Nokia Demos 4.1 Gbps over TDD-FDD LTE

Nokia Networks showcased a record-breaking speed of 4.1 Gbps over TDD-FDD LTE in collaboration with Ooredoo Qatar and China Mobile at the ITU Telecom World 2014 event in Doha.

The speed was achieved by combining TDD- and FDD-LTE spectrums and aggregating 10 carriers with 200 MHz bandwidth. The demo used:

• Nokia Networks’ commercial Single RAN Advanced hardware
• including the Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station for high-capacity throughput
• Software to aggregate carriers on both TDD- and FDD-LTE spectrum
• LTE-Advanced Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology.

Waleed Al Sayed, Chief Operating Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “We are building the biggest, fastest network in Qatar, so that customers across the country can access next-generation wireless data services. We are very proud that the first-ever ITU Telecom World to be held in Qatar should showcase this record-breaking success with the support of Ooredoo. By deploying our  advanced LTE network in Qatar, we are truly laying the foundation for the future.”

http://networks.nokia.com/

• In June 2014, Nokia and SK Telecom have tested the aggregation of ten 20 MHz spectrum bands to achieve a record LTE throughput speed of 3.78 Gbps.  The test used Nokia’s Single RAN solution including the high-capacity Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station, enhanced with software to aggregate carriers on both TDD and FDD LTE spectrum and to implement LTE-Advanced Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology.  The companies noted that their record performance demo utilized twice the amount of carriers and bandwidth specified by 3GPP, which foresees the aggregation of 5 carriers up to a total bandwidth of 100 MHz.

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G.fast Moves Ahead

G.fast, the new broadband standard designed to deliver access speeds of up to 1Gbps over existing telephone wires gained final approval last week from the ITU.

G.fast aims to deliver fiber-like speeds over existing copper at distances of up 400m from a distribution point. It maintains coexistence with xDSL and operates at higher frequencies than VDSL2 (start frequency: 2.2, 8.5, 17.664 or 30 MHz).

Service rate performance targets from the ITU:

• 500-1000 Mbps for FTTB deployments at less than 100m, straight loops
• 500 Mbps at 100m
• 200 Mbps at 200m
• 150 Mbps at 250m
• Aggregate service rates of equal to or more than 500 Mbps with start frequency of 23 MHz and VHF and DAB bands notches.

The approval of the physical-layer protocol aspects of G.fast – defined by Recommendation ITU-T G.9701 “Fast Access to Subscriber Terminals (FAST) - Physical layer specification” – follows the approval in April this year of ITU-T G.9700, a companion text specifying methods to ensure that G.fast equipment will not interfere with broadcast services such as FM radio.

ITU-T Study Group 15 has initiated work on an extended set of features for G.fast, targeting performance enhancements which will include additions to its range of low-power states. These features are likely to be available for incorporation into service providers’ G.fast deployments as early as 3 July 2015.

Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, Secretary-General, ITU: “The time from G.fast’s approval to its implementation looks set to be the fastest of any access technology in recent memory. A range of vendors has begun shipping G.fast silicon and equipment, and service providers’ lab and field trials are well underway.”

The Broadband Forum has begun developing a test suite and certification programme for G.fast systems. The test suite will provide for interoperability, functional and performance testing. A beta-trial of the certification programme is planned for mid-2015, and certified G.fast implementations are expected to appear on the market before the end of 2015.

"Consumers should have confidence that the leading broadband service providers globally are working hard to deliver 1Gbps, ultra broadband access," said Robin Mersh, CEO of Broadband Forum. "The new G.fast standard makes it possible for telcos to deploy 4K UHD services faster and more affordably than they could with Fiber to the Home (FTTH)."

"The hot new product this holiday season and beyond is 4K UHD TVs," said Gary Shapiro, CEA President and CEO. "But consumers need confidence that 4K UHD TV online content distribution services, which are often limited by bandwidth rates, are feasible. G.fast offers a promising way to overcome this challenge."

