June 10, 1962: Telstar Launches Satellite Communications Era

 Bell Labs marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of Telstar I -- the first active communications satellite, which ushered in the era of modern communications including real-time global telephone service, data communications and TV broadcasting.

Telstar I incorporated dozens of innovations from Bell Labs, including the transistor and solar panels, and was powered by 3,600 solar cells also invented by Bell Labs in 1954. The satellite could carry 600 voice calls and one black-and-white TV channel from an elliptical orbit some 30,000 miles above the Earth's equator. The orbit allowed a maximum transmission time between Europe and the United States of 20 minutes per pass. The satellite remained in service until February 21, 1963. Many generations of communication satellites have followed.

"With Telstar and its successors, the world was made a smaller place, as billions of people around the world had instant access to news, sports and entertainment. The phrase 'live via satellite' became part of the common vernacular. At the time, few people would have believed that 50 years later you could actually talk to your house or car, or predicted that children would play video games with other children 10,000 miles away," said Jeong Kim, President of Bell Labs.\
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Frontier Gains $72M from FCC's Connect America Fund

 Frontier Communications has received $71.9 million from the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Connect America Fund (CAF). The funds will be used for broadband connectivity in underserved or unserved areas.

Frontier said that by accepting this funding, it will provide broadband service to an additional 92,876 households covering more than half of the 27 states it serves, ensuring rural customers in states such as Michigan, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia have access to broadband connectivity.
http://www.frontier.com

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Troy Cable Picks ADTRAN for SmartBand Project

Troy Cable, which serves southeastern Alabama, has selected ADTRAN to deliver a full range of carrier access and enterprise solutions for the Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) funded SmartBand Project.

Troy Cable is deploying a 595 mile fiber optic Middle Mile network across the region that will enable high bandwidth voice, video and data to nearly 150 anchor institutions and 4,000 businesses in the area.

The deployment will include ADTRAN's Total Access 5000 Multi-Service Access Platform (MSAP), Total Access 900 series IP Business Gateways and the NetVanta 7100 Unified Communications platform.
http://www.adtran.com
http://www.troycable.net

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Infonetics: Demand for DDoS Prevention Solutions is Hot

 Sustained DDoS activity will drive the market for DDoS prevention appliances to 24% growth in 2012 over 2011, according to a new report from Infonetics.

“While the market for dedicated DDoS prevention solutions remains strong, going forward the overall performance of the market and the vendors in it will be challenged by the widening availability of hosted/SaaS solutions and new integrated security platforms that include DDoS prevention as a feature,” notes Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research.
“Arbor Networks and Alcatel-Lucent recently announced a combined offering that couples Alcatel-Lucent routers and a specialized DDoS mitigation blade from Arbor. And F5 recently launched a specialized data center firewall product based on its BigIP traffic management platform, with DDoS prevention as a cornerstone feature.”

Some highlights:

• The data center segment of the DDoS prevention market is growing fast and is expected to pass the carrier transport segment by the end of 2012.
• Arbor Networks, the largest vendor in the DDoS prevention appliance market, maintains a commanding overall lead with nearly 3/5 of global revenue, although Radware is challenging in the government network segment.
• Combined, all segments of the DDoS prevention market—data center, carrier transport, mobile, and government—are forecast by Infonetics to top $420 million by 2016.
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• Mobile networks will see the strongest growth in the DDoS prevention market, with a 30% CAGR over the 5 years between 2011 and 2016.

http://www.infonetics.com

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TeleGeography Publishes 2012 Submarine Cable Map

TeleGeography published its 2012 Submarine Cable Map, showing more than 150 cable systems that are currently active or due to enter service by 2014. According to TeleGeography, the trans-Atlantic remains the largest submarine cable route by far, with 16.2 Tbps of lit capacity at year-end 2011, followed by the trans-Pacific with 12.5 Tbps of lit capacity.
http://www.telegeography.com/telecom-maps/submarine-cable-map/index.html

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Opnext Carries 100Gbps Coherent PM-QPSK Signal over 3,300 Km

Opnext supplied its OTS-100FLX 100Gbps digital coherent subsystem for an optical transmission field trial between the National Supercomputing Center, SARA, in Amsterdam and CERN in Geneva.
The test used next-generation 100Gbps single carrier technology and soft decision forward error correction (SD-FEC) to optically link Amsterdam to Geneva with a transmission distance of 1,650km using only erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs).

Opnext said the embedded fiber link comprised a combination of the relatively high-nonlinear TW+ and TWRS fibers. Furthermore, the circuit was optically looped back in Geneva, thus creating a 3,300km circuit. The looped-back 3,300km link operated error-free for more than 23 hours (BER<10-15) over the entire C-band and over a range of launch powers, highlighting the true upgrade potential of this link to 8Tbps in the future using 100Gbps coherent transponders.

The Opnext subsystem consists of a suite of OTS-100FLX 100Gbps flexponder line cards and a newly released OTS-mini ETSI shelf with a 4RU small form factor.

"This trial is another clear demonstration that coherent 100Gbps PM-QPSK transmission technology is tolerant to a very large range of impairments (i.e. chromatic dispersion, polarization mode dispersion, noise) and allows the use of alien wavelengths in research networks over DWDM systems from multiple vendors,” said Roeland Nuijts, Optical Network Architect for SURFnet. “Transmission distance and tolerance against different impairments will be critical going forward as we look to build out international networks across geographic and administrative borders in order to realize a global facility for research networking."

"It is great to see the results of our 100Gbps coherent product development deliver both the capacity and reach needed to scale next-generation optical networks around the world,” said Mike Chan, President of Opnext’s subsystems business unit. “SURFnet’s 3,300km field trial really pushed us, and our 100Gbps coherent technology met the challenge."

http://www.opnext.com
http://www.surfnet.nl/en/

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Equinix Acquire Hong Kong's Asia Tone, Gaining 5 Data Centers

Equinix completed its previously announced acquisition of Hong Kong-based data center provider Asia Tone for $230.5 million in cash. In total, Equinix gains five data centers and one disaster recovery center, in addition to one data center under construction, located across three key markets – Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. Asia Tone serves a strategic customer base, which includes many existing Equinix customers. Asia Tone generated approximately $30 million in revenue in 2011, and has been growing at a greater than 50 percent CAGR for the past three years.
http://www.equinix.com

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