Equinix Brings Submarine Cable Connections to its Data Centers

Equinix's data center in Miami will host the Florida cable landing equipment of the Monet submarine cable system.

The Monet submarine cable, which will deliver 60 terabits of capacity between the U.S. and Brazil, is owned by Algar Telecom (a Brazilian telecom company and ISP), Angola Cables, Antel (the Uruguayan telecom company) and Google, which is also the U.S. landing party for Monet. Construction of the system is underway and is expected to be completed in 2017.

The Monet cable will terminate in the U.S. at Equinix's MI3 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center. In Brazil, Monet will land in Fortaleza and Praia Grande near São Paulo. Landing facilities in those markets are to be provided by Angola Cables in Fortaleza and Google in Praia Grande.

Equinix said this represents an industry first for deploying an open submarine cable architecture together with an integrated cable landing station; colocation and interconnection inside a network-dense, multi-tenant data center.

Current submarine cable projects that Equinix is engaged with and has publically announced include:  Southern Cross Cable Network (California - Sydney); Aqua Comms (New York - London); Hibernia Express (New York - London); Cinia (Germany - Finland); Trident (Australia - Indonesia - Singapore); Globenet (Florida - Brazil); Asia Pacific Gateway (China - Hong Kong - Japan - South Korea - Malaysia - Taiwan - Thailand - Vietnam - Singapore); Hawaiki Cable Limited (U.S. – Australia – New Zealand); Gulf Bridge International (Middle East - Europe); FASTER (U.S. West Coast - Japan); Seaborn Networks (New York - Sao Paulo); and Monet (Florida - Brazil).

"As data traffic continues to grow, from Facebook videos and Instagram selfies to Office 365 sessions and IoT connected devices, there is an unprecedented surge in construction of new submarine cables that currently carry 99 percent of this and all Internet traffic between continents. The investors in these new submarine cable systems, which now include large cloud service providers and content companies, are finding that when these submarine cables terminate on land, Equinix data centers are the optimal location to immediately connect these point to point submarine cables into a single location that directly connects to thousands of networks," stated Ihab Tarazi, CTO, Equinix.

http://www.equinix.com
http://angolacables.co.ao/en/network/monet

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Verizon Acquires Start-up Focused on LED Lighting

Verizon agreed to acquire Sensity Systems, a start-up focused on LED lighting solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Sensity, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, offers a sensor-based, multiservice IoT platform. The company claims 42 smart city installations across the globe supplied through its ecosystem partners that have enabled facility and municipal lighting owners to link energy efficiency and cost savings to the improvement of business goals such as public safety, parking control, asset management and analytics.

Mike Lanman, senior vice president - Enterprise Products and IoT at Verizon, said: “Sensity is a leading provider of IoT solutions for smart communities with a strong ecosystem of partners, and this transaction will accelerate the deployment of large-scale implementations that will drive the digital transformation of cities, universities and venues. Verizon is uniquely positioned through its infrastructure investments at the network, platform and application levels to provide holistic solutions that empower communities to address their most pervasive challenges.”

Verizon is working on connected-intelligent solutions including parking, lighting, traffic management and security that improve livability, resiliency and public safety for local communities.The company’s Smart Communities organization, which is a part of its IoT business, is also simplifying the creation of IoT applications through ThingSpace.

http://www.sensity.com
http://www.verizon.com

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CenturyLink Rolls with G.fast

CenturyLink claims the largest G.fast deployment in the United States: Platteville, Wisconsin, where the carrier has installed G.fast technology in 44 multi-dwelling units (MDUs) to provide internet speeds of up to 500 Mbps and higher to nearly 800 apartments.

CenturyLink said it is evaluating other locations, beyond MDUs, where G.fast technology can be used to give customers access to faster speeds, such as fiber-fed multi-tenant units (MTUs) and neighborhoods where fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) allows for G.fast to push higher speeds over the short amount of copper into the home.

