Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Dell'Oro: Optical Transport Market Returns to Positive Year-Over-Year Growth

Worldwide optical market revenues grew 3 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, reversing the trend of revenue declines that started in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. The positive result in the optical market was attributed to improved demand across all regions with particular strength in the Americas. The leading optical vendors in the quarter were Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, and Ciena with a combined worldwide market share of nearly 50 percent.


WDM equipment benefited the greatest from this increasing market demand for bandwidth. During the quarter, WDM revenues grew 18 percent versus the same quarter last year to nearly $1.6 billion. The North America region was the largest market for WDM equipment in the quarter as revenues grew 30 percent year-over-year. The vendors with the greatest market share selling into the North America region were Ciena, Fujitsu, Infinera, and Cisco with a combined share of 65 percent.


The report further indicates that 40 Gbps WDM wavelength shipments have grown approximately 200 percent year-over-year with an increasing number of worldwide deployments, and that 100 Gbps WDM wavelength shipments have started to ship this year.


http://www.delloro.com

Dell'Oro: Strong Growth in Unified Communications Market

The Unified Communications market expanded to its highest level since 2008 in the third quarter this year, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. Strong second half seasonality helped offset weakness in Europe as the Unified Communications market expanded 7 percent sequentially. Also, according to the report, vendors continue to migrate their installed base over to IP lines, although the process may take another decade to complete. The top eight vendors in the quarter that accounted for more than 80 percent of IP line shipments were: Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Shoretel, and Siemens.


"The market rebounded strongly in the third quarter due to robust seasonal quarters from several of the larger vendors, especially in North America, which was able to offset weakness in Europe" commented Alan Weckel, Director at Dell'Oro Group. "Despite pockets of weakness reappearing, we believe that the Unified Communications market will expand significantly in 2010 as existing vendors continue to invest and expand their software offerings and Microsoft begins to actively push Lync," Weckel added.
http://www.delloro.com

Australia's NBN Co Selects Cisco for Data Centres

Australia's NBN Co. has selected Cisco to provide the data centre computing platform that unites computing, network, storage access, and virtualisation. The cohesive system will support NBN Co's business and operational systems. The initial value of the contract is AU$9.5 million over three years, with the opportunity to scale up as NBN Co's needs increase.


NBN Co recently announced the selection of Global Switch to house its hardware and software systems. In addition to this data centre in Sydney, NBN Co will announce a second data centre location later in the year.
http://www.nbnco.com.au

Fon Wi-Fi Sharing Integrated into Broadcom's DOCSIS 3.0 SoCs

Broadcom and Fon, which operates the largest WiFi community in the world, with over 2.5 million Fon WiFi spots and nearly 5 million user, announced the first Fon-ready Broadcom chipsets for DOCSIS 3.0 devices.


Broadcom's DOCSIS 3.0-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions now feature a software development kit (SDK) that enables manufacturers to build Fon functionality directly into their customer premises equipment (CPEs) without any additional development.


Fon currently partners with leading broadband service providers, hardware manufacturers and Telco operators, including British Telecom, Comstar-MTS Russia, SFR, and ZON Portugal who offer Fon-ready services.


British Telecom, Coral Group, Skype, Google, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital are investors in Fon.
http://www.fon.com

PCIe 3.0 Doubles I/O Interconnect Performance

PCI-SIG released the latest PCIe Base 3.0 specification. The new PCIe 3.0 architecture is a low-cost, high-performance I/O technology that includes a new 128b/130b encoding scheme and a data rate of 8 gigatransfers per second (GT/s), doubling the interconnect bandwidth over the PCIe 2.0 specification. PCIe 3.0 technology also maintains backward compatibility with previous PCIe architectures and provides the optimum design point for high-volume platform I/O implementations across a wide range of topologies. Possible topologies include servers, workstations, desktop and mobile personal computers, embedded systems, peripheral devices, etc.
http://www.pcisig.com

ZTE Demos VoLTE Call Based on IMS

At Mobile Asia Congress 2010, ZTE demonstrated IMS-based Voice over LTE (VoLTE) calls running CSL's LTE network in Hong Kong and its existing mobile networks. The calls finished between IMS clients as well as IMS client and conventional 2G/3G handsets.


The companies said their achievement marks the first time VoLTE calls have been made between an LTE network and an existing 2G/3G network. In addition, supplementary services such as call forwarding, call waiting were demonstrated.


ZTE provided Uni-CORE solutions for CSL to build an intelligent, convergent and high-performance core network, achieving 2G/3G/4G full convergence. CSL's network will support accurate service control and content-based billing. It provides powerful data throughput to ensure that the network can deal with the challenges from the explosive growth of data traffic as well as an increasingly complex services.


