ITU Bumps G.fast to 2Gbps, Adds Support for Coax

The ITU-T Study Group 15 has doubled the G.fast standard to support top down link speeds of 2 Gbps.

The first ITU standard harnesses up to 106MHZ of spectrum frequency to deliver top speeds of 1Gbps on copper lines of less than 50 meters. The updated standard will allow 212MHz to be used.  The amendment also enables G.fast to be used over coaxial copper cables.

The amendment also specifies a mechanism for dynamic time assessment, functionality that enables upstream or downstream transmission to exploit G.fast’s full aggregate net data rate. This functionality will improve users’ broadband experience by increasing upload or download speeds in line with the demands of the applications in use.

In addition, the new ITU-T G.7701 “Common Control Aspects” describes commonalities in SDN and ASON network management-control, covering common SDN and ASON control approaches as they relate to transport resources and their representation, control components, control communications, and naming and addressing.

http://newslog.itu.int/archives/1400

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Marvell Unveils its 25GbE Data Center Solution

Marvell introduced its 25 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) end-to-end data center solution comprised of its Prestera 98CX84xx family of 25G Ethernet (GbE) switches and Alaska C 88X5123 and 88X5113 Ethernet transceivers, all fully compliant with the IEEE 25GbE and 100GbE standards.

The new Prestera 98CX84xx switch family is designed specifically for mainstream data center high-performance server applications and addresses the most common top of rack (ToR) port configurations.  The Prestera devices are integrated with 25GbE PHYs, enabling data centers to break the 1W per 25G port barrier for 25G ToR applications.

Marvell's Prestera 98CX84xx switches also include an abstraction layer which integrates seamlessly with Open Computing Project (OCP) switch abstraction interface (SAI) application program interfaces (APIs). Marvell provides an OpenSwitch driver plug-in that facilitates easy integration with the OpenSwitch application stack.

The Alaska C 88X5123 Ethernet transceiver enables customers to support the new IEEE 25GbE specifications on their existing switch ASICs without the expensive investment involved in new silicon development.

The Alaska C 88X5113 Ethernet transceiver, a 40G Ethernet to 25G Ethernet Gearbox device, enables a 40GbE stream to be translated to a 25G Ethernet stream. This device is purpose-built to enable existing 40GbE-capable server NIC controllers to support native 25GbE, hastening the availability of 25GbE-capable NICs.

"I believe Marvell's 25GbE-optimized devices are a significant contribution to the industry, helping drive the adoption of 25GbE server access to meet increasing bandwidth demands in data centers," said Michael Zimmerman, vice president and general manager, Connectivity, Storage and Infrastructure (CSI) Business Unit at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. "Our newest 25G Ethernet switch devices, PHY and Gearbox devices extend Marvell's leadership of providing best-in-class networking solutions optimized for high performance, cost effective, and energy-efficient computing."

http://www.marvell.com/

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T-Mobile US Continues to Capture Mobile Share

In the third quarter of 2016, T-Mobile US added 2.0 million total net customers while delivering 13% year-over-year growth in service revenue, $366 million in net income, and $2.6 billion in Adjusted EBITDA.

“That’s 14 quarters in a row that T-Mobile has won share from the competition,” said John Legere, President and CEO of T-Mobile. “The Un-carrier is delivering. We took share and grew our customer base while producing both financial growth and shareholder value. Most importantly, we are delivering results for both customers and shareholders alike.”

Some highlights:

• Service revenues for the third quarter of 2016 grew by 13% year-over-year, primarily due to continued growth in T-Mobile’s customer base. 
• T-Mobile US total customer base now stands at more than 69 million. 
• This was the fourteenth consecutive quarter in which the vompany has generated more than 1 million net customer additions.
• Branded prepaid net customer additions were 684,000, which was the second best quarterly performance in company history. 
• Wholesale net customer additions were 317,000 in the third quarter of 2016.
• Branded postpaid phone churn was 1.32% in the third quarter of 2016, up 5 basis points compared to 1.27% in the second quarter of 2016 and down 14 basis points compared to 1.46% in the third quarter of 2015. 
• Branded prepaid churn was 3.82% in the third quarter of 2016, compared to 3.91% in the second quarter of 2016 and 4.09% in the third quarter of 2015.
• Branded postpaid phone Average Revenue per User (ARPU) of $48.15 in the third quarter of 2016 was up 2.2% sequentially and generally stable year-over-year. 
• T-Mobile noted that it is continuing to build out Extended Range LTE, which operates on the company's low-band 700 MHz A-Block spectrum, to enhance coverage and in-building performance. 
• Extended Range LTE currently covers more than 225 million people in 366 market areas. In the third quarter of 2016, T-Mobile closed on several previously announced transactions that increased its total low-band spectrum holdings to 260 million POPs. The company expects to close on additional previously announced transactions in the fourth quarter of 2016, bringing its total low-band spectrum holdings to 272 million POPs upon closing.
• Q3 capital expenditures were $1.2 billion, down from $1.3 billion in the second quarter of 2016 and up from $1.1 billion in the third quarter of 2015. Cash capital expenditures for the full-year 2016 are expected to be in the range of $4.5 to $4.7 billion, narrowing the previous guidance range of $4.5 to $4.8 billion.