The rollout uses the Calix AXOS G.fast solution, with all systems and services managed via the cloud through Calix's Compass Consumer Connect Plus software.

In 2015, CenturyLink deployed fiber-to-the-premises technology to the majority of residential and business customers in Platteville to upgrade the CenturyLink Televideo TV service to CenturyLink Prism TV service and to offer broadband speeds up to 1 Gbps.

"We saw a great opportunity to use existing copper assets in our Platteville network to bring ultra-fast internet speeds to customers who live in areas that typically don't have access to these new broadband technologies delivering higher speeds," said Aamir Hussain, CenturyLink executive vice president and chief technology officer. "We take a fiber-first approach when deploying faster broadband speeds but enabling G.fast over copper infrastructure helps us reduce costs, speed time to market and effectively connect our customers to the power of the digital world in areas where fiber deployment is less feasible."
 
http://www.centurylink.com

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Crehan: Spending Spikes for Branded Data Center Ethernet Switches

In the first half of 2016, spending on branded data center Ethernet switches saw the strongest growth since the first half of 2012, according to the most recent report from Crehan Research Inc.

The market’s growth rate in the first half of 2016 approximately doubled the rate seen in the previous two years leading to record results, according to the report.

“Customer spending and deployments of branded data center Ethernet switches accelerated significantly during the first half of this year due to a number of factors," said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research.

“First, we have seen the recent introduction of numerous products with compelling features and value propositions including programmability, automation, and telemetry, which help to enable software-defined data center networks. Second, we are seeing the price per gigabit of bandwidth drop significantly, enticing customers to upgrade their existing infrastructure. And lastly, we are seeing a lot of early excitement and interest around 100 gigabit Ethernet switching, where data center shipments have gone from about ten thousand ports in the first half of 2015 to well over one-hundred thousand ports in the first half of 2016."

Some highlights:

• Over half of all spending on branded data center Ethernet switches during the first half of 2016 was on Cisco products, with particularly strong adoption of the company’s Nexus 3000 and 9000 lines. 
• The strongest vendor revenue growth during the same time period was seen by Arista and Huawei, each of which increased revenues by over thirty percent in comparison to the first half of 2015. 
• Juniper Networks’ revenue also had a very healthy increase – in the twenty-percent range – as its QFX portfolio of data center Ethernet switches saw strong acceptance within the telco, cable and cloud service provider markets.

http://www.crehanresearch.com/

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Vertical Systems: Mid-Year 2016 Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARD

Vertical Systems Group published its Mid-Year 2016 Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARD (in rank order based on retail port share): Orange Business (France), Colt (U.K.), BT Global Services (U.K.), AT&T (U.S.), Level 3 (U.S.), Verizon (U.S.) and NTT (Japan).

The Global Provider LEADERBOARD is the industry's benchmark for multinational Ethernet network market presence, ranking companies that hold a 4% or higher share of billable retail ports at sites outside of their respective home countries.

There were no new entrants to the LEADERBOARD based on mid-2016 share results. However, Level 3 moved up from sixth to fifth position ahead of Verizon. Level 3 also had the fastest growth in Global Provider ports among the LEADERBOARD-ranked companies during the first half of 2016.

The Challenge Tier of Global Providers includes companies with share between 2% and 4% of this defined market. Seven companies qualify for the Mid-2016 Challenge Tier (in alphabetical order): Cogent (U.S.), Global Cloud Xchange (India), SingTel (Singapore), T-Systems (Germany), Tata Communications (India), Telefonica Worldwide (Spain) and Vodafone (U.K.).

"2016 is the beginning of a technological transformation of global Ethernet services, as carriers worldwide enhance offerings enabled by SDN, NFV and LSO," said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group. "Winning providers will be those that best utilize these technologies to improve service agility, cost control and deployment speed."

