Comcast: World's Largest, Native IPv6 Deployment

Comcast’s Xfinity Internet native IPv6 deployment is the world’s largest IPv6 deployment, as measured by the Internet Society’s World IPv6 Launch Measurements. The company recently launched IPv6 support for the ARRIS Touchstone Telephony Wireless Gateway Modem (TG852G and TG862G) that brought IPv6 to over four million customers. Currently, over 25% of Comcast’s Xfinity Internet customers are actively provisioned with native dual stack broadband...

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Intel Prepares for Tablet War with Sub-$100 Pricing

by: James E. Carroll Look for a new crop of 7" and 8" tablets powered by Intel processors with value pricing of under $100. These will be the opening salvos of what Intel expects will be a big battle for the tablet market in 2014. During the course of 2013, Intel established its first footprint in the tablet market with a design win in a Samsung Galaxy device, said company CEO Brian Krzanich during an investor meeting in Santa Clara, California....

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SK Telecom Demos LTE-A Carrier Aggregation of 1.8GHz + 800MHz Bands

SK Telecom has demonstrated downlink speeds of 225 Mbps by using LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation to combine 20MHz bandwidth in 1.8GHz band and 10MHz bandwidth in 800MHz band. For comparison, the carrier's regular LTE service delivers a maximum of 150Mbps of speeds using 20MHz of continuous spectrum in one band. SK Telecom said its planned upgrade to LTE-Advanced (20MHz+10MHz) will enable mobile customers to download an 800MB movie in just 28 seconds,...

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Vivendi Confirms Plans to Spinoff SFR

Vivendi Group confirmed plans to proceed with a demerger under which shares in its SFR subsidiary will be distributed to Vivendi shareholders.  This will give Vivendi shareholders the opportunity to invest in two separate vehicles listed on the stock market and valued according to the specifics of their respective sectors. Vivendi is an international media group, bringing together strong brands in the production and distribution of original...

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BT Looks for Growth in Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa

BT will hire 400 new employees to focus on regional business growth in key markets, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey. These new employees are in additional to the 600 positions announced earlier this year for BT’s Global Development Centre in Bangalore and to the c.600 hires expected for BT’s new Global Shared Service facility in Kuala Lumpur...

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TeliaSonera Dismisses Execs over Eurasian Deals

TeliaSonera announced the dismissal of four individuals because of irregularities in transactions and agreements made by TeliaSonera and partners in Eurasia over the past few years.  The company had retained the international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright LLP to conduct a review of the deals. “The Board’s conclusion is that some senior employees no longer have the trust of the Board. Therefore they have been notified that their employment...

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Orange to Sell Subsidiary in Dominican Republic for EUR 1.1 Billion

The Orange Group will sell 100% of Orange Dominicana S.A., its  subsidiary in the Dominican Republic, to Altice for US$1.435 billion (EUR 1.1 billion). Orange Dominicana was established in 2000 and is now a leading telecommunication operator in the Dominican Republic, one of the largest and most dynamic economies in the Caribbean with an estimated population over 10 million. The company posted revenues of DOP 22.8 billion (EUR 451 million)...

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DOCOMO Offers LTE Roaming for KT

NTT DOCOMO will offer LTE roaming to subscribers of Korean mobile operator KT Corporation when they travel in Japan.  DOCOMO said it plans to partner with other overseas mobile operators to offer LTE international roaming services, including for DOCOMO users traveling outside of Japan. http://www.ntt.co...

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GSA: Mobile Broadband Subscriptions Top 2 Billion

Global mobile broadband subscriptions have passed the 2 billion milestone, according to newly published statistics from GSA. There were 126.1 million LTE subscriptions (Q2 2013) and this figure was expected to have topped 150 million by the end of September 2013. There are currently 222 commercially launched LTE networks in 83 countries, rising to 260 commercial LTE networks by the end of the year. Some other numbers from the report: 23 commercially...