http://investor.t-mobile.com/event

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Orange Business Signs Up a Pet Tracking Service for IoT Service

Orange Business Services will provide IoT connectivity services to Tractive, an Austria-based developer of hardware, apps and gadgets for pet owners.

Specifically, Orange Business Services will provide Tractive with SIM cards for IoT connectivity in the Tractive GPS product, which helps pet owners locate their pets. The deal provides global connectivity with borderless service for pet owners.

“For the services we provide to loving pet owners, seamless and interruption-resistant connectivity on a global scale is absolutely key. The Orange Business Services solution caters to our customers’ needs and requirements. We are especially impressed with the global approach from Orange and the close teamwork with our own experts. They are not just a provider, but a trusted partner for us with our future expansion,” said Michael Hurnaus, CEO, Tractive.

“Tractive’s intention to leverage IoT technology for the benefit of millions of pets and their owners worldwide clearly demands a reliable and trustworthy global provider, such as Orange. With our proven expertise across the full spectrum of IoT services, we are very happy to have been selected as their provider of choice and to help enable their global growth ambitions,” said Anne-Sophie Lotgering, senior vice president, Europe, Russia and CIS, Orange Business Services.

The Orange Business Services IoT connectivity service is part of Datavenue, a modular IoT and Analytics solution.

http://www.orange-business.com/en

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Intel Capital Bets $38M on a Dozen Start-ups

Intel Capital announced new investments totaling more than $38 million in 12 technology start-ups:

Autonomous Machines

Chronocam (Paris, France) - develops innovative computer vision sensors and systems for a variety of applications in autonomous navigation and connected objects. The company wants to establish a new computer vision standard by unlocking a paradigm shift in vision sensing and processing inspired by the human eye.

Embodied (Pasadena, California), - co-founded by the former CTO of iRobot, maker of Roomba, and a world-renowned professor of robotics and neuroscience from the University of Southern California. Embodied will leverage advances in machine perception, cognition and learning for affordable personal robots.

Perrone Robotics (Charlottesville, Virginia) - provides software and solutions that make it easier to build robust mobile autonomous robotics applications. Its technology helps researchers and engineers develop their partial and fully autonomous vehicle and robotics applications.

Data and Connectivity

Eazytec (Jiangsu, China) - a smart city developer and service provider with proprietary core firmware (BIOS) technology. Its headquarters and research park, located in Yixing City, Jiangsu Province, have been identified as a national science and technology business incubator in China. The company specializes in application software and firmware development, system integration, and data center services.

Grand Chip Microelectronics (aka Kangxi Communication Technologies) (Shanghai, China) - is committed to delivering high-performance, high-linearity and highly integrated Wi-Fi front-end devices for WLAN infrastructure, wireless connectivity on cellular platforms and the Internet of Things.

Paxata (Redwood City, California) - is the leading enterprise-grade, self-service business information platform that serves the needs of both the business consumer and IT. With Paxata, business analysts, data engineers and data scientists are able to instantaneously transform raw data to information ready for business analysis with accuracy and efficiency.

StealthMine (Sunnyvale, California ) enables enterprise applications to run on encrypted data. The technology provides full data insulation against server, network, storage, database attacks and insider compromises.

Sports and Health

CubeWorks (Ann Harbor, Michigan) - delivers the next generation in millimeter-scale computing with its Cubisens platform, which enables the first truly autonomous wireless sensing platform measuring less than a millimeter. Cubisens systems are able to sense and process their environment, wirelessly transmit the results, or store them for later usage.

Kinduct (Halifax, Canada) - provides cloud-based data and analytics software for sport organizations, military and public safety units, physical medicine clinics, and health and wellness institutions.