The Market Player tier includes all Global Providers with port share below 2%. Companies in the Market Player tier are as follows (Note - in alphabetical order): Bell Canada (Canada), Bezeq (Israel), CAT Telecom (Thailand), CenturyLink (U.S.), China Telecom (China), China Unicom (China), Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), Easynet Global Services (U.K.), Eir (Ireland), Embratel (Brazil), euNetworks (U.K.),Exponential-e (U.K.), Globe (Philippines), GlobeNet (Brazil), GTT (U.S.), Hutchinson Global (Hong Kong), Indosat (Indonesia), Interoute (U.K.), KDDI (Japan), Korea Telecom (Korea), KPN International (Netherlands), Liberty Global (Netherlands), Masergy (U.S.), PCCW Global (Hong Kong), PLDT (Philippines), Rogers (Canada), Rostelecom (Russia), Softbank Telecom (Japan), Spark (New Zealand), Sparkle (Italy), StarHub (Singapore), Symphony (Thailand), TDC (Denmark), Telecom Italia (Italy), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia), Telenor (Norway), Telia (Sweden), Telin (Singapore), Telkom South Africa (South Africa), TelMex (Mexico), Telstra (Australia), Vector (New Zealand), Virgin Media Business (U.K.), XO (U.S.), Zayo Group (U.S.), and other providers selling Ethernet services outside their home country.

http://www.verticalsystems.com

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Ranovus Debuts Multi-wavelength Quantum Dot Laser Transceiver

Ranovus, a start-up based in Ottawa, introduced a highly-scalable, Optical Engine and 200Gbps CFP2 optical transceiver solution for the Data Center Interconnect applications and based on its multi-wavelength Quantum Dot Laser (QDL) technology.

Highlights of Ranovus’ platform solution:

• A single Quantum Dot Laser capable of generating multiple wavelengths simultaneously
• Ring Resonators based SiP Modulators providing an efficient wavelength sensitive way to modulate a WDM optical signal without multiplexing or de-multiplexing architectures
• Advanced Electronics to enable PAM4 modulation format for Ethernet interfaces at 50Gb/s per lane and beyond
• Supporting links of 4.8 Tbps in the C-band
• Supporting various DCI transport distances from 15 to 120km

“In the mid 1990s the optical communication industry was revolutionized through the invention of multi-wavelength amplifiers.  Today we are announcing the availability of the World’s First multi-wavelength subsystem based on a single Quantum Dot Laser source.  Complementing such innovation with our highly integrated Silicon Photonics and high speed IC building blocks, will enable the creation of a new miniaturization, cost and power consumption paradigm for Inter/Intra Data Centre connectivity, 5G wireless backhaul, Metro and Access networks” said Hamid Arabzadeh, Chairman of the board, President and CEO of Ranovus. “I’m pleased to announce the availability of our 200Gbps DCI solution using our platform technologies to enable massive data center network connectivity”.

http://www.ranovus.com

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Renesas to Acquire Intersil for $3.2 Billion

Renesas Electronics Corporation agreed to acquire Intersil for US$22.50 per share in cash, representing an aggregate equity value of approximately US$3.2 billion (approximately 321.9 billion yen at an exchange rate of 100 yen to the dollar).

Renesas supplies microcontroller (MCU) and system-on-chip (SoC) products and technologies.  Intersil specializes in power management and precision analog capabilities.

The acquisition is also expected to expand Renesas’ product portfolio, particularly for analog devices, where the market is expected to increase by approximately US$3.9 billion by 2020.

“Renesas is accelerating its focus of resources in automotive, industrial, infrastructure, and the rapidly growing IoT segments to aggressively grow its global business and maintain its position as a leading provider. Intersil’s extensive portfolio of analog and power devices as well as its strength in the automotive, industrial, and broad-based segments complement many of Renesas’ initiatives in these areas,” said Bunsei Kure, Representative Director, President and CEO of Renesas Electronics Corporation. “We believe that this compelling and complementary combination will bring significant synergies and cross selling opportunities as well as a system solution proposition which will pave the way for Renesas to strengthen its position as a leader in the global semiconductor market while delivering value to its customers with a unique product offering.”

http://ir.intersil.com

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