Cisco Comments on Der Spiegel Report on NSA Capabilities

Cisco announced an investigation into reported claims that the NSA has developed  a catalog of special techniques to penetrate the firewalls of major industry players, including Cisco, Juniper and Huawei, along with other specific network equipment.  The report was published by Der Spiegel. In a blog posting, John Stewart, Cisco's Chief Security Officer, said Cisco is "deeply concerned" about the allegation but "unaware" of any new product...

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India's Aircel Picks ZTE for 4G

Aircel has selected ZTE as a key supplier for its 4G network. Under the contract, LTE rollout will be initiated in Chennai, Rest of Tamil Nadu (RoTN) and few other business critical circles. ZTE is also migrating Aircel’s data services int he Chennai and ROTN circles to its evolved packet core. Financial terms were not disclosed. ZTE noted its relationship with Aircel since 2008, where it has supported the operator's 2G-3G rollout in three circles...

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China Issues First MVNO Licenses

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued the first licenses allowing mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to use the infrastructure of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. A total of eleven companies were granted MVNO licenses in the first round, including the c-commerce company Alibaba. http://www.miit.gov.cn/ ...

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Microsoft Plans Massive Data Center Expansion in Quincy, WA

Microsoft has acquired a 200-acre site in Quincy, Washington for a massive new data center for its Azure cloud services.  The first phase of the project is expected to come online in 2015. Microsoft opened its first data center in Quincy in 2007. Quincy is located in central Washington along the Columbia river.  Intuit, Vantage and Yahoo! also operate major data centers in the town. http://www.portofquincy.or...

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Telstra Exits Hong Kong Mobile Market with Sale of CSL

Telstra is selling its Hong Kong based mobiles business CSL to HKT Limited for US$2.425 billion. The sale, which is subject to regulatory approval in Hong Kong and HKT and PCCW Limited security holder approval, would equate to proceeds of approximately A$2 billion* for Telstra’s 76.4 per cent interest. HKT will also acquire the remaining 23.6 per cent shareholding held by New World Development. Telstra CEO said market dynamics that make this the...

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Seagate to Acquire Xyratex for HDD Testing

Seagate Technology agreed to acquired Xyratex (NASDAQ: XRTX), a developer of hard disk drive (HDD) capital test equipment, in an all-cash transaction valued at $13.25 per share, or a total of approximately $374 million, including approximately $80 million in cash on Xyratex’s balance sheet. Seagate said the acquisition will strengthen its vertically integrated supply and manufacturing chain for disk drives and ensure uninterrupted access to important...

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China Unicom Deploys Huawei's Small Cells in Harbin

China Unicom will begin deploying Huawei's AtomCell small cell solution in the city of Harbin.  The small cell network will use the same frequency as China Unicom's existing macro network without needing to invest in new transmission resources. Huawei's AtomCell supports both wired and wireless backhaul depending on operator needs to greatly site resource acquisition and shorten time for network construction, and supports end-to-end IP RAN networking.  Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.Huawei....

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IBM to Acquire Aspera for WAN Optimization Software

IBM agreed to acquire Aspera, a start-up that offers software for accelerating data transfers.  Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Aspera claims its transfer technology can reduces transmission times for large files or data sets by up to 99.9 percent – potentially cutting a 26 hour transfer of a 24 gigabyte file, sent halfway around the world, down to just 30 seconds. Aspera's "fasp" is a protocol designed to overcome problems...

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DukeNet Tests SDN Orchestration with Cyan and Accedian

DukeNet Communications is conducting a software-defined network (SDN) proof-of-concept demonstration leveraging technology from Cyan and Accedian Networks. The SDN use case demonstration involves applications running on an enterprise server dynamically placing requests for additional cloud data center virtual machines and associated network resources using OpenStack application program interfaces (APIs) and OpenFlow across the DukeNet network. Cyan’s...

