Monday, May 23, 2011

Alcatel-Lucent Wins Managed Services Contract with China Unicom - Fujian

Fujian Unicom – a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Unicom – has selected Alcatel-Lucent to manage its mobile and fixed networks in the booming cities of Xiamen and Nanping in south-east China.


"With our extensive experience of multi-vendor network maintenance, Alcatel-Lucent will become a single point of contact for maintaining Fujian Unicom's networks in Xiamen and Nanping, helping reduce the complexity and costs associated with managing large networks on this scale. This strengthens our position as a leader in managed services in China and underlines our strong local presence through Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell, our Chinese flagship company," stated Rajeev Singh-Molares, President, Asia Pacific, Alcatel-Lucent.


Alcatel-Lucent noted that it currently provides management to more than 100 networks, supporting more than 250 million subscribers in the process. Major customers include E-Plus, Oi (formerly Brasil Telecom), Mobily, Telecom New Zealand, Orange Austria, Orange Switzerland, Reliance, Sunrise Switzerland, Bharti Airtel and Vivacom.
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Qualcomm Completes $3.1 Billion Acquisition of Atheros

Qualcomm completed its previously announced acquisition of Atheros Communications. The deal had an enterprise value of approximately $3.1 billion.

"Today marks another milestone in Qualcomm's mission to provide our customers with the best-in-class connectivity and networking solutions needed to capitalize on expanding business opportunities beyond handsets and tablets," said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm.

While the accounting for the transaction is not yet finalized, Qualcomm estimates that on a Non-GAAP basis the acquisition will be modestly dilutive to earnings per share in fiscal 2011 and modestly accretive in fiscal 2012, consistent with our previous forecasts. In addition, based on preliminary estimates, Qualcomm expects the transaction to be further dilutive to GAAP earnings by approximately $0.09 to $0.13 per share for the remainder of fiscal 2011 driven primarily by certain near-term purchase accounting charges and secondarily by ongoing share-based compensation expense.
http://www.qualcomm.com
  • The deal was first announced in January 2011.


  • Atheros, which is based in San Jose, California, is a leading supplier of Wi-Fi silicon. Its product line includes wireless LAN client chips, network processors, Ethernet transceivers, Ethernet switching silicon, Powerline SoCs, and Bluetooth devices. The company has approximately 1,700 employees and reported Q3 2010 revenue of $247 million, up 4 percent compared to $238.2 million reported in the second quarter of 2010.

Nortel's Former Campus in Richardson, Texas is Sold

Pillar Commercial has acquired the former Nortel campus in Richardson's Telecom Corridor from the company's creditors for an undisclosed sum. The 800,000 square foot property, built in 1991 as the U.S. headquarters for Nortel Networks, is located at 2201-2221 Lakeside Boulevard in Richardson, Texas and covers 17.5 acres.


Nortel had invested heavily in the property's technological and mechanical infrastructure, including a highly robust chiller plant, multiple back-up generators, and dual source electrical feeds.


"With the historical legacy of Nortel representing such an important period of time for the Telecom Corridor, the City of Richardson is particularly excited to have this outstanding campus now in the hands of an active real estate organization like Pillar Commercial," said Bill Keffler, city manager, City of Richardson.
http://www.pillarcommercial.com
  • In a story on 24-May-2011, The Dallas Morning News valued the sale of the Nortel campus at $43 million.

T-Mobile Launches 42 Mbps in 55 U.S. Markets

T-Mobile USA activated HSPA+ with top theoretical downlink speeds of 42 Mbps in 50 markets across the U.S. This is double the top speed previously available from T-Mobile USA.


The launch includes major markets such as Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, and San Francisco, among others.


T-Mobile's first 42 Mbps-capable product is The Rocket 3.0 laptop stick, manufactured by ZTE.
http://www.tmobile.com

Infinera Carries 2 Tbps on Paris-Lyon Route

Infinera's customers are carrying more than 2 Terabits/second of live revenue-generating network traffic between Paris and Lyon. Pan-European carrier Interoute and French operator Covage are among the service providers using Infinera networks to deliver services on this route, which is one of the busiest in Europe.



Separately, Infinera announced the appointment of Mark A. Wegleitner to its board of directors. Wegleitner was most recently Senior Vice President of Technology at Verizon Communications Inc., until his retirement in July 2010. From 2000 to 2007, Mr. Wegleitner was CTO of Verizon Communications, responsible for wireline networks. Prior to this, Mr. Wegleitner held a series of positions at Bell Atlantic, Bell Laboratories and AT&T. His career in telecommunications spans more than 38 years. http://www.infinera.com

France's SFR Selects Alcatel-Lucent IMS

SFR is the second biggest telecommunications operator in France, is deploying Alcatel-Lucent's End-to-End IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) for unified voice, data, multimedia and video over its fixed and mobile broadband networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.



The IMS solution is a key element of SFR's IP transformation from its TDM network towards a fully converged architecture supporting millions of residential and business customers. The IMS solution is part of SFR's Neufbox Evolution residential offering.



