Level 3 Expands its Content Delivery Network

Level 3 Communications announced a substantial expansion to its content delivery network (CDN), increasing its footprint with new points of presence (PoP) in Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

"Level 3 has a strategic focus around growing its content delivery network to address the ever-increasing globalization and mobility of entertainment, news and sports content," said Mark Taylor, vice president of Media and IP Services at Level 3. "This current expansion, along with Level 3's expansion into Latin America in 2012, shows our commitment to providing secure scalable network resources and solutions for customers around the world to grow their businesses and reach audiences worldwide. We will continue to extend our reach as it makes sense for our business and our customers."

Level 3 noted that its CDN revenue grew 37 percent in the third quarter of 2013 compared to the same quarter in 2012.

"The growth we're seeing in just a year's time is astonishing," continued Taylor. "With expansions in EMEA, Asia and LATAM, we are building a network for the future of Internet consumption and the massive adoption of mobile platforms."  21

http://www.level3.com

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NSN Enhances TD-LTE base station for 2.6 GHz Spectrum

Nokia Solutions and Networks introduced a TD-LTE 8-pipe radio module for Band 41 spectrum at 2.6 GHz.  The new base station component is the industry’s highest capacity 8-pipe radio module.

NSN said its new radio module is ready for the evolution of carrier aggregation and capable of supporting an unprecedented 120 MHz of bandwidth that can deliver more than 1.2 Gbps of total site throughput from a single unit. It supports three sectors in a single unit even for remote configurations, unlike conventional remote radio modules that run only one sector per module. It needs no air conditioning and can be pole-mounted or placed near the antenna tower base, substantially reducing installation and maintenance costs.

Countries adopting the 2.6 GHz LTE TDD spectrum include Brazil, China, India, Japan, Russia and the USA.

Sprint will be using the new 8-pipe radio module for its LTE TDD deployment in Band 41 spectrum range.

“For subscribers, quality means everything. With our high-capacity base stations, mobile subscribers will have the outstanding service experience they are looking for,” said Marc Rouanne, executive vice president, Mobile Broadband, at NSN. “We are introducing the industry’s most powerful TD-LTE 8-pipe radio module with support of 120 MHz bandwidth and 160 Watts transmission power. As the new NSN radio module is capable of supporting LTE-Advanced technology with the possibility to aggregate up to three carriers, three-fold peak cell data rates can be achieved compared to the performance of the currently deployed commercial networks. This enables the world’s leading operators to provide unrivalled data speeds to their customers and also showcases NSN’s global leadership in the LTE domain, as proven by the first deployments of carrier aggregation in South Korea last summer.”

http://www.nsn.com

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Mavenir Completes IPO -- VoLTE and IMS

Mavenir Systems completed its IPO, offering 5,450,000 shares of common stock at an initial price of $10.00 per share. The shares are not trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “MVNR”.

Shares of MVNR closed on Thursday at $9.55, down 4.5% from the opening price.

Mavenir's mOne Convergence Platform for mobile service providers supports Voice-Over-LTE (VoLTE) and Rich Communication Services 5.0, as well as Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) over existing 2G and 3G networks and next-generation 4G networks.

http://www.mavenir.com

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Vitesse Refinances Loan

Vitesse Semiconductor amended its senior secured loan agreement with Whitebox VSC Ltd. giving the Company rights of pre-payment, modifying interest rates and extending the maturity date to August 31, 2016. As part of the loan refinancing, Vitesse repurchased $13.7 million of convertible second lien debentures held by Whitebox, reducing the company's total indebtedness. The new terms provide Vitesse with working capital to further fuel its new product growth strategy and supports increasing stockholder value.

"Vitesse is committed to managing our capital structure in order to achieve sustained profitability," said Chris Gardner, CEO of Vitesse. "This loan resolution provides us with the flexibility to use our cash to pre-pay our debt, enabling us to further de-leverage the Company. Greater cash flexibility allows Vitesse to make prudent near-term investments to amplify the market traction of our new and next-generation product portfolios thereby increasing stockholder value."

http://www.vitesse.com

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Octasic Introduces Mini Base Station with 20km Reach

Octasic introduced its newest Small Cell platform supporting all cellular standards: GSM/EDGE, WCDMA, HSPA, and LTE.

The OCTBTS 3000 is an OEM-ready platform that includes baseband hardware and software, an RF front end, and a power-efficient application processor. The complete platform fits into a compact 70x75 mm form factor.

Capacity ranges from 8 to 32 active users across the various cellular standards. Applications include: network extension for capacity and coverage, Network in a Box (NIB), emergency response networks, military networks, C4ISR, human portable BTS, surveillance, and many more.

OCTBTS 3000 highlights:

• Wide reach: Octasic’s OCT2224W DSP enables a cell range of 20 km. A single Small Cell can replace multiple limited-coverage NodeBs and avoid handover between them and complex backhaul architecture.
• Carrier Agility: The OCTBTS 3000’s dynamically re-programmable radios can operate from 400 MHz to 3 GHz with bandwidth from 200 kHz to 20 MHz. The same platform can be used in all operator networks worldwide, or for custom waveforms and frequency bands.
• Complete PHY Software: Octasic’s flexiPHY software offers 3GPP-compliant physical layers for GSM/EDGE, WCDMA, HSPA, and LTE, eliminating the need for OEMs to develop the baseband portion of the design.
• Customizable: Using Octasic’s comprehensive development toolset, Opus Studio, OEMs can enhance the flexiPHY software or develop their own proprietary PHY.

