Friday, June 9, 2017

Telia Carrier expands in Pacific NW via 2 new PoPs in Portland

Telia Carrier, the wholesale carrier operation of Sweden-based Telia, announced the launch of two new PoPs in the Portland area of Oregon to help improve network diversity and connectivity for service, content and cloud providers in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Telia's new PoP locations include Hillsboro, a key connection point for subsea cable landings from the west as well for as international traffic deriving from Asia. Telia noted that the expansion into the Portland area is designed to offer OTT providers, hyper-scale cloud networks and carriers the ability to directly connect in-market, rather than having to backhaul traffic to other regions, resulting in increased network latency.

Telia noted that the Portland metropolitan area, referred to as Silicon Forest, has become a hub for carriers and content providers, as well as regional education and city networks, connecting to greater Portland and eastern Oregon, encouraged by factors such as green power sources. As a result, the construction of large-scale data centres in the region is accelerating driven by terabit-level traffic demands.

As a new market entrant, Telia Carrier's two PoPs in the region provide new, diverse network routing. The company stated that the Hillsboro location features long haul routes that offer diversity from downtown Portland, where many legacy carrier facilities are located, while carefully selected routing at river crossings further enhances reliability.



  • Telia Carrier has recently announced a number of new PoPs in Europe, as well as the deployment of new routes and the upgrade of existing systems. In April, it announced that it had extended its backbone in the U.S. via a new 100 Gbit/s-enabled express route between New York City and Chicago. The new route is designed to improve the efficiency of existing routes, including New York to San Francisco and New York to Denver.
  • In October 2016, Telia Carrier established a new network PoP at the OJUS cable landing station in Hollywood Florida, designed to provide resilient network options for customers requiring diverse connectivity to the NAP of the Americas in Miami and Equinix MI3 in Boca Raton, as well as Telia Carrier's global IP backbone, AS1299.
  • Earlier in 2016 Infinera announced it had been selected by Telia Carrier to deploy a second Infinera DTN-X-based low latency Pacific Coast Highway route between the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, and for a project to extend the operator's network to enable 100 Gbit/s services in Bay Area metro markets via the deployment of the TM-Series for metro 100 Gbit/s.
  • Telia Carrier provides global connectivity via more than 220 PoPs across Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East, including 70-plus PoPs in North America.

ZTE completes mMTC verification in phase 2 of China's 5G field test program

ZTE announced that it believes it has become the first vendor to complete the mMTC field test in the second phase of China's 5G technology test, with results showing that the number of connected terminals was increased by nearly 600% to reach an equivalent density of 10 million connections and representing progress towards the Internet of Everything (IoE).

ZTE stated that it applies multi-user shared access (MUSA) technology to effectively increase the number of connections served, and thereby enable support for scenarios involving mass connectivity with low power consumption. By introducing short extended codes, the MUSA technology proposed by ZTE is claimed to be the only multi-access solution to allow high overload and eliminate scheduling operations and help increase the number of connections by between 3- and 6-fold.

The MUSA technology is designed to eliminate resource scheduling, and simplify synchronisation and power control. In addition, the technology uses advanced spread spectrum sequence and SIC technology to simplify terminal implementation and help reduce energy consumption.

ZTE noted that China's large-scale 5G test project entered its second phase, the technical solution verification phase, earlier in 2017. As part of this initiative, the test location in Huairou, Beijing, where 5G NR@Sub-6 GHz, 5G NR@mmWave, massive machine type communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low latency communications (uRLLC) test conditions are available, is designed to meet testing and research requirements prior to the large-scale commercial implementation of 5G.

The mMTC test is a key part of the second phase of China's 5G testing, and leveraging its patented frame structure design and MUSA technology ZTE has verified performance and staged a symbolic demonstration to promote 5G technologies for scenarios that require massive connectivity and low power consumption.

ZTE stated that mMTC is one of three application scenarios identified by the ITU-R, with a key performance indicator of 5G networks achieving a density of 1,000,000 connections per square km. The provision of mass connections presents a challenge in 5G networks, as in a traditional mobile network if a large number of terminals initiate service large amounts of scheduling resources and power are consumed. Therefore, addressing these issues is a prerequisite for enabling mass connections.