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IBM Teams with China's 21Vianet on Enterprise Cloud Services

IBM announced a partnership with 21Vianet Group, a carrier-neutral Internet data center operator in China, to introduce a private cloud service in China. IBM will provide the physical point of distribution (POD) and service while 21Vianet will host the POD facility at 21Vianet data center in Beijing. Josh Chen, Chairman and CEO of 21Vianet Group, Inc said: “IBM is a global leading enterprise-level cloud computing provider. What’s more, IBM is...

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Alaska's GCI to Launch Gigabit Service in Anchorage

GCI announced plans to deploy Alaska’s first 1 Gbps, fiber Internet service in Anchorage by 2015. GCI is Alaska's largest provider of Internet services with cable modem, wireless and dedicated access. Its cable television services pass 90 percent of the state’s households with 64 percent penetration. “This announcement is another example of GCI’s continuing commitment to provide Alaskans the latest in communications technology. We were the first...

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Ekinops Ships Coherent 100G Cards

Ekinops announced commercial availability of its new coherent 100G transponder and muxponder modules, compatible with its Ekinops 360 platform.  The new 100G transponder and muxponder leverage Ekinops' programmable T-Chip technology with forward error correction (DynaFEC). The Ekinops 360 platform includes three chassis options: 1RU, 2RU and 7RU. The 2 and 7 RU options can accommodate in the same chassis 10G and 100G modules to optimize space...

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Western Australia's Trident Undersea Cable to Serve Oil/Gas Sector

The Trident Subsea Cable Project, which will connect Perth, the Pilbara, Jakarta and Singapore, announced a number of milestones. The 7,000-km fiber cable will support western Australia's oil and gas sector.  Fujitsu has been awarded a Master Services Agreement to serve as head contractor. A marine fact finding study has assessed the proposed path for the subsea cable, matching GPS coordinates against available data for risks and obstacles...

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Intel Updates Data Center Software for Big Data Analysis

Intel updated its data center software products with security and performance enhancements for big data management. The announcements include the release of Intel Graph Builder for Apache Hadoop software v2.0, Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop software 3.0, Intel Analytics Toolkit for Apache Hadoop software and the Intel Expressway Tokenization Broker. "Some of the leading data-driven companies have invested heavily to create and implement...

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Vodafone Malta Deploys Tellabs 8600 Smart Routers

Vodafone Malta is using Tellabs' 8600 Smart Routers for the 10G Ethernet backhaul network that supports its LTE service. Vodafone Malta owns its own backhaul network, which consists mainly of 10 Gbps connections over fiber. The new solution comprises Tellabs 8660 Smart Routers, Tellabs 8630 Smart Routers and Tellabs Ethernet Line Card (ELC1) cards, all managed by the Tellabs 8000 Intelligent Network Manager. http://www.vodafone.com.mt http://w...

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GigOptix Raises $11.8 million in New Share Offering

GigOptix announced the pricing of its underwritten public offering of an aggregate of 8,325,000 newly issued shares of common stock at a price of $1.42 per share. The company expects to receive gross proceeds of $11.8 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and other estimated offering expenses. http://www.gigoptix.co...

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Amazon Web Services to Launch in China

Amazon Web Services announced plans to launch cloud services from Beijing, China in early 2014.  China Net Center and SINNET will provide the infrastructure, network services, and CDN services. In a blog posting, AWS cited a number of customers in China already, such as Qihu 360, Xiaomi, FunPlus Game, Mobotap, TCL, Hisense, Tiens, Kingsoft, Light in the Box,  NQ mobile, Papaya mobile, Madhouse, DerbySoft, Tap4fun, DeNA China, Boyaa interactive,...

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European Commission and the 5G PPP Association Set Charter

The European Commission and the 5G PPP Association signed a contract to create a 5G public-private partnership (PPP). The 5G PPP will further develop 5G technology to prepare for the future standardization of the system and components that are expected to be deployed in the next decade. The 5G PPP, which brings together a broad range of stakeholder from the communications technology sector, will deliver solutions, architectures, technologies and...

