Espial to Acquire ANT plc

Espial, a leading supplier of digital TV and IPTV middleware, agreed to acquire ANT plc, which also develops embedded software for the TV industry. The all cash offer of £0.205 per outstanding share values ANT at approximately £5 million.

ANT's Galio Suite is an HTML5 browser, client and applications stack supporting a wide range of consumer TV platforms. ANT's software has been extensively deployed by ADB, Amino, Bouygues Telecom, Cisco, Chunghwa Telecom, Coship, HwaCom, France Telecom, Humax, Pirelli, Sagemcom, Samsung, Technicolour, Telecom Italia and YouSee. ANT plc's shares are listed on AIM, a London Stock Exchange regulated market, under the ticker ANTP.

Espial's middleware, video-on-demand, and browser products power a diverse range of pay-TV and Internet TV business models. Over 10 million licenses of its patented software are in use across the world.

Espial is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada.  ANT is based in Cambridge, UK.

"Multiscreen video services on set-top boxes, smart TVs, tablets, PCs and smart phones are quickly becoming the new expectation for today's consumers. Delivering a superior user experience across these devices is a critical element to the success of TV service providers" said Jaison Dolvane, CEO of Espial. "The acquisition of ANT provides Espial with the increased scale, resources and depth of experience to extend our HTML5 market leadership. ANT provides rich expertise in delivering HTML5 user interfaces and applications as well as delivering complex vertically integrated client software solutions. We believe the acquisition of ANT will extend our capabilities to establish Espial as a clear market leader as TV service providers aggressively move to IP video delivery. We're excited about this combination and are committed to continue working with ANT's existing customers and partners to ensure their ongoing success"

http://www.espial.com
http://www.antplc.com

• In 2008, Espial, a specialist in IPTV middleware and applications, acquired  Kasenna, which developed a "PortalTV" suite that allows TV providers to deliver advanced features such as recording and pausing live TV, PVR - both Network-based and Local, StartOver TV, Customized EPG, On-Screen Caller ID, Pay-per-View, Video-on-Demand, Favorites, Reminders, Weather Services, Network Games, etc. 

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RagingWire Offers Wholesale Colocation in California

RagingWire Data Centers announced availability of wholesale capacity in its second Sacramento, California data center for enterprise-class infrastructure.

RagingWire' wholesale offering features a patented power architecture that enables companies to scale from 200 kilowatts to 5+ and 10+ megawatts.  The company said it has ample available power to support three 13,000 square foot PODs in Ashburn, 43,000 square feet in Sacramento, and build-to-suit greenfield construction on 75 acres in Ashburn, Virginia.

http://www.ragingwire.com

• In October, RagingWire Data Centers, which operates 650,000 square feet (60,000m2) of wholesale and retail data center space in Northern California and Northern Virginia, paid $20 million to acquire 75 acres of land in Ashburn, Virginia.  The company plans to build  a 750,000 square foot (69,000m2) data center in phases on the site.  RagingWire currently operates a 150,000 square foot facility in Ashburn, along with its flagship 500,000 data center in Sacramento, California.

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Vodafone Continues CWW Integration

In follow-up to its acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide earlier this year, Vodafone has formed a new Group Enterprise unit. Nick Jeffery, currently CEO of Cable & Wireless Worldwide, will be appointed Group Enterprise Director responsible for the new unit, and will report to Vittorio Colao, Group CEO.

Vodafone also announced the following integration activities:

• CWW’s UK-based enterprise businesses with Vodafone’s UK-based enterprise businesses
• CWW’s international businesses, Carrier Services, Hosting and Cloud Services, and product activity with our newly created Group Enterprise unit
• CWW’s Customer Service with Vodafone UK’s Customer Operations
• CWW’s Finance, Human Resources, and Legal and Regulatory activity with those of Vodafone UK
• CWW Technology with Group Technology

http://www.vodafone.com

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ESnet and Infinera Test SDN Open Transport

Infinera and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) demonstrated a prototype Software Defined Network (SDN) Open Transport Switch (OTS) capable of dynamically controlling bandwidth services at the optical layer via an extensions to the OpenFlow protocol. The idea is to provide a lightweight virtual transport switch on optical transport systems with an interface to an SDN Controller.

The proof-of-concept demonstration, which used ESnet's Long Island Metropolitan Area Network (LIMAN) control plane test bed, tested a prototype of the OTS running on the Infinera DTN platform, allowing ESnet’s optical transport network to be configured by an SDN controller via the OpenFlow protocol. ESnet enhanced its SDN controller and demonstrated on-demand bandwidth Ethernet services including bandwidth elasticity for data-intensive science experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory on their LIMAN network, spanning from Manhattan, NY, to Upton, NY.

The services were provisioned by a high-capacity bandwidth-on-demand application utilizing the SDN controller in three different transport network abstractions, including one based on Infinera’s standards-based GMPLS control plane, showcasing the potential to deploy Transport SDN in networks with existing control planes in production. Brookhaven National Lab’s networking team and researchers used this SDN platform to experiment with ultra-high speed data transfer applications being developed for next-generation networks using RDMA over Ethernet protocols.

ESnet Chief Technologist Inder Monga said big data is a reality for science conducted at the national labs and at research universities across the country.  While some of the traffic flows are persistent and can use nailed up optical circuits efficiently, the sharing of big data sets generates bursty traffic. By enabling multi-layer coordination and control, including converged wavelength, OTN and packet transport technologies, ESnet is looking to improve the utilization and efficiency, while simplifying and automating operations.

“The emerging era of data-intensive science demands the highest level of performance from the network. The ability for the network to scale and handle large data flows efficiently across a multi-layer network is an essential capability,” said ESnet Chief Technologist Inder Monga. “The type of bandwidth flexibility, automation and resource efficiency demonstrated in this test are critical to supporting the large-scale data transfer requirements of data-driven science research.”

