Ericsson Mobility Report: Big Trends by 2020

Mobile video traffic will continue to grow dramatically, increasing tenfold by 2020 to account for 55 percent of all mobile data traffic, according to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report.  Ericsson is also predicting that nine out of ten people aged six and over will have mobile phones by 2020, when smartphone subscriptions will top 6.1 billion.

"The falling cost of handsets, coupled with improved usability and increasing network coverage, are factors that are making mobile technology a global phenomenon that will soon be available to the vast majority of the world's population, regardless of age or location," said Rima Qureshi, Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of M&A, Ericsson.

Some highlights:

• 65-70 percent of all phones sold in the third quarter of 2014 were smartphones, compared with 55 percent in the same quarter for 2013.
• LTE continues to grow strongly and has reached 350 million subscriptions, with around 50 million additions in Q3 2014.
• Smartphones currently account for just 37 percent of all mobile phone subscriptions, meaning that many users have yet to make the switch to the more feature-rich, internet-friendly option.
• WCDMA/HSPA will make up the majority of all subscriptions in 2020, with around 4.4 billion subscriptions, compared to around 3.5 billion LTE subscriptions.
• Currently in North America, nearly all mobile devices are 3G or 4G, and the only 2G devices that are left are M2M.
• There are 2.7 billion smartphone subscriptions today
• In 4G-dominated networks video currently constitutes 45-55 percent of mobile traffic.
• Mobile data traffic is expected to rise at a CAGR ofaround 40 percent (2014–2020). This will result in an 8-fold increase in traffic by the end of 2020.
• 5G is expected to be commercially deployed in 2020, and Ericsson predicts it will have a faster uptake than 4G LTE, just as 4G had a faster uptake than 3G. 
• 5G will encompass evolved versions of existing radio access (such as 3G and 4G), cloud, and core technologies.

This is the seventh issue of the Ericsson Mobility Report, which shares forecast data, analysis and insight into traffic, subscriptions, and consumer behavior to provide insight into current traffic and market trends.
More data is online.

http://www.ericsson.com/ericsson-mobility-report

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LTE Category 9 Carrier Aggregation Testing Hits 450 Mbps

Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies achieved download speeds of up to 450 Mbps in the industry's first inter-company interoperability testing of LTE Category 9.

Testing was conducted using Ericsson's LTE-Advanced network infrastructure, including its commercially available 14B software release and RBS 6000 family of base stations, along with Qualcomm's next-generation LTE-Advanced modem.  Ericsson said it supports all bandwidth and frequency combinations for up to 60 MHz 3x Carrier Aggregation, providing users with speeds of up to 450 Mbps.

Thomas Norén, Vice President, Head of Radio Product Management at Ericsson says: "Inter-company vendor interoperability testing between network and device is key to enabling large-scale commercial deployments.  Working with ecosystem partner Qualcomm, we continue to drive LTE innovation and performance improvements, ensuring a great user experience even as mobile broadband demand grows."

Serge Willenegger, Vice President of Product Management, QTI, says: "We are excited to see our next-generation LTE-Advanced modem play an important role in enabling the world's first multi-company interoperability Category 9 test. We are pleased to be working closely with Ericsson to help lead the mobile industry's transition to next-generation network connectivity as ultra-fast mobile broadband connectivity has become an essential feature for mobile users."

http://www.ericsson.com/news/1872405

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Alcatel-Lucent Extends its 7750 Edge Routing Line

Alcatel-Lucent introduced its 7750 SR-a edge router - a hardware platform designed for high density, high performance aggregation of mobile backhaul, business and residential services.

The new platform, which extends the company’s 7750 Service Router family and leverages the company's FP3 400G Network Processor, targets fixed, mobile and cable operators, governments and enterprises.

The 7750 SR-a is powered by Alcatel-Lucent’s Service Router Operating System (SR OS) and managed by the 5620 Service Aware Manager (5620 SAM).  It offers class-leading GE and 10GE density with high-performance 40G and 100GE interface investment protection. Oversubscription allows providers to efficiently and cost-effectively support the changing traffic demands of a mix of customers - LTE Advanced and small cell mobile backhaul, business VPN, datacenter and cloud-based services and residential broadband services.

The 7750 SR-a  is available in two variants:

• The 4-slot 7750 SR-a4 offering 200G system throughput capacity
• The 8-slot 7750 SR-a8 offering 400G system throughput capacity

“We are committed to delivering product innovations that bridge a gap in the market. The 7750 SR-a will allow providers to go closer to the customer to meet their exploding traffic demands across the network. Despite its compact size, by leveraging the FP3 network processor we are not compromising on scalability, functionality or quality of service – it offers performance beyond its size and drives down costs at the same time,” stated Basil Alwan, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Routing & Transport business line.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2014/alcatel-lucents-new-compact-high-performance-edge-router-drives-down-operator-costs-even-data

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Last week, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled a Virtualized Service Router (VSR) built on Intel silicon and implementing its Service Router Operator System (SROS) and managed by the 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM).

The addition of an Alcatel-Lucent virtualized edge router running on x86 accelerates the industry's shift to network functions virtualization (NFV), enabling service providers to build more flexible infrastructure that scales with cloud technologies. Over 20 trials are underway with carriers and two contracts have already been won.

