MetroPCS Goes Live with First Rich Communications over LTE

MetroPCS Communications announced the commercial launch of Rich Communication Services (RCS) on its 4GLTE network under the  GSMA-licensed joyn brand.  Based on the GSMA RCS 5.0 standard, joyn by MetroPCS will deliver an experience beyond voice and basic messaging to provide customers with a unified and intuitive way to use enriched services like integrated instant messaging or chat, WiFi and video calling and simplified...

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AT&T and T-Mobile Enable Open Roaming in Sandy's Wake

AT&T and T-Mobile agreed to enable roaming on their networks in areas impacted by Hurricane Sanday and where capacity is available and subscribers have a compatible device.  Both networks use GSM and UMTS. Customers will be able to place calls in a normal fashion and the traffic will be carried by the most available network.   There will no change necessary for rate plans. AT&T also noted that it has many disaster response...

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Infinera's DTN-X Selected for Mediterranean Subsea Network

Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (Cyta) has deployed Infinera’s DTN-X platform across the TE-North Cable System, interconnecting Asia and Africa to Europe.  Cyta operates and maintains the ALEXANDROS subsystem, part of Telecom Egypt’s TE-North Cable System which stretches 3,600 kilometers connecting Abu Talat, Egypt, to Marseilles, France, with a branch to Pentaskhinos, Cyprus. Infinera’s DTN-X platform allows Cyta to add additional...

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Verizon Wireless: 6% of Cell Sites Offline in Northeast

As of Wednesday afternoon, Verizon Wireless reported that more than 94% of it cell towers in the Northeastern United States (from Maine to Virginia) were operational and supporting customers.   The company said it has seen some improvement to wireless service in lower Manhattan and elsewhere in the NYC metro area over the past 24 hours as power is being restored. A number of cell sites are still on backup power and the company is working...

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IPtronics Files Complaint Against Avago for 40/100G Modules

IPtronics has filed legal suit against Avago Technologies in the U.S. District Court in San Jose for allegedly violating commitments made to standards setting organizations and failing to protect IPtronics’ confidential information. IPtronics claims that Avago ignored legally binding commitments to standards setting organizations to disclose patented technology and to make that technology available for licensing. The claims concern...

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PacketFront Acquired by Fiber Access AB

PacketFront Network Products AB has been acquired by Fiber Access Holding AB for an undisclosed sum. PacketFront is a supplier of broadband access equipment for network operators. The company has shipped more than 1.2 million access connections since its founding in 2001. The main owners of Fiber Access Holding AB is the investment group ShortCap, which focuses on entrepreneurial companies with strong potential for growth. http://www....

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Big Switch Raises $25 Million for Open SDN

Big Switch Networks raised $25 million in Series B funding for its platform-independent Software-Defined Networking (SDN) solution. Big Switch Networks, which was founded in March 2010 and is based in Palo Alto, California, leverages open APIs to enable customers to deploy dynamic and flexible networking applications, including data center network virtualization. The company is building an ecosystem of physical and virtual switching partners...

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Ixia Validates LTE Base Station Performance

Ixia introduced its XAir solution for validating LTE base station performance in terms of realistic subscriber and service modeling, scalability, and QoE measurements. Ixia said its new XAir provides realistic subscriber modeling, supporting web, voice and video applications, all LTE mobility types, and modeling of radio characteristics — cell edge, cell center and user movements.  It supports more than 1,000 emulated user equipment’s per...

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Extreme Posts Revenue of $76 Million, Down 13% Sequentially

Extreme Networks reported revenue of $76.1 million for its first quarter of fiscal 2013 ending September 30, 2012, a 3.5% decrease compared to revenue of $78.9 million reported for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 and a 13.1% decrease compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012. GAAP net income for the first quarter was $12.9 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, an increase year-over-year compared to GAAP net income of $1.6 million, or $0.02 per diluted share, for the first quarter of fiscal 2012. "Q1 results were in-line with our targets...

