Huawei's First Half Sales Hit CNY245.5 billion, up 40% YoY

Huawei reported sales revenue for the first half of 2016 of CNY245.5 billion (US$36.75 billion), an increase of 40% comparing with the same period last year. The company's operating margin was 12%.

"We achieved steady growth across all three of our business groups, thanks to a well-balanced global presence and an unwavering focus on our pipe strategy," said Sabrina Meng, Huawei's Chief Financial Officer. "We are confident that Huawei will maintain its current momentum, and round out the full year in a positive financial position backed by sound ongoing operations."

Huawei said its enterprise business is on a fast development track, including solutions for cloud computing, storage, SDN, Safe City and Electric Power IoT.

Huawei's consumer business has maintained steady growth globally. Its flagship products, such as the P9, Mate 8, Honor V8, and MateBook, have all won significant support from consumers around the world.

In the carrier business, Huawei is innovating to support telecom operators' digital transformation across four core areas: business, operations, architecture, and networks. The company is driving development of cutting-edge technologies such as 5G and IoT, which promise to reshape the role of telecom operators in the economy and across numerous industries.

http://www.huawei.com/en/news/2016/7/Huawei-Announces-2016-H1-Business-Results

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Hans Vestberg is Out as CEO of Ericsson

Hans Vestberg has stepped down as President and CEO and member of Ericsson's Board of Directors.

Jan Frykhammar, Executive Vice President and CFO, will assume the CEO position until a new CEO is in office.

The resignation comes under pressure from the company's Board of Directors, which issued a statement saying that new leadership is required to address changing market conditions and "drive the next phase of Ericsson's development."  As stated during the disappointing financial report last week, the company must further cut expenses.

In a press statement, Chairman of the Board Leif Johansson says: "Hans Vestberg has led the company for seven years through significant industry and company transformation. Hans has been instrumental in building strong relationships with key customers around the world and his leadership and energy have been an inspiration to employees and leaders across Ericsson. However, in the current environment and as the company accelerates its strategy execution, the Board of Directors has decided that the time is right for a new leader to drive the next phase in Ericsson's development."

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2030327

• In June 2009, Hans Vestberg took over as CEO of Ericsson, replacing Carl-Henric Svanberg who had taken over as CEO of BP.

Ericsson's Q2 Sales Declined 11% YoY, Further Cuts Announced

Tuesday, July 19, 2016  Ericsson, Financials  No Comments

Ericsson's Q2 sales decreased by 11% YoY, or down 7% YoY when adjusted for comparable units and currency, as mobile broadband sales continued to decline particularly in markets impacted by a weak macro-economic environment, such as Brazil, Russia and the Middle East.

"The negative industry trends from the first quarter have intensified impacting demand for mobile broadband, especially in markets with a weak macro-economic environment. We are delivering on ongoing cost reduction activities. However, in light of market development, management has, with the support of the Board of Directors, initiated significant actions to further reduce cost," stated Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson.

In addition to its ongoing cost and efficiency program targeting savings of SEK 9 b. during 2017, Ericsson said it now plans to reduce R&D investments in IP and capture efficiency gains from the new company structure. Together, these activities are expected to reduce the annual run rate of operating expenses, excluding restructuring charges, to SEK 53 b. in the second half of 2017. This is to be compared with SEK 63 b. for full-year 2014 and equates to double the previously targeted savings in operating expenses.

Some highlights:

• In Europe, completion of mobile broadband projects in 2015 continued to have a negative effect on sales growth YoY. 4G sales in Mainland China were stable YoY as the fast pace of deployments continued.
• Network sales in North America were stable YoY driven by continued mobile broadband capacity investments. Global Services sales declined in North America as activities in Professional Services were lower.
• The transition from 3G to 4G continued primarily in parts of Asia, contributing to solid sales growth in region South East Asia and Oceania.
• Sales in the targeted growth areas were 20% of total sales and grew by 5% in the quarter in constant currencies. 