The virtualized router is positioned as an addition to the company’s routing hardware family. Alcatel-Lucent continues to develop its custom ASICs for powering the higher performance routers.

Alcatel-Lucent's Virtualized Service Router (VSR) will implement its full, non-stop routing code.  Significantly, the company said it was able to optimize the code so as to deliver 2X the routing performance compared to other virtual routers on x86.  The performance gains are achieved by leveraging parallel processing across multiple core on Intel's Xeon processors.  Alcatel-Lucent has a development partnership with Intel.  In data plane performance, the VSR is able to hit 160G throughput in a 2RU x86 server.

In addition, while others have focused on delivering one or two router virtual network functions, Alcatel-Lucent will deliver a suite of router applications.  One of the first applications is a Virtualized Route Reflector, which the company says has achieved 8x the performance in the control plane over competitor offers.

Some highlights:

• VSR-RR: The industry’s highest performance virtualized Route Reflector. Available now.
• VSR-SIM: The full IP-MPLS software-based router simulator. Available now.
• VSR-PE: The Virtualized Provider Edge delivering Carrier Ethernet and IPN services. Available for demonstration now and commercially available during the first half of 2015.
• VSR-AA: The Virtualized Application Assurance delivers application-based value added services and application-level reporting and traffic management. Available for demonstration now and commercially available during the first half of 2015.
• VSR-SEGW: The Virtualized IP Security Gateway  will be available for demonstration during the first half of 2015.
• VSR-WLGW: The Virtualized Wireless LAN Gateway will be available for demonstration during the second half of 2015.
• VSR-BNG: The Virtualized Broadband Network Gateway will be available for demonstration during the second half of 2015.

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Intel's Next Xeon Phi Brings Omni-Path Fabric and 10nm process

Intel's third-generation Intel Xeon Phi product family, code-named Knights Hill, will be built using Intel's 10nm process technology and integrate Intel Omni-Path Fabric technology. Knights Hill will follow the upcoming Knights Landing product, with first commercial systems based on Knights Landing expected to begin shipping next year.

Intel also disclosed that its Intel Omni-Path Architecture will achieve 100 Gbps line speed and up to 56 percent lower switch fabric latency in medium-to-large clusters than InfiniBand alternatives. The architecture targets a 48 port switch chip compared to the current 36 port InfiniBand alternatives. This will reduce the number of switches required in HPC clusters.

"Intel is excited about the strong market momentum and customer investment in the development of HPC systems based on current and future Intel Xeon Phi processors and high-speed fabric technology," said Charles Wuischpard, vice president, Data Center Group, and general manager of Workstations and HPC at Intel. "The integration of these fundamental HPC building blocks, combined with an open standards-based programming model, will maximize HPC system performance, broaden accessibility and use, and serve as the on-ramp to exascale."

http://www.intel.com/xeonphi
http://www.intel.com/omnipath

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Intel Achieves 32 Gbps SerDes on 14nm Process

Intel published silicon characterization results for its 1 to 32 Gbps high-speed SerDes on the 14nm process. This marks the first time that a 32 Gbps, multiprotocol SerDes has been validated on any sub-20nm foundry process.

Intel's 14nm SerDes family is the second generation of SerDes offering and is built on the company's 12 and 28 Gbps SerDes, which is currently in production on its 22nm Tri-gate process technology. The new 14nm SerDes extends the operating range while reducing power by 20 percent and area by more than 40 percent as compared to Intel's 22nm SerDes offering.

"Our SerDes architecture continues to improve with each successive development in the Tri-gate process" said Ali Farhang, vice president, Design and Enablement Services, Intel Custom Foundry. "We are able to meet the 28G CEI LR spec while supporting operation down to 1 Gbps, thus enabling flexibility in our customers' products."

http://newsroom.intel.com/

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BT Launches Cloud for Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa

BT announced new cloud services aimed at supporting the expansion plans of its customers in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa (AMEA), including:

• BT One Cloud Cisco: a global platform that features Unified Communications capabilities, including high-definition (HD) voice, multiparty HD video, Instant Messaging (IM) and presence, and mobile clients delivered by Cisco Jabber. Global coverage and resilience are ensured through BT’s data centres in the Americas, the UK and Asia Pacific. Those data centres are paired one to another in geographically remote cities to bring additional resilience to services in case of major incidents. 
• BT One Cloud Lync: A fully-managed private cloud service with enterprise telephony and video with the standard feature set of presence, IM and conferencing in a single, unified platform. 
• BT Cloud Connect program across AMEA. Customers across the region will now be able to connect directly through BT’s network to various other software-as-a-service providers and to more than 200 third- party data centres around the world. 
• BT for Life Sciences R&D in AMEA - -a cloud service designed to enable collaboration within the life sciences industry for increased R&D productivity. It is specifically designed to allow organisations active in the life sciences, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and associated sectors to comply with stringent security, regulatory and compliance requirements while accessing the very high computational demands of R&D and adopting the latest in cloud computing, collaboration, and unified communications. 

http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/ShowArticle.cfm?ArticleID=D7755EB4-3521-4148-8057-B4CEE53EC2D3

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