Google and Facebook Team Up for Pacific Light Cable Network

Facebook and Google are teaming up to build the highest capacity, trans-Pacific cable system to date.

The Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), which will stretch 12,800 km between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, will have an estimated cable capacity of 120 Tbps.  The cable is expected to enter service in the summer of 2018. The project is organized by Pacific Light Data Communication Co. Ltd., a new company based in Hong Kong.

TE SubCom has been appointed lead contractor. The cable will use TE SubCom’s C+L technology, a major step forward in available cable transmission capacity that effectively doubles the available bandwidth and capacity per fiber pair over a traditional C-band-only designed system.

Google noted that it has now taken an ownership stake in six submarine cables: PLCN, Unity, SJC, FASTER, MONET and Tannat.

http://www.te.com/usa-en/about-te/news-center/subcom-facebook-google-pldc-co-build-plcn-101216.html
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/new-undersea-cable-expands-capacity-for-Google-APAC-customers-and-users.html

Transpacific FASTER Cable Enters Service with 60 Tbps Capacity

Wednesday, June 29, 2016  Google, Submarine Cable, Undersea  No Comments

The world's highest capacity undersea cable system has entered commercial service -- six fiber pairs capable of delivering 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific.

FASTER is a 9,000km trans-Pacific cable connecting Oregon and two landing sites in Japan (Chiba and Mie prefectures). The system has extended connections to major hubs on the West Coast of the U.S. covering Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland and Seattle. The design features extremely low-loss fiber, without a dispersion compensation section, and the latest digital signal processing technology.

Google will have sole access to a dedicated fiber pair. This enables Google to carry 10 Tbps of traffic (100 wavelengths at 100 Gbps). In addition to greater capacity, the FASTER Cable System brings much needed diversity to East Asia, writes Alan Chin-Lun Cheung, Google Submarine Networking Infrastructure.

"From the very beginning of the project, we repeatedly said to each other, 'faster, Faster and FASTER,' and at one point it became the project name, and today it becomes a reality. This is the outcome of six members' collaborative contribution and expertise together with NEC's support," said Hiromitsu Todokoro, Chairman of the FASTER Management Committee.

"This was the first trans-Pacific submarine cable built solely by NEC Corporation, employing the latest 100Gbps digital coherent optical transmission technology. We are honored that the consortium entrusted us to build FASTER. Although we faced many challenges during the construction, I am truly glad that we were able to overcome these and to welcome this day," said Kenichi Yoneyama, Project Manager for FASTER at NEC's Submarine Network Division. "This epoch-making cable will not only bring benefits to the United States and Japan, but to the entire Asia-Pacific region."

Construction of the system was announced in August 2014 by the FASTER consortium, consisting of China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and Singtel.

http://www.nec.com
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/06/Google-Cloud-customers-run-at-the-speed-of-light-with-new-FASTER-undersea-pipe.html

• Google previously invested in the 7.68 Tbps Pacific Unity cable system, which came online in 2010.

Microsoft and Facebook to Build 160 Tbps Transatlantic Cable

Thursday, May 26, 2016  Facebook, Microsoft, Submarine Cable, Undersea  1 Comment

Microsoft and Facebook will jointly fund a new transatlantic cable system linking Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain.

The MAREA cable, which will be managed by Telxius, Telefónica’s new infrastructure company, will feature eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160 Tbps. The new 6,600 km submarine cable system will take a more southern route than other transatlantic cables, which mostly connect northern Europe to the New York/New Jersey region.

Construction is set to begin in August 2016 with completion targeted for October 2017.

“In order to better serve our customers and provide the type of reliable and low-latency connectivity they deserve, we are continuing to invest in new and innovative ways to continuously upgrade both the Microsoft Cloud and the global Internet infrastructure,” said Frank Rey, director, global network acquisition, Microsoft Corp. “This marks an important new step in building the next generation infrastructure of the Internet.”

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/2016/05/26/microsoft-and-facebook-to-build-subsea-cable-across-atlantic/

• Microsoft has previously announced investments with Hibernia and Aqua Comms for fiber connectivity from North America to Ireland and on to the United Kingdom.
• Microsoft is a consortium partner in the New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable Network.  Other partners include China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, and KT. TE SubCom its the cable supplier.

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Ericsson Cites Negative Industry Trends

Ericsson warned that its third quarter 2016 financial results will be below previous expectations.

The company cited "negative industry trends" from the first half of 2016, along with weaker demand for mobile broadband, especially in markets with weak macro-economic environments.

