Qualcomm to Pay $975 Million Fine under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law

Following an investigation of Qualcomm under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) will impose a fine of 6.088 billion Chinese Yuan (approximately US$975 million at current exchange rates.  Qualcomm will not contest the penalty.  Other terms of the settlement include:

• Qualcomm will offer licenses to its current 3G and 4G essential Chinese patents separately from licenses to its other patents and it will provide patent lists during the negotiation process. If Qualcomm seeks a cross license from a Chinese licensee as part of such offer, it will negotiate with the licensee in good faith and provide fair consideration for such rights.
  
• For licenses of Qualcomm’s 3G and 4G essential Chinese patents for branded devices sold for use in China, Qualcomm will charge royalties of 5% for 3G devices (including multimode 3G/4G devices) and 3.5% for 4G devices (including 3-mode LTE-TDD devices) that do not implement CDMA or WCDMA, in each case using a royalty base of 65% of the net selling price of the device.
  
• Qualcomm will give its existing licensees an opportunity to elect to take the new terms for sales of branded devices for use in China as of January 1, 2015.
  
• Qualcomm will not condition the sale of baseband chips on the chip customer signing a license agreement with terms that the NDRC found to be unreasonable or on the chip customer not challenging unreasonable terms in its license agreement. However, this does not require Qualcomm to sell chips to any entity that is not a Qualcomm licensee, and does not apply to a chip customer that refuses to report its sales of licensed devices as required by its patent license agreement.

“We are pleased that the investigation has concluded and believe that our licensing business is now well positioned to fully participate in China’s rapidly accelerating adoption of our 3G/4G technology,” said Derek Aberle, president of Qualcomm. “We appreciate the NDRC’s acknowledgment of the value and importance of Qualcomm’s technology and many contributions to China, and look forward to its future support of our business in China.”

http://www.qualcomm.com

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VeloCloud Enhances its SD-WAN Service with Zscaler and Websense

VeloCloud Networks, a start-up offering a subscription-based, virtualized WAN service for enterprises that aggregates multiple access lines (cable modem, DSL, LTE) into a single secure connection, announced interoperability with leading cloud security platforms Zscaler and Websense, spurring growth of its SD-WAN ecosystem. VeloCloud has also expanded its business policy framework, enabling enterprises, for the first time, to deploy cloud network services and applications easily and with assured enterprise-grade performance.

VeloCloud's SD-WAN service uses an Intel-based customer premise device at a branch office to communicate with a VeloCloud gateway in the cloud. The service analyzes network performance and application traffic to determine the best path and dynamically steer traffic to corporate data center or cloud services.

The new capabilities from Zscaler and Websense bring new virtual services to the platfrom. VeloCloud enables enterprise branch offices to achieve the same security services as corporate headquarters—without having to install multiple, separate appliances in each branch or backhaul traffic over expensive private links to their data centers. VeloCloud’s extensible business policy framework for network services insertion will cover additional services from its growing ecosystem.

In addition, the business policy framework adds explicit link usage policies for business and security compliance, augmenting VeloCloud’s existing automatic multi-path optimization which dynamically steers traffic to achieve enterprise-grade application performance. This business policy framework is transport independent, and also applies to private lines such as T1/MPLS as they are integrated into VeloCloud’s management and optimization of hybrid WANs. The expanded business policy framework provides software-defined WAN flexibility, simplicity and automation over both network services and transport utilization.

“VeloCloud’s Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN brings software-defined flexibility and automation to the WAN, and the policy-driven insertion of network services announced today extends our no-compromise SD-WAN simplicity, application performance and security,” said Sanjay Uppal, CEO and co-founder of VeloCloud. “Our comprehensive business policy framework replaces today’s complicated configuration and stacks of appliances in branch sites with single-click direct access to both on-premises and cloud-hosted services, including those from Websense and Zscaler.”

“For distributed enterprises, equipping branch and remote offices with secure, high-performance access to cloud services has been complex and expensive,” said Punit Minocha, vice president of business development for Zscaler. “Now that our partner VeloCloud’s SD-WAN solution is seamlessly integrated with Zscaler’s cloud-based Internet security platform, distributed organizations can securely and safely leverage the power of cloud computing, while dramatically reducing costs, increasing performance, and improving employee productivity and satisfaction.”

http://www.velocloud.com

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Ruckus Adds Wi-Fi Roaming and Traffic Handling Capabilities

Ruckus Wireless is adding advanced capabilities to Smart Wi-Fi technology to improve IP-based voice calling over Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi Calling) in challenging environments. These include capacity-based client access control, Wi-Fi multimedia admission controls, directed roaming, and automatic packet flow heuristics.

• Automatic QoS Heuristics - this is the ability to prioritize Wi-Fi Calling traffic by looking at the Type of Service (ToS) bits set by the smartphone in the IP header, or by using automatic packet flow heuristics that constantly examine the size and frequency of packets in any flow, encrypted or not.
  
• Capacity-Based Client Access Control - If too many new devices attempt to connect to a given Wi-Fi access point (AP), already connected clients may experience service degradation. To help ensure existing clients' quality of user experience, Ruckus ZoneFlex™ APs can now implement a capacity-based client access control algorithm to decline connection requests from new clients. This new feature allows organizations to protect the user experience during periods of heavy load.
  
