Network Visibility 2017 - CenturyLink

To really understand how your application is performing it is critical to gain end-to-end visibility across the network, says Andy Huckridge, Director of Service Provider Solutions at Gigamon. You have to be able to measure performance across multiple layers and network boundaries. Customers are more demanding these days, says Drew Flechsig, Director of Network Policy, Traffic and Security for CenturyLink.  Customers want visibility at Layer...

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Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF – Automating Carrier Networks

Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF provides an update on key MEF initiatives to enable orchestrated Third Network services over automated networks.  He notes that MEF is seeing “huge demand” to develop “East-West” APIs  for orchestration across multiple providers. MEF also is working on “North-South” APIs to orchestrate services over multiple technology domains within a single operator.  Stay tuned for news in the coming months about MEF’s...

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Juniper Unveils Unite Cloud Framework for Hybrid Environments

Juniper Networks introduced "Unite Cloud" - a data center framework for helping enterprises to simplify the creation and management of hybrid, multi-cloud environments.  The solution complements the previously announced Unite Campus and Unite Cloud-Enabled Branch solutions to further broaden Juniper's Unite architecture. Juniper's Unite Cloud is aimed at building and managing many virtualized elements spread across multiple geographies and...

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AT&T Advances Project AirGig to Trials

AT&T reported progress with its Project AirGig, which aims to deploy low-cost plastic antennas along medium-voltage power lines as a means of propagating millimeter wave (mmWave) signals that can be used for 4G LTE and 5G multi-gigabit mobile and fixed deployments. AT&T confirmed that it is now in advanced discussions with power companies and others to trial Project AirGig in at least two locations by this fall. One location will be in the...

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FCC Eliminates Two Rules in First Meeting

The FCC, now under the Chairmanship of Ajit Pai, announced the elimination of two public inspection file requirements: (i) the requirement that commercial broadcast stations retain in their public inspection file copies of letters and emails from the public; and (ii) the requirement that cable operators maintain for public inspection the designation and location of the cable system’s principal headend. The FCC said the eliminating the correspondence...

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Telefónica Picks Huawei for Large Scale Virtual EPC in 13 countries

Telefónica has selected Huawei for building a large scale virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) covering eleven countries in Latin America:  Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, México, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala; and two in Europe: Germany and Spain. Huawei’s vEPC solution, named CloudEPC, enables carriers to build agile networks that quickly scale to match the performance demands of new services, reduce production...

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Nokia Extends IP/MPLS for Power Distribution Smart Grids

Nokia introduced its 7705 SAR-Hm, an LTE/3G wireless router aimed bring IP/MPLS to the distribution networks of utilities and other vertical applications. Nokia noted that many power utilities currently use narrowband or proprietary wireless solutions to connect their field devices to each other and the control center, with most remote devices have no connectivity at all. The SAR-Hm uses standards-based LTE/3G and IP/MPLS technologies, and security...

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DISH Acquires DBS and OTT Assets from EchoStar

DISH Network Corporation will acquire certain EchoStar assets and operations, including its EchoStar Technologies hardware and software development group, its national and regional uplink business, its managed fiber backhaul network serving all U.S. DMAs and its OTT development group, in exchange for DISH’s 80 percent economic interest in Hughes Retail Group held in the form of a tracking stock. The deal also transfers to DISH the 10 percent stake...

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Network Visibility 2017 - Verizon

Network operators are in the early days of a significant  transformation as they provide visibility and insight into the performance of applications running across their infrastructure.  Paul Hooper, CEO of Gigamon, provides perspective on the power of visibility solutions to transform networks. Customers want better visibility and Verizon is now providing end-to-end metrics of network services, says Greg Harris, Associate Director of...

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Dense Fiber Connectivity for New York City

ZENFI is rolling out over 400 route miles of high-density fiber cabling across New York City to serve the growing demand for bandwidth especially from mobile networks. Walter Cannon, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at ZenFi,  discusses the wholesale fiber market in NYC, including the recent partnership with Cross River Fiber of New Jersey to collaborate on metro cross-connects across the wider metropolitan region. Filmed at PTC'17...