In July 2010, ZTE and CSL began deployment of the world's first 1800 MHz/2600 MHz dual-band LTE network as well as the upgrade of CSL's existing 3G network with Dual Cell technology. The dual-band LTE network takes advantage of CSL's spectrum position to provide customers with better coverage and enhanced penetration, for a more satisfying communications experience.


CSL's LTE/DC-HSPA+network will provide users with a broader range of enhanced multimedia services. The IMS-based broadband voice solution demonstrated at this event and the further deployment of Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC) solution in the future will promote CSL's mobile voice evolution from traditional network to LTE network. ZTE provides the continuously innovative core network solutions, helping CSL to keep its leading position in Hong Kong and enhanced customer experience.


"The ability to achieve VoLTE is one of the biggest challenges for operators on the road to deploying LTE networks. ZTE collaborated with CSL to research this issue and obtained some valuable experience in voice applications over the LTE network. This not only lays the foundation for CSL's future IMS-based LTE advanced network deployment but also provides a significant reference for other operators, "said Xu Ziyang, President of ZTE's Core Network Products.
http://www.zte.com.cn

NSN Named Armando Almeida to lead Global Services

Armando Almeida has been appointed to lead the Global Services business at Nokia Siemens Networks, effective January 1, 2011. He will join the company's executive board and be based in Espoo, Finland. Almeida is currently responsible for sales and operations for the company in Latin America.


Ashish Chowdhary, the current head of Global Services, is moving to a newly created position: head of Customer Operations East. In this role, Chowdhary will lead the company's customer and business operations across India, Asia Pacific, Japan, Greater China and the Middle East. Chowdhary will continue to be a member of the executive board.
http://www.nsn.com

Conexant Names Chittipeddi as New President & COO

Conexant Systems named Sailesh Chittipeddi as its new president and chief operating officer. Chittipeddi joined Conexant in 2006 and served most recently as co-president, with responsibility for global engineering, operations, quality, IT, and associated infrastructure activities. In his new role, Chittipeddi will have worldwide responsibility for engineering, operations, quality, and marketing. He continues to report to Scott Mercer, Conexant's chairman and chief executive officer.


Prior to joining Conexant, Chittipeddi spent 17 years in several senior R&D and operations-related positions with Agere Systems, Lucent Technologies, AT&T Microelectronics, and AT&T Bell Labs. He also served as Lucent's SEMATECH representative, and was a member of the Technical Staff with AT&T Bell Labs.
http://www.conexant.com

PMC-Sierra Completes Acquisition of Wintegra

PMC-Sierra completed its previously announced acquisition of Wintegra, a privately-held developer of networking silicon. PMC-Sierra paid approximately $240 million in cash for the acquisition, less estimated cash and short-term deposits acquired of approximately $26 million at time of closing. Further, up to an additional $60 million of cash consideration may be paid if certain growth and performance milestones are reached by the end of 2011.


Wintegra's WinPath family of network processors is used in 3G/4G base stations, fiber and microwave cell-site routers, as well as radio network controllers deployed globally in mobile networks.


Wintegra has approximately 165 employees located primarily in Ra'anana, Israel, and Austin, Texas.


The acquisition of Wintegra expands PMC-Sierra's presence in Israel, where its FTTH business is based.
http://www.pmc-sierra.com

Politico: FCC to Take Initiative on Net Neutrality Regulations

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski may be preparing to push forward a proposal for new Net Neutrality regulations as early as next month, according to Politico -- a Washington D.C. insider's news site. Details of the proposal have not yet emerged, but the report notes that the likely timing of FCC action follows the failure of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reach consensus on the issue ahead of this month's election. The upcoming change to Republican leadership of the committee makes its unlikely that new legislation on the issue will pass.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45371.html

Marvell Posts Revenue of $959 million, up 20% YoY

Marvell Technology Group reported Q3 net revenue of $959 million, a 20 percent increase from $803 million in the same period last year, and an 7 percent sequential increase from $896 million. GAAP net income was $256 million, or $0.38 per share (diluted), compared with a GAAP net income of $202 million, or $0.31 per share (diluted), last year.


"We delivered excellent results, which were at the high-end of our original guidance for the third quarter," said Dr. Sehat Sutardja, Marvell's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We delivered significant long term growth in all of our target end-markets. We continue to make excellent progress within our mobile and wireless end market, which increased over 20 percent sequentially, and we experienced improved demand within our storage end-market as revenue increased 3 percent sequentially. Furthermore, we continue to deliver robust margins and significant free cash flow, which highlights the long term leverage our business model can deliver."http://www.marvell.com

Digital Partners: Verizon FiOS + Google TV Ads

Google and Verizon have signed a partnership deal tying together the Google TV Ads platform Verizon FiOS TV.