“Customers are asking for more compact and power efficient solutions as the demand for ubiquitous wireless coverage is exploding,” said Emmanuel Gresset, VP Software Defined Radio at Octasic. “The OCTBTS 3000 is a key building block that allows vendors to focus their efforts on developing ground-breaking applications for this emerging class of base stations.”

http://www.octasic.com//news/details/octasic-introduces-the-industrys-smallest-base-station-platform

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MRV's 10RU OptiDriver Transport Platform Packs 80 Wavelengths

MRV introduced its new "OptiDriver" high-density, 10 Gbps optical transport platform featuring built-in testing and rapid turn up capabilities.

MRV said its OptiDriver was designed for intelligent ROADM and 100Gbps transport. The chassis supports modules from other MRV optical transport products and is fully integrated into MRV’s advanced Pro-Vision service delivery and provisioning platform, with built-in processing support for current and emerging intelligent control plane technologies like GMPLS and Software Defined Networking (SDN).

The 10RU chassis can support up to 48 single height cards and 80 wavelengths. The multi-function hardware can serve a variety of applications, including Ethernet, OTN, TDM, Fibre Channel, ESCON/FICON, Infiniband and others.

“Our team has developed OptiDriver™, our next-generation optical transport platform, with a solid understanding of the changing demands of our customers, while drawing on our rich history of solving complex optical and networking challenges. This is especially obvious in the integrated test and management capabilities built into MRV’s optical product line that significantly reduce the time and complexity traditionally associated with turning up and operating a network,” said Dave Stehlin, CEO for MRV Communications. “As these networks become more complex, this new OptiDriver™ platform will enable data centers, wholesale carriers, Internet exchanges and service providers to do more with less. It delivers additional capacity and ease-of-use to reduce management time and maintain a high-performance network.”

http://www.mrv.com

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Spirent and Luxoft Show OpenFlow Compliance Test Solution

Spirent Communications and Luxoft announced an OpenFlow Compliance Testing solution for automating QA and regression testing for OpenFlow products. The solution is being shown at the fourth semi-annual ONF Plugfest being hosted at the Spirent Proof of Concept (SPOC) lab in Sunnyvale, CA, November 4-8, 2013.

Solution highlights include:

• OpenFlow 1.3 and 1.4 Compliance Testing – Spirent’s iTest OpenFlow Compliance Test Solution Pack, powered by Luxoft, includes more than 400 test cases that support the latest OpenFlow 1.3 and 1.4 specifications. The solution combines Spirent iTest’s easy-to-use GUI and test case development tools with Luxoft’s backend for distributed and parallel execution of comprehensive OpenFlow 1.3 and 1.4 conformance testing.
• OpenFlow Conformance Certification Preparation – Spirent’s iTest-OFTest Solution Pack addresses the needs of users preparing for ONF Conformance Certification by automating installation, configuration and execution of OFTest, the open source test tool used by ONF for OpenFlow certification testing.
• QA & Regression Testing Automation for OpenFlow – Spirent iTest enables experienced feature testers and engineers to easily build or extend fully-automated test cases to speed up replication, defect resolution and regression testing.
• Professional Services & Continuous Integration Software Engineering Practices – Spirent partners with Luxoft to provide on-demand customization, quality assurance and conformance coaching services. 

http://www.spirent.com/
http://www.luxoft.com/

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Pluribus Appoints Kumar Srikantan as CEO

Pluribus Networks, a start-up developing software and hardware network virtualization platforms for the cloud, named Kumar Srikantan as its new president and CEO.

Srikantan previously served as general manager and vice president of Cisco’s Enterprise Backbone Business Unit, as well as vice president of marketing for the Cloud Switching and Services Technology Group.

Pluribus Networks has pioneered a distributed bare-metal network hypervisor OS technology, Netvisor, along with defining a server-switch hardware platform.  The company is based in Palo Alto, California.

http://www.pluribusnetworks.com

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Telekom Malaysia Activates Undersea Cable to Hong Kong and Japan

Telekom Malaysia (TM) has activated "Cahaya Malaysia", an undersea cable networkin between Malaysia–Hong Kong and Hong Kong–Japan.

The cable initially supports 40 Gbps digital coherent optical transmissions technology and is designed for upgrade to 100 Gbps and a full capacity of up to 10 Tbps. Cahaya Malaysia was built in collaboration with Japan's NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) and Singapore's StarHub.

Telecom Malaysia is also launching an initiative called "My1Hub" that provides a neutral one-stop hub enabling seamless and reliable connectivity from Malaysia to the rest of the world via its submarine cable investments. In terms of the infrastructure, TM said its My1Hub nodes are pre-wired domestically to the cable landing stations at a very high capacity bandwidth. Customers residing at any My1Hub nodes will be able to link to all submarine cable systems which TM are connected to via four (4) cable landing stations namely Cherating in Terengganu, Mersing in Johor, Kuala Muda in Kedah and Pengkalan Balak in Melaka.

At the same event, TM also launched the Iskandar International Gateway (IIGW), its latest investment in Iskandar Malaysia, that provides a neutral hub catering to various information exchange needs.

Speaking at the launch, YB Dato' Sri Ahmad Shabery Cheek, Malaysia's Minister of Communications and Multimedia said; "Today's launch of My1Hub, the Iskandar International Gateway and the Cahaya Malaysia submarine cable system, mark another important milestone for the nation's ICT development, in line with our Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) and National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs), especially in the Communications Content and Infrastructure (CCI) sector, as well as the recently announced Budget 2014. With My1Hub, Malaysia will be well positioned as a World Class Data Centre in the Asia Pacific Region. I am particularly excited that with My1Hub, the level of telecommunications efficiency in the country will be elevated and that this in turn will further enable Malaysia to become an Information Exchange." https://www.tm.com.my

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