Clearwire Takes $80M in Sprint Financing, Continues Discussions with DISH

Clearwire elected to take an $80 million April draw under the terms of its agreements with Sprint.  The funding is in the form of exchangeable notes, which will be exchangeable under certain conditions for Clearwire common stock at $1.50 per share. Clearwire also stated that it continues discussions with DISH over its proposal and that it intends to pursue the course of action that it believes is in the best interests of Clearwire's non-Sprint...

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D-Link Ships 802.1ac Cloud Wi-Fi Router

D-Link introduced its Wireless AC1200 router (DIR-850L) featuring 802.11AC supporting dual band speeds of up to 300Mbps (2.4GHz) and 867Mbps (5GHz). The unit is optimized for wireless HD video streaming inside the home. It also offers four Gigabit Ethernet ports. D-Link features a "mydlink Cloud Management" capability that enables the user to monitor and manage the network from anywhere, including remote file access by mobile devices. http://...

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KPN Picks VMTurbo's Operations Manager

KPN has selected VMTurbo's Operations Manager to automate and control cloud operations. VMTurbo is an intelligent workload management system that serves as an automated control plane for cloud and virtualized data centers. It allocates infrastructure resources in service provider data centers. The VMTurbo platform first launched in August 2010 and the company claims more than 9,000 deployments by cloud service providers and enterprises worldwide,...

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IBM to Build Tier IV Data Center for Telkom Indonesia

Telkom Indonesia has selected IBM to build a state-of-the-art data center. The new Tier IV facility will be built to the highest standards of energy efficiency. http://www.ibm.co...

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Infonetics: OTN Switching Sees Strong Growth

The OTN transport and switching equipment market grew 8% in 2012 to $7.3 billion and is expected to reach $13 billion by 2017, according to a new report from Infonetics. “OTN spending, and particularly OTN switching, is benefiting from a rise in investment in coherent core networks,” explains Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research. “Many service providers rolling out 100G are using the opportunity to upgrade their...

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Vertical Systems: 2012 Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARD

Vertical Systems Group reported a realignment of carriers in its Year End 2012 Global Provider Ethernet Leaderboard, as BT Global Services surged forward to challenge Orange for market leadership. Market shares are calculated using the base of enterprise Ethernet services installations, plus input from Vertical's surveys of Ethernet providers throughout the world. "As we forecasted in our mid-year readout, the final 2012 Global Provider Ethernet...

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ZTE Posts 2.4% Sales Drop for 2012

ZTE reported 2012 annual of RMB 84.2 billion, representing a decline of 2.4% for 2012. In China, revenue of RMB 39.6 billion was stable compared to a year earlier, accounting for 47% of the company’s total. Overseas revenue dropped 4.5% to RMB 44.7 billion, representing 53% of the company’s total The company recorded a net loss attributable to shareholders of listed company of RMB 2.84 billion. ZTE posted positive operating cash flow of RMB 1.87...

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VDSL2 G.Vector Plugfest Attracts 15 Vendors

A plugfest for equipment implementing ITU-T G.vector for VDSL2 attracted fifteen vendors earlier this month in Durham, New Hampshire. The interoperability testing event, which was organized by the Broadband Forum and hosted by the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), was focused on detailed testing of G.vector functionality. The participating companies were Actiontec Electronics, Inc., ADTRAN, Alcatel-Lucent, AVM...

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Fujikura Develops 40-60 Gbps Silicon Photonics Modulator

Fujikura Ltd. announced the world's first 40-60 Gbps silicon photonics modulator in both Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying (QPSK) and Differential QPSK (DQPSK) versions. The modulator comprises two silicon phase-shifters that are integrated in a nested Mach-Zehnder configuration. The company optimized electrode arrangements and doping profiles in the phase-shifters, which materializes high-speed performance of >40 Gbps DQPSK and >60Gbps QPSK...

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NTT Opens R&D Center in Silicon Valley

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation is opening a new R&D center in San Mateo, California, The NTT Innovation Institute will pursue the development and provisioning of highest-grade information security and cloud computing technologies.  NTT I3 will initially focus on promoting the development of services tailored to the North American market. Best practices concerning intellectual property solutions applied in a modular format in...

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Digital Realty Acquires Data Center Space Near Toronto

Digital Realty Trust acquired a 120,000 square foot data center development property in Markham, Ontario (Canada), approximately 17 miles north of Toronto's central business district. The facility is capable of supporting approximately 5.4 megawatts of IT load. The purchase price was C$8.65 million. "We have been tracking a significant amount of demand for enterprise-quality data center space with very limited supply in the Toronto market," said...