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Telstra Launches Gigabit LTE with Ericsson, Qualcomm

Telstra is launching commercial Gigabit LTE service is select capital cities across Australia. The gigabit downlink performance is enabled by LTE Advanced features including 4x4 MIMO, 3CA (Three Carrier Aggregation) and higher order modulation (256QAM). Ericsson is a key technology provider for the rollout. At its "Gigabit LTE Experience" event in Sydney, Telstra said that n addition to Gigabit LTE speeds on the downlink, its new network capability...

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F5 Networks Names François Locoh-Donou as CEO

F5 Networks announced the appointment of François Locoh-Donou as its new President and CEO.  He will also served on the company's Board of Directors. Locoh-Donou succeeds current President and CEO, John McAdam, who will remain a Director on F5's Board upon his retirement on April 3, 2017. Since McAdam joined in 2000, he has led F5 to $2.0 billion in annual revenue, with 49 of the Fortune 50 as customers, and numerous industry and community...

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25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium Completes 25G/50G Plugfest

The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium announced record participation in, and successful completion of, the first 25G and 50G Ethernet plugfest. The plugfest, which was held at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) in Durham, New Hampshire, provided a forum where consortium members could collaborate and ensure interoperability of feature sets and configurability between their products. Sixteen companies attended the week-long...

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Keysight to Acquire Ixia for $1.6 Billion

Keysight Technologies (formerly Agilent's test and measurement group) agreed to acquire Ixia for $1.6 billion in cash. Ixia shareholders will receive $19.65 per share in cash, representing a premium of approximately 45 percent to Ixia’s unaffected closing stock price on Dec. 1, 2016, the last trading day prior to media reports that Ixia was considering strategic alternatives, and a premium of approximately 38 percent to the Ixia’s unaffected 52-week...

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Intel Promotes Aicha Evans

Intel has promoted Aicha S. Evans from corporate vice president to senior vice president. She is general manager of the Communication and Devices Group at Intel and is responsible for driving wireless communications for all Intel platforms. Evans joined Intel in 2006, was elected to corporate vice president in 2014, and is based in Santa Clara, California. Intel also announced the promotion of Steven R. Rodgers from senior vice president to executive...

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Second Intelsat Epic Enters Service

Intelsat 33e, the second of the Intelsat EpicNG high throughput satellites (HTS), successfully completed all in-orbit testing and entered service on 29 January 2017. Intelsat 33e was manufactured by Boeing and is equipped with the most advanced digital payload on a commercial spacecraft. Intelsat 33e will extend Intelsat’s high throughput capacity in both C- and Ku-band from the Americas to include Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific,...

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Network Visibility 2017 - Level 3 Communications

Managing the customer experience has to be the highest priority for Service Providers, says Andy Huckridge, Director of Service Provider Solutions at Gigamon.  The next wave of software-defined services has started to roll. Level 3 is keenly focused on the customer experience, says Adam Saenger, VP Product Development and Management, Level 3. The customer experience extends across a continuum of shop, buy, get, use, pay and renew.  Each...

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PTC'17: Next-Wave Network Interconnections - DE-CIX

2016 was an eventful year for DE-CIX with the launch of the fastest-growing Internet Exchange in Madrid, the widely-distributed exchange in New York, and a new presence in Istanbul, Marseille, and Palermo, addressing the future traffic exchange requirements for African and Middle Eastern networks. In this video, Ivo Ivanov discusses the next advances for network interconnection. It's going to be an eventful year as DE-CIX brings to market new...

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Ericsson Announces Support for OpenECOMP

Ericsson announced its supportive of AT&T's OpenECOMP initiative, saying it shares the vision of a modular and model-driven management and orchestration system with analytics and policy-based control. Ericsson wants to accelerate industry alignment in Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) management and orchestration. To this end, Ericsson will support service providers who deploy OpenECOMP and work with...

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Source Photonics Invests in Next Generation FTTx

Source Photonics has expanded investments in its market leading 10G PON OLT and ONU product lines to support the upcoming fixed access network upgrade cycle from EPON and GPON to 10GEPON and XG(S)PON. The company said its investment at all levels of manufacturing, including laser chips and advanced optical modules, will enable continuing leadership as the highest volume vertically integrated provider in the market. This contrasts with several industry...