Infinera described the proof-of-concept demonstration as a first step in realizing the potential of Transport SDN at the optical transport layer.  The company's Bandwidth Virtualization technology already provides an abstraction layer via a standards-based GMPLS software control plane, integrated OTN switching and photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology.  Key learnings from this demonstration are that Transport SDN can provide useful, programmable interfaces to Tier 1 service providers, and that optical hardware and software are SDN ready.

“This pioneering demonstration is an important first step on the path toward enabling Transport SDN,” said Chris Liou, VP Network Strategy, Infinera. “For service providers interested in deploying Transport SDN, we believe the OTS can play a key role in realizing many benefits, including simplified provisioning of bandwidth services in multi-tiered, multi-vendor, multi-domain environments, increased efficiency and utilization of network resources, and an open, programmable transport network for enhancing integration and automation with applications.”

http://www.infinera.com/go/SDN

See Blueprint column from Infinera on 

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Cisco to Acquire Cariden for Network Planning Expertise

Cisco agreed to acquire privately held Cariden Technologies, a provider of network planning, design and traffic management solutions for telecommunications service providers, for approximately $141 million in cash and retention-based incentives.

Cariden's network planning and design tools help service providers to enhance the visibility, programmability and efficiency of their converged networks, while improving service velocity. Cariden's MATE software is widely used by global tier-1 ISPs, PTTs, MSOs and mobile operators for IP/MPLS network engineering.

Cariden has recently extended its network visibility and traffic control platform to perform business intelligence function by leveraging its  traffic flow collection from key nodes in a carrier network.  Specifically, Cariden has now added a Flow Interface to its MATE portfolio, enabling the ability to collect and analyze NetFlow, S-Flow and J-Flow data to determine the cost of traffic flows and monitor their use of network resources.  This includes being able to analyze peering traffic compliance to agreements and calculate bit-mile costs for that and other services, thus providing operations staff the ability to meet their obligations for transparency to the commercial side of their business

Cariden has also developed a blueprint for infrastructure software defined networking (SDN) that provides visibility and programmability of network resources, simplifying network control through an open API.

Cariden is based in Sunnyvale, California and led by Arman Maghbouleh since its founding in 2001.  Following the acquisition, it will be integrated into Cisco’s Service Provider Networking Group.

Cisco said the acquisition supports its Open Network Environment (ONE) strategy by providing sophisticated wide area networking (WAN) orchestration capabilities. These capabilities will allow service providers to improve both the programmability of their networks and the utilization of existing network assets across the IP and optical transport layers.

“The Cariden acquisition reinforces Cisco’s commitment to offering service providers the technologies they need to optimize and monetize their networks, and ultimately grow their businesses,” said Surya Panditi, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco’s Service Provider Networking Group. “Given the widespread convergence of IP and optical networks, Cariden’s technology will help carriers more efficiently manage bandwidth, network traffic and intelligence.  This acquisition signals the next phase in Cisco’s packet and optical convergence strategy and further strengthens our ability to lead this market transition in networking.”

http://www.cisco.com
http://www.cariden.com

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Syria Cuts Off Internet

Internet traffic to/from Syria was completely cut off on Thursday, November 29, as confirmed by Google and Akamai.

In a blog posting, Google said "this is why a free and open Internet is so important."

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/

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Tellabs Appoints Daniel P. Kelly as CEO

Tellabs named Daniel P. Kelly as its new chief executive officer and president.

Kelly, 51, has served as Tellabs acting CEO and president since June 27, 2012, following the passing of Rob Pullen.  Previously, Kelly was executive vice president of global products at Tellabs. He had global responsibility for Tellabs products, including research and development, product line management and product marketing.

Kelly holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Chicago.

http://www.tellabs.com

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Zayo Reaches10,000 On-Net Buildings

Zayo has reached the milestone of more than 10,000 buildings on-net.

The company has completed 22 acquisitions over the past 6 years, with its most recently announced acquisition of First Telecom Services expected to close by the end of 2012. In the second half of 2012, Zayo doubled its network with the July acquisition of AboveNet. Zayo further expanded its reach with the August acquisition of FiberGateand October acquisition of USCarrier.   Zayo’s network now covers 67,000 route miles with 4.7M miles of fiber in total.

In addition, Zayo has just completed fiber deployment to DuPont Fabros Technology’s (DFT) ACC6 Data Center located in Ashburn, Virginia. DFT’s ACC6 Data Center is not connected via diverse dark fiber in point-to-point or ring topology to Zayo’s regional and national network.

http://www.zayo.com

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NTT Comm Deploys Juniper T1600 Core Router

NTT Communications has deployed the Juniper Networks T1600 Core Router to power its next-generation video transmission system.   NTT Comm is using the T1600's MPLS multicasting capability for high-capacity delivery of high-definition video for customer applications.

NTT Communications, a subsidiary of NTT Corporation -- one of the world's largest telecommunications companies -- provides network management, security and network services to consumers, corporations and governments.

The T1600 boasts 1.6 terabits per second (Tbps) throughput and the ability to forward up to 1.92 billion packets per second.  Juniper noted that the half-rack design of the T1600 combines a small footprint with the industry's best power efficiency.

"To achieve the high-quality of services that our customers demand, we have worked hard to develop new technologies that enable the forwarding of multicast streams to change dynamically and across a wide bandwidth without packet loss. This has been achieved through our discussions with Juniper Networks' developers and engineers in the U.S. and Japan. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Juniper team to support our organization's evolving needs," stated Osamu Nakazawa, director, Innovative IP Architecture Center, NTT Communications.

http://www.juniper.net

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ZTE Intros Mini LTE Data Card

ZTE introduced a mini 4G LTE datacard supporting driver-free operation. It uses Qualcomm’s second generation LTE chip platform and is only 13mm thick, nearly a third of the size of the first generation LTE datacard, making it the world's smallest LTE datacard.

