Infinera Intros Open Mobile Transport for 5G

Infinera introduced a new range of flexponders for mobile fronthaul and a new EMXP Access Unit for mobile backhaul to extend the capabilities of its XTM Series-based solutions for future 5G networks. The solutions are designed for multiple future fronthaul scenarios requiring dramatically higher capacity and significantly lower-latency for 5G mobile transport.

Infinera said its new Mobile Fronthaul and Backhaul Solutions offer the low latency and highly accurate synchronization for 5G applications, such as autonomous vehicles. The solutions are reconfigurable in software and include hardened and non-hardened platform options to support different deployment environments. They are also fully programmable via software-defined network (SDN) controllers and orchestrators, and able to support any 5G radio solution.

Announcement highlights:

• Infinera 5G-ready Mobile Fronthaul Solution. Adding a new range of flexponders for mobile fronthaul provides mobile operators with deployment flexibility via rack-mounted unit, hardened access unit and hardened clamshell options. Mobile operators also benefit from functional flexibility in which all units are fully reconfigurable to operate as transponders, as muxponders, or in hybrid mode, a level of flexibility that Infinera believes is unique to the industry. The flexponders enable service flexibility with support for Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) and Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI) mobile fronthaul protocols and Ethernet in both 4G and 5G environments. The flexponder features are coupled with the high-performance capabilities required for mobile fronthaul, such as low latency, superior synchronization and new fronthaul-specific capabilities including real-time delay compensation that enables better support for RAN in fiber protection scenarios.
• Infinera Packet-Optical Mobile Backhaul Solution. Infinera’s Mobile Backhaul Solution now includes a new EMXP Access Unit that extends Infinera’s range of packet-optical transport switches to hardened environments such as street and cell site cabinets. The new unit supports a common software and feature set with the rest of the EMXP range, which includes Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) services, low latency, superior Synchronous Ethernet and 1588v2 synchronization and sophisticated network resilience options.
• Infinera Open Architecture. Infinera’s Mobile Fronthaul and Backhaul Solutions are designed to be fully open to support SDN control by any orchestrator and offer the ability to transport any radio vendor’s equipment. For mobile backhaul, the full range of Infinera’s EMXP units now also supports a direct Openflow interface, controlled by Infinera’s Xceed Software Suite. This provides a multi-layer SDN control platform and SDN applications.

“The mobile industry is on the cusp of a step change to 5G. While the radio network needs to radically transform to the new 5G infrastructure and services, the underlying transport network requires a seamless evolution that protects operator investments now,” said Sten Nordell, CTO Metro Business Group at Infinera. “One key aspect to this is the ability to support future 5G mid-haul and cross-haul architectures in a truly open transport environment without lock-in to the radio vendor. We are already working with key players in the industry to allow pre-5G networks to be tested against high-performance transport networks and will demonstrate this at Mobile World Congress.”

http://www.infinera.com

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OIF Completes SDN Transport Application Programming Interface (T-API) Testing

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) conducted a six-week long global testing of the Transport Application Programming Interface (T-API) standard from the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) with intra-lab and inter-lab testing across five carrier labs: China Telecom, China Unicom, SK Telecom, Telefonica and Verizon.

“As operators move from SDN PoCs and lab trials into commercial deployments, lack of interoperability between the SDN controllers and the orchestration layer above has quickly become the biggest technical barrier for many operators,” said Sterling Perrin, principal analyst, Heavy Reading. “Building a standardized northbound interface and successfully testing interoperability across different vendors and different networks – as the OIF has demonstrated – is a major step forward in addressing the northbound interface challenge and bringing SDN architectures to wide-scale commercial use.”

Thes testing included multi-domain orchestration of services delivered through Ethernet, OTN and optical switching. Carriers and vendors demonstrated how Virtual Network Functions (VNF) and SDN configured connectivity are combined to deliver service life cycle management.

Participating vendors include ADVA Optical Networking, Ciena, Coriant, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Infinera, Juniper Networks, NEC Corporation, Sedona Systems, and SM Optics. Consulting carriers include Orange and TELUS. Academic and/or research institution participants include China Academy of Telecommunication Research (CATR) and Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC).

Participants also submitted a proof of concept demo proposal to ETSI NFV called “Mapping ETSI-NFV onto Multi-Vendor, Multi-Domain Transport SDN”.

A technical white paper on the demonstration is available to download.

http://www.oiforum.com/meetings-and-events/2016-oif-sdn-t-api-demo/

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Intelsat 32e Brings Broadband over North Atlantic & Caribbean

The Intelsat 32e satellite was successfully launched by an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana.

Intelsat 32e is designed to overlay certain beams of Intelsat 29e, the company’s first Intelsat EpicNG spacecraft, increasing the throughput available in the highly-trafficked Caribbean and North Atlantic routes and providing resiliency for mobility network service providers servicing those shipping and air routes. The satellite is located at 317º East.

“This is the first of three Intelsat EpicNG satellite launches planned for 2017 as we continue to deploy our high-performance overlay on the world’s first Globalized Network. With the addition of Intelsat 32e, Intelsat is now the only satellite operator with HTS resiliency over the world’s busiest air route,” said Stephen Spengler, Chief Executive Officer, Intelsat. “Intelsat 32e also increases our capabilities to support the growth of our maritime customers in the Caribbean and the Atlantic, such as the exclusive use of our services for broadband to most of the world’s largest cruise ships sailing the Caribbean right now.”

