Australia's NBN Co Updates is National Rollout Plan with HFC

Australia's NBN Co announced a new national rollout plan for the National Broadband Network (NBN) based on a multi-technology access strategy, including fiber to the premise (FTTP), fiber to the node (FTTN), wireless and upgraded HFC.

Areas where NBN FTTP has been deployed or is in advanced stages of being built will likely remain part of the FTTP rollout, while areas served by the Optus or Telstra Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) cable networks will likely receive fast broadband over an upgraded HFC network.

The plan covers the next 1.9 million homes and businesses by mid-2016 across more than 400 cities, suburbs and towns, on the path to achieving 8 million connections to the NBN by 2020.

“We’re committed to bringing fast broadband to all Australians as quickly as possible. The new multi-technology approach enables us to do just that. Over the past year, we have carried out successful trials of a range of new technologies, revised our build processes and are renegotiating our partner agreements. As a result of this work, we are able to provide forecasts that reflect the next phase of our network build," stated NBN Co’s CEO Bill Morrow.

“Naturally some people will be disappointed that they are not included in today’s schedule but ultimately no-one misses out as the NBN will be made available to every Australian family and business by 2020.”

http://www.nbnco.com.au/

http://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbnco2/documents/MTM-rollout-plan-01122014.pdf

• Prior to the elections in 2013 and the subsequent review of national broadband policy, NBN Co. had estimated that it would take nearly a decade to complete the installation of fibre to 93% of premises in Australia. A further 4% were to be reached by fixed-wireless and the remaining 3% to be connected via broadband satellite. In 2011, the total cost of the fibre rollout was estimated A$40.9 billion up to FY2021.
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• In December 2013, Bill Morrow was appointed as the new CEO, replacing Mike Quigley. Morrow previously headed up Vodafone Australia since March 2012. Previously, he was Chief Executive of Clearwire Incorporated and the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. He is a former Europe Chief Executive with Vodafone Group and has run the Group's businesses in Japan and the UK.

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Ooredoo Launches LTE-A at up to 225 Mbps in Qatar

Ooredoo Qatar has launched its nationwide LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) services boasting downlink data speeds of up to 225 Mbps.

Nokia Networks upgraded the operator’s LTE network with LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation for the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum bands.

Nokia supplied the complete radio and core network for Ooredoo Qatar, including its Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station, Evolved Packet Core technology and NetAct network management system.

Waleed Al-Sayed, COO, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “The demand for higher network capacity and speed in malls, stadiums and at national events is growing at a rapid pace. With Nokia Networks’ help, we are now able to address this demand, offering the fastest network with latest technology for our customers.”

http://networks.nokia.com/

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Stanford Researchers Develop Silicon Prism for Bending Light

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a prism-like device in silicon that can split a beam of light into different colors and bend the light at right angles.  The development is seen as having possible applications in fiber optic networks.  The device measures 8 microns in length and has been tested with both 1300-nanometer light and 1550-nanometer wavelengths.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/december/optical-silicon-algorithm-120214.html

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Verizon Wireless Picks SpiderCloud for 4G Small Cells

SpiderCloud Wireless will supply its scalable small cell systems for its Verizon Wireless business customers.

SpiderCloud, which is based in San Jose, California, said a single E-RAN Services Node (SCSN) can control up to 100 self-organizing, multi-access small cells, providing reliable coverage and capacity for enterprise and venues of up to 1.5 million square feet.  It can be installed using an enterprise Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN) as a managed service by a mobile operator's network. SpiderCloud also supplies Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) Radio Nodes operating in 3G (single band), and software upgradeable, dual-band 3G+4G and 4G+4G small cells as part of the system.

http://www.spidercloud.com/

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DragonWave Lands Big Orders from North American Carrier

Last week, DragonWave confirmed orders in excess of US$10 million for the month of November from a Tier One North American mobile operator. DragonWave will provide Horizon Compact+ and Horizon Quantum microwave links to support the operator's ongoing upgrade and expansion of its nationwide 4G/LTE network, with more than 50 percent of the orders tied to engineering planning and installation services.

“These contracts represent a significant increase in our services business and we are proud to have DragonWave products deployed by a leading Tier 1 partner committed to delivering a top-quality network experience to its customers,” said Peter Allen, President and CEO of DragonWave. “We look forward to playing a supportive role in building out a next-generation network that fully meets the growing demand for wireless services.”

DragonWave Horizon Compact+ and Horizon Quantum offer a combination of 2048 QAM modulation and the industry's only bandwidth accelerator bulk compression capability to deliver unsurpassed spectral efficiency and wireless capacity.

http://www.dragonwaveinc.com

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HP Unveils New Enterprise Infrastructure Products

At a company event in Barcelona, HP unveiled new products and services for enterprise data centers. The new offerings include:

HP Integrity Superdome X server -- promises delivers four times faster e-commerce transactions than leading x86 platforms by using Intel's Xeon E7 processor and offering scalability up to 16 sockets and 12TB memory. It is aimed at database workloads, including SAP and Oracle stacks.