It supports LTE-FDD DL/UL 100/50Mbps, UMTS-HSPA+: DL/UL 42/5.76Mbps and GPRS/GSM downward compatibility. ZTE said the card offers significant power savings over first generation LTE data cards.  The unit has already been launched in Kazakhstan and will launch soon in Europe and Asia-Pacific countries.

http://www.zte.com.cn

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BT Implements ALU's Motive Data Collection

BT has awarded a four-year contract extension to Alcatel-Lucent to upgrade its suite of Motive Customer Experience Solutions with latest-version software to assist its broadband and IPTV support departments.

Specifically, BT will deploy the new Motive Data Collection Manager (DCM), which is used to track the performance of the rapidly proliferating number of communication devices in peoples’ homes. The data is then made available to BT’s customer service teams – safely and securely – so they can proactively manage how the network and devices perform, ensuring a better overall experience for BT customers.

Alcatel-Lucent said the addition of Motive DCM to BT’s toolkit will not only make it easier to manage customers’ devices remotely, but also will provide tools to help customers with self-service capabilities.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/motive/

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CenturyLink Names Jeff Von Deylen President of Savvis

CenturyLink named Jeff Von Deylen as president of Savvis, its subsidiary focused on data center and cloud infrastructure. Von Deylen, who previously served as senior vice president of global operations and client services at Savvis, assumes the position from Bill Fathers, who has chosen to leave the company after a transition period ending in March 2013. 

Savvis claims nearly 2,500 unique clients, including more than 30 of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500.

http://www.centruylink.com

http://www.savvis.net

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Amazon Web Services Positions Itself as the Infrastructure of Innovation

Amazon Web Services is growing rapidly thanks to a virtuous circle -- as it gains more customers there is greater server usage, this means AWS needs to build more infrastructure, which then leads to greater economies of scale, the company benefits from lower infrastructure costs, it reduces prices and this attracts even more customers.  This virtuous cycle is currently in full motion, giving AWS a strategic advantage over others who were late to enter the market, said Andy Jassy in a keynote at the company's first AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.  The company has lowered prices 23 times since launching cloud services in 2006 largely without competitive pressure to do so. The latest price cut: AWS is lowering its S3 cloud storage service by 25%.

Jassy said Amazon is injecting new energy into its virtuous circle flywheel by adding services/features and opening up to third party integrators, network solution providers and app vendors.  This propels AWS forward to be the "infrastructure for innovation."

Here is current snapshot of AWS

• 100s of thousands of customers using its cloud services
• Over 300 government agencies and 1,500 academic institutions
• AWS has introduced over 150 new cloud services or features during 2012
• Amazon's S3 storage service is currently holding over 1.3 trillion objects and handling peak loads of 835,000 requests per second
• The Amazon Elastic Map Reduce service (Hadoop running on EC2) has now launched 3.7 million clusters
• In 2003, Amazon.com's retail business generated $5.2 billion in revenue. Now, AWS adds enough server capacity every day to power the entire operations of the 2003 retail business
• AWS Global Infrastructure now encompasses 9 regions(US East, two US West coast, Europre, Brazil, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney) 25 availability zones and 38 edge locations. There is as a separate U.S. government AWS cloud

Jassy's keynote, along with partner presentations from NASA, Netflix, NASDAQ and SAP, is now on YouTube.

http://youtu.be/8FJ5DBLSFe4
http://aws.amazon.com/live/

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Amazon's Redshift Brings Data Analysis and Warehousing to Cloud

Amazon Web Services introduced Redshift, a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud.

Amazon Redshift, which works with third-party business intelligence tools, allow enterprises to leverage the scale of the cloud to aggregate and analyze large data sets.  Redshift offers fast query performance using SQL-based analysis tools.

Using the AWS Management Console, businesess can quickly launch a Redshift cluster, starting with a few hundred gigabytes of data and scaling to a petabyte or more. Redshift manages all the work needed to set up, operate, and scale a data warehouse cluster, from provisioning capacity to monitoring and backing up the cluster, to applying patches and upgrades.

AWS said pricing will be under$1,000 per terabyte per year, which the company estimates is about 1/10th the cost of traditional data warehouse solutions. Query performance is said to be 10X faster than an "old guard" data warehouse provider.

The keynote presentation by AWS Sr. Vice President Andy Jassy is posted online.

http://aws.amazon.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJ5DBLSFe4&feature=youtu.be

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F5 Intros Virtual Big-IP ADC in the Amazon Cloud

F5 Networks introduced a BIG-IP virtual edition for the AWS cloud, enabling enterprises to extend their data center and applications to AWS while assuring enterprise-class reliability, scale, security, and performance.

The BIG-IP application delivery controller (ADC) for AWS offers equivalent features to physical BIG-IP devices.  These include options for traffic management, global server load balancing, application firewall, web application acceleration, and other advanced application delivery functions. 

F5 said that with BIG-IP running in enterprise data centers and on AWS, customers can establish secure tunnels, burst to the cloud, and control the application from end to end.

 

F5’s initial product offering will use the AWS “bring your own license” (BYOL) model, which allows customers to buy perpetual licenses from F5 and then apply these licenses to instances running in AWS.

F5 already provides support for virtualized and cloud environments based on vSphere, Hyper-V, Xen, and KVM.

http://www.f5.com/about/news/press/2012/20121127b/

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Japan's Nissho Electronics Tests 8 Tbps Super-Channel with Infinera

 Nissho Electronics has successfully tested the Infinera DTN-X platform delivering 8 Terabits per second (Tbps) capacity using production ready super-channels across 800 kms of ITU-T G.653 Dispersion Shifted Fiber (DSF).

