06/26/12 ~ Converge! Network Digest

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

FBI Undercover Operation Hits Cyber Carding Crimes

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Cyber Security, FBI

The FBI announced the arrest of 24 people in what is described as the largest coordinated international law enforcement action in history directed at “carding” crimes — offenses in which the Internet is used to traffic in and exploit the stolen credit card, bank account, and other personal identification information. The two year undercover operation led to the arrest of individuals in 13 countries: U.S.(11 arrests), United Kingdom (6 arrests), Bosnia (2), Bulgaria (1), Norway (1), and Germany (1), Italy (1) and Japan (1). Australia, Canada, Denmark,...

Hibernia Rebrands as Global Express Platform

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Hibernia Atlantic, Service Provider, Submarine Cable

Hibernia Atlantic has re-branded its Global Financial Network (GFN) as the Global Express Platform. The Global Express Platform, which provides connectivity to 60+ global exchanges and low latency entry points in Europe and North America, serves the financial community, including global broker dealers, hedge funds, and capital markets. Hibernia is also building "Project Express", a new cable promising the lowest latency connecting the...

UNH-IOL Forms Home Networking Consortium

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Academia, Broadband Forum, Standards, UNH-IOL

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) has launched a Home Networking Consortium to offer a one stop shop for both Broadband Forum TR-069 testing and IPv6 CPE Ready Logo testing. The UNH-IOL has been named the world’s only official laboratory for all Broadband Forum TR-069 testing and is the only approved laboratory for IPv6 CPE Ready Logo testing in North America. Beginning the week of July 2, 2012 members of the Home Networking Consortium can pre-test CPE in compliance with the Broadband Forum TR-069 Conformance...

AT&T Readies Enhanced Push To Talk

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 App, ATT, Mobile, Service Provider

AT&T reports positive feedback from trial users of its forthcoming Enhanced Push to Talk (PTT) service. AT&T is now doubling the number of business PTT users who may participate in its free program. In addition, AT&T expects to offer a choice of up to five compatible smartphones, including multiple devices from Samsung, when Enhanced PTT is anticipated to be commercially available later this year. CourierNet, an Atlanta-based courier...

Wi-Fi Alliance Begins Passpoint Certifications

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Wi-Fi

The Wi-Fi Alliance has begun certifying mobile devices and infrastructure equipment under its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint program. The Passpoint program aims to make it easy for users to connect with hotspots using WPA2 security. The Passpoint certification program is based on technology defined in the Wi-Fi Alliance Hotspot 2.0 Specification. The first batch of products has just been certified. "Product manufacturers partnered with service...

BT Openreach Expands its Fibre Rollout

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 BT, FTTX, Last Mile, Service Provider, UK

Openreach is extending its fibre rollout to a further 98 exchange areas as part of BT’s £2.5bn fibre initiative. The deployment, which will be completed by late 2013, will add nearly 800,000 homes and businesses to Openreach’s previously announced fibre plans. In total, the company aims to serve around two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014. Openreach is making fibre broadband available on an open wholesale basis using a mix of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises (FTTP) technologies. http://www.btplc.com 26-Jun...

Avago Releases 120 Gbps Parallel Optics for Cloud Apps

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Avago, Components, Infiniband, Optical

Avago Technologies announced production volumes of 120 Gbps multichannel optical transmitter and receiver modules for "inside-the-box" data-center applications and a CXP pluggable transceiver for board-edge “box-to-box" and "rack-to-rack" communications. The stand-alone MiniPODTM transmit and receive modules—the AFBR-81uVxyZ and AFBR-82uVxyZ, respectively, each contain 12 unidirectional channels (lanes) that can each transfer data at 10.3125 Gbits/s using 64b/66b encoding for an aggregate data rate of 120 Gbps for each module. The CXP pluggable...

Tellabs Appoints Interim CEO

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Financial, Tellabs

Tellabs Board of Directors has appointed Dan Kelly as acting president and CEO, stepping in for Rob Pullen who has been continuing treatment for cancer and is recuperating from surgery. http://www.tellabs....

ZTE Captures 40% of China Telecom 2012 Broadband Equipment Project

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 OpticalNetworking

ZTE has won a contract for 40% of China Telecom’s 2012 broadband equipment procurement project -- the largest share of any vendor participating on the project. The contract covers procurement of PON OLTs, FTTB MDUs, and broadband terminals. It includes for over 21 million units valued at approximately RMB4 billion (approximately US$629 million). ZTE said this is the largest broadband procurement project in the world in 2012. http://www.zte...