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Lockheed Martin Forms Silicon Valley Alliance

Lockheed Martin is establishing a Silicon Valley Alliance aimed at helping innovative companies in the region meet the diverse technology needs of the federal government.  The goal is to provide the federal government with greater visibility into innovative technology solutions developed in Silicon Valley, especially software and cyber security solutions. "Lockheed Martin has played an ultra-high-tech role in the Silicon Valley story since...

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MTS and VimpelCom Bid to Acquire Tele2 Russia

Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), the leading telecommunications operator in Russia and the CIS, and VimpelCom announced a joint bid to acquire Tele2 Russia, a subsidiary of Tele2 AB, for between US$ 4.0 - 4.25 billion, including US$1.15 billion of net debt.  This represents a premium of up to 30% for Tele2 AB and its shareholders relative to the equity value of the recently announced offer from VTB Capital. In a letter to Tele2 AB, the CEOs of MTS...

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Metaswitch Opens Near Cambridge University

Metaswitch Networks opened a new product development facility in Cambridge, UK.  Located in the heart of the University of Cambridge, the new Metaswitch office will house current employees, new recruits and interns. “We have a long-standing association with Cambridge, with many of our graduate intake coming from the University of Cambridge,” says John Lazar, CEO of Metaswitch. “We are both centres of technology excellence and innovation,...

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Cloudflare: The DDoS That Almost Broke the Internet

San Francisco-based Cloudflare reported that a Distributed Denial of Service attack against Spamhaus has surpassed all other known DDoS attack in volume --  exceeding peak loads of 300 Gbps. The DDoS attack, which was profiled in The New York Times, the BBC and other media outlets on Wednesday, involves a dispute between Spamhaus and Cyberbunker, a Dutch web host. Cloudflare began providing web optimization and DDoS protection for Spamhaus...

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Egyptian Navy Captures Saboteurs Cutting SEA-ME-WE 4 Cable

The Egyptian navy reported the capture of three scuba divers who were cutting an undersea cable off the coast of Alexandria. The BBC said that the affected cable is the SEA-ME-WE 4 and noted a drop in Internet speeds in Egypt on Wednesday. https://www.facebook.com/Egyptian.Navy On March 22, Seacom suffered multiple subsea cable cuts off the northern coast of Egypt.  These cuts disrupted a number of cable systems in Africa, Middle East...

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Amazon Web Services Offers Dedicated Hardware Security Appliances

Amazon Web Services introduced "CloudHSM," a new service offering dedicated Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliances within the AWS Cloud.  The CloudHSM service, which is aimed at companies data security compliance requirements,  allows customers to securely generate, store and manage cryptographic keys used for data encryption in a way that keys are accessible only by the customer. Previously, contractual or regulatory mandates...

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Equinix Offers NetApp Private Storage for AWS

Equinix has begun offering NetApp Private Storage for AWS. The service is now available in Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers where AWS Direct Connect is deployed including the United States and Asia. NetApp Private Storage for AWS allows organizations to balance private and public cloud resources to best meet their business needs. This enables companies to maintain control of their data, comply with the most stringent...

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KT Expands its CDN Partnership with Akamai

KT has agreed to leverage technology from Akamai to provide CDN services to its customers in Korea. Specifically, KT will use Akamai's Aura Managed CDN for its own content applications and for third party CDN services.  KT has been an Akamai NetAlliance Partner since 2011. "The era has come where culture and digital content are leading the market.  Our main priority is to ensure access to content from any device, at anytime, anywhere,"...

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SiTime Offers 32kHz MEMS Oscillator for Smartphone Market

SiTime introduced a family of 32 kHz MEMS oscillators designed to replace legacy quartz crystal resonators in mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, fitness monitoring and watch products, medical monitoring and wellness devices, etc. As with the company's other MEMS timing solutions, the new SiT15xx family of oscillators compare favorably to existing quartz-based devices in several ways; SiTime’s MEMS are 85% smaller, use 50% less power,...

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Network Instruments Intros 2U Analysis Appliance for 1G, 10G

Network Instruments introduced a smaller version of its GigaStor appliance supporting gigabit and 10G retrospective analysis for enterprise network teams. The new appliance, which is offered in a 2U form factor, is a scalable, monitoring tool that can be expanded from 2 TB – 16 TB in the field. Features ensuring its availability for monitoring heavy traffic loads include the Gen2 card, exclusively engineered by Network Instruments to maximize...

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nTelos Picks Alcatel-Lucent for LTE

nTelos Wireless, which operates in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, and North Carolina, has selected Alcatel-Lucent's LTE solution for portions of its network. Specifically, Alcatel-Lucent is supplying its multi-technology base stations equipped with Remote Radio Head (RRH) technology.  The rollout also includes much of Alcatel-Lucent's Evolved Packet Core infrastructure. Close to 200 existing CDMA 3G-1X...

