Verizon FiOS Offers Live Streaming of University of Texas Sports

Verizon will begin streaming a livesimulcast of the Longhorn Network – the 24/7 channel devoted to athletic programming and related activities at the University of Texas – and is making it available to Verizon FiOS TV customers across the country.


Verizon said it continues to build out its FiOS TV Online video content. FiOS also offers a broad collection of programming on TV, with more than 540 all-digital channels including more than 130 HD channels and 30,000 monthly video-on-demand titles. http://www.verizon.com

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Belgium Completes 4G Auctions

The Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunication (BIPT) concluded its auction of 4G spectrum.


Four bidders have acquired a 4G licence in the 2.6 GHz band: Belgacom SA, BUCD BVBA, KPN group Belgium SA and Mobistar SA. Only one bidder (Craig Wireless Belgium) was unsuccessful in securing any spectrum.


The auction offered 6 frequency blocks in the 2,500-2,570 MHz and 2,620-2,690 MHz frequency bands
(FDD spectrum), as well as the 2,575-2,620 MHz frequency block (TDD spectrum). In total, 155 MHz were successfully auctioned for a total profit of EUR 77,790,000.


http://www.ibpt.be

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AT&T Notes Record Retail Activity Post Thanksgiving

Noting increased demand for smartphones and tablets, AT&T reported a record increase in year-over-year customer traffic to att.com and double digit increase in retail store traffic. Wireless shopping traffic at www.att.com was up 32 percent from Black Friday through the post-Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday, compared to the same time last year. New online wireless orders were up 15 percent compared with post-Thanksgiving weekend 2010.
http://www.att.com

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PCI Express 4.0 Promises 16GT/s, Twice the Throughput of PCIe 3.0

The next generation of the widely adopted PCI Express (PCIe) industry-standard input/output (I/O) technology, PCIe 4.0, will offer a bit rate of 16 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) -- twice the throughput of today's PCIe 3.0.


as the bit rate for the next generation of PCIe architecture, PCIe 4.0. This decision comes after the PCI-SIG completed a feasibility study on scaling the PCIe interconnect bandwidth to meet the demands of a variety of computing markets.


PCI-SIG, the organization responsible for developing the standard, said its analysis of I/O requirements determined that 16 GT/s on copper is technically feasible at approximately PCIe 3.0 power levels. The data also confirms that a 16GT/s interconnect can be manufactured in mainstream silicon process technology and can be deployed with existing low-cost materials and infrastructure, while maintaining compatibility with previous generations of PCIe architecture. In addition, the PCI-SIG will investigate advancements in active and idle power optimizations, key issues facing the industry.


"The PCI Express architecture has become the de facto I/O technology within the industry, in large part due to PCI-SIG's dedication to I/O innovation and the insight of those who defined earlier versions in such an extensible manner," said Nathan Brookwood, research fellow at Insight 64. "Like its predecessors, the PCIe 4.0 architecture is well positioned to preserve the industry's investments in earlier generations of PCI Express specifications while extending the technology in a manner that enables new applications and usage models."http://www.pcisig.com

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FCC Releases Staff Report Critical of AT&T + T-Mobile USA Deal

The FCC allowed AT&T to withdraw without prejudice its application filed in conjunction with plans to acquire T-Mobile USA. Several parties, including Dish, had petition FCC to vote on the existing application.


The FCC also released staff analysis and findings concerning the proposed merger. The key conclusion by FCC staff is that AT&T and T-Mobile USA failed to prove that potential consumer benefits for the merger outweighed the harm to competition, and thus the merger would not be in the public interest. Confidential data from the carriers has been deleted from the public release of this report.
http://www.fcc.gov

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Verizon FiOS Offers Live Streaming of University of Texas Sports

Verizon will begin streaming a livesimulcast of the Longhorn Network – the 24/7 channel devoted to athletic programming and related activities at the University of Texas – and is making it available to Verizon FiOS TV customers across the country.


Verizon said it continues to build out its FiOS TV Online video content. FiOS also offers a broad collection of programming on TV, with more than 540 all-digital channels including more than 130 HD channels and 30,000 monthly video-on-demand titles. http://www.verizon.com

Read More

Belgium Completes 4G Auctions

The Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunication (BIPT) concluded its auction of 4G spectrum.


Four bidders have acquired a 4G licence in the 2.6 GHz band: Belgacom SA, BUCD BVBA, KPN group Belgium SA and Mobistar SA. Only one bidder (Craig Wireless Belgium) was unsuccessful in securing any spectrum.


