Oracle Ups its SDN Game with Acquisition of Corente for WAN Virtualization

Oracle agreed to acquire Corente, a start-up developing software-defined WAN virtualization technology, for an undisclosed sum.  Oracle already offers a LAN virtualization platform, so the deal extends its SDN portfolio for cloud services covering both the enterprise data center LAN and the WAN.

Corente, which is based in Bernardsville, New Jersey, offers a virtualization platform that accelerates the deployment of distributed and cloud-based applications services.  Key components of the offering include:

• Corente Cloud Services Exchange:  A cloud-based service delivery platform that establishes trusted network services between public or private cloud data centers and any location over any IP network
• Corente Services Gateway: An integrated virtual appliance that provides secure endpoints for private networks that are connected over global IP networks with zero-touch installation and service activation
• Corente Services Portal: Secure, role-based access to service life cycle management tools for both service operators and service subscribers.

These Corente components are designed for defining, provisioning, activating, operating, and dynamically changing business services delivery requirements for enterprise ecosystems.

Corente said it already has deployments at leading enterprises and cloud service providers.

Oracle said the Corente acquisition will enable it to deliver software-defined networking offerings that create cost-effective, secure networks, spanning global deployments. Oracle’s current Virtual Networking offering virtualizes the LAN enabling customers to dynamically connect any server to any network and any storage through software.

http://home.corente.com/index.php
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/acquisitions/corente/faq-2098814.pdf

• Corente is headed by Jim Zucco, Chairman & CEO, who previously headed Shiva leading to its acquisition by Intel.  He later served as Executive-in-Residence at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.

In 2013, Oracle acquired 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 such as Local Number Portability, Equipment Identity Register, 3G to Voice over LTE Migration, load balancing, congestion control, and protocol mediation.

Also in 2013, Oracle acquired Acme Packet, a leading supplier of session border controllers, for $29.25 per share in cash, representing an enterprise value of $1.7 billion net of cash.

Acme Packet supplies session delivery solutions to both carriers and enterprises. Oracle said it would make Acme Packet a core offering in its Oracle Communications portfolio to enable customers to more rapidly innovate while simplifying their IT and netw

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AT&T to Buy More AWS Spectrum Covering 50 Million POPs

AT&T will acquire 49 Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum licenses from Aloha Partners II for an undisclosed sum. The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year, pending regulatory approval.

The licenses cover nearly 50 million people in 14 states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

AT&T said the new spectrum complements its existing AWS holdings.

http://www.att.com

• Aloha Partners II was formed in 2004 and is currently the 8th largest owner of wireless spectrum in the U.S.
• In 2004 Aloha Partners II purchased 15 licenses covering 38 million pops from the Federal Communications Commission in the Advanced Wireless Spectrum (AWS) auction. In 2007 and 2008 Aloha Partners II purchased an additional 37 AWS licenses covering 12 million pops from Nextwave Wireless. Today, Aloha Partners II has licenses that cover 50 million people and 630 million MHz POPs.
• In 2007, AT&T acquired spectrum licenses in the 700 MHz frequency band from Aloha Partners for $2.5 billion in cash. The spectrum licenses cover areas with approximately 196 million people. 

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AT&T to Provide Connectivity for Ericsson Connected Vehicle Cloud

AT&T will provide wireless connectivity for products and applications that are powered by the Ericsson Connected Vehicle Cloud.

Ericsson's Connected Vehicle Cloud, which is based on its Service Enablement Platform, provides drivers and passengers with access to applications directly from a screen in the car.  Connected Vehicle Cloud leverages Ericsson’s M2M service enablement capabilities and portfolio in the OSS/BSS domain and can be deployed on standard cloud infrastructures.

Ericsson lists several examples of consumer services that could be enabled by the Connected Vehicle Cloud: the ability to detect vehicle repair issues, automatically book service appointments, subscribe to in-vehicle Wi-Fi, and on-demand infotainment. The solution is enhanced by its ability to send and receive information from third-party ecosystems players, such as satellite radio content providers, road authorities, and city and government sites.

