Telefónica Business and Huawei Reach Global Agreement on Cloud

Telefónica Business Solutions, which offers a wide range of integrated communication solutions for the B2B market, announced a global collaboration agreement with Huawei to promote the migration of traditional IT services to the cloud. The agreement is aimed at helping enterprises to migrate their servers to the cloud, allowing them to use computing, storage and backup services in Telefónica’s data centers with no infrastructure investment required...

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Telefónica’s Strategic Plan: Onlife Telco by 2020

Telefónica presented its new strategic plan for coming years under the slogan “We choose it all”. In a corporate event in Madrid, César Alierta, Executive Chairman of Telefónica, said his goal is to transform the company into an “Onlife Telco”, which he defines as "a company that promotes connections in life for people to choose a world of infinite possibilities." The event was streamed to the Group's 125,000 employees in 20 countries. The new...

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Microsoft Adds Office 365 Enterprise Communications

Microsoft rolled out new capabilities in Office 365 that modernize the enterprise across meetings and voice, intelligence, and security and privacy. Some highlights: Meeting and voice capabilities in Office 365 -- adds Skype Meeting Broadcast, Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) Conferencing, PSTN Calling and Cloud Private Branch Exchange -- making Office 365 one platform for calling, conferencing, video and sharing integrated with Office applications Analytics...

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AppDynamics Builds Ecosystem, Raises $158 Million

AppDynamics, a start-up based in San Francisco, announced co-engineering, co-marketing, and co-sales agreements with Accenture, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Pivotal, Rackspace, and Red Hat. AppDynamics offers an Application Intelligence Platform that helps businesses proactively monitor, manage, analyze and optimize complex software environments, providing real-time, actionable IT operational and business insights into application performance,...

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Orange Romania Updates Microwave Transport Network with ALU

Alcatel-Lucent is upgrading Orange Romania’s existing long-haul microwave transport network, allowing Orange to enhance its 4G network capacity and performance. Orange Romania’s 4G network covers 70 percent of the population and 96 percent of those in urban locations, with higher speeds of up to 300 Mbps now available in six major cities as well as throughout Bucharest’s metro rail network. Under the project, which will be completed in 2016, Alcatel-Lucent...

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Iguaz.io Raises $15 Million for Big Data Storage

Iguaz.io, a start-up based in Israel, announced $15 million in Series A funding for its data management and storage solutions for Big Data, IoT and cloud applications. The funding round was led by Magma Venture Partners, the funding includes additional investments from JVP and large strategic investors. The iguaz.io founding team is comprised of a group of former executives from successful technology companies in the fields of storage, cloud...

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Orange and ENGIE to Collaborate on Rural Electricity Grid in Africa

Orange and ENGIE announced a partnership to use their technological knowledge to achieve sustainable progress and economic and social development in Africa. The goal is to expand the electricity grid in Africa and encourage responsible power consumption. These solutions could, for instance, include individual solar kits and small-scale, local electricity networks. The service could then be billed via mobile using Orange Money. Both companies are...

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Zain Hosts Telecom Technology Conference in Bahrain

Zain Group, a leading mobile telecom innovator in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa, is hosting its fifth annual Zain Technology Conference (ZTC) this week in Manama, Bahrain. The theme of this year’s Conference is ‘Transforming Our World’, reflecting Zain’s strategic aspirations of delivering on a compelling digital lifestyle to its customers. Zain is hosting some 60 technology vendors, showcasing their latest technologies.  Topics...

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LGE Licenses Rambus CryptoManager Security Platform

LG Electronics (LGE) has licensed Rambus' CryptoManager security platform for its next-gen mobile devices. The Rambus CryptoManager platform provides chip and device companies with end-to-end security throughout the design and manufacturing process.  It includes a hardware root-of-trust for provisioning of keys to manage sensitive data on mobile devices. Specific terms of the agreement are confidential. "At LGE, we are committed to ensuring...

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Blueprint: Virtual Session Border Controllers - Benefits and Pitfalls

by Ashish Jain, Director of Solutions Marketing, GENBAND The move to Network Functions Virtualization is certainly gaining steam. Increasingly, communications service providers are evolving their hardware-based infrastructure to new, next-generation communications networks. The rationale is simple – because of the many benefits offered by the virtualization of network functions including, but certainly not limited to, time-to-market for introducing...

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Orange and Ericsson Test Internet of Things

Ericsson and Orange announced a trial of optimized, low-cost, low-complexity devices and enhanced network capabilities for Cellular IoT over GSM and LTE. Some highlights: Improved indoor coverage: The world-first EC-GSM (Extended Coverage) trial will be conducted in France using the 900 MHz band, with the aim to enhance device reachability by up to 20dB or a seven-fold improvement in the range of low-rate applications. This further extends the...