Infinera’s DTN-X platform, built upon 500 Gb/s Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC) and the second generation FlexCoherent Processor offering software-configurable coherent modulation, offers long haul 500 Gbps super-channels which feature world class Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) compensation performance.

Infinera said DSF fiber, deployed throughout Japan, has proven to be a challenge in deploying high-capacity dense WDM  transport technology due to low chromatic dispersion in the C-Band, making it difficult to achieve high capacity optical transmission over long distance economically.  As a result, capacities have been severely limited and have had to utilize expensive L-band technology to achieve long haul quality performance from the DSF fiber.

The demonstration conducted with Nisho successfully transmitted  8Tbps of super-channel capacity on the C-Band over 800 kms of challenging DSF fiber.

Infinera also demonstrated the FlexCoherent capabilities of the system, showcasing the ability to software-select different modulation formats including QPSK and BPSK to optimize both reach and capacity. 


“This test truly demonstrates the value of the DTN-X platform to service providers with DSF assets,” said Kimitaka Sato, Executive Officer at Nissho. “In the past, service providers may not have been able to run even multiple 10 Gbps transmission over this kind of fiber. Infinera’s solution proves that we can run the very latest super-channel technology at 8Tbps on DSF, which is impressive.”

“This trial is unique because it  not only achieves world class reach and capacity over a very difficult type of optical fiber, it shows how quickly capacity can be turned up for service providers today,” said  Dave Welch, Infinera Co-founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer.  “This capability can be combined with our recently introduced Instant Bandwidth™ solution on the DTN-X to allow service providers to compete more effectively and achieve a success-based business model.”

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Trend Micro Delivers Security for Amazon's Cloud Storage Gateway

Trend Micro has optimized its cloud security for Amazon Web Services (AWS), including the newly announced AWS Storage Gateway. Trend Micro security solutions are now listed in the AWS Marketplace, providing a streamlined path to securing cloud deployment.

Trend Micro said its role is to automate the protection for new AWS instances, automating the encryption of sensitive data stored in the cloud, and centralizing the management across hybrid cloud environments.

In addition, the company said its research indicates that over 90% of targeted attacks are using spear phishing emails.

http://newsroom.trendmicro.com/index.php?s=43&news_item=1021&type=current&year=0

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Spanish Mobile Operators Offer 'Joyn' Rich Communications

Spain’s three leading mobile network operators, Movistar, Orange and Vodafone, are now offering interoperable Rich Communication Services (RCS) under the consumer-facing brand joyn.

Movistar, Orange and Vodafone are initially offering joyn services through an application for Android, with a version for the iPhone to follow shortly. 

joyn is based on the GSMA's  RCS 5.0 standard, enabling mobile users  to chat and enrich messaging or voice calls by exchanging images or video simultaneously during calls, in a private and secure manner, with any member of their contact list that has joyn, regardless of the user’s network or mobile device. Additional services, such as VoIP or IP-video caling,l will be introduced in the near future.  joyn operates on both the operators’ mobile networks and on Wi-Fi networks.

“The GSMA is delighted that joyn services are now available across Spain, giving customers a greater choice of communication possibilities without compromising the quality and security they have come to expect from their mobile operator,” said Michael O’Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA. “This initial implementation of a new technology clearly required a major effort and strong leadership in the alignment of the ecosystem of manufacturers, developers and integrators, and operators. Consumers across the world will benefit from the leading efforts of these three operators in Spain.”

Other operators who have launched joyn services include Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone Germany, and MetroPCS.

http://www.joynus.com

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Sumo Logic Raises $30 Million for Big Data Analytics

Sumo Logic, a start-up focused on big data analytics, raised $30 million in Series C funding.

Sumo Logic offers a cloud-based solution that helps enterprises to search, analyze, monitor, and visualize big data in real time, enabling application and infrastructure troubleshooting within data center, cloud and hybrid environments.

The company said it has seen rapid adoption from large-scale enterprise clients including Netflix.  Sumo Logic is based in Mountain View, California.

The funding round was led by Accel Partners, with participation from existing investors Greylock Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures. The company has raised $50.5 million to date.

“This new round is validation of our vision and innovation as a company, and testament to the traction we are seeing in the marketplace,” noted Vance Loiselle, president and CEO of Sumo Logic. “The funding positions us well to aggressively expand our powerful cloud-based analytics and log management service to a very broad section of the market.”

http://www.freesumo.com

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MegaFon Makes IPO Debut

MegaFon, which is Russia's second largest mobile operator, raised US$1.7 billion (£1.4bn) from an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Russia’s MICEX – RTS.  About 15 per cent of the company was sold.  Teliasonera still holds about 25% of the firm and Mr. Alisher Usmanov controls over 50% through holding companies. The shares were priced at $20 and declined after the opening to close at $19.60.

MegaFon currently serves about 63 million subscribers. In addition to its GSM 900/1800 network in Russia, MegaFon also has subsidiaries in Tajikistan, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

http://4g.moscow.megafon.ru/

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FireEye Appoints David DeWalt as CEO

FireEye, which offers next gen cybersecurity services, appointed David DeWalt as CEO.  He also serves as chairman of the board of directors. Ashar Aziz, FireEye founder and CEO, will become the company’s new vice chairman and chief strategy officer as well as continue to serve as the company’s CTO.

DeWalt is the former president, CEO, and director of McAfee, Inc.

"FireEye addresses a very critical security gap plaguing businesses today – the lack of sufficient protection against this next generation of cyber attacks. As more and more companies fall prey to cybercriminals targeting their corporate data and proprietary IP, it becomes glaringly apparent that the current approach to security is fundamentally broken. FireEye has emerged as the clear leader in combatting these advanced cyber attacks with its unique technology and platform," said DeWalt. "The company has demonstrated tremendous growth and I’m excited to work side by side with Ashar, one of the world’s foremost technologists and security thought leaders, and the entire executive team to further innovate and expand FireEye’s reach."