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Broadcom Names VP of Worldwide Sales

Broadcom has promoted Michael Hurlston to Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales. He replaces Thomas Lagatta, who will continue with Broadcom until he retires at the end of 2013, serving as Executive Vice President of Business Development. Hurlston most recently served as Senior Vice President and General Manger of the Wireless Connectivity Combo business. He joined Broadcom in 2001. http://www.broadcom.c...

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Ericsson Completes Job Cuts in Sweden

Ericsson reduced its operations in Sweden by cutting 1,399 positions.  This resulted in 919 employees being given notice.  The majority of cuts are in Ericsson's Networks unit. Ericsson said its expects to incur approximately SEK -1.5 billion in restructuring costs. http://www.ericsson.com As of 31-Dec-2012, Ericsson had 17,712 employees in Sweden....

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T-Mobile USA's "Un-carrier" Attitude Eliminates Contracts

Adopting what it calls an "Un-carrier" attitude, T-Mobile USA announced a radical simplification of consumer rate plans and the first activation of its LTE network in an initial 7 cities. T-Mobile USA is promoting a Simple Choice Plan that replaces restrictive annual contracts with a flat price of $50 per month for unlimited talk, text and Web with 500MB of data.  Customers can add a second phone line for $30 per month, and each additional...

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Overture Intros New Switching/Aggregation Platform for CE2.0 and SDN

Overture introduced a new switching platform for Carrier Ethernet 2.0 (CE2.0) Ethernet aggregation over any access method, it includes support for fiber, E-Access, copper, SONET/SDH, and TDM. The new Overture 6500, which will be offered in several slot configurations, is designed for the company's new Ensemble Open Service Architecture for transforming the metro edge with software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization technology....

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Big Switch Offers Open Source OpenFlow Software

Big Switch Networks took the wraps off of its Switch Light, a thin switching, open source software platform that can be deployed as a virtual switch for server hypervisors and in merchant silicon-based physical switching platforms.  The open source software is based on the Indigo Project, a sub-project within Project Floodlight, which is an SDN developer community that already includes some 200,000 lines of code. Big Switch said the aim of...

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Extreme Networks Looks Toward Lightweight SDN Switch

Extreme Networks announced a commitment to offering an open source, OpenFlow thin switching platform in line with Big Switch Networks' Switch Light initiative. Later this year, Extreme Networks plans to introduce its first such switch, the Slalom -- an optimized SDN switch supporting lightweight software and network services based on the OpenFlow protocol.  The company said this new Slalom switch will provide an evolutionary progression of...

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IBM Releases SDN Virtual Overlay Tool

IBM introduced a new Software Defined Network for Virtual Environments (SDN VE) solution for automating the process of setting up am networks. The software helps network administrators to speed up traditionally time-consuming tasks such as network provisioning.  In addition to management and provisioning, the IBM SDN VE, which is based on IBM’s DOVE (Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet) architecture, automates network virtualization. “Our...

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Former Foundry Exec Charged with Insider Trading Ahead of Brocade Acquisition

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged David Riley, the former chief information officer at Foundry Networks, and Matthew Teeple, a former hedge fund investor, with insider trading. The SEC alleges that David Riley tipped off Matthew Teeple in advance of a July 2008 announcement that Foundry Networks Inc. had agreed to be acquired by Brocade Communication Systems for approximately $3 billion.  Teeple used the tip to buy Foundry...

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Tabula Looks Beyond FPGAs with 100G Programmable Processing

Tabula, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, introduced its suite of high-performance packet processing solutions aimed at 100G applications. The technology focuses on routing of high-performance buses, on-chip RAM throughput, and timing closure for the ultra-high-performance functions required by 100G systems. Tabula will also leverage Intel's 22nm Tri-Gate technology. The packet processing solutions, combined with Tabula’s new ABAX2P1...

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Brocade Deepens its SAN Management, Debuts 96-port FC Switch

Brocade outlined its new "Fabric Vision" technology for simplifying SAN deployment and management and announced a new high-density fixed-configuration SAN switch in its Gen 5 portfolio of 16 Gbps Fibre Channel products. Brocade Fabric Vision, which combines Brocade hardware, its embedded operating system (Brocade Fabric OS) and management software (Brocade Network Advisor) with the goal of helping administrators anticipate and preempt problems...

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Telus Picks Fujitsu FLASHWAVE 9500 Packet Optical

TELUS has selected the Fujitsu FLASHWAVE 9500 Packet Optical Networking Platform (Packet ONP) to bring 100G to its network.  Financial terms were not disclosed. Fujitsu said its 100G solution will help TELUS to meet the bandwidth requirements for high-speed data services, Internet video services, and smart phones, while ensuring a better cost per unit and a lasting technology foundation for their evolving packet-centric regional and national...