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CloudEthernet Forum Sets Five Priorities

The CloudEthernet Forum (CEF) has identified five key priorities to drive its work: Virtualization – VMWare, Citrix and Microsoft are all working to extend their platforms to encompass network virtualization, and network service providers need to manage both the end to end transport of storage and virtual machines, and network virtualisation tunnels. How to make sure that a unified management layer can be rolled out across a network, and meet the...

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Dell'Oro: Wireless Packet Core Revenue up 17% YoY

The overall Wireless Packet Core market grew more than 17% during the third quarter of 2013 versus the year-ago period, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. Huawei, Ericsson, Cisco and Nokia Solutions and Networks were the top revenue-producing vendors in the overall market.  In the faster-growing Evolved Packet Core (EPC) segment, Alcatel-Lucent joined Ericsson and Huawei in the top three vendor list. Dell'Oro said the Evolved...

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Infonetics: SP Routers and Switch Market Rises 7% YoY in Q3

The global carrier router and switch market (IP edge and core routers and carrier Ethernet switches) totaled $3.6 billion in 3Q13, an increase of 7% from the year-ago 3rd quarter, according to a new report from Infonetics Research. The third quarter is normally slow for the carrier router/switch market, so a 10% sequential drop isn’t overwhelmingly bad, especially with the expectation of a good 4Q13 and an improving year-over-year outlook,” says...

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XO Names Christopher Ancell as CEO

XO Communications named Christopher Ancell as its new CEO, replacing Laura W. Thomas, who will remain with the company and assume the role of Chief Financial Officer, a position she previously held. Ancell most recently served as senior vice president of sales and sales engineering for CoreSite Realty Corporation.  Prior to CoreSite, Ancell spent 12 years in a variety of leadership roles at both CenturyLink and Qwest, including president of...

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New Powerline Spec Approved -- IEEE 1901.2 - for Electical Smart Grids

The HomePlug Alliance applauded the approval of the IEEE 1901.2 Standard for Low-Frequency Narrow-Band Powerline Communications. The new standard enables urban and long-distance communications through existing transformers in the electricity distribution network using frequencies below 500 kHz, while supporting data rates of up to 500 kbps. The HomePlug Alliance is launching a "Netricity" certification and marketing program for the 1901.2 standard....

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Microsemi Completes Symmetricom Acquisition - Precision Timing

Microsemi completed its previously announced acquisition of Symmetricom for approximately $230 million, or $7.18 per share, representing a premium of 49 percent based on the average closing price of Symmetricom's shares of common stock during the 90 trading days ended Oct. 18, 2013. Microsemi said the deal enables it to offer the industry's largest and most complete timing product offering spanning from the core of the network to the edge and...

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Brazil's Copel Telecom Upgrades to 100G with Coriant

Copel Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Companhia Paranaense de Energia (Copel), has selected Coriant's coherent 100G technology to upgrade its optical backbone, which has been using the hiT 7300 intelligent transport platform since 2010. Copel Telecom's backbone network boasts over 9,330 km of fiber optic cables deployed between its main ring and urban radials (self-sustained cables), totaling more than 30,000 km and reaching more than...

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China Mobile Demos International TDD/FDD VoLTE Call

China Mobile demonstrated international HD voice and video calls between its VoLTE trial networks in Chengdu and Hangzhou with the VoLTE network of a South Korean mobile operator.  Huawei participated in the demo. http://pr.huawei.com/en/news/hw-316012-volte.htm#.UpUX5MRDu...

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Acacia Acquires More HSPA and LTE Patents

Acacia Research Corporation confirmed that it has has acquired US patents and foreign counterparts related to cellular HSPA and LTE technology.  The name of the seller and the purchase price were not disclosed. “We are rapidly becoming the leader in technology licensing and we continue to grow our base of future revenues by adding new patent portfolios," commented Matthew Vella, CEO and President of Acacia Research Corporation. http://aca...