The auction offered 6 frequency blocks in the 2,500-2,570 MHz and 2,620-2,690 MHz frequency bands
(FDD spectrum), as well as the 2,575-2,620 MHz frequency block (TDD spectrum). In total, 155 MHz were successfully auctioned for a total profit of EUR 77,790,000.


http://www.ibpt.be

Read More

AT&T Notes Record Retail Activity Post Thanksgiving

Noting increased demand for smartphones and tablets, AT&T reported a record increase in year-over-year customer traffic to att.com and double digit increase in retail store traffic. Wireless shopping traffic at www.att.com was up 32 percent from Black Friday through the post-Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday, compared to the same time last year. New online wireless orders were up 15 percent compared with post-Thanksgiving weekend 2010.
http://www.att.com

Read More

PCI Express 4.0 Promises 16GT/s, Twice the Throughput of PCIe 3.0

The next generation of the widely adopted PCI Express (PCIe) industry-standard input/output (I/O) technology, PCIe 4.0, will offer a bit rate of 16 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) -- twice the throughput of today's PCIe 3.0.


as the bit rate for the next generation of PCIe architecture, PCIe 4.0. This decision comes after the PCI-SIG completed a feasibility study on scaling the PCIe interconnect bandwidth to meet the demands of a variety of computing markets.


PCI-SIG, the organization responsible for developing the standard, said its analysis of I/O requirements determined that 16 GT/s on copper is technically feasible at approximately PCIe 3.0 power levels. The data also confirms that a 16GT/s interconnect can be manufactured in mainstream silicon process technology and can be deployed with existing low-cost materials and infrastructure, while maintaining compatibility with previous generations of PCIe architecture. In addition, the PCI-SIG will investigate advancements in active and idle power optimizations, key issues facing the industry.


"The PCI Express architecture has become the de facto I/O technology within the industry, in large part due to PCI-SIG's dedication to I/O innovation and the insight of those who defined earlier versions in such an extensible manner," said Nathan Brookwood, research fellow at Insight 64. "Like its predecessors, the PCIe 4.0 architecture is well positioned to preserve the industry's investments in earlier generations of PCI Express specifications while extending the technology in a manner that enables new applications and usage models."http://www.pcisig.com

Read More

FCC Releases Staff Report Critical of AT&T + T-Mobile USA Deal

The FCC allowed AT&T to withdraw without prejudice its application filed in conjunction with plans to acquire T-Mobile USA. Several parties, including Dish, had petition FCC to vote on the existing application.


The FCC also released staff analysis and findings concerning the proposed merger. The key conclusion by FCC staff is that AT&T and T-Mobile USA failed to prove that potential consumer benefits for the merger outweighed the harm to competition, and thus the merger would not be in the public interest. Confidential data from the carriers has been deleted from the public release of this report.
http://www.fcc.gov

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NSN Sells Off WiMAX Business to NewNet

Nokia Siemens Networks is selling its WiMAX business to NewNet Communication Technologies, LLC, a Skyview Capital, LLC portfolio company, for an undisclosed sum. This business unit was originally part of the Motorola Solutions' assets that Nokia Siemens Networks acquired earlier this year. The deal includes he complete WiMAX product portfolio, the related employees and assets, as well as active customer and supplier contracts. Approximately 300 Nokia Siemens Networks employees would transfer to NewNet. Many of these employees are based in suburban Chicago, USA and Hangzhou, China. The companies expect to close before December 31, 2011.


NewNet is a supplier of signaling and messaging solutions for wireless, IP, and wireline networks.


"We believe that our current WiMAX customers would receive the highest quality products, services and sales support from NewNet,�? said Marc Rouanne, head of Network Systems, Nokia Siemens Networks. “This transaction would also provide an excellent opportunity for our WiMAX employees. We have great confidence in NewNet's plans to become a major WiMAX infrastructure provider." http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com

• NewNet, which is based in Shelton, CT, is headed by Ronald E. Pyles, who previously was President of Continuous Computing Corporation, a developer of hardware and software building blocks used by leading telecommunications equipment manufacturers.



• Earlier this month, Nokia Siemens Networks reached an agreement to sell its microwave transport business, including its associated operational support systems (OSS) and related support functions, to DragonWave in a transaction potentially worth up to EUR 110 million. The deal provides DragonWave with an existing microwave transport business serving many top carriers worldwide, a more extensive product portfolio, an on-going agreement under which its will become the preferred, strategic supplier to Nokia Siemens Networks of packet microwave and related products, and joint R&D work with NSN. The division has sales several times larger than DragonWave, its client base is much larger, and it has more employees (360), mainly based in Milan, Italy and Shanghai, China.