"Besides supporting high-end services such as multi-stream 4K UHD TV, in urban areas already with good penetration of fixed copper telephone lines, G.fast has the added benefit of bringing self-installed broadband access to existing homes cheaper and with less disruption than bringing fiber into the home," said Malcolm Johnson, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau.

http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2014/70.aspx#.VIZZc4u-2-0

https://www.broadband-forum.org

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Sckipio Raises $17 Million for G.fast Silicon

Sckipio Technologies, a start-up based in Israel, has raised US$17 million in a Series B round for its G.fast modem chipsets and software.

Sckipio's G.fast solution includes chipsets bundled with software for a variety of access and mobile backhaul applications based on the ITU G.fast G.9700 and G.9701 standards, to which Sckipio is a leading contributor.

The new funding was led by Pitango Venture Capital and combined with follow-on investment from the original Series A investors; Gemini Israel Ventures, Genesis Partners, Amiti Ventures and Aviv Ventures. This Series B round follows an initial investment of $10 million in the company.

“The market for G.fast is about to explode,” said Eitan Bek, General Partner, Pitango Venture Capital. “But what makes Sckipio a special opportunity is its combination of a world-class team, incredible technology and deep expertise in the G.fast market.”

“Sckipio intends to extend our leadership in G.fast,” said David Baum, Sckipio CEO. “The additional investment will help us move even faster, enhance our product offering more quickly, and provide working capital to scale production to meet the high demand for our solutions.”

htttp://wwwww.sckipio.com

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CenturyLink Acquires DataGardens for Cloud Disaster Recovery

CenturyLink has acquired DataGardens, a provider of Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), for an undisclosed sum.

DataGardens takes a cloud approach to mirror physical or virtual machine data. Its flagship software suite, SafeHaven, provides cloud-based disaster recovery by creating an offsite virtual data center in locations such as CenturyLink Cloud. Customers can define recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives, and quickly failover and failback with minimal disruption to mission-critical systems. In addition, SafeHaven delivers point-and-click test failover and failback functions that simplify disaster recover testing without affecting production data. DataGardens is based in Alberta, Canada.

CenturyLink said the DataGardens technology platform is ideal for small to midsize business (SMB) customers or enterprise departments that cannot tolerate unexpected downtime, but have traditionally seen disaster recovery as too expensive or complicated to set up.

http://www.centurylink.com

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CenturyLink to Provide Cybersecurity to US Govt Agencies

CenturyLink was awarded a task order from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Cybersecurity and Communications to provide Intrusion Prevention Security Services, known as EINSTEIN 3 Accelerated (E3A) protections, to U.S. federal civilian agencies. The one-year task order was issued under a four-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for EINSTEIN cybersecurity services that was previously awarded to CenturyLink in March 2013. Financial terms were not disclosed.

CenturyLink said the EINSTEIN program provides advanced email filtering and web Domain Name System spoofing protections, as well as signature-based intrusion detection, prevention and mitigation services to participating federal agencies under the guidance and oversight of DHS.

"CenturyLink is proud to be selected to continue providing EINSTEIN cybersecurity protections to federal agencies," said Lisa Bruch, CenturyLink Government acting senior vice president and general manager. "We're excited to support DHS's mission to provide federal agencies with advanced managed cybersecurity capabilities that offer additional protections to mitigate growing and evolving threats. The ability to share valuable cyber intelligence and information with an expanding list of federal agencies."

http://news.centurylink.com/ 

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Mitsui & Co. Invests in Pica8 for Open SDN

Pica 8, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California with R&D in Beijing, China, has added Mitsui & Co. Global Investment to its previously announced Series B funding round.

Pica 8 leverages commodity bare metal switches for its Open-vSwitch (OVS) SDN solution aimed at high-end data centers. PicOS provides extensive support for traditional switching and routing protocols.  Pica8 can provide PicOS, switching hardware or both in a fully integrated package as part of an end-to-end data center SDN solution.

“When network administrators think that programming a Cisco Catalyst switch with Python is SDN, SDN is in trouble,” said Steve Garrison, vice president of marketing at Pica8. “When Cisco says ACI is SDN even though it’s a closed architecture, SDN is in trouble. Pica8 believes that we have come too far along the path toward SDN to declare it the exclusive property of heavyweights like Cisco and Juniper.”

http://www.pica8.com/

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Vitesse Integrates Carrier Ethernet Services with Open Source SDN Controllers

Vitesse Semiconductor announced availability of an open, full duplex machine-programmable application programming interface (API) – JSON/RPC – for its CEServices software. This is an essential tool for enabling open-source SDN controllers to program all essential functions in an automated, programmatic model.