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Spain's Jazztel to Deploy Huawei's 400G Core Router

Spain's Jazztel will be the first operator in Western Europe to deploy the Huawei NE5000E 400G core router.  The Huawei NE5000E core router allows 400 Gbps linecards, which support flexible networking of 100GE ports, 40GE ports, and 10GE ports. Financial terms were not disclosed. "The burgeoning mobile bandwidth services and video services are spurring the growth of backbone network traffic and present an opportunity for the 400G technology...

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SK Telecom Tests Virtualized Evolved Packet Core with NSN

Nokia Solutions and Networks and SK Telecom demonstrated a joint proof-of-concept for Evolved Packet Core (EPC) virtualization based on Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) principles. The companies said their project showed successful results for capacity scaling for both throughput and signaling traffic in connection with smartphone usage patterns. NSN has previously demonstrated a complete EPC solution in a cloud environment, including both...

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Las Vegas Pilots LTE Public Safety Net with Alcatel-Lucent

The Las Vegas Metro Police Department, along with the Nevada Department of Transportation and other first responders, conducted a six-month trial of a 4G LTE public safety network in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent. The trial, which occurred in a designated section of Las Vegas, used 700 MHz Band 14 spectrum allocated to the First Responders Network Authority (FirstNet).  The network delivered real-time use of video gathered from the Las Vegas...

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Qualcomm Finalizes $800 Million Sale of Omnitracs

Qualcomm completed the the sale of its Omnitracs subsidiary to Vista Equity Partners (Vista), a U.S.-based private equity firm, for approximately $800 million in cash.  The sale includes all of Omnitracs' operations in the United States, Canada and Latin America. The deal was first announced in August. "Omnitracs was one of Qualcomm's earliest businesses and has been a leader in fleet management and telematics for more than 25 years. We'd like...

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China Initiates Anti-Monopoly Investigation into Qualcomm

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has commenced an investigation of Qualcomm relating to the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law (AML). In a statement, Qualcomm said it is not aware of any charge by the NDRC that Qualcomm has violated the AML. http://www.qualcomm.c...

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Equinix Hires Senior Exec from Level 3

Equinix appointed Karl Strohmeyer as president of the Americas, a role in which he will be responsible for the management, strategy and growth plan for Equinix in the Americas, with P&L accountability for the region. Strohmeyer joins Equinix from Level 3 Communications, where he was group vice president for the North American enterprise group. Prior to this role, Strohmeyer led the Global Carrier Channel for Level 3 and managed sales teams...

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Alcatel-Lucent USA Offers $250 Million in Senior Notes

Alcatel-Lucent USA announced plans to offer $250 million aggregate principal amount of its 6.750% Senior Notes due November 2020.  The net proceeds will be used, together with available cash, to repay  the €298 million Senior Secured Term Loan Facility due 2019. http://www.alcatel-lucent....

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Intel: From Silicon to Platforms

"If it computes, it does it best with Intel" -- this statement underscores Intel's mission, said company CEO Brian Krzanich, speaking at the Intel Investor's Day conference in Santa Clara, California. Intel is dedicated to "a new pragmatism" that will make the company much more market driven, said Krzanich, with a the goal of capturing significant inroads in the data center and mobile computing. Among the changes to the way the company does business...

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NTT DATA to Acquire Optimal Solutions Integration for SAP Consulting

NTT DATA will acquire Optimal Solutions Integration, a consulting company based in Irving, Texas that specializes in SAP services.  Financial terms were not disclosed. Optimal offers a broad range of planning, implementation, and maintenance services for the SAP product suite. NTT DATA said its SAP-related revenues already exceed $1 billion annually and the acquisition will expand this business. Optimal’s 2012 fiscal year revenue was $153...

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NTT DOCOMO Updated Indoor Base Station + Antenna for LTE-A

NTT DOCOMO has developed an indoor multi-band base station and antenna that are newly compatible with the 1.5 and 1.7 GHz frequency bands for LTE-Advanced in addition to the conventionally supported 2 GHz band.  Maximum downlink is rated at 150 Mbps currently and up to 225 Mbps when DOCOMO launches its LTE-Advanced service.  Installations of the new base station and antenna are beginning immediately in parts of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Aichi, Osaka,...