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Level 3 Activates Metro Networks in Bogota and Buenos Aires

Level 3 Communications launched new metropolitan networks in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Bogota, Colombia. Level 3 has established multiple nodes in both of these cities, with each network boasting a total capacity of 80x40Gbps and the potential of upgrading to 80x100Gbps. Level 3 is offering fiber capacity of up to 40 Gbps.   Wholesale and enterprise customers also can build their own backbones and dedicated networks, and interconnect with...

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Zayo Appoints VP for Europe -- Alastair Kane

Zayo Group announced the appointment of Alastair Kane as Vice President of Europe.  Kane has held a variety of executive roles throughout his career in the Telecommunication industry in Sales Management and Marketing, for organisations such as 2e2, British Telecom, Level 3 and MFS. Zayo expanded into the European market with the acquisition of AboveNet in July of 2012, and currently has 72,800 fibre route miles world-wide. http://www.zayo.co...

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Oracle's Acquisition of Tekelec Expands its Telco Presence

Oracle agreed to acquire Tekelec, which supplies network signaling, policy control, and subscriber data management solutions for telecom operators.  Financial terms were not disclosed. Tekelec’s main solutions include its Diameter and SS7 Network Signaling platform, its Policy Control platform and its Subscriber Data Management system, which tracks dynamic subscriber data. The Diameter and SS7 Network Signalling offers integrated applications...

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NETGEAR Renews its Ethernet Switching Line

NETGEAR introduced a new line of managed Ethernet switches for small and medium businesses. The NETGEAR Intelligent Edge M4100 series consists of 12 fully managed switch products in desktop and rackmount form factors, ranging from 8-port Fast Ethernet and Power over Ethernet (PoE) to 50-port Gigabit Ethernet and PoE Plus (up to 30W), and power budgets ranging from 66W to 1,440W. Key Features of the Intelligent Edge M4100 series: IPv4/IPv6 Layer...

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TV White Space Trial Set for Cape Town

The first TV White Space (TVWS) trial in South Africa will test wireless broadband in ten schools across the Cape Town area.  The trial is led by Google, Carlson Wireless and other partners. The trial will attempt to show that broadband can be offered over white spaces without interfering with licensed spectrum holders. To prevent interference with other channels, the network utilizes Google's spectrum database to determine white space availability....

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Shell Renews with AT&T for 5 Years

Shell renewed a five year contract under which AT&T serves as Shell's global provider of secure, advanced communications and mobility solutions. The Shell contract is the largest retail communications services contract signed by AT&T with a company headquartered outside the United States. Financial terms were not disclosed. "It's been enormously rewarding to work with Shell, which operates in a very dynamic and highly globalized industry,"...

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Arvig Upgrades with Cyan in Minnesota

Arvig Communications, which serves some 66,000 customers in rural Minnesota, has selected Cyan's packet-optical transport solutions to upgrade its network. The deployment includes Cyan's Blue Planet, a software-defined network (SDN) system, and Z-Series packet-optical transport platform.  Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.cyaninc.c...

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Interoute's 2012 Revenue Grew 12% Thanks to Enterprise Cloud Services

Interoute Communications reported 2012 top line revenues of €410 million, a 12% increase over the same period in 2011.  The company cited strong growth in sales of its enterprise Cloud and computing services (up 28% from 2011), and increased demand for international pan-European private network services (up 12.5% from 2011). 2012 EBITDA rose 16%, to €79 million for the full year, while profits rose 140% to €18.4 million. "Interoute’s Cloud...

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Tehuti Intros Compact 10GbE Card

Tehuti Networks introduced a 10GbE adapter with integrated 10GBase-T support. The company said its card, which it believes to be the smallest in the industry, offers a low-power, small form factor and low-cost 10GbE solution enabling 10GBase-T connectivity. It hosts the latest Tehuti TN4010 controller, an optimized 10GbE controller designed for low-power, low-cost, single-port applications required in application servers, high-end workstations...

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Infonetics Forecasts Small Cell Market to Hit $2.7B in '17

The global small cell market to grow from a very small base now to $2.7 billion by 2017, according to a new forecast from Infonetics. Given the current pace of LTE rollouts worldwide, 4G small cell shipments are anticipated to overtake 3G shipments by the end of 2013. “2013 is shaping up as a kick-off year for small cells, driven by 4G small cells deployed for capacity upgrades,” expects Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure...

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Apple Data Centers Now 100% on Renewable Power

Apple's data centers are now 100% powered by renewable energy. In a blog posting last week, Apple announced that its flagship data center in Maiden, North Carolina, boasts the nation’s largest end user–owned, onsite solar photovoltaic array -- a 100-acre, 20-megawatt (MW) facility with  an annual production capacity of 42 million kWh.  Apple is currently building a second 20-MW solar photovoltaic facility on nearby land that should be...

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