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Nasuni Raises $20 Million for Enterprise Cloud Gateway

Nasuni, a start-up based in Natick, Mass., raised  $20 million in Series C funding for its enterprise cloud gateway. Nasuni provides a consolidated storage-as-a-service solution for distributed enterprises.  The solution brings all primary storage (i.e. file and block) together with built-in backup, replication, and offsite protection using an on-site appliance connected to the cloud. The funding came from a new key investor,.Previous...

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MIT Tech Review: Breakthrough in Power Amplifiers

Eta Devices, a start-up company led by two MIT electrical engineering professors, has cracked the energy efficiency problem in power amplifier designs for radio communications.  According to MIT Technology Review website, the technology promises to reduce power usage in LTE base stations by half.  The company has the backing of Strata Venture Partners. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506491/efficiency-breakthrough-promises-smar...

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NSN Ties Network Investments to Customer Experience Management

Nokia Siemens Networks introduced its Customer Experience Management (CEM) for Liquid Net that ties capacity optimization related investments to customer experience.  The aim is to help operators to decide precisely when and where to optimize network performance to improve user experience, for instance, identifying low throughput and uplink performance caused by network congestion. Nokia Siemens Networks said this approach links customer and...

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Datagram's NYC Data Center Taken Down by Sandy

Datagram's data center at 33 Whitehall in Manhattan was knocked offline by Hurricane Sandy.  Once ConEdison cut power to the neighborhood, Datagram's back-up generators kicked on.  However, the basement flooded with sea water , taking out the the diesel pumps.  The company reports no infrastructure damage. http://www.datagram.com/ A number of prominent websites were impacted by the Datagram outage, including Buzzfeed, Gawker.com,...

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Internap's NYC Data Center Flooded by Sandy

Internap's NYC data centers located at 111 8th Ave. and 75 Broad suffered damage and were knocked offline by Hurricane Sandy.  On Monday evening, Con Edison proactively cut electricity to lower Manhattan ahead of the storm surge. Both sites activated their back-up diesel generators.  However, the salt water flooded into the 75 Broad data center, compromising the diesel pumps.  The building was evacuated and the site eventually...

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ADVA Intros Sync Probe (1588v2) for Mobile Base Stations

ADVA Optical Networking introduced an Ethernet network probe that helps mobile network operators deliver precise time-of-day information for phase alignment between adjacent base stations. The ADVA FSP 150SP device features a Precision Time Protocol (PTP) clock probe that simultaneously supports Synchronous Ethernet and IEEE 1588v2, and a built-in GPS receiver, enabling time synchronization and assurance across multi-vendor mobile backhaul infrastructures. "Service...

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Steadfast's 121 Varick St Data Center Offline

Steadfast Networks' 5,000 square foot data center located at 121 Varick St. in Manhattan was knocked completely offline by Hurricane Sandy.  The facility suffered an auxiliary electrical failure after commercial power was cut off in the neighborhood and the building evacuated.  Steadfast's data center remained inaccessible as of Tuesday afternoon. https://support.steadfast.net/index.php?/News/NewsItem/View/...

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Broadcom Expands Base Station Solutions

Broadcom introduced a Digital Front End (DFE) board designed to speed development of multi-protocol radio systems for macro and small cell base stations. The board ships with the components for a complete transmit loop, with the exception of the customer's selected driver and power amplifier (PA). Broadcom also noted that it recently began sampling its 28 nanometer (nm) dual-core XLP-200 series communications processor for scalable small cell designs...

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EMC to Acquire Silver Tail for Web Session Intelligence

EMC agreed to acquire Silver Tail Systems, a start-up offering web session intelligence and behavior analysis tools, for an undisclosed sum. The Silver Tail Systems platform collects and analyzes real-time web traffic forensics with the goal of providing visibility into all web and mobile application traffic.  Silver Tail then provides a behavioral analysis engine that creates heuristics and rules to detect anomalies, IT security...

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China's 21st CBH: China Unicom Looks at its Cisco Core Routers

China's 21st Century Business Herald reported that China Unicom has decided to replace Cisco core routers in the China169 backbone nodes in Wuxi, Jiangsu province due to security concerns. Neither company has commented on the report. The article notes that the report follows the recent public scrutiny that Huawei and ZTE have faced in the U.S.. http://www.21cbh.com/HTML/2012-10-26/1MNzE4XzU0OTA1Mg.ht...