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2029293

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MEF's Open Connectivity Services Packet WAN Use Case Led by Cisco. Amartus

MEF is undertaking a new OpenCS (Open Connectivity Services) Packet WAN Use Case that as part of MEF’s Open Initiative to accelerate the industry transition to agile, assured, and orchestrated Third Network services.

The OpenCS Packet WAN use case, which is led by Cisco and Amartus, will deliver a multi-vendor enabled reference design that includes the Presto NRP API using an OpenDaylight (ODL) SDN controller as a platform. In addition, the project involves OpenDaylight plug-ins defined in the ODL UNI Manager project. The OpenCS Packet WAN project team will provide frequent feedback about the use cases, information models, and operations required for MEF network resource models to the MEF NRP project team and coordinate MEF contributions to the ODL community.

MEF has multiple OpenCS use case instances underway, representing the services under the control of a specific network operator but which are orchestrated as part of a federated system initiated by a Third Network service provider. Within the OpenCS ecosystem, companies are developing and testing reference designs of MEF-defined L1-L7 services using combinations of open and closed source software, open specification and commercial hardware (e.g. Carrier Ethernet 2.0 certified devices), SDN, and NFV via MEF’s LSO Presto Network Resources Provisioning (NRP) APIs.

“We are delighted to have the support of Cisco and Amartus for MEF’s OpenCS Packet WAN Use Case that will help drive industry innovation,” said Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF. “We especially want to thank Donald Hunter, Principal Engineer, Cisco and Bartosz Michalik, Technical Architect, Amartus for co-leading this important project.”

“We’re pleased that the MEF has selected Bartosz to co-lead this project,” said Marcin Paszkiewicz, CEO of Amartus. “Bartosz has contributed to the development of the LSO Presto API from the very outset, having participated in both of the MEF LSO Hackathons that have taken place to date, and I have no doubt that he’ll be highly successful in this project.”

https://www.mef.net/

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Crehan: Steeper Price Declines for Ethernet Networking Bandwidth

Much steeper server-class Ethernet networking price declines will result in a significant increase in bandwidth deployed, enabling the next phase of cloud services, according to most recent Server-Class Adapter & LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) Long-Range Forecast Report from Crehan Research Inc.

The firm forecasts that the dollar-per-gigabit cost of server-class Ethernet networking bandwidth will fall to less than one-fifth of its current level within five years, and that the related bandwidth deployed will correspondingly increase more than seven-fold during that same time period (see accompanying figure).

“Over the past five years, server-class Ethernet networking bandwidth has seen a robust increase of about thirty percent per year, in conjunction with ever-increasing data center network traffic and an annual dollar-per-gigabit price decline in the ten to fifteen percent range,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research.

“With the arrival of 25 gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 50GbE and 100GbE, we expect an inflection change in this trend, with total bandwidth increasing close to fifty percent annually and the cost-per-gigabit of that bandwidth declining by close to thirty percent annually.” He added, “In fact, we are already seeing examples where 25GbE, 50GbE and 100GbE data center Ethernet products have very small – and sometimes no – price premium over the comparable lower speed offering.”

Despite its projection of a very strong ramp in the adoption of 25GbE, 50GbE and 100GbE, Crehan Research expects 10GbE to remain a very important server-class Ethernet networking technology through 2020, especially in enterprise data centers. “Although there is a lot of excitement around 25GbE, 50GbE and 100GbE, and justifiably so,” Crehan said, “many enterprise data centers are still using 1GbE for server networking attach. A lot of these customers will likely see 10GbE, and especially 10GBASE-T, as their next network upgrade path.” In a prior long-range forecast report, the firm noted that in contrast to the past, many high-speed Ethernet networking speeds would coexist simultaneously, as the diverse segments of the market looked for more targeted solutions to meet their specific needs.

http://www.CrehanResearch.com

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Nokia to provide Tele2 with Cloud Packet Core

Tele2 has selected Nokia's Cloud Packet Core solution for deployment across its international network, first in Croatia and followed by Sweden, the Baltic states, Austria, the Netherlands and Kazakhstan.