"Our result is significantly lower than we expected, with a particularly weak end of the quarter, and deviates from what we previously have communicated regarding market development. The negative industry trends have further accelerated affecting primarily Segment Networks. Continued progress in our cost reduction programs did not offset the lower sales and gross margin. More in-depth analysis remains to be done but current trends are expected to continue short-term. We will continue to drive the ongoing cost program and implement further reductions in cost of sales to meet the lower sales volumes," stated Jan Frykhammar, Ericsson President and CEO.

Key points:

• Sales declined by -14% YoY to SEK 51.1 (59.2) b., driven by slower development in Segment Networks where sales declined by -19%.
• Gross margin declined to 28% (34%) following lower volumes in Segment Networks, lower mobile broadband capacity sales, and higher share of services sales.
• Operating income declined to SEK 0.3 (5.1) b., including restructuring charges of SEK 1.3 b.
• Current trends are expected to continue short term.

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2048427

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Nokia Bell Labs Achieves 65 Tbps for Transoceanic Cable Systems

Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN) and Nokia Bell Labs have achieved record transmission capacity over a 6,600 km single mode fiber.

The lab trial demonstrated a total 65 Tbps transmission using submarine grade dual band erbium doped fiber amplifiers, which will help extend the capability of transoceanic cable systems to meet increasing data traffic demand. The trial leveraged Bell Labs' new Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS) technology, a new modulation technique that maximizes the distance and capacity of high-speed transmission in optical networks. Unlike traditional techniques whereby all constellation symbols are transmitted with the same occurrence, PCS intelligently uses non-uniform transmission of constellation symbols by reducing the occurrence of high power symbols, thus providing more resilience to noise and other impairments, and the ability to dynamically adapt to changing conditions.

"The future digital existence where everyone, everything and every system and process is connected will require a massive increase in network capacity and the ability to dynamically optimize this capacity. Probabilistic Constellation Shaping extends the limits of current optical transmission by utilizing novel modulation techniques to dramatically improve the performance and capacity needed for the new digital era that will be enabled by the Future X Network," stated Marcus Weldon, president of Nokia Bell Labs & Nokia CTO.

http://www.nokia.com

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U.S. Cellular Tests 5G for Fixed Wireless with Nokia

U.S. Cellular is working with Nokia to test 5G fixed wireless in both indoor and outdoor environments.

Nokia said the 5G testing used 28GHz spectrum through an experimental license from the FCC and Nokia's commercially-available, 5G-ready AirScale radio platform to stream six simultaneous 4K ultra high-definition videos.

For the outdoor testing, which was conducted at U.S. Cellular's technology center in Schaumburg, Ill., the team set up a point-to-point, clear line of sight scenario between a base station and user equipment. To test the impact of a real world environment, impairments such as dry wall, windows and metal panels were introduced, and testing was repeated by moving the base station and user equipment behind trees and foliage. The indoor testing was done in U.S. Cellular's lab. In both environments, the tests delivered speeds of 5Gbps and ultra-low latency under 2 milliseconds (ms) over the 5G wireless link.

Ricky Corker, executive vice president and head of North America for Nokia, said: "Nokia continues to accelerate its efforts to develop and test 5G in North America, and we're pleased to expand our relationship with U.S. Cellular with this newest 5G collaboration. Our tests show how 5G technology not only will enhance U.S. Cellular's ongoing efforts to stay ahead of the needs of their data-hungry customers and businesses, but also create opportunities for new services requiring high bandwidth and low latency."

http://www.nokia.com

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CoreSite Expands its Silicon Valley Data Center Campus

CoreSite Realty announced the opening of “SV7”, the fifth building on its Santa Clara campus, and its seventh building in the Silicon Valley market.  The company 62% of the 230,000 net rentable square feet of the new facility has already been leased. CoreSite commenced and completed construction on the entire build out of SV7 in order to continue to meet strong demand for multi-tenant data center space in the Silicon Valley market.

"We are pleased to announce the opening of SV7, which underlines our commitment to our continued growth in the important Silicon Valley market,” said Paul Szurek, CEO of CoreSite. “Santa Clara remains one of the top markets in the U.S., with strong data center demand driven by growth in the deployment of leading technology products and services, and we believe that our SV7 development provides a differentiated colocation solution to this robust market. Further, SV7 offers our customers seamless access to the network, cloud and enterprise communities of interest across CoreSite’s Santa Clara campus and the rest of CoreSite’s Silicon Valley data center market.”

http://www.coresite.com

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Laser Light Looks to Bring Space-based Optical Links to Equinix Data Centers

Laser Light Communications, which is planning to deploy an All Optical Global Communications Network (HALO) using a constellation of 8-12 Medium Earth Orbit satellites with sat-ground 100 Gbps optical up/down links, will establish its inaugural global Point of Presence (PoP) at Equinix’s DC11 International Business Exchange (IBX®) data center in the Washington, D.C. area.