FireEye supplements signature-based firewalls, IPS, anti-virus, and gateways, and provides a cross-enterprise, signature-less protection against Web and email threat vectors as well as malware resident on file shares.

http://www.fireeye.com

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SingTel Deploys MPLS-TP for Global Carrier Ethernet Service

SingTel has deployed Multiprotocol Label Switching-Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) as the foundation for its ConnectPlus E-Line service, which provides up to 10 Gbps of Ethernet connectivity for multinational corporations.

SingTel is using the Cisco MPLS Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) suite of Carrier Packet Transport technologies for this global deployment.

SingTel is also planning to introduce dedicated point-to-multipoint and electronic Bandwidth-On-Demand (eBOD) for ConnectPlus E-Line services over the coming year

Cisco said its Carrier Packet Transport solution provides SingTel with a network that unifies both packet and transport domains, while providing a greater degree of freedom in terms of network topology demands regardless of its customers' locations, traffic conditions and bandwidth requirements.  SingTel is one of industry's first standards-based MPLS-TP deployments.
MPLS-TP also brings predictable resiliency and simplicity to service provisioning.

"The video, cloud, and mobile services are defining new meshed traffic patterns and placing unprecedented demands on the transport network architecture.  In deploying the Cisco Carrier Packet Transport solution, SingTel is able to simplify service fulfilment complexity and evolve the ConnectPlus suite of services into a new generation converged transport architecture ready for enabling future services," stated Jeff White, Vice President for Cisco's Service Provider Business in Asia Pacific, Japan and China.

http://www.cisco.com
http://www.singtel.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Builds Openness with its Carrier CloudBand

Alcatel-Lucent is expanding the range of open source cloud platforms and networking equipment vendors supported by its CloudBand "carrier cloud" solution.

CloudBand, which Alcatel-Lucent first unveiled one year ago, is its foundational architecture for a new class of carrier cloud services, such as IMS or video applications, that leverage generic compute resources deployed in regional data centers throughout a carrier's footprint. The goal is to make the carrier infrastructure more agile, elastic, resilient and application-aware.

Alcatel-Lucent said CloudBand gives service providers the flexibility they need to introduce carrier cloud services while benefiting from their existing investments in network infrastructure.

The company has adopted an open approach to integrating best-of-breed open source cloud computing software. This includes support for the OpenStack Foundation, which was co-founded by NASA and RackSpace and is dedicated to open cloud development throughout data centers. Alcatel-Lucent's CloudBand is also supporting Apache CloudStack in the CloudBand Management System, as well as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Alcatel-Lucent said it is now possible for service providers to remotely set up a networked CloudBand Node in just a few hours by accessing a pre-configured 'cloud in a box' solution. With this approach they can provide all the functionality of the public cloud wherever they choose in their network while offering the benefits of quality and security that come with the carrier cloud.

"Openness has been a key principle that we have embraced to ensure that our customers' cloud environments can be adapted and expanded as the customer demand evolves. We have delivered on this promise of openness with multi-vendor support at every point in the network and the cloud so our customers can enjoy flexibility in their investment decisions, choosing whichever vendor best meets a particular need," stated Dor Skuler, Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent Cloud Solutions.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Targets Enterprise-scale SDN

Alcatel-Lucent is pursuing an enterprise-scale Software Defined Network (SDN) strategy that goes beyond offering basic awareness of the applications running on it to a network that can make automatic real-time adjustments. The strategy involves building greater programmability, application awareness and end-to-end visibility into its Application Fluent Network.

Alcatel-Lucent's Application Fluent Network, which is built on its OmniSwitch platform, detects virtualized applications and applies a profile-driven policy to enable a network to automatically adjust to virtualized traffic, such as virtual desktops, in order to meet service quality demands. The solution can combine individual user policies, the type of device and applications being used, with the knowledge of the entire network to dynamically adjust network access priority and bandwidth allocation, ensuring required service levels are met.

CandIT Media, a digital media solutions vendor based in Belgium, is using Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch 6900 to create a “content aware” digital network that dynamically supports the large traffic peaks specific to media flows. In addition to providing a higher quality user experience, CandIT Media can deliver solutions to its customers at lower costs since the network is more efficient in transporting large files.

"The high volumes of media traffic we deal with have a bursty nature that makes Ethernet switches suboptimal for their transport. By using off the shelf hardware and Alcatel-Lucent’s OminSwitch 6900, we were able to achieve and significantly improve Quality of Service by optimally tuning the transfer of media content which also resulted in a much higher utilization of physical components," stated Luc Andries, CTO, CandIT Media.

In addition, Alcatel-Lucent announced that its OmniVista 2500 Virtual Machine Manager is now classified as VMware Ready.  The OmniVista 2500 Virtual Machine Manager provides real-time and historical visibility of the enterprise data center network and the location of virtual components, such as virtual machines, within the network. This visibility of both the network and virtual applications coupled with the ability to provision and manage resources, enables the network to automatically make adjustments in response to changes in virtualized workloads within and between data centers.

Alcatel-Lucent  said it will further enhance the Application Fluent Network during the first half of 2013 via:

• Increased programmability through a set of RESTful interfaces that enable applications, external controllers and orchestration platforms such as OpenStack and CloudStack to talk with  Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch for greater orchestration and optimization of  application delivery.
• Greater network recognition of applications through application profiling, and new application performance analysis of virtual machine connectivity to understand and react to network conditions on applications in real-time.
• Enhanced global control view through the addition of Plug-N-Play capabilities that allow each device in the network to be identified and brought into service automatically for improved decision making at the network node level.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com
http://bit.ly/ALUE_SDN

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Infonetics: Juniper Retakes No.2 Routing Share

The global service provider router and switch market, including IP edge and core routers and carrier Ethernet switches, declined 5%  in Q3 2012, both sequentially and from the year-ago 3rd quarter, to just shy of $3.4 billion, according to Infonetics' 3rd quarter 2012 (3Q12) Service Provider Routers and Switches report, which tracks and analyzes IP edge router, IP core router, and carrier Ethernet switch (CES) vendors and markets.