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CloudNFV Advances with Proof-of-Concept Acceptance by ETSI NFV ISG

The ETSI Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Industry Specifications Group (ISG) has accepted the first proof-of-concept application covering expected use cases. CloudNFV, which was set-up by CIMI Corporation President Tom Nolle, submitted the NFV proposal on behalf of its members, which include 6WIND, Dell, EnterpriseWeb, Huawei, Overture, Mellanox, Metaswitch and Qosmos. The CloudNFV POC leverages extensions to the ETSI NFV framework based...

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Amazon's CloudFront CDN Gets Country-Specific Restriction Capability

Amazon Web Services has enhanced its CloudFront CDN with the ability to restrict content based on the geographic location of the viewer.  Publishers can now choose to whitelist or blacklist specific countries where their content may be viewed.  This is useful for dealing with geographic licensing terms for online media or software distribution.  AWS said the geographic restriction is now a native feature of CloudFront instead of requiring...

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Cisco Offers Desktop as a Service (DaaS) for Cloud Providers

Cisco introduced a Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution that enables enabling cloud providers to offer their customers a either a VMware or Citrix virtual desktop subscription service using the Cisco Unified Computing System and the Cisco Unified Data Center architecture. The Cisco DaaS solution delivers up to 252 virtual desktops on a single UCS blade server while supporting end user applications that require high-quality rendering of immersive,...

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MADA Kuwait Selects DragonWave for Microwave Backhaul

MADA Communications Kuwait has selected DragonWave as its single-source microwave backhaul supplier for its multi-million dollar network deployment. DragonWave’s Horizon Compact and Quantum products allows MADA’s network to achieve multi-gigabit speeds with minimal latency. MADA provides high capacity Wireless Broadband nationwide in Kuwait for both corporate and residential customers. MADA is relying exclusively on the DragonWave solution for...

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NSN Confirms LTE Contract with China Telecom

NSN has secured a contract with China Telecommunications as a major partner for its nationwide LTE rollout. Under the contract, NSN will implement its innovative Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Stations. The company will also provide network launch optimization, implementation supervision and care services in order to use resources most efficiently and to guarantee the highest network quality possible. In addition, the agreement covers NSN’s intelligent...

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KDDI Picks Ericsson for LTE-RAN and EPC

Ericsson confirmed that KDDI has selected it as one of the prime vendors to deploy its LTE system and Evolved Packet Core network. Under the contract, Ericsson will provide a LTE radio access network based on RBS6000 as well as the Evolved Packet Core. The radio access network is based on LTE FDD. In addition to network solutions, Ericsson will provide related services such as network rollout and systems integration. Financial terms were not di...

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Alcatel-Lucent Names Tim Krause its Chief Marketing Officer

Alcatel-Lucent appointed Tim Krause as Chief Marketing Officer, reporting to company CEO Michel Combes.  Krause will be responsible for the company's global marketing efforts as well as external communications. Most recently, Krause served as Senior Vice President, in charge of the AT&T customer team. He has over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, having held various positions in engineering, product line management,...

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CTO Viewpoint: Top Predictions for 2014

By Martin Nuss, Vitesse Semiconductor As 2013 draws to a close, it’s time to ponder what’s next. We know connections are growing, as previously unconnected devices are now joining smart phones and tablets in the network, but how will they be networked? Furthermore, how will networks handle these additional connections, which are only going to grow faster in 2014? And lastly, how will all of these links be secured? Many advanced technologies have...

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AT&T to Sell Wireline Operation in Connecticut for $2 Billion

AT&T will sell its wireline business and statewide fiber network that provides services to residential, commercial and wholesale customers in Connecticut to Frontier Communications for $2 billion. The deal includes AT&T's U-verse video and satellite TV customers in Connecticut. Frontier expects the transaction to be accretive to its adjusted free cash flow per share in the first year.  The company says the acquisition gives it greater...

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Brazil's Telefónica Vivo Picks Coriant

Telefónica Vivo, the largest telecommunications company in Brazil, has selected Coriant's hiT 7300, hiT 7100, TNMS and related support services to drive network expansion and increase capacity in its optical backbone network. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deployment includes Coriant's hiT 7300 intelligent optical transport platform, hiT 7100 OTN/MPLS-TP switch, and TNMS, a holistic network management system designed to simplify end-to-end...