Neufbox Evolution is a set-top box and home gateway all in one, offering communications, IPTV multi-screen access, Femtocell connectivity and the ability to connect directly to ADSL or Fibre-to-the-home. Users have the option to connect the Neufbox Evolution wired or wirelessly.



Alcatel-Lucent's IMS solution also supports the Global System Mobile Association's (GSMA's) Rich Communication Suite, enabling SFR to unify service across mobile handsets and the web to improve consumer and enterprise communication and collaboration. These capabilities include: unified network address book; presence; multimedia instant messaging (including SMS, text and video) and image sharing.http://www.alcatel-lucent.com http://www.sfr.com

EZchip Developing 200-Gigabit Network Processor

EZchip Semiconductor disclosed plans for an upcoming 200 Gbps network processor with integrated 200-Gigabit traffic management for building ultra-dense 10GE, 40GE and 100GE port line cards in switches and routers.



The EZchip NP-5, currently in design, will provide a natural scale-up path for customers that use EZchip's NP-4 100-Gigabit processor. The upcoming device will enable line cards that feature multiple 40 and 100-Gigabit ports as well as dozens of 10-Gigabit ports.



The NP-4, which has secured design wins among leading Carrier Ethernet Switch Router (CESR) equipment vendors, is manufactured in a 55nm process and is scheduled to move to mass production in the second half of 2011. The NP-5 will be manufactured in a 28nm process and is scheduled to sample at the end of 2012.



"Through technological innovations and optimized architecture, the NP-5 continues our push to provide solutions that enable customers to multiply the port count and bandwidth as well as enhance the functionality of their line cards, while reducing their overall cost," said Amir Eyal, Vice President Business Development of EZchip Semiconductor.http://www.ezchip.com

Video: Small Cell Backhaul Architecture







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While 3G networks typically are deployed with cell site spacing of 3 km, 4G architecture will lead to picocells, especially in dense urban environments. This video outlines the characteristics of picocells and the reasons why 60 GHz wireless technology is ideal for small cell backhaul.

Presented by Paul Obsitnik, BridgeWave Communications.http://www.bridgewave.com

Video: Google's Best Practices for Data Centers

Google published a series of short videos outlined some of its best practices in building and operating very large data centers around the world. The company strives to "think outside the box" when envisioning how a data center should be built for maximum efficiency. Some of its innovations include installing a UPS battery on-board each server so as to minimize the number of AC/DC conversions needed to ensure redundancy, utilizing free cooling wherever possible, and transforming an old paper mill in Finland into a modern data center cooled by seawater.



1. Measure PUE -- Power Usage Effectiveness







Google's lowest result is 1.09



2. Manage Air Flow







3. Adjust the Thermostat -- Running Hotter Data Centers







4. Utilize Free Cooling







5. Optimize Power Distribution







6. A Sea Water Cooled Data Center in Finland




http://www.youtube.com

PMC-Sierra's POLO 40G Coherent Enables Double Port Density

PMC-Sierra introduced a 40 Gbps System-on-Chip (SoC) solution for coherent optical transmission in metro, regional and longhaul networks. The chip doubles line card density and reduces power consumption by more than 50 percent when compared to 40G non-coherent network deployments.



Coherent optical technology eliminates the need for widely deployed optical equipment such as dispersion compensation management (DCM) and dispersion compensated fiber (DCF). PMC-Sierra said its integrated design enables OEM line cards to transition from today's two- or three-slot implementations to single-slot. As a result, Carriers can more than double faceplate density and reduce power consumption by 50 percent, as line card tuneable dispersion compensators (TCMs) are no longer required.



PMC-Sierra's POLO 40G is a 43-Gbps - 50-Gbps transceiver/modem IC supporting Coherent Intradyne transmission/reception of DP-(D)QPSK optical signals. It features a DSP engine which includes a chromatic dispersion equalizer, a 2x2 MIMO-style equalizer to compensate PMD/SOPMD, Carrier and Polarization Recovery, and a 4-path, 4-quadrant slicer and differential decoder (DQPSK), Serializer, Deserializer and Clock and Data Recovery (CDR). The platform provides an SFI 5.1 client interface and a fully OIF-compliant line side DP-(D)QPSK interface that seamlessly integrate into MSA optical modules and onto a line card with next-generation CFP2 optical modules. POLO 40G also incorporates flash ADC technology with background calibration to maintain operating performance in demanding Carrier environments.




"With the explosion of bandwidth demand driving the need to upgrade existing metro, regional and longhaul fiber infrastructures to 40Gb/s and beyond, POLO 40G will be a key enabler to make the optical buildout a reality," said Daryn Lau, vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra's Communication Products Division. "PMC-Sierra has significant experience in delivering innovative products to enable evolving Carrier network requirements. Our POLO 40G is uniquely positioned to provide the combination of bandwidth per unit, power and cost when compared to existing multi-slot coherent solutions even in cost-sensitive Carrier Ethernet service point-to-point and metro deployments."http://www.pmc-sierra.com