K4Connect (Raleigh, North Carolina) - creates solutions that serve older adults and individuals living with disabilities by integrating the latest smart technologies and applications into a single responsive system. Its first solution, K4Community, is specifically designed for residents of senior living communities, creating smarter and healthier living environments, as well as fostering family and community engagement, while also providing the operators with the insights and analytics needed to offer world-class care and hospitality.

Virtual Reality

Dysonics (San Francisco, California) - leverages more than 20 years of academic research to deliver patented technologies that yield lifelike 360-degree sound experiences over headphones. Dysonics creates immersive audio software and hardware products for capture, creation and playback of next-generation content including virtual reality.

InContext Solutions (Chicago, Illinois) - develops scalable, cloud-based virtual reality solutions for retail that provide important insights for manufacturers and retailers. The company’s enterprise SaaS VR platform and services help brands visualize new concepts and better understand shopper behavior in a rapidly evolving retail space – more efficiently and profitably.

https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-capital-announces-38m-new-investments/

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Swisscom Deploys Red Hat OpenStack Platform

Swisscom has selected Red Hat as its technology partner to help the company deliver a modern, agile, and highly scalable cloud platform. Swisscom is deploying Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Virtualization as the basis of its new cloud infrastructure.

Red Hat said its OpenStack Platform now provides the infrastructure foundation needed for Swisscom’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

“Our mission at Swisscom is to give every citizen in Switzerland a piece of the cloud, and we are one of the first service providers in Europe to launch a publicly available, commercial cloud offering at the scale we have. Red Hat OpenStack Platform enables us to take our cloud strategy one step further, helping us to be flexible in multiple senses. We can scale up and down our clusters; we can fully automate our deployments; and we have limited our downtime when we make changes in production. As a result, we are proud to say we now have organizations outside of Switzerland using our solution,” stated Marco Hochstrasser, head of Cloud Platform Development, Swisscom.

http://www.swisscom.com

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Boston-based Investment Firm to Acquire Masergy

Berkshire Partners LLC, a Boston-based investment firm, agreed to acquire a majority interest in Masergy Communications, a global service provider offering hybrid networking, managed security and cloud communications solutions to medium and large enterprise customers.

Masergy, which is headquartered in Plano, Texas, serves enterprise clients in over 75 countries.

"We think Berkshire Partners is the ideal partner as we embark upon the next chapter of our growth strategy," said Chris MacFarland, Chairman and CEO of Masergy. "Berkshire brings the industry expertise required to help us fulfill our vision."

"We are excited to partner with Chris and his exceptional team," added Tom Kuo, Managing Director at Berkshire Partners. "Given the accelerating rate of change across the information technology landscape, there are significant opportunities for Masergy to continue its impressive growth and this is a team, company and culture that we are excited to invest behind."

http://www.masergy.com

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WiGig USB Adapter Gains Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Status

Peraso, a fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Toronto, announced that its WiGig USB Adapter Reference Design Kit is part of the Wi-Fi Alliance test bed for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WiGig and among the first products to achieve certification.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WiGig is an interoperability certification program from the Wi-Fi Alliance, with products based on technology defined in the IEEE 802.11ad specification.

Peraso has been an active participant in the standardization of 60GHz technology and development of the IEEE 802.11ad specification.

Peraso is currently in production with WiGig IC solutions, addressing both next generation Wi-Fi opportunities in the consumer electronics (CE) space, as well as outdoor devices in the 60 GHz wireless infrastructure space, and continues as a vital player in the Wi-Fi Alliance compliance efforts.

"We congratulate Peraso on achieving selection to the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WiGigTM test bed," said Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa. "Peraso's participation in the development of this program has been instrumental in the achievement of an industry-wide certification for this program."

WiGig technology delivers multi-gigabit connectivity in the uncongested 60GHz spectrum, providing unparalleled speed and performance, where throughput, low latency and reliability are essential.

http://www.perasotech.com

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Huawei Spain and Orange Hit 1.5 Gbps on a 4.5G Network

Huawei Spain and Orange reported download speeds of 1.5 Gbps on a 4.5G network, during tests in Valencia.

Huawei deployed a LTE solution based on the 3GPP LTE Advanced Pro standard. The average speed obtained was 1.54 Gbps.

Huawei said this milestone has been made possible by technological advances on LTE-Advanced Pro (also called 4.5G), which include:

• Carrier aggregation up to 5 frequencies of 800, 1800, 2600 and 3500 MHz.
• Simultaneous use of FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Duplexing Time Division).
• MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) 4x4 (4 transmission paths, 4 reception).
• 256QAM modulation, which allows for the sending of more bits in the same radio spectrum.

http://www.huawei.com

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