for mobile technology and architecture at BT. Prior to working for BT, Moiin held positions with T-Mobile including group vice president for Technical Strategy and chief architect. Moiin was also chief technologist for the Network Service Provider Group at Sun Microsystems where he spent several years in a variety of management and development roles.


Moiin has a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of California and holds both Iranian and Italian citizenship. He is moving to Finland to be based out of the company's headquarters in Espoo.


The new role of CTO was created by Nokia Siemens Networks following the reorganization it announced in November 2009 and the elimination of the role of chief operating officer from January 2010. The CTO will be responsible for developing and advocating the company's technology strategy and long-term views on network architecture.
http://www.nsn.com

ZTE Completes TD-LTE S1/X2 Interface Conformity Test

ZTE and China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MII) completed the first S1/X2 Interface Conformity test for TD-LTE.
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Within LTE network infrastructure, the S1 interface is the communications interface between LTE eNB (base station) and EPC (packet core network), while the X2 interfaces between eNB and eNB. ZTE said the success of the S1/X2 Interface Conformity test validates that its TD-LTE system, including its wireless and core network, fully comply with 3rd Generation Partnership Project(3GPP)standards.
http://www.zte.com.cn

Telehouse Opens Flagship Facility in London's Docklands

Telehouse inaugurated its flagship Telehouse West data centre in London's Docklands. The opening event was hosted by BBC breakfast's Bill Turnbull, with speeches from: Mr Mitsui, Managing Director, Telehouse Europe; Mr Ishikawa, Vice President, KDDI; Mr. Hiroshi Oka, Minister of the Embassy of Japan in the United Kingdom; and Mike Harris, co-founder, Egg plc.


Telehouse was delighted to welcome key customers, including Ioka, Daiwa Capital Markets, Hitachi, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Verizon and T-Systems.


Spread over nine floors, five with a "localised data centre environment", the custom-built 19,000m² state-of-the-art facility brings the total power at the company's London Docklands site to 40MVA.


Telehouse's global data centre footprint has now reached 119,000m². The facility will meet the demands of UK businesses for high-capacity data centres, as well as offering connectivity to over 400 ISPs, carriers, operators and Internet Exchanges.
http://www.telehouse.net/

Juniper Research: Mobile VoIP users to exceed 100 million by 2012

Mobile VoIP services will develop significantly faster in developed markets due to the direct correlation between 3G roll outs and the take up of mobile VoIP, according to a new report from Juniper Research. The consultancy predicts that revenues from the circuit switched voice market will continue to diminish over the next five years, although this will not accelerate. Juniper Research advises that alliances between mobile VoIP players and traditional operators may provide the best option for today's incumbent operators to address the advent of mobile VoIP.http://juniperresearch.com/

SMC Networks Appoints Todd Babic as President

SMC Networks has promoted Todd Babic to the position of President of SMC Networks, effective immediately. Babic has served SMC since 2002, and spent the last two years as Vice President of Sales, Broadband Business Development for North America.


In his new role, Babic will be responsible for aligning SMC's resources, internally and externally, to achieve the company's strategic vision and will have day-to-day responsibility for directing and managing sales, engineering, and product management.


SMC Networks now focuses on supplying Customer Premise Equipment to Service Providers.
http://www.smc.com
  • Last year, SMC Networks spun off its business networking division (Edgecore Networks).

China's Nebulae Ranks as No. 2 Supercomputer

China's Nebulae, a new supercomputer based on a Dawning TC3600 Blade system with Intel X5650 processors and NVidia Tesla C2050 GPUs, has achieved 1.271 PFlop/s running the Linpack benchmark, which puts it in the No. 2 spot
on the TOP500 list of supercomputers worldwide. The leading spot is retained by Jaguar, which is located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and which retains a record 1.75 petaflop/s performance running the Linpack benchmark. Jaguar has a theoretical peak capability of 2.3 petaflop/s
and nearly a quarter of a million cores. One petaflop/s refers to one quadrillion calculations per
second.


Nebulae, which is located at China's newly build National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, leverages NVidia GPU accelerators to achieve an even higher theoretical peak capability of almost 3 petaflop/s -- the highest ever on the TOP500.


The third place on the list is Los Alamos' Roadrunner, which was the first to break the petaflop/s barrier in June 2008.


The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
http://www.supercomp.dehttp://www.top500.org