The company said the new capabilities introduced by the JSON/RPC machine-to-machine (M2M) protocol will enable its CEServices software stack to eclipse the rudimentary forwarding behavior of low-level APIs like OpenFlow, and extends SDN controller programming capabilities to:

• End-to-end service creation
• Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM)
• Quality of Service (QoS)

“Vitesse’s turnkey CEServices software and Serval Carrier Ethernet switch engine have already been integrated into the popular OpenDaylight controller, and is in customer SDN/NFV trials with large service providers,” said Uday Mudoi, vice president of product marketing at Vitesse. “We recognize the criticality of service agility in global networks and are committed to helping define open and standardized APIs as part of the MEF Third Network Initiative.”

http://www.vitesse.com

• In January, Vitesse Semiconductor introduced its CEServices software suite for easier provisioning and management of Carrier Ethernet business services.
  CEServices software works in tandem with Vitesse's ViSAA-enabled Carrier Ethernet switch engines -- Jaguar, LynX, Caracal, and Serval -- to simplify Ethernet business service provisioning and monitoring at greater scale and wire-speed performance with various standards-based capabilities including:

• Service classification and MEF compliant policing to meet advanced Service Level Agreements (SLAs);
• Performance Monitoring and Service Activation Measurements - RFC2544, Y.1731 and Y.1564;
• Multi-operator OAM - Up and Down MEPs;
• Extensive suite of Carrier Ethernet and MPLS/MPLS-TP networking protocols; and
• SyncE and IEEE 1588v2 PTP protocol support with Vitesse's VeriTime, the industry's de facto highest accuracy IEEE 1588v2 synchronization technology.
  
  For service subscriber Edge applications, such as SLAs, ViSAA Service Edge Software control functionality enables per EVC, policers, shapers, queues, tagging and marking, statistics and extensive OAM to ensure traffic flow compliance.

For network applications, CEServices software enables ViSAA networking functionality for provider bridge (Q-Q) tunneling. Traffic protection enables scalability, while ensuring reliability. CEServices also enables end point and immediate point access to MEF CE 2.0 capabilities and functions.

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Cox Launches its First Gigabit Home Service in SoCal

Cox Communications has launched its first 1 gigabit residential Internet service at the new Park Place Apartment Homes in Irvine, California.

Cox is the first in Southern California with residential Internet service.

Earlier this year, Cox Communications announced that it would bring 1 gigabit speeds to residential customers in all of its markets by the end of 2016. The company has been deploying gigabit speeds to businesses for more than 10 years, and launched gigabit speeds to residential customers in Phoenix in October.

“Cox already offers the fastest residential Internet in Orange County, and with the launch at Park Place Apartment Homes, we’re the first provider in Southern California to offer 1 gigabit speeds to residential customers,” said Dave Bialis, Senior Vice President and Region Manager for Cox Communications in California. “As technology continues to advance and change how consumers use broadband, Cox will be well positioned to serve our customers in the future.”

http://www.cox.com

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T-Mobile to Raise Funds from New Share Offering

T-Mobile US is commencing a registered public offering of 17,391,305 shares of its Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock, Series A, with a liquidation preference of $50 per share.

The company said it will use the funds for capital investments and acquisition of additional spectrum unrelated to spectrum it may obtain in the Federal Communications Commission’s pending AWS-3 spectrum auction.

http://www.tmobile.com

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Ireland's ESBT Deploys Coriant for 100G

ESoB Telecoms Ltd (ESBT) has deployed Coriant's hiT 7300 Multi-Haul Transport solution to enable 100G services for wholesale and enterprise customers across Ireland.

Coriant said the new ESBT network will also utilize the robust capabilities of the Coriant TransNet Planning Tool while being managed by Coriant's well-proven TNMS Management System. With these tools, ESBT can automate workflow and commissioning tasks while accelerating deployment of new services it plans to bring to market.

http://www.coriant.com/company/press_release.asp?id=1176

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