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Verizon to Stream FiOS TV Channels to Xbox 360 Console

Verizon is ready to deliver 26 live, FiOS TV channels over Microsoft's Xbox 360 Entertainment System. The offer is available to customers who are Xbox LIVE Gold members and who subscribe to both FiOS TV and Internet service. To access the channels, customers will have to download the Verizon FiOS TV app on their console.


New customers who sign up online for FiOS TV service can take advantage of a special offer that includes triple-play service with FiOS TV, FiOS 35/35 Mbps Internet service and Verizon voice service, starting at $89.99 a month. In addition, the offer includes a 12-month Xbox LIVE Gold Membership and the "Xbox Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary" game. The discounted offer is available through Jan. 21.


Notably, these customers will be able to integrate their TV experience with voice and gesture commands through Kinect for Xbox 360.

http://www.verizon.com http://www.microsoft.com

• In October, Microsoft unveiled its Xbox 360 online entertainment service boasting content and support from nearly 40 leading TV partners, including Bravo, Comcast, HBO GO, Verizon FiOS and Syfy in the U.S.; BBC in the U.K., Telefónica in Spain; Rogers On Demand in Canada; Televisa in Mexico; ZDF in Germany; and MediaSet in Italy. Content providers already on the Xbox include AT&T, Netflix and Hulu Plus in the U.S., TELUS in Canada, BSkyB in the U.K., Canal+ in France, Vodafone Portugal, VimpelCom in Russia, and FOXTEL in Australia.
  
  
  Xbox 360 aims for seamless, living room entertainment integrating gaming, music, live TV and video-on-demand using a common interface and controlled by remotes, voice or Microsoft's exclusive Kinect technology.
  
  
  Xbox LIVE currently has 35 million members worldwide who spend 2.1 billion hours a month on the service. Microsoft said the service has seen three times the growth in video consumption last year.

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Cavium Sets Performance Benchmark with OCTEON

Cavium announced a performance benchmark for its flagship 32 Core OCTEON II MIPS64 CN6880 processor -- a score of over 150,000 on the industry standard Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) benchmark in a single chip.


The CoreMark benchmark isolates the CPU's core performance from memory and I/O effects and is able to measure meaningful information about a processor's core performance and includes tests of basic pipeline structure, read/write operations, integer operations, control operations including multiply-accumulate (MAC) and single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instructions, list processing, string search, matrix array multiplication and state-machine processing. Tests are based on information not available at compile time and provides for a more realistic real-world performance metric for embedded processors than some older benchmarks.


Cavium said its record CoreMark Score of 153,477 is unmatched by any other general purpose communication processor chip with an integrated high performance I/O subsystem capable of delivering over 40 Gbps feature-rich, networking application throughput. http://www.cavium.com

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Mu Dynamics Teams with Atlassia for App Performance

Mu Dynamics' "Blitz" cloud-based application testing service has been integrated with the Atlassian development tool, Bamboo, a Continuous Integration (CI) server. Bamboo app developers to quickly identify the performance of their applications in real-time during the entire development and deployment process.

The companies said that by being incorporated into the Atlassian Bamboo CI server, Blitz now enables Bamboo developers to load and performance test their applications as a part of the continuous development and deployment process. Tests can be run the moment changes are checked in, ensuring those changes don't degrade performance. By tracking Application Performance Index (Apdex) scores as part of the build process, developers can also quickly detect and remediate application performance issues in the staging process – an industry first. http://blitz.iohttp://www.mudynamics.com

• In September, Mu Dynamic announced the integration of its "Blitz" cloud-based, application testing service into multiple platforms –- including Heroku, AppHarbor, Acquia and CloudFlare -- to make it easier for developers to test the performance of their application. The integration with these major Platform as a Service (PaaS), Content Management System (CMS) and web security and performance offerings means that the application developer can perform the network load testing without leaving the workflow of their environment.

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Cisco Forecasts Cloud Computing Traffic to Grow 12-Fold by 2015

Global cloud computing traffic will grow 12-fold from 130 exabytes to reach a total of 1.6 zettabytes annually by 2015, according to a new Global Cloud Index published by Cisco. This represents a 66 percent compound annual growth rate, and makes cloud the fastest growing component of data center traffic, which itself is forecast to grow 4-fold at a 33 percent CAGR to reach 4.8 zettabytes annually by 2015. Cisco calculates that cloud traffic today represents about 11% of data center traffic.