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JDSU Sees Cautious Spending by Service Providers

JDSU reported revenues of $420.9 million and a GAAP net loss was $(11.6) million, or $(0.05) per share for its fiscal 2013 first quarter ended September 29, 2012. Prior quarter net revenue was $434.0 million, with a net loss of $(22.2) million, or $(0.10) per share. Net revenue for the fiscal 2012 first quarter was $415.8 million, with a net loss of $(5.8) million, or (0.03) per share. The Communications Test and Measurement division accounts...

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Riverbed to Acquire OPNET for Network Visibility and Performance

Riverbed Technology agreed to acquire OPNET for $43 per share in cash and stock, representing an equity value of $1 billion and an enterprise value of $921 million.  The deal will combine Riverbed's Cascade network performance management (NPM) business with OPNET's expertise in application performance management (APM) market.  The combination of Cascade and OPNET will have over $250 million in annualized revenue in a market...

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Gigamon Extends and Scales its Traffic Visibility

Gigamon has enhanced its Traffic Visibility Fabric solutions with a new, 400 Gbps processing card for its high-density, GigaVUE H Series chassis. The platform supports a range of GigaSMART applications to enable the deduplication, modification, manipulation and transport of network traffic as it is delivered to management, monitoring and security tools and systems. The enhancements represent the second step in Gigamon's four-phase evolution of...

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PMC Posts Q3 Revenue of $131.7 Million

PMC posted Q3 revenue of $131.7 million, a decrease of 4% compared to net revenues of $137.8 million in the second quarter of 2012 and a decrease of 24% compared to $173.3 million in the third quarter of 2011. GAAP net loss for Q3 was $274.4 million, or a loss of $1.31 per share. Third quarter GAAP results included impairment write-downs of goodwill and intangible assets of $276.1 million related to the Passave and Wintegra acquisitions, completed in 2006 and 2010, respectively. This compares to a GAAP net income of $26.5 million, or $0.12 per...

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Google Launches Nexus 4 Smartphone, No LTE

Google introduced its Nexus 4 smartphone, a 4.7" handset built by LG and powered by Qualcomm's quad core, Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. The phone is priced at $299 in the U.S. for an unlocked version. It uses GSM/HSPA+ radios but it does not offer LTE connectivity. The Nexus 4 runs Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) and features integrated Google Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Play, etc. http://officialandroid.blogspot.c...

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China Telecom's Profit Slides as Revenues Rise

China Telecom reported Q3 revenue of CNY 71.9 billion, up 15.6% over the same period last year.  Profit attributable to equity holders in the company amounted to CNY 3.75 billion, down 7.8% compared to a year earlier. China Telecom now has 152.62 million mobile subscribers, of which 59.72  are on the 3G network. http://www.chinatelecom-h.com/eng/ir/kpi.php?cat=monthl...

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Juniper's QFabric Completes EMC Compatibility Testing

Juniper Networks' QFabric products  have completed testing through EMC's E-Lab, certifying their interoperability with EMC VMAX and VNX storage arrays. In addition, Juniper's QFabric system has been added to EMC's Support Matrix. EMC E-Lab tested the QFabric solution in an end-to-end, multivendor environment, which included testing and qualification of solutions with hypervisors, operating systems, Converged Network Adapters (CNA), Fibre Channel,...

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Ceragon Says Mobile Operators Showing Extreme Caution in Spending

Ceragon Networks reported Q3 revenue of $118.0 million, up 2% from $116.1 million for the third quarter of 2011, and down 1% from $119.1 million in the second quarter of 2012.  Net loss (GAAP) was $(2.7) million or $(0.07) per basic share and diluted share, compared to net loss of $(6.7) million in the third quarter of 2011, or$(0.19) per basic share and diluted share. "We...

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Wireless Charging Builds Momentum

The Power Matters Alliance (PMA), which is creating an ecosystem and open standard for smart wireless power, has added AT&T, Google and Starbucks as members. Vint Cerf will serve as honorary chairman of the organization. "An Internet of 'smart things' is rapidly evolving and most of them are powered electrically. Google cares greatly about a future where power can be wireless, smart and environmental," said Vint Cerf, Chief...