“We created the AT&T Drive platform to bring automakers the best the industry has to offer, so we can deliver innovation, not a one-size-fits-all solution.  Ericsson is an integral player in that platform of services,”” said Chris Penrose, senior vice president, AT&T Mobility.  “Ericsson’s vehicle cloud realizes the true potential of connected vehicle products and applications.”

http://www.ericsson.com/news/1752983

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Vistapointe Raises Funding for its Cloud-based, Network Intelligence Solution

Vistapointe, a start-up based in San Ramon, California, closed a second round of funding for its cloud-based and real-time network intelligence solutions for mobile operators.

Vistapointe specializes in data extraction, analysis and insight generation technologies that enable mobile operators gain visibility into their mobile networks. Vistapointe’s product portfolio following the NFV architecture, is completely software-based, runs on COTS & ATCA platforms and provides a 360° visibility around Subscriber, Applications, Networks, Roaming, Tethering & Device proliferation. The Vistapointe solution enables Mobile and Het-Net operators to monetize the explosion of data traffic, save and optimize their cost-structure through better visibility and reduce subscriber churn through better QoE. The solution passively taps into the data, session and signaling layers of 3G, 4G LTE and Wi-Fi networks non-intrusively, complies with the 3GPP, IETF & IEEE standard protocols, without requiring any integration with the existing vendors.

The funding came from Navenby, a British Virgin Islands based investment company. It has a made a wide range of investments including internet infrastructure, application software delivered as a service, mobile products and services and new media convergence. Vistapointe is the first investment by Navenby in the mobile segment.

“Vistapointe has quickly scaled up: In 5 quarters, it has launched the product, established a customer base in North America and is pursuing large opportunities in the APAC region. It has built up technology and channel partnerships within the industry ranging from a market leader in Wi-Fi products to large system integrators” says Paul Tori, Director and Investment Manager, Navenby.

“The market is ripe: Mobile Operators are dealing with ongoing revenue erosion in their traditional voice & SMS revenues. They are exploring new business models and effective ways to deal with the mobile data explosion and the associated signaling storms. We provide an elegant and flexible solution. This round of funding will help scale our field operations and expand our customer foot print, said Ravi Medikonda, CEO, Vistapointe Inc.

http://vistapointe.net/

• Unlike general purpose, deep packet inspection (DPI)-based network intelligence platforms, Vistapointe features a Linux-base packet parser engine to selectively decode 3GPP and 4G/LTE protocols, capture only specific protocol fields, apply compression and then deliver this data to a cloud-based mobile analytics platform.  The cloud-based analytics enables Vistapoint to offer a highly scalable Network Intelligence As A Service (NiAS) for 3G, 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi carriers.  Vistapointe's Dynamic Subscriber Profiling enables the operator to predict subscriber usage patterns and profile their mobile data customers so as to offer fine-tuned tariff plans.  Vistapointe also said its dynamic subscriber profiling could leverage APIs to integrate with 3rd party mobile ad platforms.
  
• Vistapointe is headed by Ravi Medikonda (CEO), who previously held leadership roles at Juniper Networks in its Product Management & Marketing groups. Before Juniper, he was Director of Product Management at Tellabs/Vivace Business Unit with P&L responsibility for the IP/MPLS products and successfully led Tellabs into the 3G/Wireless RAN backhaul market.

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MoCA 2.0 Certification Gets Underway - 800 Mbps over Coax

Certification testing for products implementing the MoCA 2.0 specification is now underway by National Technical Systems in Culver City, California.

MoCA 2.0 offers two performance modes of 400 Mbps and 800 Mbps net throughputs (MAC rate), respectively.  The MoCA 2.0 spec supports packet error rates (PER) as low as one in 100 million with a nominal latency of 3.6ms.  In addition, standby and sleep modes are included in the specification to help with overall power management in the network.

