NTT Raises CAPEX Forecast for 2011

NTT is forecasting FY2011 CAPEX of 1,950.0 billion yen, representing an increase of 79.9 billion yen from FY2010. Increased spending is expected in FTTH -- 300 billion yen compared to 295 billion yen for last fiscal year. Spending at NTT DoCoMo will hit 705 billion yen, up from 668.5 billion yen for last year. CAPEX at NTT Communications is also expected to make a significant jump to 136.0 billion yen, up from 115.3 billion yen in FY 2010.

The company's over CAPEX-to-Sales ratio is forecast to be 18.5% for FY 2011, compared to 18.1% last year and 19.5% in FY 2009.


http://www.ntt.co.jp/news2011/1105ezqg/rhqy110513.html

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NTT Bolsters its Global Business Unit

In light of its recent strategic alliance and merger & acquisition activities, NTT will elevate the role of its Global Business Strategy Office. Under a new corporate structure, the department will now report directly to the president. NTT will also change the name of its department to Global Business Office. http://www.ntt.co.jp

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NBN Co Selects Fujitsu Australia for $100M Contract

NBN Co has appointed Fujitsu Australia Limited as its prime alliance partner to deliver fibre infrastructure under a contract valued at over $100M for the first 12 months. Fujitsu will manage the design, construction and associated works for the deployment of fibre to new developments. The company was chosen because it has "the capacity and scale of operations to meet NBN Co's unique requirement for the deployment of fibre to a large number of discrete locations across the country simultaneously."


NBN Co CEO, Mike Quigley said: "Since 1 January 2011 NBN Co has received more than 1,480 applications from developers of new estates, representing approximately 133,000 premises to be connected across Australia. These applications are submitted for individual stages of developments, but due to different construction timeframes and housing demand, fibre deployment will be spread over a period of up to three years. NBN Co will work with developers to deploy fibre as and when it is needed."http://www.nbnco.com.au

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Ericsson Forecast: Network Equipment Market Growing 3-5%

In an investor's briefing held last week in New York, Ericsson executive presented the following observations:

• The total telecom market based on operator OPEX and CAPEX in 2010 estimated to US$223 billion.



• The total network service provider equipment market in 2010 was an estimated to US$94 billion with an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 3-5% 2010-2013.



• Mobile networks market (excluding WiMax, site material and OSS) will have a compound annual growth rate estimated at 6-8% 2010-2013.



• Ericsson's market share in mobile networks (excluding WiMax) is approximately 32%.



• Total addressed global telecom services market in 2010 grew to an estimated to US$96 - 101 billion, with an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 6-8% 2010-2013.



• Ericsson's market share is estimated at 11%.



• By year-end 2011, Ericsson expects more than 80% of its radio product deliveries will be RBS 6000.

http://www.ericsson.com

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DOCOMO Adds Two LTE Data Terminals

NTT DOCOMO unveiled its 2011 summer lineup of 24 new mobile devices for launch on or after May 20, including nine Android smartphones, plus a wide variety of feature phones compatible with DOCOMO's i-mode mobile Internet platform, as well as mobile Wi-Fi routers for DOCOMO's Xi (read "Crossy") LTE extra-high-speed service.



The company said LTE service will expand to include Japan's six largest urban metropolises by July and other large cities including prefectural capitals by March 2012.http://

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Singapore's M1 to Complete LTE Network in Q1 2012

Singapore-based M1 expects to complete the rollout of an LTE network island-wide by Q1 2012.



Huawei has been awarded a five year contract, valued at S$280 million, to provide the turnkey LTE solution for M1. This will include installation of macro base stations, distributed base stations and Evolved Packet Core (EPC), for M1's island-wide next generation network.



"We are building an advanced world class mobile network which will truly enhance the wireless internet experience for our customers, and cater to the increasing demands of future mobile devices and applications," commented Ms Karen Kooi, Chief Executive Officer, M1 Limited.



Huawei's President of wireless product line, Mr David Wang Tao said: "It is a great privilege for Huawei to be M1's partner in the deployment of the region's first commercial LTE network. With our innovative end-to-end solution, Huawei is fully committed to make this network deployment a success."http://www.huawei.com http://www.m1.com.sg

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Ericsson's Smart Services Router to Offer Multi-Application Blades, Caching

Ericsson's next generation Smart Services Router (SSR) is on-target for introduction later this year, said Georges Antoun, Head of Product Area IP & Broadband. The platform, which is being developed at Ericsson's Silicon Valley R&D center, will offer a capacity of 16 Tbps per system and feature 20 slots with 400 Gbps full-duplex capacity each.



Ericsson's Smart Services Router is being designed to scale in several dimensions -- scalability in subscribers, scalability in bandwidth, scalability in signaling, and scalability in the number of applications.



The Smart Services Router (SSR) is being positioned as a "multi-application" platform for advanced services on both fixed access and broadband wireless access. Specific blades will deliver processing power for applications, including: video (caching), mobility (mobile gateway), business and residential services with powerful DPI and policy enforcement.



Ericsson said the SSR will handle the onslaught of video traffic by support uni-cast and multicast, by implementing intelligent subscriber policy management functionality, and by offering built-in CDN capabilities. Ericsson has a partnership project underway with Akamai, although product plans have not been disclosed.



The company expects that operators deploying the SSR will "recognize new revenue opportunities through rapid deployment value-added services and user experience optimization. They can also reduce operational costs through functional consolidation, unified management, and low energy consumption".



Some other items of note from last week's Ericsson Business Innovations Forum in Silicon Valley:





Ericsson demonstrated an OpenFlow-based "Split Architecture", where end-to-end MPLS paths are used for access aggregation. The goal of this research project, which leverages work underway at Stanford, is to separate the control and data planes so that lighter-weight, programmable switches can be used instead of routers. This demo used Ericsson's EDA 1500 and SEA20 platforms, along with a Tilera programmable softswitch. The Tilera platform leverages 64 cores and offers 50- 100 Gbps of capacity for handling 100k to 1 million flow entries. While OpenFlow has initially been directed at data center switching, Ericsson said future versions of the spec could be opened up for Metro applications and integration with MPLS.



Ericsson's Innova Program is seeing some early success. Ericsson Innova encourages employees to bring forth new ideas. The program rapidly provides the employees with development time and light funding. In the past few months, thousands of ideas have come, a few hundred have gotten approval, a few dozen will get serious development support, and perhaps a handful will make it to product status.




Ericsson is working with Stanford University on a "MobiSocial" project aimed at a new way to run social networking without giving up your privacy.http://www.ericsson.com

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