Keeping an eye on Alibaba Cloud, Aliyun – Part 1

Alibaba's Jack Ma made headlines across the world last week by laying out a plan for rapid global expansion of China's e-commerce behemoth. In an Investor Conference held at the company's Xixi headquarters in Hangzhou, China, Ma made the bold claim that Alibaba could reach $1 trillion in gross merchandise value by 2021 by becoming the primary online store for 2 billion people, as well as by expanding into new areas, one of which is the international...

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AT&T to launch software-based 10G XGS-PON trial

AT&T announced it will conduct a 10 Gbit/s XGS-PON field trial in late 2017 as it progresses with plans to virtualise access functions within the last mile network.The next-generation PON trial is designed to deliver multi-gigabit Internet speeds to consumer and business customers, and to enable all services, including 5G wireless infrastructure, to be converged onto a single network.AT&T noted that XGS-PON is a fixed wavelength symmetrical...

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Ciena teams with University of Waterloo

Ciena announced that it is working with engineering researchers at the University of Waterloo to develop solutions to help network operators and Internet providers address to the ever increasing demand for faster data transmission over the Internet.The partners stated that the research relationship has received funding support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).A key area of the University of Waterloo's partnership...

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Cavium and China Unicom trial 5G user cases on M-CORD

Cavium, a provider of semiconductor products for enterprise, data centre, wired and wireless networking, and China Unicom announced a targeted program for the testing of 5G use cases on a M-CORD SDN/NFV platform leveraging Cavium's silicon-based white box hardware in M-CORD racks populated with ThunderX ARM-based data centre COTS servers and XPliant programmable SDN Ethernet-based white box switches.Under the program, China Unicom and Cavium plan...

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TIM launches 1G FTTH and previews 4.5G

Italy's TIM has claimed another first for its mobile network by enabling upload speeds of up to 75 Mbit/s for all customers, and from July this year will enable 700 Mbit/s download speeds, over its 4.5G network in Turin, Milan, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Taormina and Giardini-Naxos.In addition, as part of its fixed and mobile ultrabroadband initiative, TIM is launching a new 1,000 Mbit/s fixed-line service in 70 Italian municipalities. The company stated...

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Silicon Labs launches XOs for 100/400G line cards

Silicon Labs, a supplier of silicon, software and solutions for networking applications, has introduced a new family of crystal oscillators (XOs), the Si54x Ultra Series, that is claimed to offer the lowest jitter frequency-flexible solution on the market.The new Si54x Ultra Series XOs deliver jitter performance down to 80 femtoseconds (fs) for both integer and fractional frequencies across the entire operating range. The devices provide leading...

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Spirent supports testing of New H3C 100 GBE switch

Spirent Communications, a supplier of network test and measurement solutions, announced that it supported New H3C in conducting what is believed to be the highest density 100 Gbit/s data centre switch test.Spirent also announced it had partnered with the China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI) to demonstrate automated testing of virtual core networks.100 Gbit/s switch testingThe test, completed by Spirent and the New H3C Group and moderated by independent...

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AT&T and China Telecom sign partnership deal

AT&T and China Telecom announced they have signed a framework agreement that strengthens their cooperation to support the development of advanced network services for multinational companies operating in China.Through the agreement, the companies will help multinational customers leverage secure global communications to support business growth in China and worldwide. AT&T and China Telecom will also jointly work to create new services in...

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IoT forecasts come into focus

For years now there has been forecast after forecast predicting the size of the IoT market by the end of the decade or ten years hence. There is always a big number of connected things and impressive valuation for the sum of the whole market, and with the large mobile operators such as AT&T and Verizon now including connected things in their quarterly reports there is hard data to back up the rosy forecasts. At an editorial briefing in San Jose...

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Nokia – IP networks re-imagined

Recently we have seen Cisco predict that busy hour global IP traffic will grow 4.6-fold (35% CAGR) from 2016 to 2021, reaching 4.3 Pb/s by 2021, compared to average Internet traffic that will grow 3.2-fold (26% CAGR) over the same period to reach 717 Tb/s by 2021. The latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report, released earlier this week, calculates that the total traffic in mobile networks increased by 70% between the end of Q1 2016 and the...

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AT&T Demos 650 Mbit/s using LTE + LAA

AT&T and Ericsson announced that they have conducted a live LTE-LAA technology field trial, during which initial wireless data rates of more than 650 Mbit/s were achieved in downtown San Francisco.AT&T noted that LTE-LAA technology is expected to play a key role in its push to achieve theoretical peak speeds of 1 Gbit/s at selected small cell sites by the end of this year. In addition, the technology also constitutes a key element as the...

