European Commission Adopts its Most Ambitious Telecom Market Reforms

The European Commission adopted its most ambitious plan in 26 years of telecoms market reform with the goal to "reduce consumer charges, simplify red tape faced by companies, and bring a range of new rights for both users and service providers, so that Europe can once again be a global digital leader." The “Connected Continent” legislative package, which was outlined by Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in his 2013 State of the Union speech,...

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AT&T: Preparing for LTE-Advanced

With LTE now the preferred radio technology in the majority of handsets it sells, AT&T is preparing its network for LTE-Advanced, said John Donovan, AT&T's Senior Executive Vice President of Technology & Network Operations, speaking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference.  This means implementation for carrier aggregation for the company's 700 and 850 MHz spectrum, leveraging self-optimizing...

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GENBAND Acquires fring -- an OTT Mobile Communications Service

GENBAND has acquired fring’s Over-the-Top (OTT) mobile IP communications service for consumers. Financial terms were not disclosed. The fring app, which is available for both iOS and Android, provides free mobile group video chat, 2-way video chat, voice-only calls and text chat over IP. GENBAND will offer a white label version that will let service providers and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) compete with OTT solutions. fring reduces...

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Gogo's Ground to Orbit Architecture Promises 60 Mbps to Aircraft

Gogo plans to deploy a proprietary, hybrid Ground-to-Orbit architecture by the second half of next year that would combines existing satellite technologies with Gogo's Air to Ground (ATG) cellular network.  The technology will use satellite for receive only (transmission to the plane) and Gogo's Air to Ground network for the return link (transmission to the ground).  Gogo will be utilizing a Ku antenna developed specifically for receive...

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Qualcomm Announces New $5.0 Billion Stock Repurchase Program

Qualcomm announced a new $5.0 billion stock repurchase program, replacing a similar $5.0 billion repurchase program launched in July underwhich the company has already repurchased approximately 40.1 million shares of common stock for approximately $2.7 billion. "In recognition of our strong financial position and business model, we are pleased to have recently completed significant stock repurchases and to introduce a new $5.0 billion stock repurchase...

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Datapipe Acquires Newvem for AWS Analytics/Optimization

Datapipe, a global provider of managed services and infrastructure for outsourced IT and cloud computing, has acquired Newvem, a start-up specializing in cloud usage analytics and operations optimization. Datapipe said the combination of its managed IT services with Newvem's cloud optimization platform empowers enterprises to easily deploy, govern, analyze, optimize, and manage their workloads on the AWS cloud to meet specific business requirements. "Datapipe's...

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Open Networking Foundation and ONUG Announce Partnership

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and the Open Networking User Group (ONUG) announced a partnership allowing input from ONUG’s end-user community to help shape the future of the SDN movement. As part of this collaboration, ONF is supporting ONUG Fall 2013, a two-day event Oct. 29-30 in New York City. The event includes the ONUG Academy, a day of tutorials and workshops open to the industry, and the ONUG Conference, which will include user case...

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Alcatel-Lucent Signs Ecuador's CNT for LTE

Ecuador's Corporacion Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (CNT) has selected Alcatel-Lucent to deploy the nation's first 4G LTE network in Ecuador. The deployment will cover the cities of Guayaquil, Cuenca, Machala and Loja, as well as most of the major cities in Ecuador´s Pacific Coast and Southern area. The new network will provide download speeds of up to 100 Mbps and upload speeds of 40 Mbps, enabling CNT to offer enhanced fixed, mobile and convergent...

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AppDirect Acquires Standing Cloud and Raises $9 Million

AppDirect, which offers a cloud service marketplace and management platform that enables companies to distribute web-based services, has acquired Standing Cloud, another start-up offering cloud management services, such as automated software packaging and orchestration. Founded in 2009, Standing Cloud has deployed services with a range of cloud partners, including Amazon, Rackspace, Savvis, IBM, and others. Its catalog of integrated software features...

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