HP Integrity NonStop X -- a 100 percent fully integrated, fault-tolerant system architecture for the most-stringent uptime SLAs.

HP Converged Storage solutions -- offering unified, flash, and flat backup storage innovations that can serve the entire spectrum of storage requirements with a single design.

HP 3PAR File Persona -- delivers Network File System, Common Internet File System and object access on new HP 3PAR StoreServ platforms, boosting utilization and lowering costs by moving storage-affinity related workloads such as data access, protection and analytics directly into the storage operating system and controller. All block, file, and object-access is now managed via a new 3PAR StoreServ Management Console which enables simple provisioning and features a search-enabled interface aligned with HP OneView.

HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c Converged Flash Array -- offering all-flash performance with configuration flexibility to support spinning media. With block, file, and object-access, 3.5 petabytes total capacity, all-flash optimized performance, enterprise-class resiliency, and high speed connectivity, this midrange-priced system increases agility, efficiency and cuts data center space requirements. EMC VMAX customers can now easily move to these new 3PAR StoreServ systems via new 3PAR Online Import software.

HP StoreOnce Recovery Manager Central (RMC) software -- a new application-managed backup feature for 3PAR StoreServ which delivers greater flexibility and reduced risk. StoreOnce RMC manages snapshots on 3PAR StoreServ systems and controls movement of changed data to a HP StoreOnce Backup target in a single-click, delivering greater protection and 17 times faster performance.

HP StoreOnce Backup systems -- now include a new 50 terabyte StoreOnce VSA and expanded Kernel-based Virtual Machine hypervisor support to enable Backup-as-a-Service consolidation. The high-end HP StoreOnce 6500 now provides system-wide deduplication over eight nodes via Federated Catalyst enhancements; enabling easier management compared to traditional single-node limited architectures such as EMC Data Domain.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/newsroom.html

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CyrusOne Commissions New Facility in Virginia's Data Center Alley

CyrusOne has activated the first 30,000 square feet of colocation space (CSF) of its 124,000-square-foot building Sterling, Virginia.  This first phase of the data center has up to 12 megawatts of critical load.

At full build, the 14-acre site is expected to accommodate a shell of approximately 400,000 square feet with up to 240,000 square feet of CSF, 36,000 square feet of Class A office space, and up to 48 megawatts of critical load.

“This new data center in Northern Virginia will enable us to effectively address customer demand in this valuable market. By expanding our footprint on the East Coast, we can better meet the expectations of our future and existing customers in this region. CyrusOne’s connectivity options, power capabilities, and ability to scale quickly make us an ideal colocation provider for enterprise-level customers in this market,” said Tesh Durvasula, chief commercial officer of CyrusOne.

Northern Virginia is home to one of the world’s largest clusters of data center real estate, and an estimated 70 percent of Internet traffic passes through Loudoun County, which is how it became dubbed “Data Center Alley.”

http://www.cyrusone.com/

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OrisTel Systems Signs ALU and Coriant for APAC Sales

OrisTel Systems Pte Ltd (OrisTel), has signed an agreement with Alcatel-Lucent to be a preferred regional value-add partner for the distribution of its comprehensive portfolio of ultra-broadband fixed and wireless access products in the Asia Pacific region. The deal includes Alcatel-Lucent’s 4G LTE and 3G wireless access products, as well its ISAM portfolio of high-capacity fiber access and copper access solutions. As part of Alcatel-Lucent’s Global Partner Program, OrisTel will serve as a distributor to service providers, as well as customers in vertical sectors such as oil and gas, maritime, utility, large enterprises, government and public safety agencies in the region.

Separately, OrisTel  has been appointed by Coriant as a regional sales partner for the distribution of its smart router and packet optical networking products to telecom service providers, data centre operators, financial services industry, and government and enterprise customers in the Asia Pacific region.

OrisTel is a subsidiary of Singapore Technologies Electronics Limited.

http://www.stee.stengg.com
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com
http://www.oristel.com.sg

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Autodesk Intros More Cloud-based 3D CAD/CAM tool

Autodesk is introducing more cloud-based 3D CAD/CAM tools.  A new  A360 Team capability, which will be available globally later this month, makes it easier to set-up and manage complex engineering projects with multiple team members. It also serves as an extensible collaboration platform for third parties to build integrated applications on top of the design application.

A360 Team, which became commercially available in North America in September, already counts more than 60,000 users among the manufacturing and engineering industries.

http://www.autodesk.com

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