• Directed Roaming - Leveraging the 802.11v standard, directed roaming helps to ensure the overall quality of user experience for the entire wireless LAN (WLAN) network by directing clients toward another Wi-Fi access point that can provide a better user experience. If a signal falls below user-definable signal strength (RSSI) or throughput thresholds, Ruckus ZoneFlex APs can automatically provide a list of alternative access points and request the client to move to a closer AP.  This solves the problem of clients that stay connected or 'sticky' with a given AP, even if it no longer provides the best connection.
• 
  Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) Admission Control - WMM admission control improves the performance of Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi networks for real time voice and video services by preventing oversubscription of bandwidth. By requiring clients to request a specific amount of bandwidth before connecting to a given Ruckus ZoneFlex AP, bandwidth management on each AP now takes into account network load and channel connections before allowing clients to connect.

"The innovations we've made will improve the reliability and quality of Wi-Fi Calling applications, which enables both service providers and enterprises to extract greater value from their Wi-Fi infrastructure," said Dan Rabinovitsj, Chief Operating Officer at Ruckus Wireless. "While voice over Wi-Fi isn't new, the ability to deliver a carrier-class voice service over Wi-Fi is something that no one has mastered, until now."

http://www.ruckuswireless.com

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Meru Debuts Controller-less XPress Cloud for 802.11ac

Meru Networks introduced its XPress Cloud, a controller-less 802.11ac Wi-Fi solution featuring cloud-based management and aimed at small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and distributed enterprises.

Meru said its XPress Cloud requires only a PoE-capable Ethernet switch or an optional external power supply, along with a basic Internet connection. Only network management traffic traverses the cloud; all corporate data remains behind the firewall.

The XPress Cloud portfolio includes the new Meru XP8i access point, with management software hosted by Meru and delivered through secure data center providers worldwide. The high-performance, two-radio, 2X2, 802.11ac Meru XP8i offers zero-touch provisioning, with automated channel and power selection capabilities enabling instant self-configuration. Meru XPress Cloud also features an integrated captive portal for secure on-boarding of employee and guest devices.

Meru is also offering two options for the acquisition of XPress Cloud, with XP8i access points available for purchase upfront, or available on a Wi-Fi-as-a-Service (WaaS), subscription basis. Monthly management and monitoring license fees apply.

“We’ve worked closely with small-to-medium enterprises around the world to understand what they need to meet their unique business demands,” said Don Trimble, vice president of SME Cloud Sales at Meru. “These findings, combined with our experience in the design of enterprise-grade WLAN solutions, led to Meru XPress Cloud – a high-performance offering that brings affordability, ease of deployment and scalability to the SME and distributed enterprise markets.”

http://www.merunetworks.com/Products/Cloud/Index.html

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Red Hat and NEC Collaborate on OpenStack Solutions for NFV

Red Hat and NEC Corp. will jointly develop network functions virtualization (NFV) features in OpenStack in order to deliver carrier-grade NFV solutions with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

The companies noted that they have collaborated for more than a decade on joint open source software development. In recent years, they focused on NFV system integration with OpenStack, leveraging NEC’s telecom expertise. This enables the acceleration of NFV features in OpenStack and the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) in order to achieve carrier-grade and carrier-scale systems, including data plane acceleration through the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK). Moreover, these efforts are being contributed to the upstream OpenStack community, to enable Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform to emerge as a leading cloud platform for NFV. Several of the NFV features resulting directly from this collaboration were included in the OpenStack Juno release, or are planned for the forthcoming OpenStack Kilo release.

With this new agreement, NEC's NFV system integrated with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform will be designed to deliver mobile packet core virtualization, also known as virtualized Evolved Packet Core, or vEPC, as well as virtual Customer Premises Equipment (vCPE). NEC and Red Hat plan to continue the expanded collaboration to integrate and optimize Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform and NFV, along with contributions to open source communities, including OpenStack and Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV).

http://www.redhat.com
http://www.nec.com

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ZTE Completes VoLTE Tests with China Mobile

ZTE confirmed its completion of China Mobile’s large-capacity VoLTE (Voice over LTE) tests.

ZTE’s IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) solutions deployed in the China Mobile test delivered robust and stable network performance, fully fulfilling customer requirements, demonstrating VoLTE capacity, voice quality and continuity that exceeded projections. ZTE completed the full range of tests, including network function, service function, performance test and IOT, ahead of all other participating vendors.

ZTE said its VoLTE and IMS solutions offer hierarchical QoS guarantee, seamless 2G/3G/WiFi/4G voice continuity handover and end-to-end O&M features, guaranteeing HD voice quality, delivering superior user experience and easy O&M.

http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/press_center/news/201502/t20150209_431380.html

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CommScope Intros Metro Cells on Street Poles

CommScope introduced a new Metro Cell Concealment Solution that features a two-piece design for mounting all the necessary equipment for metro cell operation.  Two can mount and hide radios, antennas, backhaul termination (wireline or wireless), back-up batteries and other equipment on street poles in units that are more structurally balanced and easier to permit.

“The key to successful metro cell deployments is making the equipment as inconspicuous as possible and installing it at just the right location in dense urban areas,” said Stan Catey, senior vice president and general manager, Cable Products, CommScope. “Our concealment solution targets some of the most commonly available street furniture available for metro cell deployment—street lighting poles.”


http://www.commscope.com

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