Google said that by adding over 50 networks on Verizon FiOS TV across 3.3 million homes, it can offer advertisers a growing TV audience. By early 2011, advertisers will be able to reach 35 million households, or almost one-third of all US cable and satellite homes through Google TV Ads.
http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/#subid=US-en_US-pa%26sourceid=AWO-adage

AT&T Builds Alternative Fuel Vehicle Fleet in California

AT&T is adding specialized, Ford F-450 trucks to its fleet in California. The new model has been converted to compressed natural gas (CNG) and contains a hybrid-electric system to power the aerial device. The first vehicle is part of the nearly 1,600 alternative fuel vehicles that have had been placed into service for the company throughout California.


AT&T began deploying fleet vehicles with hybrid and CNG technology in 2008 as part of an overall commitment to minimize its environmental impact and explore renewable energy alternatives. AT&T plans to spend up to $565 million in a 10-year initiative to deploy approximately 15,000 fleet vehicles nationwide with alternative-fuel models through 2018.


So far, AT&T has deployed more than 2,700 hybrid and CNG vehicles nationwide -- with nearly 60 percent in California. Overall, the company expects to purchase up to 8,000 CNG vehicles through 2013, at an anticipated cost of up to $350 million. Currently, the AT&T fleet includes more than 75,900 vehicles companywide.
http://www.att.com/sustainability

Verizon Deploys GPON to the Desktop for Russell Investments

Verizon Business has wired the new global headquarters for Russell Investments using GPON to the desktop. Compared with traditional switched Ethernet cabling, the GPON alternative can significantly reduce power consumption; decrease space requirements in riser closets, data rooms and conduits; and control capital costs related to network elements. In addition to the new networking infrastructure, Verizon Business connects Russell's offices globally with a fully managed Private IP network service based on MPLS.


"We opted for this new fiber-optic technology because it provides green benefits, and it's secure, scalable and can meet the needs of our future growth," said Gopi Chelliah, global head of technology and operations with Russell Investments. "Rather than opt for copper or other multimode cables, we took the step of deploying fiber directly to the desktop to improve network efficiencies while enhancing network capacity and controlling costs." http://www.verizon.com

Juniper Deepens CDN Offering with Acquisition of Blackwave

Juniper Networks has acquired the intellectual property assets of Blackwave, a start-up based in Acton, Mass., that developed Internet video storage and delivery solutions. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal reinforces Juniper's continued investment in content delivery network (CDN) technology.


Juniper said it plans to integrate Blackwave's technology with its own Media Flow Controller.

"The acquisition of Blackwave technology continues Juniper's commitment to the new network by serving the rapidly escalating appetite for high-quality video from anywhere to any device, " said Rajan Raghavan, vice president and general manager, Content and Media Business Unit, Juniper Networks. "The Blackwave technology brings storage performance and scaling capabilities that, combined with the Media Flow platform and Juniper's high-performance networking systems, will provide a compelling solution for our customers who require scalable and efficient distribution of content and high-quality video over the Internet."


Juniper Networks Media Flow portfolio is a converged content delivery and caching solution that improves the performance of rich media delivery by leveraging hierarchical caching, media-aware intelligence and massive scalability.
http://www.juniper.nethttp://www.blackwave.tv
  • In August 2010, Juniper Networks released a line of high-performance content delivery appliances designed to maximize the scale and reliability of its Media Flow converged content delivery and caching solution for service providers. The Juniper VXA Series Media Flow Engines appliances, which leverage technology originally developed by Ankeena Networks (acquired by Juniper earlier this year), are aimed at optimizing content delivery networks (CDNs). Juniper's Media Flow Solution can cache and deliver content closer to the edge of service providers' networks, which can reduce transit traffic and lower CapEx and OpEx. Content publishers can deploy Media Flow as a next-generation origin cache, where its high scalability enables server consolidation, reducing costs associated with power, space and cooling. The Media Flow uses adaptive streaming technology to ensure a TV-like viewing experience even as network conditions fluctuate. Users also enjoy improved response times since content is served more locally.


    The foundation of the Media Flow Solution is Juniper Networks Media Flow Controller, a hierarchical caching software appliance that provides an awareness of content requirements, network conditions and storage infrastructure for optimal caching efficiency and performance. The Media Flow Solution also includes Juniper Networks Media Flow Manager, an element management application and the newly available VXA Series Media Flow Engines. Media Flow Controller can be deployed on the VXA Series Media Flow Engines or on general purpose x86 servers.


  • In April 2010, Juniper Networks agreed to acquire Ankeena Networks, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, for its online media delivery technology. The companies had been collaborating for several months and Juniper announced plans to leverage Ankeena software to offer high-performance content delivery networking and "3 Screen" media delivery solutions for the mobile and fixed service providers. The solution allows network operators to provide highly-optimized video delivery services using their own infrastructure.