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Nokia Builds an Engineering Digital Assistant for Telecom Carriers

Nokia introduced "MIKA" a customized 'digital assistant' for helping the network engineers of telecom operators gain faster access to critical information. MIKA - or Multi-purpose Intuitive Knowledge Assistant - is powered by the Nokia AVA cognitive services platform and underpinned by Nokia's services expertise. It will provide voice-dictated automated assistance to reduce time spent searching information resources, enabling operators to focus...

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Nokia Wins EUR 30M Contract with Bangladesh's Teletalk

Bangladesh's Teletalk awarded a contract to Nokia to improve coverage in rural areas not currently covered by 2G and 3G networks and enhance the quality of services in urban areas. Under the agreement, Nokia's will supply its Single RAN technology to allow 2G, 3G and 4G technologies to run from a single platform.  Teletalk will deploy the Nokia Single Radio Access Network (RAN) platform, extending its service offerings in parts of the capital...

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Microsoft Azure Revenue Increases 93% YoY

Microsoft posted revenue of $24.1 billion GAAP and $26.1 billion non-GAAP for its quarter ending 31-Dec-2016. Net income was $5.2 billion GAAP, and $6.5 billion non-GAAP. “Our customers are seeing greater value and opportunity as we partner with them through their digital transformation,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “Accelerating advancements in AI across our platforms and services will provide further opportunity to...

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Ixia Demos 400GbE via Four-Level PAM4

Ixia successfully demonstrated 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) technology by combining eight electrical lanes of 56 Gbps, defined as 400GAUI-8 by IEEE802.3bs, via four-level Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM4). Ixia said currently supports and collaborates with two key multisource agreement (MSA) development groups to help drive the effectiveness and efficiency of 400 GbE technology: double-density quad small-form-factor pluggable (QSFP-DD) MSA, and Octal...

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Juniper Posts Q4 Revenue of $1.386B, up 5% YoY

Juniper Networks reported preliminary net revenues for the fourth quarter of 2016 of $1,385.6 million, an increase of 5% year-over-year and an increase of 8% sequentially. Juniper's GAAP operating margin for the fourth quarter of 2016 was 21.5%, an increase from 21.2% in the fourth quarter of 2015, and an increase from 19.5% in the third quarter of 2016. GAAP net income was $197.4 million, flat year-over-year, and an increase of 15% sequentially....

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T-Mobile Boosts Capacity in Houston Sites 20X Ahead of Super Bowl

T-Mobile has permanently increased 4G LTE capacity nearly 20x in and around Houston’s NRG Stadium and more than 10x at area airports, venues and hotels in the last year in anticipation of the upcoming Super Bowl. “When carriers get ready for big events, they just bring in a lot of temporary, short-term fixes. That’s not how we roll, so when we souped up T-Mobile’s network in Houston, we did it permanently and all through the city -- not just in...

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Ericsson and Orange Exceed 10G in 5G Testing

Ericsson and Orange have exceed 10 Gbps peak rates in lab testing for 5G technologies in France. "The significant increase in throughputs, including on the move, is one of the promises of 5G. These ever-increasing speeds will be needed for new use cases such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, or the needs of business environments. Thanks to our 5G partnership with Ericsson, we are preparing the future of networks," says Alain Maloberti, senior...

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MACOM Completes AppliedMicro Acquisition

MACOM completed its previously announced acquisition of AppliedMicro.  MACOM plans to sell off AppliedMicro’s compute business. John Croteau, MACOM’s President and Chief Executive Officer stated, “I am pleased to announce the completion of this transaction. AppliedMicro’s leadership in MACsec and 100G to 400G single-Lambda PAM4 positions MACOM as a preferred supplier to major Enterprise and Cloud Data Center providers, many of whom are adopting...

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Apple Plans to Add 200 Megawatts of Solar in Nevada

Apple reached an agreement with NV Energy to build 200 megawatts of additional solar energy in Nevada by early 2019 to support its Reno data center. "We are proud to play a role in helping Apple meet their energy needs with Nevada's abundant solar resource," said Paul Caudill, president and CEO of NV Energy. "In partnership with our customers, we continue to develop a more balanced fuel mix in a way that benefits the local economy by providing hundreds...