Some highlights of the report:

• Asia Pacific is the only region up in 3Q12 over 2Q12, albeit slightly, built on a 31% spike from Japan.      
• In the router-only segment (IP edge and core routers), Cisco maintains its strong market share lead, but in a shakeup in the 3-way race for the next 3 leadership positions, Juniper took back the #2 spot from Huawei, which dropped to #4, while Alcatel-Lucent held steady in 3rd in 3Q12.
• Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei together account for 88% of total IP router revenue (edge and core) in 3Q12.

"The performance of the router/switch market roughly reflects economic conditions, and true to form economic weakness in Europe, North America, and Latin America drove down IP router and switch revenue in the third quarter," notes Michael Howard, Infonetics Research's co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks. "EMEA posted another negative quarter amid the ongoing fiscal crisis in Europe, and we may not see much of the usual final quarter budget flush, as it seems just as the European Commission gets closer to economic steadiness, more negative reports arrive.  Although North America is showing positive economic signs, carrier router/switch revenue is down 2% from the year-ago quarter, and Latin America is slowing as many of the year-long projects in South America and Mexico wind down."

http://www.infonetics.com

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Polaris Wireless Joins FCC's Indoor Location Technology Trial

Polaris Wireless has joined an indoor location technology market trial organized by the FCC's Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC).

The trial, which is taking place from November 15 through December 31 in the San Francisco Bay Area. involves the simultaneous testing of indoor location technologies from four leading companies: Polaris Wireless, Qualcomm, Boeing, and NextNav.  The trial aims to identify technologies that can be deployed to enable PSAP’s (Public Safety Answering Points) to quickly and accurately locate emergency callers.

Polaris Wireless is the only network-based location technology provider that is being tested in indoor environments.

Polaris Wireless said one of the leading challenges for public safety responders is how to accurately locate an emergency caller indoors. This challenge will only grow as mobile subscribers increasingly come to rely upon their mobile devices for the vast majority of calls, both indoors and outdoors.

The trial includes Polaris Wireless Location Signatures (Polaris WLSTM), a software- based RF Pattern Matching approach to the high-accuracy location determination problem, requiring no changes in the wireless device or in the wireless service provider’s base stations.

“We are very enthusiastic to participate in the CSRIC trial for indoor location,” said Manlio Allegra, Polaris Wireless CEO and Co-founder. “This vote of confidence reflects our leading-edge location technology performance, especially in indoor environments, through deployments all over the world.”

http://www.polariswireless.com

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Cincinnati Bell Standardizes on Ruckus for Smarter Wi-Fi

Cincinnati Bell has standardized on Ruckus Wireless' Smart Wi-Fi solution to support its enterprise managed services, Wi-Fi hotspot and emerging metro public access businesses. The technology is being used for managed, campus-wide Wi-Fi such as local stadium venues, college campuses, and other hospitality establishments.

Cincinnati Bell's commercial Wi-Fi services are managed through Ruckus ZoneDirector Smart WLAN controllers, located at Cincinnati Bell's central office.

Ruckus noted that at one college campus in particular, Cincinnati Bell is using its Ruckus ZoneFlex 802.11n products to deliver an average download of 440 gigabytes per 24-hour period from only 100 students and their devices.

http://www.ruckuswireless.com

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Reliance Globalcom Picks Ciena for 100G Submarine Cable Upgrade

Reliance Globalcom will upgrade its FLAG Europe-Asia (FEA) submarine network using Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent optical 100G networking solution. The 100G DWDM network follows a route that connects Egypt and Jordan.

The installation uses Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform equipped with WaveLogic coherent optical line interfaces. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Ciena is also providing Reliance Globalcom with its advanced network management solution for streamlined service activation, robust fault management and comprehensive performance monitoring. Additionally, the deployment includes a wide range of professional services for this deployment via Ciena’s Specialist Services portfolio, including engineering, furnishing and installation (EF&I).

Earlier this year, Reliance announced it is using Ciena’s 100G solutions to power its European network. In 2011, the companies announced two 40G deployments on the Reliance Globalcom network – one to support a 5,000 kilometer submarine link along two key routes connecting Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong, and the other to support a 6,400 kilometer ultra-long haul submarine link connecting the UK, Spain, Italy and Egypt.

http://www.ciena.com
http://www.flagtelecom.com/

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Ericsson Files Patent Infringement Case Against Samsung

Ericsson launched patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung concerning technology that is essential to several telecommunications and networking standards. Ericsson said it took this action following nearly two years of negotiations which failed to reach an agreement. The complaint was filed in the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which is the district where Ericsson's US headquarters is located.

Ericsson said Samsung previously licensed Ericsson's patents in 2001 and renewed in 2007, but its license has now expired.

Ericsson noted that in 2011 alone, it invested SEK 32.6 b. (US$5.0 billion) in R&D.  Its research has resulted in hundreds of patents related to GSM, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, LTE and 802.11.  The company has more than 30,000 patents worldwide.

http://www.ericsson.com

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Aricent Offers OpenFlow Source Code to TEMs

Aricent is now offering OpenFlow and Software Defined Networking (SDN) software frameworks as part of its wireline communications source code portfolio. The OpenFlow Client software, along with Aricent's product lifecycle services, is designed to help telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) add OpenFlow and SDN to their products.

