Sandvine Cites Customer Traction, Including a Top Ten U.S. MSO

Sandvine has won nine new service provider customers. Six of the customers are fixed line service providers and three are mobile network operators. Four of Sandvine's new service provider customers are based in North America, including one of the top ten cable operators in the United States and a North American tier-one DSL service provider with more than one million broadband subscribers. Three of the new customers come from the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) sales region, and one each from Caribbean and Latin America and Asia Pacific.


Two of Sandvine's new customers were won through strategic reseller partnerships with network equipment manufacturers.


Sandvine's network policy control solutions focus on protecting and improving the quality of experience on the Internet.
http://www.sandvine.com

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Ericsson Builds Optical Transport in Costa Rica

Ericsson has signed a five-year contract with cable television operator CableTica to build and operate an optical transport network in Costa Rica specifically optimized to handle the needs of next-generation mobile networks.
Ericsson will also manage the new network. Financial terms were not disclosed.


The new, state-of-the-art optical network is based on Ericsson's MHL 3000 and OMS 1400 optical platforms. The network will enable CableTica to transport any kind of data -- including television, internet and mobile backhaul -- and also allow for future implementation of IPTV services. Further, CableTica will be able to offer services -- such as digital television, video-on-demand and data services -- in more areas of Costa Rica.


The deal, signaling the opening of Costa Rica's telecommunications market, is Ericsson's first cable television deal in Central America and Caribbean. CableTica is expected to launch the new service shortly.
http://www.ericsson.com
http://www.cabletica.com/

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AT&T Authorized to Offer Managed Trusted IP Services to Govt

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has issued an Authority to Operate (ATO) to AT&T for implementation of Managed Trusted IP Services (MTIPS) under the Networx contract. AT&T is the first network operator to receive this authority. AT&T Government Solutions has disclosed MTIPS task orders with the Federal Trade Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency.


Networx is a contract vehicle that allows AT&T to provide a full range of communications services to federal government agencies.


MTIPS is an offering under the Networx Universal and Enterprise contracts that allows federal agencies to connect to the Internet via secure IP portals in full compliance with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative.


"AT&T's cloud based approach to cybersecurity is the foundation for MTIPS," said Ed Amoroso, Chief Security Officer, AT&T. "We use the cloud to proactively detect and diffuse security threats at the 'street corner' as opposed to the 'front door' of a federal agency -- thereby minimizing the risk of a cyber attack. With AT&T's MTIPS solution, we can help agencies protect their network with the advance notice necessary to counter the threats."http://www.att.com
http://www.corp.att.com/gov/networx/product_services.html

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Telx Launches Carrier Ethernet Exchange

Telx, which operates 15 carrier-grade interconnection, colocation and business exchange facilities across the U.S., is launching an Ethernet Exchange to bring together buyers and sellers of Ethernet services.


The Telx Ethernet Exchange platform is powered by the Cisco ASR 9000 router and Cisco Active Network Abstraction network management software. It will become available in seven strategic interconnection data centers over the next nine months with initial customers being part of a charter program in the third quarter of 2010. Service providers and enterprises will also receive professional consultation services to help ensure full Ethernet interoperability.


An automated customer portal allows users to establish new virtual connections in minutes and leverage robust reporting, which allows customers to see inventory and metrics to help run their business.


"The Telx Ethernet Exchange is a direct response to the needs within our Global Marketplace of customers, who have been limited to offering and supporting Ethernet services in markets where they have services deployed," said Eric Shepcaro, CEO of Telx. "Telx can now facilitate customers extending their Ethernet network reach, and being powered by the Cisco platform ensures we will provide a high-performance and feature-rich service to meet their needs."