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Huawei Marine Selected for Cameroon-Brazil Subsea cable

Huawei Marine, the joint venture between Huawei Technologies and UK-based Global Marine Systems, announced it has been contracted by China Unicom and Cameroon government-owned infrastructure operator Camtel to construct the South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL), marking the official commencement of the SAIL cable system implementation phase. Funded with investment from China Unicom and Camtel, the SAIL system will link Cameroon and Brazil and span...

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Spectra7, providing chips for high-speed connectivity, raises $4.6m

Spectra7 Microsystems of San Jose, California, a developer of high performance analogue semiconductors, announced that it has closed its previously announced bought deal offering of 11,500,000 units at a price of 40c per unit, including the full exercise of the over-allotment option, for aggregate gross proceeds of $4.6 million.Spectra7 stated that the public offering was underwritten by a syndicate of underwriters led by Canaccord Genuiy and including...

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PacketFabric partners with Internet exchanges

PacketFabric, provider of a scalable network-as-a-service platform and a NantWorks group company, announced it has partnered with multiple Internet exchanges (IXs) to extend Internet exchange services to users across the PacketFabric network.Under the agreements, PacketFabric is initially partnering with multi-metro IXs including AMS-IX and DE-CIX, as well as regional organisations IX-Denver and United IX's Chicago Internet Exchange (ChIX) to launch...

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Cavium unveils FastLinQ 41000 10/25/40/50 GBE NIC

Cavium announced the introduction of the FastLinQ 41000 Series products, its low power, second generation 10/25/40/50 Gigabit Ethernet NIC that is claimed to be the only such adapter to feature Universal RDMA.Cavium's FastLinQ 41000 Series devices are designed to deliver advanced networking for cloud and telco architectures; the products are available immediately from Cavium and shortly due to be available from Tier-1 OEMs/ODMs in standard, mezzanine,...

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China Telecom and Orange Business Services Target IoT

China Telecom and Orange Business Services announced the extension of their strategic partnership into the IoT space during the launch event of eSurfing on the Silk Road, IoT with the World in Shanghai, China, with the new cooperation designed to enable the companies to serve enterprise customers via a combined footprint across three continents.Through the expanded agreement, multinational customers of China Telecom and Orange will be able to deploy...

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ZTE and China Mobile showcase 5G eMBB

ZTE announced at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai the launch of a live 5G field test in Guangdong, deployed with China Mobile and designed to showcase an enhanced 5G Mobile Broadband (eMBB) experience using 100 MHz bandwidth and delivering a single-user rate of up to 2 Gbit/s.China Mobile and ZTE conducted the 5G field test in Guangzhou University Town, selected to represent a typical high-traffic scenario and also a key 'pilot field' for enhancing...

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Linux Foundation Launches Open Security Controller Project

A new Open Security Controller Project is being launched by The Linux Foundation to help centralize security services orchestration for multi-cloud environments. Founding members include Huawei, Intel, McAfee, Nuage Networks from Nokia, and Palo Alto Networks. The main idea for the Open Security Controller Project is to orchestrate virtual network security policies for virtualized network security functions, like next-generation firewall, intrusion...

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AT&T launches fixed wireless Internet in 8 states

AT&T announced that its Fixed Wireless Internet for rural and underserved locations is now available in a further eight states, expanding on the initial launch of the service in Georgia in April this year.With the latest launch, the AT&T fixed wireless Internet service is available to more than 70,000 locations across underserved or unserved areas in the 9 states. AT&T noted that the service expansion is part of its FCC Connect America...

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MPLS-TP OpenFlow extensions approved

ZTE announced that the 'MPLS-TP OpenFlow Protocol Extensions for SPTN' (ONF TS-029) technical document proposed by China Mobile has become a formal standard of the ONF (Open Networking Foundation) after receiving unanimous approval from the forum's board of directors.The release of MPLS-TP OpenFlow Protocol Extensions for SPTN is intended to provide a foundation for interworking between devices from heterogeneous vendors, and between devices and...

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T-Mobile trials LAA enabling 741 Mbit/s data rate on commercial network in LA

Deutsche Telekom unit T-Mobile in the U.S., serving nearly 73 million customers, has announced what it claims is a network first with the demonstration of a mobile broadband data session live in the field utilising License Assisted Access (LAA) on its commercial network.The field testing, which was launched in Los Angeles, achieved a 741 Mbit/s download speed using 80 MHz of aggregated spectrum.T-Mobile also claims to have become the first national...

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Claro Brazil partners with Huawei to launch 4.5G

Huawei announced that Claro Brazil recently launched what is claimed to be the first commercial 4.5G network in Brazil, incorporating 4 x 4 MIMO, carrier aggregation (CA) and 256QAM technology, in the city of Brasilia.Claro demonstrated 4.5G data rates averaging 250 Mbit/s on compatible smartphones during the release ceremony in Brasilia, which is claimed to be around ten times the average rate delivered on the existing 4G network. Claro also announced...

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