Aricent said its OpenFlow Client software can be customized and deployed for both hybrid and pure OpenFlow architectures. The software can be used to develop OpenFlow and SDN controllers, as well in conjunction with Aricent other networking platforms.

“OpenFlow is a tremendous opportunity for network innovation and we are really excited about its potential applications. Our membership with ONF further underscores our commitment, both to the technology and to our customers, towards cost-effectively co-creating cutting-edge next-generation networks,” said Sridhar Raju, Assistant Vice President and Head of the Wireline Communications Practice at Aricent.

http://www.aricent.com/pdf/Aricent_Solution_Brief_SDN_OpenFlow.pdf
http://www.aricent.com

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Google Cuts Cloud Storage Pricing 20%, Adds Durable Reduced Availability Option

Google cut the price of its standard Cloud Storage service by over 20% and announced a limited preview of Durable Reduced Availability (DRA) storage, which is an archival service with longer data retrieval times. 

Another new feature is Persistent Disk Snapshotting, which enables the user to crete an instant backup of a disk and then move it around Google datacenters in order to startup a new VM.  

Google has also continued to add to its European datacenter support, which lets the users assign applications, data and virtual machines to European Datacenter for regulatory compliance and to be closer to customers.

http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/11/google-cloud-platform-new-features.html

In June, Google introduced its Compute Engine service, which provides on-demand, virtual Linux machines at Google scale. The service lets you run large-scale computing workloads on the same infrastructure that runs Google Search, Gmail and Ads. 

"Ten thousand cores is really cool," said Urs Hölzle, Google's Sr. VP of Technical Infrastructure, and then demonstrating a genomics application being instantly scaled to a further 600,000 cores. Google is promising up to 50% more computer power per dollar compared to other cloud computing service providers. The price for one virtual core starts at $0.145 per hour. The service is live now and a Developers Guide with open APIs is available.

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Sprint Adds 11 More LTE Markets

Sprint has extended its 4G LTE network to customers in 11 new cities/counties, including:

•  Anderson, Ind.
• Clarke County, Va./Jefferson County, W.Va.
• Harrisburg/Carlisle/Hershey, Pa.
• Hagerstown, Md./Martinsburg, W.Va.
• Harrisonburg, Va.
• Muncie, Ind.
• Peabody, Mass.
• Salina, Kan.
• Shenandoah County, Va.
• South Bend/Mishawaka, Ind.
• Winchester, Va.

Sprint's LTE service is now available in a total of 43 markets.  The network was first launched in July.

http://www.sprint.com/4GLTE

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Delloro: Huawei Leads in Q3 WDM Sales

The total WDM market which is comprised of both metro and long-haul applications grew 14 percent year-over-year in 3Q 2012 and is forecast to reach $8 billion for the full year 2012. It is expected to climb further in 2013, according to a newly published report from Dell'Oro Group.

The top five vendors in this space are Huawei, Ciena, Alcatel-Lucent, Fujitsu and NEC, according to the Dell'Oro tracking.

“It was the year 2000 when the WDM market peaked at $7.7 billion and then promptly burst downwards to $1.8 billion,“ said Jimmy Yu, Vice President of Optical Transport research at Dell’Oro Group. “Since then, it has taken twelve long years to reach this milestone but we are finally on a path to best this previous revenue peak and to attain a new record revenue marker for the WDM market. We are forecasting the total WDM market to be $8 billion for the full year 2012 as a larger number of service providers roll out 40 and 100 gigabit DWDM wavelengths to meet the rising demand for bandwidth."

http://www.delloro.com

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aql to Build Huge Data Center in Leeds, UK

aql confirmed plans for a massive, £43 million data center to be built in the city of Leeds, England.  The company has three existing data centres in the city, but these are expected to be fully populated by mid-2013.  The new DC4 data center will consist of two six storey buildings totalling 120,000 square feet (11,100 m2)  of space.  The new buildings will be connected to aql’s existing city sites (DC1, 2 and 3) by a private fiber loop.  Project completion is expected in 2014.

aql said it is  working with Leeds and Partners to drive forward the region’s digital strategy and the new centre – one of the UK’s largest independent data centres – could attract more major players in the industry to join existing names such as Cogent, SSE Telecom, Level (3), Janet and Fujitsu.

http://www.leedsandpartners.com/press_releases/data-centre-boost-for-citys-growing-digital-sector/

http://www.aql.com

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Interoute Acquires Danish IT Company

Interoute, which operates over 60,000 km of lit fibre, 9 hosting data centres and 32 collocation centres across Europe, is acquiring the Danish IT company Comendo’s subsidiary Comendo Network.  The deal will double Interoute's evenues and its employees in Denmark. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Interoute will be taking on all of Comendo Network’s prominent customers, including DSB, Saxo Bank and DONG Energy.

"Following our purchase of VCG last year, the purchase of Comendo Network further strengthens our position in Denmark and the Nordic region. This gives us critical mass in the Danish market and provides an excellent platform for further development of our cloud based network solutions and video communications," stated Gareth Williams, CEO Interoute.

http://www.interoute.com
http://www.comendo.com

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Bright House Acquires Telovations for Cloud Comm Services

Bright House Networks, the sixth largest owner and operator of cable systems in the U.S., will acquire Telovations, a Tampa, Florida-based Cloud Communications provider that delivers businesses hosted voice solutions, including PBX and managed SIP trunking. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Brighthouse said the deal helps accelerate its cloud based and managed services, as well as enhance its mission to offer small and medium sized businesses additional services.

“We welcome this collaborative opportunity to combine our fiber optic network and managed services offerings with Telovations’ cloud-based unified communications services to provide companies with a much broader array of network capabilities and industry-leading services,” said Leo Cloutier, senior vice president, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Bright House Networks.