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Cosmote Hits 500 Gbps with LTE FDD 3x Carrier Aggregation + 256QAM

Cosmote Greece achieved download speeds of 500Mbps in a live LTE network using equipment from Ericsson. Cosmote is implementing FDD 3xCarrier Aggregation & 256 QAM innovation to their commercial network, boosting performance and market differentiation. The demonstration, which took place at the Infocom World 2015 event in Athens on November 24, 2015, used Ericsson’s radio solutions and Ericsson Networks Software 16A . In addition, three component...

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DOCOMO's 5G Trials Hit Multiple Gigabits Rates

NTT DOCOMO announced results from several recent 5G trials, each of which surpassed the gigabit barrier.  Some highlights: A 5G trial it conducted with Nokia Networks at the Roppongi Hills high-rise complex in Tokyo on October 13 achieved data transmission in excess of 2Gbps. The trial used millimeter-wavelength signals with an extremely high frequency of 70GHz, a key development for the eventual commercial use of 5G wireless technology in...

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ADVA Acquires Engineering Team

ADVA Optical Networking has acquired an engineering division from technology incubator, mic AG. Financial terms were not disclosed. ADVA said this team of engineers is specifically focused on the development of optical monitoring technology and will help to advance its FSP 3000 Access Link Monitoring (ALM) product. "We have one of the biggest engineering teams in the industry. It's this combined intelligence, this collective insight, that sets...

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Verizon Sees Jump in Black Friday Data Traffic

Verizon reported a bounce in broadband and mobile data traffic for Black Friday: Broadband traffic attributed to e-commerce shopping activities on Black Friday (Nov. 27) spiked by 12 percentage points from Thanksgiving Day, and is relatively consistent with the same day in 2014.   Average daily mobile traffic on Black Friday increased by a few percentage points from Thanksgiving Day, which exhibited the same pattern in 2014. Year-over-year,...

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GSMA: India Surpasses 500 Million Unique Mobile Subscribers

India is on track to surpass half a billion mobile subscribers by the end of the year, according to a new GSMA study published today, signaling the start of a new era for the country’s mobile economy. The new report, ‘The Mobile Economy: India 2015’, finds that 13 per cent of the world’s mobile subscribers reside in India and that subscriber growth is forecast to outperform the regional and global averages over the coming years as the country cements...

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Poland's Polkomtel Readies Voice over Wi-Fi with Nokia

Polkomtel, the Polish operator of the Plus network, has partnered with Nokia Networks to launch Poland’s first public trial of its Wi-Fi Calling+ service. The service lets users make regular calls when connected by Wi-Fi in locations with poor mobile coverage. The common voice core for VoWiFi and voice over LTE (VoLTE) enables a smooth evolution of enhanced voice services going forward. During the trial period, the Wi-Fi Calling+ service is available...

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WRC15 Reaches Agreement on Satellite Spectrum

The World Radiocommunication Conference 2015 in Switzerland agreed on a framework for future access to satellite spectrum. “WRC-15 has been a turning point in the global recognition of the value of satellite services for the future. We commend the national administrations – and the WRC Chairman, Mr. Festus Daudu – for their commitment to connectivity for all,” said a joint statement of a coalition of associations representing the satellite industry....

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Ericsson Opens 5G Garage in Budapest

Ericsson opened at 5G "Garage" within its R&D facility in Budapest, Hungary to served as an incubator for the 5G ecosystem. 5G for Hungary is part of the recently launched "5G for Europe" program, which will deliver industry pilots of 5G solutions in areas including the Internet of Things, energy and utilities, safety and security, public infrastructure and retail. It will include joint innovation and prototyping as well as demos to operators...

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Blueprint: Operationalizing NFV in the Face of 100G

by Dan Joe Barry, VP Positioning and Chief Evangelist, Napatech A recent survey on the future of network appliances indicates that 100G will be the dominant speed rate in core, metro and access in 2018. How can we ensure that NFV is ready for this challenge? Great strides have been made over the last three years in proving the viability of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). Dozens of Proof of Concept (PoC) trials have proven that workloads...

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First 3.5 GHz LTE FDD-TDD 3 Carrier Aggregation Test

Nokia Networks, Deutsche Telekom and Cosmote (Deutsche Telekom’s subsidiary in Greece and leading network operator in the country) have demonstrated a world-first: LTE-Advanced 3 carrier aggregation combining LTE-FDD in band 3 (1.8 GHz) with LTE-TDD in band 42 (3.5 GHz). The showcase, completed with the commercially available Nokia Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station, confirms the ability of 3.5 GHz LTE-TDD technology to increase mobile broadband capacity...