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DE-CIX Completes Upgrade of its Internet Exchange

DE-CIX, which operates the world’s largest Internet exchange in Frankfurt am Main (Germany), completed a major upgrade to its flagship DE-CIX Apollon platform and successfully migrated all of its nearly 600 customers to the next system. DE-CIX Apollon consists of four fully implemented Supernodes and six edge nodes spread across the Frankfurt metro, with the platform’s deployment having begun in April 2013. In ten scheduled maintenance windows,...

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Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Names Ericsson as Main LTE Supplier

Ericsson confirmed that it has been awarded main supplier for Taiwan's first LTE tender from leading operator, Chunghwa Telecom Co. The island-wide LTE deployment includes the Radio Access Network (RAN) and roll-out services. In addition, Ericsson has won the tender as sole supplier for the Evolved Packet Core, which includes Mobility Management Entity and Evolved Packet Gateway on SSR 8020, as well as IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). Financial...

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Raytheon Opens Cyber Center in San Antonio

Raytheon inaugurated a new cyber facility in San Antonio, Texas. Raytheon cited its expertise in providing full-spectrum cyber capabilities including cyber domain situational awareness, incident response, network monitoring, vulnerability assessment, information assurance and cyber training capabilities. Raytheon's global cyber resources include 21 cyber facilities in five countries. This includes 10 states where cyber solutions are developed, tested...

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Slovak Telekom Launches LTE with Ericsson

Slovak Telekom has launched its LTE network in five cities in Slovakia.  Ericsson is the sole vendor for the LTE radio network, which is based on the multi-standard RBS 6000 base station. The network operates at 1800MHz and offers a maximum theoretical speed of 73Mbps download and 23Mbps upload. Circuit-switched fallback (CSFB) ensures that voice calls and text messages are delivered to LTE devices through the use of a 2G/3G circuit-switched...

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SingTel Deploys Ericsson's Self-organizing Network Solution

SingTel is deploying Ericsson's SON Optimization Manager to extend benefits of network automation to their WCDMA networks. Ericsson's SON solution adapts intelligently to network traffic conditions, delivering optimum coverage, capacity and quality at all times. It includes self-optimization features such as coverage capacity optimization and load balance (CCLB), and automatic neighbor relation (ANR) handling. Self-healing functions are being developed...

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ETSI Publishes Cloud Computing Report

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) delivered a 59-page report to the European Commission discussing the role of standards in cloud computing. The report aims to serve as a detailed map of the necessary standards (inter alia for security, interoperability, data portability and reversibility) needed to build trust in cloud computing services. http://www.etsi.org/images/files/Events/2013/2013_CSC_Delivery_WS/CSC-Final_repo...

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Avago to Acquire LSI for $6.6 Billion

Avago Technologies agreed to acquire LSI Corporation for $11.15 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at $6.6 billion. The acquisition creates a highly diversified semiconductor market leader with approximately $5 billion in annual revenues by adding enterprise storage to Avago's existing wired infrastructure, wireless and industrial businesses. The combined company will be strongly positioned to capitalize on the growing opportunities created...

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Crown Castle Completes Tower Deal with AT&T

AT&T and Crown Castle completed a previously announced  $4.85 billion deal under which AT&T will lease the rights to approximately 9,100 of its company-owned wireless towers to Crown Castle.   The deal also includes the sale of approximately 600 AT&T towers to Crown Castle.Under the terms of the leases, Crown Castle will have exclusive rights to lease and operate approximately the towers, including the option to sublease to...

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Intel to Acquire Mindspeed's Wireless Unit - ARM Baseband Processors

Intel will acquire the wireless infrastructure division of Mindspeed Technologies.  Financial terms were not disclosed. The asset sale was contemplated by M/A-COM Technology Solutions' agreement to acquire Mindspeed, which was announced last month. Mindspeed is a leading supplier of processor for small cells in 3G/HSPA, TD-SCDMA and LTE.  Its base station semiconductor solutions serve residential to enterprise to pico/metro applications....

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