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Ericsson's Q4 Sales Drop 11% YoY

Ericsson reported Q4 2016 revenue of SEK 65.2 billion (US$7.36 billion), down 11% YoY primarily due to the decrease of SEK -5.5. b in IPR licensing revenues. Full-year IPR licensing revenues were SEK 10.0 (14.4) b. Operating income decreased to SEK -0.3 (11.0) b. in the quarter. Ericsson said a number of markets, in regions such as Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, were impacted by a weak macroeconomic environment with a negative effect...

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Verizon Edgecast CDN Adds Distil Botnet Protection

Verizon Digital Media Services is partnering with Distil Networks to deliver bot protection on the Verizon Edgecast Content Delivery Network (CDN). The partnership will enhance Verizon Digital Media Services' suite of security features, now incorporating protection against a wide-range of automated threats including: web scraping, application denial of service, account takeover, transaction fraud and digital ad fraud. The service is available immediately...

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SentinelOne Secures $70 Million for Endpoint Security

SentinelOne, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, raised an additional $70 million in Series C financing for its next generation endpoint security powered by machine learning and dynamic behavior analysis. SentinelOne unifies endpoint threat prevention, detection and response in a single platform driven by sophisticated machine learning and intelligent automation. SentinelOne said its solution enables organizations to detect malicious behavior...

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AT&T Hits Financial Targets as Revenue & Income Dip

AT&T posted Q4 consolidated revenues of $41.8 billion, down from $42.1 billion in the year-ago quarter. Compared with results for the fourth quarter of 2015, operating expenses were $37.6 billion versus $34.6 billion; operating income was $4.2 billion versus $7.5 billion; and operating income margin was 10.2% versus 17.9%. Fourth-quarter net income attributable to AT&T totaled $2.4 billion, or $0.39 per diluted share, compared to $4.0 billion,...

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F5 Posts Revenue of $516 Million, up 5.4% YoY

F5 Networks reported Q1 revenue of $516.0 million, up 5.4 percent from $489.5 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2016. GAAP net income was $94.2 million ($1.44 per diluted share), compared to $89.7 million ($1.28 per diluted share) in the first quarter a year ago. Excluding the impact of stock-based compensation and amortization of purchased intangible assets, non-GAAP net income was $130.3 million ($1.98 per diluted share), compared to $120.6...

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Global Capacity Expands Network Edge Nationwide

Global Capacity announced its nationwide Ethernet service expansion with a network investment in 346 central offices. Global Capacity said its investment in central office facility equipment enables it to leverage the existing copper infrastructure to deliver from 1 Mbps up to 100 Mbps access directly to customers, satisfying the growing demand for hybrid and SD-WAN network solutions. "As demand for our Ethernet offerings continues to soar, Global...

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Ciena Blue Planet Adds Analytics

Ciena is integrating analytics and machine learning into its Blue Planet portfolio to help service providers improve the end user experience and simplify network operations. Specifically, Blue Planet Analytics combines analytics with orchestration and policy. It utilizes machine learning on data collected from multiple sources, including multiple network vendors, layers and physical or virtual domains. It can also take advantage of third party big...

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PTC'17: Internationalising Data Centres for China

China is likely to become the world's largest data centre market. Chayora is a world-class infrastructure developer based in Hong Kong with a primary focus on building data centre platforms in China. In this video, Chris Miller, Global Client Director at Chayora, discusses the company's operational strengths and prospects for growth in China. Filmed at PTC'17 in Honolulu, Hawaii. https://youtu.be/lzxY-lxONog ...

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Apstra Demos Wedge Switch Running its OS

Apstra, a start-up based in Menlo Park, California, released its Apstra Operating System (AOS) 1.1.1 and an integration with Wedge 100, Facebook’s second generation top-of-rack network switch. Apstra said its distributed operating system for the data center network will disaggregate the operational plane from the underlying device operating systems and hardware. Sitting above both open and traditional vendor hardware, AOS provides the abstraction...

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Cisco Acquires AppDynamics for $3.7 Billion

Cisco agreed to acquire AppDynamics, a start-up based in San Francisco, for approximately $3.7 billion in cash and assumed equity awards. AppDynamics will be run as a new software business unit in Cisco's IoT and Applications business. AppDynamics offers an Application Intelligence Platform that helps businesses proactively monitor, manage, analyze and optimize complex software environments, providing real-time, actionable IT operational and business...

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