Laser Light will commence installation, testing and demonstration of its leading-edge laser communications and SD-WAN equipment using the DC11 facility. Once operational, the HALO satellite constellation will offer its Optical Satellite as a Service (OSaaS) - SpaceCable services –  to carriers, enterprises and government customers at Equinix facilities around the globe, providing a seamless all-optical communications system, through its hybrid satellite-terrestrial network, capable of quickly and cost-effectively connecting any two points on the globe with 100Gbps service links.  

Laser Light said space-based laser communication technology – known as Free Space Optics – stems from 20+ years of civil science and federal investments and deployments by government entities such as Department of Defense (DOD), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Space Agency (JSA).

http://www.equinix.com
http://www.laserlightcomms.com/

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Mist Raises $28 Million for Cloud-enabled Wi-Fi + Bluetooth

Mist, a start-up based in Cupertino, California, raised $28 million in Series B funding for its smart wireless networking that integrates Wi-Fi and Bluetooth location services.

Mist said its platform lets you think centrally and act locally through a combination of cloud-based intelligence and on premises enterprise-grade Access Points. Machine learning automates key tasks like event correlation, location, and clustering to dramatically simplify wireless operations. The platform collects ongoing real-time state information from every mobile device on the network. It leverages virtual BLE (vBLE) beacons to eliminate the setup and management hassles of physical beacons.

Additional features:

• Real-time visibility into user Radio Frequency (RF) environment - “RF glasses” give administrators a real-time view of the RF environment from the mobile device’s perspective. If a wireless user complains about a Wi-Fi or BLE problem, the Mist platform can be used to easily visualize in real-time exactly what their wireless environment looks like for accurate troubleshooting.
• BLE Asset tracking – Mist is the first vendor to deliver deep analytics on both Wi-Fi and BLE using a single converged platform (Access Points and cloud). Administrators can easily track the average and maximum number of wireless users or BLE-enabled devices in a given location, the number of visits per zone, who is visiting each zone, and what the wireless experience was during each visit.
• BT11 Access Point – The Mist BT11 is an industry-first enterprise-grade Access Point for Bluetooth Low Energy (version 4.2). It has a 16 antenna element steerable directional antenna and one omni-directional element array for the highest location accuracy of any BLE AP on the market. In addition, the BT11 has a dedicated radio for collecting data and sharing it with the Mist cloud for detailed location analytics and high accuracy indoor location services (down to one-meter accuracy with sub-second latency).

The funding was led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), with additional funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Cisco Investments. With the latest round of financing, Karim Faris, General Partner at GV, has joined Mist’s Board of Directors.

“The latest round of financing will help us further our goal of delivering amazing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth experiences to the billions of people using smartphones, tablets and laptops,” said Sujai Hajela, CEO and co-founder of Mist. “At the same time, we are committed to simplifying wireless operations and lowering IT costs by being the first vendor to bring big data and machine learning at web scale to wireless networking.”

“Mist is addressing two of the biggest issues in mobility today: reliable Wi-Fi that is easy to operate at web scale, and accurate Bluetooth location services that are seamless to deploy in any environment,” said GV General Partner Karim Faris. “Mist’s cloud-based platform uses advanced machine learning to deliver unprecedented automation and insight. This means that organizations like corporations, hotels, stores, hospitals, and universities can interact with their mobile users in exciting new ways.”

http://www.mist.com

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KodaCloud Targets AI-powered Wi-Fi Management for Business

KodaCloud, a start-up based in Campbell, California emerged from stealth to unveil its Cloud Service Wi-Fi powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for enterprises.

KodaCloud’s service, which is now commercially available, consists of a network of Wi-Fi Access Points (AP) that are shipped directly to customer location(s), without the need for a customer to buy equipment or a partner to manage an inventory or shipments. With the use of web-based dashboard, or the use of a smartphone app, a customer or partner can install and activate a Wi-Fi business network in minutes with AP-to-cloud activation using existing LAN and Internet. KodaCloud then delivers and manages Wi-Fi networks for a monthly fee.

“The key value of KodaCloud’s disruptive service is that customers and partners do not have to carry the burden of buying and managing equipment and inventory,” said Iain Gillott, president and founder of iGR. “Rather than simply monitoring network status from the cloud, KodaCloud actually manages the network in real time. Customers and partners use the KodaCloud app to monitor their network and take action as necessary, direct from their smartphone or mobile device.”

As for AI, KodaCloud said its service monitors, learns, adapts and automatically acts to adjust interference parameters in all customer networks using learning and real-time calculations with contextual information in real time and without the active involvement of a network IT person. The patented AI service reduces or removes the need for dedicated IT teams to constantly monitor or manage network interference, or respond to network alerts that identify a problem without a solution.

http://www.kodacloud.com

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