In addition, Telx is partnering with Neutral Tandem, which provides tandem interconnection services to wireless, wireline, cable and broadband telephony companies, for its new Telx Ethernet Exchange. Neutral Tandem and Telx plan to connect their key Ethernet Exchange sites, helping customers to seamlessly interconnect their networks without complex, time consuming interconnection agreements, providing greater reach to their end customers. As such, Telx's Global Marketplace of service provider customers will be able to extend their geographic service regions by tapping directly into Telx's seven Ethernet Exchange locations as well as Neutral Tandem's planned 14 Ethernet eXchange locations nationwide.
http://www.telx.com

• Neutral Tandem recently announced plans to launch 14 Ethernet eXchanges at the following locations: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

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Silicon Vendors Form Linaro to Promote Linux Devices

Leading siicon vendors, including ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, have formed a not-for-profit open source software engineering company called "Linaro" to promote open source innovation for the next wave of always-connected, always-on computing. Linaro's mission is to significantly simplify the process of bringing Linux-based consumer devices to market.


The founders said Linaro was formed "to increase investment in open source, address the challenges in developing products for sophisticated consumer markets and provide the support of a broad array of semiconductor products from multiple companies." By providing the common foundations of tools and software for other distributions and stacks to build upon, Linaro will enable greater operational efficiency for the electronics industry. The goal is to accelerate the abundance of new consumer products that use Linux-based distributions such as Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS in conjunction with advanced semiconductor SoCs to provide the new features consumers desire at the lowest possible power consumption.


"The dramatic growth of open source software development can now be seen in internet-based, always-connected mobile and consumer products," said Tom Lantzsch, executive officer, Linaro. "Linaro will help accelerate this trend further by increasing investment on key open source projects and providing industry alignment with the community to deliver the best Linux-based products for the benefit of the consumer."


The company's first release is planned for November 2010 and will provide performance optimizations for SoCs based on the ARM Cortex™-A processor family.


In addition to ARM and IBM, four of the world's leading application processor companies, Freescale, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, will align open source engineering efforts within Linaro.
http://www.linaro.org

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Nokia Siemens Networks Integrates TD-LTE into Mobile Portfolio

Nokia Siemens Networks is now including TD-LTE within its mobile portfolio of base stations and core networks. The company also showcased the industry's first concurrent TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE demo.



The co-existence of the two technologies is a significant step towards facilitating operators' transition to TD-LTE and was conducted on Nokia Siemens Networks' Flexi Multiradio Base Station.
Specifically, Nokia Siemens Networks' Single RAN solution supports LTE in the paired and unpaired spectrum on the same Flexi Multiradio Base Station. The TD-LTE variant is fully compliant with 3GPP Release 8 LTE specifications. In addition, the common platform ensures easy maintenance and rapid evolution to future standards such as LTE-Advanced.


NSN said the abundance of available unpaired spectrum in many countries across the world will enable operators to make a quick transition to TD-LTE mobile broadband.


"TD-LTE is an evolutionary path for 3G TD-SCDMA and WiMAX networks, as well as an option for operators around the world who have available unpaired spectrum. The shift from TD-SCDMA and WiMAX to TD-LTE, will be a gradual process, thereby making it important that the two technologies co-exist with each other," said Thorsten Robrecht, head of LTE product management, Nokia Siemens Networks. "This achievement marks a solid step towards seamless evolution to TD-LTE and will enable operators to quickly move to the technology."http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com

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ZTE Appoints Mr. Lixin Cheng as CEO of ZTE USA

ZTE USA has appointed Mr. Lixin Cheng to the role of President of the North American Region and CEO of ZTE USA. He replaces Mr. Jiang Xiangyang who has stepped down in order to spend more time with his family. Jiang will continue working with ZTE's management team operating out of their headquarters in Shenzhen, China.


Mr. Cheng sits on the Board of Directors of the World Trade Center in San Diego and most recently founded ALA Group, Inc. where he provided consulting services to help technology companies increase penetration in the U.S. market. Mr. Cheng served as President of then start-up Axesstel Inc., from 2004 to 2006,. Previously, Mr. Cheng also led the sales and supply team at Ericsson Panda Ltd in China from 1998 to 2001.
http://www.zte.com.cn

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OIF Kicks Off 2 Projects Focused on 100G

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) is starting two new 100G projects.