Sprint Confirms July 15th Launch Date for LTE

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 LTE, Service Providers, Sprint

Sprint will launch its initial LTE service on July 15th in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and San Antonio. More market launches are planned for later this year. By the end of 2013, Sprint expects to have largely completed the build out of its all-new 4G LTE nationwide network – with an enhanced 3G network – covering 250 million people across the United States. Dan Hesse, Sprint's CEO, said the Network Vision program is delivering on its...

NSN Achieves 1.3 Gbps with TD-LTE

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 China, Mobile, NSN, TD-LTE

Nokia Siemens Networks has achieved TD-LTE data speeds of 1.3 Gbps using its commercial Flexi base station hardware during a live demonstration at a recent China Information Technology show in Beijing. Nokia Siemens Networks also noted that it is the first vendor to complete Phase 1 and 2 of China Mobile’s (CMCC) TD-LTE field tests and that it leads the industry with its TD-LTE key performance indicators (KPIs). "Our record-breaking mobile broadband...

Google I/O Highlights Ambition as Premium Content Aggregator

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Google, HD voice, IPTV, Service Providers

The Google I/O event in San Francisco drew a capacity crowd of app developers as the company updated its Android road map and rollout two key products. Some highlights: Google announced several Android milestones -- 400 million devices have been activated so far and there are now 1 million new activations per day. The Google Play store is of strategic importance to the company. Google Play has just added TV shows and magazines. The Google Play...

SEC Charges for Philip A. Falcone and Harbinger

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Regulatory, Satellite

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud charges against New York-based hedge fund adviser Philip A. Falcone and his advisory firm, Harbinger Capital Partners for illicit conduct that included misappropriation of client assets, market manipulation, and betraying clients. In the networking industry, Falcone is best known for the LightSquared initiative, which was ultimately blocked in its attempt to build a nationwide LTE + satellite wholesale network. http://www.sec....

MPEG Industry Forum Concludes its Work

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 StandardsWatch

The MPEG Industry Forum declared victory and is now winding down its work. By the end of this month, all remaining assets will be put into the hands of the Open IPTV Forum. The MPEG Industry Forum was initiated in June 2000 with mission to educate and evangelize an emerging standards based solution that became known as MPEG-4 Part 10, aka AVC, aka H.264. At the time, there was considerable industry fragmentation as to the future of video compression. Slowly but surely H.264 gained mind share and then market share and today is clearly the dominant...

IceHook Acquires RouteNGN Call Routing Software

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Financial, Mergers and Acquisitions

IceHook Systems, which supplies data management applications for telecommunications service providers, has acquired Covista Communications' RouteNGN call routing software, including all intellectual property, service and trademarks. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal allows IceHook to build upon its current product portfolio that includes Call Detail Record (CDR) and Rate Management while allowing Covista to continue offering the...

Alcatel-Lucent Expands R&D with Russia's Rostechnologi

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Packet Systems, Russia

Alcatel-Lucent announced a major expansion of its partnership with Rostechnologii (SC Rostechnologii), Russia’s largest high-technology corporation, with an aim of accelerating the development of LTE and ground-breaking transmission technologies. The two companies will create a new research and development center in Moscow, expected to employ several hundred highly-skilled engineers drawn from both organizations. The joint venture will be set-up...

Philipp Humm Resigns as CEO of T-Mobile USA

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Service Providers

Philipp Humm has resigned as CEO of T-Mobile USA. Humm joined Deutsche Telekom in 2005, and was initially responsible for the company’s mobile business in Germany. In 2008 he took on the responsibility of managing the sales and service activities of the European mobile companies within Deutsche Telekom Group. In May 2010 he moved to T-Mobile USA., taking over as CEO in November of that year.AT&T first announced its $39 billion bid to acquire...

Avago Releases 120 Gbps Parallel Optics for Cloud Apps

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 Infiniband, Optical

Avago Technologies announced production volumes of 120 Gbps multichannel optical transmitter and receiver modules for "inside-the-box" data-center applications and a CXP pluggable transceiver for board-edge “box-to-box�? and �?rack-to-rack�? communications. The stand-alone MiniPODTM transmit and receive modules—the AFBR-81uVxyZ and AFBR-82uVxyZ, respectively, each contain 12 unidirectional channels (lanes) that can each transfer data at 10.3125 Gbits/s using 64b/66b encoding for an aggregate data rate of 120 Gbps for each module. The CXP pluggable...