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Facebook Backs RocksDB Open Database in Flash

At last week's Data@Scale event, Facebook announced support for RocksDB, a high-performance, embedded key-value store database optimized for flash storage. Facebook said RocksDB builds on LevelDB to be scalable to run on servers with many CPU cores, to efficiently use fast storage, to support IO-bound, in-memory and write-once workloads, and to be flexible to allow for innovation. A video by Dhruba Borthakur, software engineer at Facebook, presents...

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Twitter Implements Forward Secrecy

Twitter announced the implementation of Forward Secrecy for traffic on twitter.com, api.twitter.com, and mobile.twitter.com.  The new security seeks to defend against an adversary that may be recording all of Twitter's encrypted HTTPS traffic. On a blog post, Twitter's engineering team said that unlike traditional HTTPS, Forward Security enables the EC Diffie-Hellman cipher suites, which lets the client and server share a random session key...

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NYT: N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power

The New York Times reported on a top secret, 2012 N.S.A. document leaked by Edward Snowden that outlines the agency's ambition to expand its surveillance powers through new access channels, by integrating its technical tools and by leveraging global business trends in data and communications services. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/us/politics/nsa-report-outlined-goals-for-more-power.h...

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Level 3 Opens Tier III Data Center in Bogotá

Level 3 Communications has launched its newest data center in Bogotá, Colombia. The new facility adds 1,700 square meters to Level 3’s current data center complex in Bogotá.  The Tier III data center is built for earthquake preparedness and energy efficiency.  It implements the 2N philosophy (system + system), which results in higher redundancy and reliability. “Demand for colocation, housing, hosting and value-added services continues...

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Dell'Oro: LTE RAN Market Advances, Nearly Offsetting Declines in GSM, WCDMA, CDMA

The LTE RAN market continued to grow at a rapid pace in 3Q13, nearly offsetting declining RAN technologies (GSM, WCDMA, CDMA), according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group.  After three quarters of consecutive year-over-year RAN growth, Dell'Oro Group estimates that the total RAN (2G, 3G, 4G, excluding TD-SCDMA and SP WiFi) market declined approximately one percent year-over-year in 3Q13. "Even though growth is slowing down in some of the...

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NTT DOCOMO to Deliver Wi-Fi on Bus

NTT DOCOMO will begin delivering Wi-Fi on busses in Japan later next month. The service uses the LTE network to enable an on-board router to supply up to 72 Mbps downstream.  The company plans to have 1,452 busses installed by the end of March 2014. https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/2013/11/22_00.html...

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IBM Tests SDN-based Disaster Prevention Intervention App

IBM is working with Marist College on a rapid re-provisioning application for cloud computing that could move resources to a safe location in the event of a pending natural disaster.  The effort comes in response to last year's Hurricane Sandy, in which many data center operators were warned of the impending weather disaster, but were unable to re-provision applications and storage to a safe location at short notice. The cloud computing disaster...

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Optical Internetworking Forum Continues 100G and 400G Work

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) launched three new projects following its Q4 Technical meeting last month in Hong Kong: 400G Framework Document  - the Physical and Link Layer (PLL) and Carrier Working Groups joined forces to begin developing a 400G Framework Document that will analyze and discuss trade-offs between high-order modulation formats, high data rates per channel and a number of subcarriers.  The effort is expected...

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Internap's AgileCLOUD to Offer Native OpenStack API

Internap Network Services announced the beta availability of the next generation of its public cloud. Internap's AgileCLOUD will fully expose both virtualized and bare-metal compute instances over a native OpenStack API. The company said this will allow customers to easily provision and manage thousands of virtual or bare-metal cloud AgileSERVER instances – to best fit their application and use case requirements – across Internap’s global cloud...

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