The first addresses the interoperable processing of Optical Transport Network (OTN) streams over a packet switch fabric. The convergence towards OTN as the primary transport protocol and the predominance of packet traffic lead to a need to switch ODUk/ODUflex in a Packet Fabric environment. The "OTN over Packet Fabric Protocol" project aims to develop a common protocol for switching ODUk/ODUflex data and timing through a packet fabric to ensure interoperability among framer and fabric devices. By defining a packetized ODUk/ODUflex format, true convergence is enabled as both packet and Constant Bit Rate (CBR) OTN signals can be switched by a common fabric within an Optical Transport Platform (OTP).


The second project addresses the important issue of thermal management at the faceplate of an optical communication system given the trend towards ever increasing port density coupled with the increased power consumption necessary to support higher data rates.



"The industry is seeing a trend toward converged packet optical transport as transport network rates increase to 40G/100G," said Dave Stauffer, of IBM and the OIF's Physical & Link Layer Working Group chair. "This leads to a growing need for interoperability between devices processing OTN clients and a converged OTP. A converged OTP may also lead to a more cost-effective approach."

In addition, the OIF's Physical Layer User Group will develop a white paper elaborating on the need and solutions to improve thermal management at the faceplate that support the trend of increasing power densities.
http://www.oiforum.com

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France Surpasses 20 Million Broadband Subscriptions

As of 31 March 2010, there were 20.06 million high-speed and ultra high-speed internet subscriptions in France. The number of subscriptions increased about 370,000 over the quarter. Over one year, the growth was about 1.69 million (+9%). The number of gross sales is about 1.075 million over the quarter.


19.73 million of these subscriptions were high-speed subscriptions. The number of ADSL subscriptions (18.81 million at the end of the quarter) represented 95% of high-speed broadband subscriptions and increased by about 315,000 throughout the quarter.


As of 31 march 2010, the total base of ultra high-speed broadband subscribers in France was estimated to 330,000 (about 40,000 net adds over the quarter), all operators and all technologies combined, including:

• 75,000 FTTH or FTTB subscribers. The total net adds (+5,000 over the quarter) is due to growth in FTTH subscriptions;
  
  
• 255,000 other subscribers (hybrid fiber-coax solution) which increased of about 35,000 over the quarter.

http://www.arcep.fr/index.php?id=10471&L=1

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Infinera cites Gains in Long Haul DWDM Market Share

According to Dell'Oro Group data, Infinera took a record 39% share in Q1 2010 in the North American long-haul DWDM market, its highest share ever and more than double the share of the number two vendor. Infinera has ranked first in revenue in the North American long-haul market for the past three years. Infinera's revenue in North America was up 54% to $76.0 million on a year-on-year basis, according to Infinera earnings reports. By contrast, the North America long-haul DWDM market was down 8% to $177.3 million on a year-on-year basis, according to Dell'Oro Group data. Infinera believes that its growth in this period was due to the gain in new customers as well as the successful performance of Infinera customers in the telecom marketplace. Infinera customers in North America include major coast-to-coast networks like Cox Communications, Global Crossing, Internet2, and XO Communications, as well as two large Internet content providers. In Q1, Infinera added five new customers to its roster.


The company also noted that according to Dell'Oro Group data, Infinera ranked second in the worldwide long-haul optical networking market in Q1, with a 15% share of long-haul DWDM revenue. Infinera global revenue grew by 44% to $95.8 million on a year-on-year basis, as reported in Infinera earnings reports. Over the same period, worldwide long-haul DWDM revenue rose by just 1.3% to $575.4 million, according to Dell'Oro Group data. In recent months, Infinera has broadened its geographical reach, winning leading Tier 1 service providers like NTT of Japan, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica International Wholesale Services, and OTEGLOBE, as well as fast-growing European carriers like COLT and Tiscali.
http://www.infinera.com

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