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Microsemi and PMC Agree on Acquisition

Microsemi Corporation and PMC-Sierra entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsemi will acquire PMC for $9.22 in cash and 0.0771 of a share of Microsemi common stock for each share of PMC common stock through an exchange offer. The transaction is valued at approximately $2.5 billion and represents a 77.4 percent percent premium to the closing price of PMC's stock as of Sept. 30, 2015. "We are pleased PMC has accepted our compelling strategic...

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Skyworks to Gain $88.5 Million Merger Break-up Fee

Skyworks Solutions confirmed that PMC has terminated its acquisition agreement and, as a result, Skyworks is entitled to an $88.5 million termination fee from PMC. http://www.skyworksinc....

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise Reports Renewed Growth

Hewlett Packard Enterprise reported fiscal 2015 fourth quarter revenue of $14.1 billion, down 4% year over year, or up 3% in constant currency. This is the second consecutive quarter of year over year, constant currency revenue growth for the Hewlett Packard Enterprise segments. Business segment results are as follows: Enterprise Group revenue was $7.4 billion, up 2% year over year, up 9% in constant currency, with a 14.0% operating margin. Industry...

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Australia's Macquarie Telecom Deploys MapR

Macquarie Telecom, Australia’s leading managed hosting and business-only telecommunications company, has deployed the MapR data platform to help secure the communications of the Australian government. Macquarie Telecom’s Government Division today secures telecommunications for 42% of government agencies in Australia. The company provides government employees with a secure Internet gateway, so they can safely access external public websites, downloads,...

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Blueprint: OpenFlow and SDN in Action

by Calvin Chai There’s a lot of talk about OpenFlow as an evolving architecture for driving software-defined networking (SDN), but so far much of the action has been around development rather than deployments, and most of the deployment activity has been in the data center. In this article, we’ll look at some real-world examples of OpenFlow and SDN in action in the larger network. Disaggregating the Network Implementing open networking solutions...

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Zayo to Acquire Allstream for its Canadian Network

Zayo Group Holdings agreed to acquire Allstream,a wholly owned subsidiary of MTS, for CAD $465 million, representing a pre-synergized adjusted EBITDA multiple of less than five times. Allstream has approximately CAD $600M revenue and Adjusted EBITDA (excluding restructuring charges) of approximately CAD $100M. Allstream is a Canadian leader in IP communications and the only national provider that works exclusively with business customers.  Zayo...

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AWS Extends AWS Direct Connect in Dallas and London

Equinix announced availability of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect in its Dallas and London International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers (DA2 and LD5). AWS Direct Connect availability in London marks the second Equinix location in Europe to offer the service.  This deployment allows Equinix to improve upon previous connectivity options by offering “native” AWS Direct Connect service to customers into the full portfolio of AWS...

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China Telecom Expands Rollout of ALU's 7950 XRS IP Core Router

China Telecom is deploying Alcatel-Lucent's IP routing technology, including the 7950 XRS IP Core Router and 7750 Service Router, to expand its 4G LTE network.  Financial terms were not disclosed. Alcatel-Lucent said its 7950 XRS, which is already in use in Jiangsu province and Shanghai, will manage the increasing traffic in the urban data centers of Beijing  as the financial hub of Guangzhou. Alcatel-Lucent’s 7750 Service Router will...

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Spirent Announces Customer and Network Analytics Solution

Spirent Communications unveiled an operator analytics solution that focuses on customer experience assurance and troubleshooting, with support for 2/3/4G technologies including VoLTE and the Internet of Things (IoT). Spirent's InTouch Customer and Network Analytics (CNA) enables mobile operators’ engineering, customer care, and marketing groups to proactively identify and resolve wireless customer experience issues spanning LTE/4G networks and services...

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Broadband Forum Completes FTTdp Work

The Broadband Forum completed work on the management of Fiber to the Distribution Point (FTTdp), which aids in the management of fiber-fed nodes in the periphery of the access network. At the Broadband Forum’s quarterly meeting in Mexico, it was agreed that the FTTdp YANG management model was ready for release exclusively to members for testing in network equipment. This is the Forum’s first software project written in the YANG modelling language. “This...

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Infinera and EBlink Partner on Mobile Fronthaul

Infinera and EBlink, a supplier of of wireless fronthaul technology, announced a partnership to deliver both fiber and wireless based solutions and to provide an end-to-end fronthaul architecture. The joint solution has already been demonstrated in a live field trial with Orange in western France that interconnected baseband units (BBU) and remote radio heads (RRH) from several of Orange's Radio Access Network (RAN) vendors. In the live field trial,...

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