Bright House Networks currently serves more than 2.4 million customers in five states including Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Michigan and California.

http://www.brighthouse.com/corporate/about/11031.htm
http://www.telovations.com

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France's Bouygues Telecom Sells Towers for EUR 205 Million

Bouygues Telecom is selling of 2,166 of its cell site towers to France Pylons Services (FPS), a new company formed to hold and manage the towers.  Bouygues Telecom said it is taking this action to lower its debts.

The deal is valued at for EUR 205 million and Bouygues Telecom will retain a 15% equity stake in FPS.  Therefore, the net proceeds to Bouygues Telecom this transaction is approximately EUR 185 million.

Ownserhip of the first 1,873 towers was completed today and the remaining towers will be sold in Q2 2013.

Bouygues Telecom currently serves 11 million mobile customers (including Simyo and Darty Telecom) and 1.8 million fixed broadband customers (including Darty Telecom),  as well as more than 1.5 million business customers.

http://www.presse.bouyguestelecom.fr

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Arianespace Lands New Launch Contract with Echostar

Echostar awarded a new contract to Arianespace to launch multiple new satellites over a multi-year period from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. Echostar expressed confindence in relying on the Ariane 5 rocket to deliver on-time success for its near term expansion programs.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

“EchoStar’s renewed confidence in Arianespace is extremely gratifying to us. This launch contract allows us to play a role in the expansion of EchoStar’s broadcast and data revolution. Our dedication to quality gives customers like EchoStar a solid foundation for innovation and growth,” said Jean-Yves Le Gall, chairman and CEO of Arianespace.

In 2012, Arianespace performed eight successful launches at the CSG:  six Ariane 5, one Soyuz and one Vega. Starsem, its European-Russian subsidiary, has also carried out a launch of Soyuz from the Baikonur cosmodrome.  The company has a Soyuz launch plus another Ariane 5 launch at CSG before the end of the year. 

http://www.arianespace.com/news-press-release/2012/11-26-2012-EchoStar-launch-contract.asp
http://www.echostar.com

 In July 2012, EchoStar XVII, which is one of the highest capacity satellites ever built, was successfully launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

EchoStar XVII is an all Ka-band, broadband satellite designed to provide well in excess of 100 Gbps capacity to HughesNet across North America. Its multi-spot beam architecture will expand coverage and focus capacity on the areas with the highest traffic demand. It uses the Space Systems/Loral satellite bus.

In October 2012, Hughes Network Systems activated its new HughesNet Gen4 satellite Internet service. HughesNet Gen4 delivers downlink speeds of up to 15 Mbps, depending on the plan. Pricing starts at $49.99 per month for 10 Mbps downlink with a 10 GB cap for a 24 month term , plus $9.99 per month to lease the equipment.

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Oclaro Sells Off Thin Film and Interleavers for $27 Million

Oclaro has sold its thin film filter business to Photop Technologies, a wholly-owned subsidiary of II-VI Incorporated, and will also sell its interleaver product line to Photop Koncent (FuZhou), also a wholly owned subsidiary of II-VI.  The deals are valued at $27 million.

"Divesting our thin film filter business and the interleaver product line is consistent with our strategy to focus our resources on our core competencies," said Alain Couder, chairman and CEO of Oclaro. "The proceeds from these deals improve our balance sheet and give us additional operating flexibility to serve our global customer base.

http://www.oclaro.com

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Alvarion Supplies its 802.16e Wireless in Guinea

Alvarion announced a contract to supply its 4Motion 802.16e solution to ETI, a leading Internet service provider in Guinea.  The network will extend from the capital city, Conakry, to cover the entire country covering an area of 246,000 square kilometers (94,981 sq mi).

Alvarion notes that ETI’s network is designed to deliver voice and data services in the 2.5 GHz spectrum to a wide range of customers, including both high-end enterprise customers as well as residential customers.

http://www.alvarion.com

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Japan Examines Disaster Scenarios for Network Congestion

Researchers from NTT DoCoMo, Tohoku University, NEC, Hitachi East Japan Solutions and Fujitsu have set up a joint test bed to examine network resiliency issues during major disasters such as the Great East Japan Earthquake.  The test environment has been set-up in the Yokosuka Research Park and at Tohoku University.

The idea is to enable more dynamic network control for dealing with priority mail and voice calls when congestion spikes above a certain threshold.

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/2012/11/22_00.html

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UK Issues White Spaces Proposal

Ofcom, the official telecoms regulator for the UK,  published detailed proposals for consumer devices using "white spaces" spectrum.

Ofcom said its framework will ensure that the devices do not interfere with existing licensed users of the spectrum, which include DTT and wireless microphone users.  The idea is to allow white space devices to operate without the need for a licence. New legislation is needed to support this proposal.  Ofcom is seeking public consultation on the issue.

Ed Richards, Ofcom Chief Executive, said: "From rural broadband to enhanced Wi-Fi, white space technology offers significant opportunities for innovation and enterprise in the UK. "It also represents a fundamentally different approach to using spectrum by searching and recycling unused gaps in the airwaves. This could prove critical in averting a global spectrum capacity crunch, as consumers demand more bandwidth over different devices."


http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/whitespaces/

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Pacnet Provides Trans-Pacific Ethernet for NEC Big Globe

Pacnet, which operates the EAC Pacific subsea cable system, is providing an Ethernet International Private Line (EIPL) service to interconnect NEC Big Globe's data center in Japan with the  Any2 Internet Exchange in Los Angeles.

EAC Pacific is part of the $300 million Unity cable system built with five other global telecommunications and technology companies. Pacnet is the largest investor in Unity and operates two of the five fiber pairs in the cable system independently. The two fiber pairs, collectively known as EAC Pacific, stretch over 9,600 kilometers and provide up to 1.92 Tbps of capacity across the Pacific Ocean.

http://www.pacnet.com

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