MoCA 2.0 Golden Nodes, for testing of interoperability, are available from both Broadcom and Entropic.

http://www.mocalliance.org/

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Marvell Debuts Quad-Core ARMADA ARM CPUs for Smart TVs

Marvell unveiled its ARMADA 1500 PRO, a quad-core ARM-based CPU optimized to support Google services for Smart TV along with IP-hybrid service security from Verimatrix.

The ARMADA 1500 PRO features a sophisticated security engine, up to 12K DMIPs applications processor, and a 38GFLOP graphics processor for Smart TV and set-top box implementations, driving the convergence of digital entertainment and gaming applications and paving the way for the next-generation of Smart Home devices.

Marvell said ithe multi-core 1.2 Gigapixel GPU, which is based on Vivante GC4000, enables support for high quality 3D gaming.  It includes Google services for Smart TV reference designs for both TVs and set-top boxes. It includes an complete SDK for rapid deployment of combined Pay TV and Android-based over-the-top services.

The ARMADA 1500 PRO offers multiple connectivity options, including Marvell's Wi-Fi (2x2 11ac) and powerline technologies.  Peripheral support includes SATA, SDIO, USB for operator/consumer apps such as DVR and 10/100/1000 Ethernet MAC with RGMII interface.

"2013 was an exciting and big year for the success of Google services for Smart TV. The successful launch of Google Chromecast is a perfect example. I am extremely proud of the innovation and collaboration among Google, Marvell and our ecosystem partners in bringing those creative and game-changing Smart products to the market," said Weili Dai, President and Co-Founder of Marvell. "I believe the new quad-core ARMADA 1500 PRO raises the bar yet again in delivering innovative Smart TV experiences with high performance, robust security and advanced graphics."

http://www.marvell.com

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Broadcom Expands Satellite Device Portfolio for Operators

Broadcom announced a new Outdoor Unit (ODU) satellite chipset that integrates support for regions and countries across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  The design allows operators to provide fast channel change by allocating more channels to a single set-top box.  It support supports up to 24 resident set-top boxes within a multiple dwelling unit.

Some key features:

• Second generation with reduced power and better integration in 28 nm process
• 8 RF inputs and 1RF output covering the 250 to 2350 MHz frequency range
• 24 user-band output channels
• 24 output channels selectable from any LNB input
• Frequency shift keying (FSK) and digital satellite equipment control (DiSEqC)
• Sampling underway.
• Broadcom's BCM4551 is currently sampling.

"With the launch of today's new low-power ODU chipset, Broadcom is helping to expand the availability of satellite services in single homes and multiple dwelling units across the globe," said Nicholas Dunn, Broadcom Vice President of Marketing, Broadband Communications Group.  "By streamlining the cabling required to support a single home or multiple residential units, we've also reduced hardware and installation costs for satellite operators and simplified satellite distribution to consumers."

http://www.broadcom.com
http://www.connectingeverything.com

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Broadcom Introduces Low Cost ADSL and VDSL2 Routers

Broadcom introduced an entry-level xDSL system-on-a-chip (SoC) for residential gateways with ADSL and VDSL2 with G.vector technology, a fast Ethernet switch and a PCI-e interface for connectivity to Wi-Fi silicon.

The BCM63381 device is based on 29nm technology.

"VDSL2 technology has been widely deployed by global telcos to deliver premium access data rates to subscribers," said Greg Fischer, Broadcom Vice President and General Manager, Broadband Carrier Access.  "With the BCM63381, Broadcom has leveraged our best-in-class IP and engineering to combine ADSL and VDSL2 technology into an entry-level single-chip device that satisfies carrier needs to maintain costs, while also delivering faster broadband access and networking to residential customers."

http://www.connectingeverything.com
http://www.broadcom.com

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