The next EpicNG launch, Intelsat 35e, is scheduled aboard a SpaceX Falcon flight in Q2 2017.

http://www.intelsat.com

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3GPP Debuts 5G Logo

The 3GPP has introduced a new logo to represent 5G specifications from Release 15 onwards.  The design is a derivation of existing 3GPP LTE logos.

3GPP makes the logos available for use by manufacturers and service providers to declare that their products are based on the Project’s specifications.

http://www.3gpp.org

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ADVA Launches Hypervisor for Optical Network Virtualization

ADVA Optical Networking introduced its FSP Network Hypervisor for helping service providers to automate service discovery and service activation, especially when paired with the ADVA FSP 3000 DCI and network infrastructure solution.

ADVA said its FSP Network Hypervisor creates an abstracted view of the underlying physical infrastructure, helping to decouple the complexities of managing photonic transmission systems while enabling greater network automation and optimization. It assists service providers with topology discovery and abstraction, connectivity management, path computation and notifications. This in turn leads to self-provisioned services, automated resiliency and optimized resource utilization.

“There can be no question that by extending our open photonic system with an open SDN control we are leaps and bounds ahead of the field. This unique combination is the target for the rest of the industry to aim for,” said Christoph Glingener, CTO, COO, ADVA Optical Networking. “Our FSP Network Hypervisor is the next logical step in making our connectivity solutions truly open – in the data plane as well as in the control plane. At its core, it’s all about reducing complexity and helping CSPs and ICPs to be far more responsive to their networks’ needs. It enables real-time response to load changes, automatically reacts to network failures and ensures the most effective path computation. These are things that today’s static networks simply can’t do. You can now achieve in minutes what formerly took hours or even days. Our FSP Network Hypervisor will prove to be a key component for any CSPs and ICPs that are virtualizing their optical networks.”

http://adva.li/fsp-network-hypervisor-slides

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Australia's nbn Reports Service Available to 3.8m premises, up 129% yr/yr, 1.6m Customers Connected

Australia's nbn has released financial results for the six months to December 31, 2016, noting strong performance in terms of key metrics and affirming that it is on target to reach the half-way point for its network roll-out by mid-2017 and its goal of completing the network by 2020.

Highlights for the six-month period ended December 31, 2016 include:

1. The number of premises able to order nbn service reached 3.8 million, up 129% compared with the prior year six-month period.

2. The number of homes and businesses with an active service on the nbn network increased to 1.6 million, up 125% year on year.

3. FTTN deployments enabled the higher rate of network build, with currently more than 1 million FTTN premises ready for service.

4. Revenue for the half-year totalled A$403 million (approximately $310 million), up 146% versus the first half of fiscal year 2016.

5. ARPU for the period remained stable at A$43, flat year on year.

nbn noted that in December 2016 the weekly run rate for new premises made ready for service rose to approximately 48,000 on a 12-week rolling average basis; for December 2015, the equivalent figure was 21,000 premises.

In terms of customer connections, the December 2016 weekly run rate reached approximately 20,000, roughly double that of the prior year period. In addition, by the end of January 2017 the weekly run rate for new connections had increased to 28,000.

nbn cited further key achievements for the half-year period including the launch of the second Sky Muster satellite into orbit and an increased focus on implementing advanced fibre-to-the-kerb technology in its network mix.

Commenting on the results, nbn CEO Bill Morrow, said:

- "Now, 80% of the country is either in design, in construction or already able to order a service… the company is on track to reach the half-way point of the rollout this year… nbn is refining processes with retailers to ensure ordering and installing a service on the nbn network can be completed more efficiently".

- "Already more end users are purchasing plans from retailers based on the 100 Mbit/s wholesale speed tier… nbn experienced the greatest incremental growth in this speed tier in the December quarter".

http://www.nbnco.com.au/

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China Mobile Hong Kong Partners with Huawei to Migrate services to NFV cloud core network

China Mobile Hong Kong (CMHK), a subsidiary of China Mobile, which serves around 850 million mobile subscribers in China, including 535,000 4G subscriptions, announced that in partnership with Huawei it has migrated services to a commercial NFV-based cloud core network.

CMHK claims that it has become the first mobile operator in Hong Kong to cloudify its core network. For the project CMHK deployed a 3GPP system that supports services for more than 20 network systems, including IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), evolved packet core (EPC), Diameter routing agent/mobile number portability (DRA/MNP), home subscriber server/home location register (HSS/HLR) and mobile switching centre-server (MSC-S).

The new network architecture delivered by Huawei is designed to both help maximise return on investment and improve operational and maintenance efficiency and provide a path toward 5G as part of the Network 2020 vision.

Previously, in November 2016 CMHK and Huawei jointly announced that CMHK has achieved a 4.5G mobile network milestone and that the operator had rolled out major network enhancements to enhance service performance and coverage during the year. CMHK and Huawei also completed a live demonstration of a 2.3GHz TDD massive MIMO solution and achieved a TDD + FDD 1 Gbit/s download speed.

In January 2017, CMHK launched a home broadband service providing bandwidth options of from 100 Mbit/s up to 1 Gbit/s.

Regarding the upgrade, Wang Yongde, VP of Huawei's cloud core network product line, commented, "On CMHK's cloud network, network elements IMS, packet switched and circuit switched domains are co-deployed... (and) VoLTE, VoWiFi and mobile data services are co-operated... CMHK and Huawei are jointly developing new technologies such as network slicing and edge computing for the transformation to cloud networks".

http://www.huawei.com/en/news/2017/2/Cloud-Era-HK-New-Cloud-Core-Network

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