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Xilinx Announces Defense-Grade 7 Series FPGAs

Xilinx introduced its fourth generation secure architecture with Information Assurance and Anti-Tamper IP core support for defense-grade 7 series FPGAs and Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoCs. The reprogrammable Xilinx FPGAs and SoCs use 28nm process technology and include Information Assurance methodology and DoD 5000 Series compliant Anti-Tamper Security Monitor IP core (SECMON) technology for aerospace and defense systems. "In addition to the...

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IBM Builds Carbon Nanotube Chip

IBM announced a breakthrough in building a semiconductor using carbon nanotubes instead of silicon.  IBM researchers created a device consisting of more than ten thousand working transistors made of nano-sized tubes of carbon.  Standard semiconductor processes were used to fabricate the device. IBM has previously demonstrated that carbon nanotube transistors can operate as excellent switches at molecular dimensions of less than...

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América Móvil Hits 319 Million Accesses

Mexico-based América Móvil finished was serving 319 million accesses as of the end of September 2012,  up by 4.1 million wireless subscribers and 1.6 million fixed-line revenue generating units (RGUs) in the third quarter. This figure includes 255.9 million wireless subscribers, 30.3 million landlines, 16.7 million broadband accesses and 15.8 million PayTV units. Fixed-line accesses increased 11.3% year-on-year while the wireless subscriber...

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Ericsson's Global Services Now Represent 45% of Sales

Citing tighter carrier spending on wireless infrastructure projects, Ericsson reported lower Q3 2012 revenue of 54.6 billion SEK (US$8.14 billion  ), down 2% YOY and down 1% compared to Q2.  Net income declined 42% YOY to SEK 2.2 billion, impacted by lower profitability in Networks. Ericsson cited weaker sales in parts of Europe, China, Korea and Russia as well as continued decline in CDMA equipment sales.  This was partially...

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Clearwire Slows LTE Rollout to Control Costs

 Clearwire will  defer a portion of its LTE network construction in order to better align CAPEX with the expected receipt of LTE revenues.  The company now plans to have 2,000 LTE sites on air by the end of June 2013 and expects to start receiving Sprint prepayment installments in June 2013.  Clearwire said its full year 2012 CAPEX budget is expected to total $125 to $175 million, as compared to most recently provided guidance...

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BT Opens Global IP Hub in Singapore

BT has launched a major Global IP Exchange (GIPX) hub in Singapore to meet the demand for growing traffic over its IP Exchange platform, the wholesale service that enables communications providers to connect VoIP to VoIP and VoIP to traditional voice calls.  The Singapore hub provides a local switch function in the Asia-Pac region for BT. BT said demand for its GIPX service has grown rapidly since it was launched globally in 2011. BT now...

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ARM, Red Hat and AppliedMicro Collaborate on 64-Bit Cloud Server

ARM, Red Hat and Applied Micro announced a collaboration to develop a 64-bit server for cloud computing, data centers and enterprises. AppliedMicro X-Gene Server on a Chip, which is based on the  ARMv8 architecture, is now running Red Hat's Fedora Linux in the lab. “We have a multi-year history in the ARM space, and already have our community-powered Fedora Linux distribution running on AppliedMicro hardware in our labs,”...

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RST Global Builds FTTP Underground Network in North Carolina

RST Global Communications, a privately funded company based in Shelby, North Carolina, has begun construction on a 100% fiber-optic network that includes backbone, middle and late mile installation. The network, which will serve North Carolina’s growing Piedmont region, is installed entirely underground at an average depth of 10 feet.  The company said it is pursuing this approach instead of aerial fiber deployment in order to ensure maximum...

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Sprint's Network Vision Sees Some Delays

Sprint’s Network Vision program  now has over 4,300 cell sites on air and the number either ready for construction or currently being updated has more than doubled in the last three months to more than 13,500.  Sprint has completed leasing and zoning permits on more than 20,000 sites.  Weekly construction starts are up over 250 percent from the second quarter but the company now expects to bring 12,000 sites on air approximately one...

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