The new generation mobile network will give Tele2 the flexibility, scale and performance necessary to support LTE consumer services on a larger scale, and further develop the foundation for 5G. Nokia will deliver its full Cloud Packet Core solution based on Cloud Mobile Gateway  and Cloud Mobility Manager, including the EMS and Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) Manager. The deal also includes Nokia's Professional Services.

"Like all leading operators, Tele2 is building out its packet core network to address the growth of consumer mobile broadband and an evolution path to 5G. Nokia is a packet core innovator and our cloud-native solution will allow Tele2 to connect a greater number and variety of devices and deliver a broader range of services. We look forward to helping our customer transform its mobile network infrastructure so they can offer new services faster, ensure scalability and performance, and evolve with confidence," stated Basil Alwan, president of IP/Optical Networks at Nokia.

http://www.nokia.com

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Singapore's StarHub Triple Upload Speed with Carrier Aggregation + 64 QAM

Singapore's StarHub completed a trial with Nokia that implmented carrier aggregation in the 1800MHz and 2600MHz bands and the 64 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) technique to triple the upload speed over its LTE network.  The companies reported peak upload speeds of 150 Mbps.

StarHub plans to introduce the technology commercially in the Marina Bay and Orchard areas of Singapore in time for the city state's year-end celebrations, allowing customers with compatible devices to enjoy a smoother mobile data experience while sharing high definition videos and photos in real time. At such speeds which are three times faster than what most 4G networks offer today, a 200MB 4K resolution video can be uploaded to the Internet in as little as 11 seconds.

Mock Pak Lum, Chief Technology Officer, StarHub, said: "The ability to upload quickly is fast becoming a necessity for our mobile customers. In fact, we saw a close to 50% increase in upload traffic year-on-year, as customers increasingly share high definition videos and photos instantly with the world. Collaborating with technology partners such as Nokia, we are driving innovation in 4G for the benefit of our customers amid continued growth in mobile data use."

http://www.nokia.com

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Verizon Confirms $4.8 Billion Acquisition of Yahoo

Verizon confirmed a deal to acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billion in cash. The deal does not include Yahoo’s cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings, its shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo’s convertible notes, certain minority investments, and Yahoo’s non-core patents (called the Excalibur portfolio). Yahoo will remain a registered, publicly traded investment company holding these assets, and will change its name once the deal closes.

Yahoo, which was founded in 1994 and is based in Sunnyvale, California, remains one the most visited news and media website, with over 7 billion views per month, along with leading web services with email, sports, etc..

Yahoo claims 600 million monthly active users. Yahoo's email service has 225 million monthly active users.

Verizon said the acquisition, combined with its AOL property, gives its more than 25 digital content/service brands in areas ranging from sports and entertainment news to online information services.

“Just over a year ago we acquired AOL to enhance our strategy of providing a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators and advertisers. The acquisition of Yahoo will put Verizon in a highly competitive position as a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising.” Lowell McAdam, Verizon Chairman and CEO
http://www.yahoo.com

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ADVA Expands its NFV Ensemble Harmony Ecosystem

ADVA Optical Networking announced ten new members of its network functions virtualization (NFV) Ensemble Harmony Ecosystem: Advantech, ASTRI, Check Point Software Technologies, Introspective Networks, LightRiver Technologies, Mirantis, Riverbed Technology, Versa Networks, and Walker and Associates.

ADVA said its Ensemble Harmony Ecosystem enables more than 30 partners to collaborate on solutions spanning 14 categories of VNFs.

“The Ensemble Harmony Ecosystem offers a comprehensive portfolio of onboarded VNFs with unparalleled variety and choice. The truth is, no other program in the industry even comes close,” commented Brian Irish, director, marketing, Ensemble Division, ADVA Optical Networking. “We know that today’s customers expect cooperation between vendors. They demand solutions that enable them to combine the most advanced and best-of-breed components from various suppliers. That’s why we’ve created an environment where the industry’s leading companies can collaborate to deliver even more value to customers and take NFV to the next level. We’ve done the heavy-lifting and made it incredibly simple for customers. They can now choose from a wide variety of virtualized functions and effortlessly realize the full promise of NFV.”

http://www.advaoptical.com

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