Cisco generated its Global Cloud Index using various primary and secondary sources, including more than 30 terabytes of data generated each month over the past year from a variety of data centers around the globe, measurements of more than 45 million broadband-speed tests and third-party market forecasts. The company notes that the vast majority of the data center traffic is not caused by end users but by the data centers and clouds themselves undertaking activities that are largely non-transparent to end users – like backup and replication.


Some items of note:

• Of the data center traffic in 2015, 76 percent stays within the data center itself, through such activities as storage and authentication across virtual machines.



• 17 percent is data-center traffic being delivered to end users.



• 7 percent is generated between data centers through activities such as backup and replication.



• Peak end-user activity more than 2.5 times average in 2015.



• In 2010, 21 percent of workloads were processed in a cloud-based data center with 79 percent being handled in a traditional data center.
  2014 is the first year where the balance of workloads shifts toward the cloud for the first time – 51 percent of total workloads will be in a cloud environment versus 49 percent in the traditional IT space.



• Overall, the data center workload from 2010 – 2015 is growing 2.7-fold; however, the cloud workload from 2010 – 2015 is growing more than 7-fold over the forecast period.

More is onlinehttp://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1175/networking_solutions_sub_solution.html

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Mindspeed Milestone: Five Millionth Multi-Core Packet Processor for CPE

Mindspeed Technologies announced company milestone: five million Comcerto multi-core system-on-chip (SoC) embedded packet processors for customer premises equipment (CPE) have been shipped to date. The processors are used in residential gateways and broadband home routers (BHRs).


Mindspeed recently extended its Comcerto 1000 family to enable a new category of CPE service offload platform (SOP) hardware that can be used with existing BHRs in the connected home. "SOP Boxes" will make it easier and more cost-effective for service providers to partner with best-of-breed home automation, utility monitoring, security, healthcare and networked appliance vendors to deliver cloud-based applications that can be provisioned and securely managed using their current hardware and software infrastructure. http://www.mindspeed.com

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Microsoft Updates Cloud Services in Office 365 and SkyDrive

Microsoft released the first major service update for Office 365, its cloud productivity service for businesses. The company said it is making inroads with multinational firms, who are choosing Office 365 to enable their employees and customers to work together in the cloud.


The release includes more than 30 updates to Office 365 to enhance collaboration and communication, and for SkyDrive, adding simple app-centric sharing for Office, powerful file management and easier uploads with HTML5 based largely on customer feedback. Key new features and enhancements include the following:

• Support for Lync for Mac. Mac users can now use instant messaging, presence and videoconferencing through Office 365.



• New SharePoint Business Connectivity Services, which allow people to connect to information in their company's critical line-of-business applications, such as customer relationship management or SAP software.



• Support for Windows Phone 7.5. Starting today, people can access and update documents in SharePoint Online from anywhere using their Windows Phone.



• SkyDrive gets simpler app-centric sharing for Office, powerful file management and easier uploads with HTML5.

“We are seeing really positive momentum for Office 365. Customers are adopting Office 365 eight times faster than our previous service, and the solution is on track to become one of our fastest-growing offers in Microsoft history,�? said Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft. "We are also seeing great traction with small businesses, with more than 90 percent of our early Office 365 customers coming from small businesses." http://www.microsoft.com

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Skorpios Attracts $2 Million from Deutsche Telekom

Skorpios Technologies, a start-up based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, announced a follow-on investment to its Series B round of $19 million. The additional $2 million provided by T-Venture, Deutsche Telekom's venture capital company, brings total investment in the round to $21 million.


Skorpios Technologies has developed an advanced Composite Semiconductor on Insulator Technology promising lower cost, reduced size, and decreased power dissipation compared to traditional technology approaches. The technology allows the generation, detection and modulation of light to be monolithically integrated with high-speed electronic circuits in a standard CMOS-compatible process known as Composite-Semiconductor on Insulator (C-SOI).


"The integration of today's separated building blocks into a single chip provides various important effects for our network, such as capex and opex savings at the aggregation layer and core, but also the economic enabling of new technologies that are essential to our strategy," said Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, Director of Technology, Telekom Deutschland GmbH. "We are happy to support Skorpios in the realization of this disruptive approach with the investment from T-Venture." http://www.skorpiosinc.com

• Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and other leaders in the communications ecosystem participated in the Skorpios Series B funding round. Also participating were founding investors Cottonwood Technology Fund and Sun Mountain Capital.

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