Following the completion of the tests in the first phase of China's 5G technology R&D test, ZTE is currently engaged in the second-phase. Utilising the latest IT baseband unit (BBU), 5G multi-band active antenna unit (AAU) and new radio (NR) air interface technologies, ZTE has launched field performance testing designed to meet the performance requirements of seven application scenarios, including higher spectral efficiency, greater connection density, higher reliability and lower delay air interfaces.

Internet Exchange Milestones - @DECIX #ITW2017


DE-CIX is celebrating important milestones in 2017, says Ivo Ivanov, Head of Strategic Development, including the 3-year anniversary of DE-CIX New York, the No.1 position of its flagship Internet Exchange in Frankfurt which leads the world in traffic volume, and the newly opened DE-CIX Madrid, which has attracted over 80 networks in its first months of operation.

 See video: https://youtu.be/aOqWjgHzis0


Spain's MasMovil partners with Ericsson for network upgrade

Ericsson announced it has been selected by fourth-largest Spanish operator MÁSMÓVIL to provide an array of solutions and services, including a core network evolution based on network functions virtualisation (NFV), enterprise billing, managed and systems support services, and the deployment, installation and maintenance of FTTH infrastructure.

The agreement is intended to result in MÁSMÓVIL's subscribers gaining access to a consolidated network delivering improved quality and reliability and new services such as Voice over LTE, WiFi calling and fixed VoIP, for residential and enterprise markets.

The solutions to be supplied by Ericsson include, for the core network evolution, subscriber data management (SDM), policy control and charging rules function, a complete virtual IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to support mobile, fixed and enterprise communication services, WiFi mobility gateway for WiFi calling, and Diameter signalling controller. Additionally, MÁSMÓVIL's enterprise billing will be enhanced via the provision of a new, unified B2B billing system.
For the FTTH network deployment, Ericsson will provide installation and maintenance services, with the enhanced network designed to enable MÁSMÓVIL to expand its offering of convergent fixed-mobile solutions in the Spanish market.

In addition, as part of the agreement MÁSMÓVIL has extended its existing managed and systems support services contracts with Ericsson to the end of 2019, with the option of extending the scope to include its fixed network.

MÁSMÓVIL Group offers fixed and mobile (3G/4G) telephony broadband Internet through brands Yoigo, Pepephone, MÁSMÓVIL and Llamaya. As of the end of 2016 it served approximately 4.4 million customers across Spain. The company's fixed network reaches around 18 million premises via ADSL and 7 million with fibre.

CommScope establishes Multi-Tenant Data Center Alliance

CommScope, a supplier of network infrastructure solutions, announced it has formed the Multi-Tenant Data Center (MTDC) Alliance as part of the PartnerPRO Network ecosystem to help members offer optimal network infrastructure solutions for customers wishing to deploy the technology in multi-tenant environments as they seek to address increasing data consumption and the trend of outsourcing data centre facilities.

CommScope noted that demand will continue to grow for MTDC facilities from hyper-scale data centre operators, service providers, cloud providers and enterprises it has established the MTDC Alliance with the aim of assuring customers that work with its certified partners within the PartnerPRO Network that quality enterprise solutions, such as its SYSTIMAX, NETCONNECT and Uniprise solutions, are deployed in MTDCs.

MTDC infrastructure makes advanced technologies such as cloud computing and virtualised data centres available to companies of all sizes; from small- and mid-sized business to large enterprises, while also enabling flexible expansion as businesses grow. By outsourcing data centre services, rather than building, hosting, maintaining and upgrading them, MTDC tenants can achieve significant opex and capex savings.

CommScope noted that its PartnerPRO Network currently has partners in 88 countries and serves as a resource with thousands of distributors, installers, integrators and consultants worldwide.

Regarding the new initiative, Greg Adgate, VP of global technology partners and alliances at Equinix, commented, "With its global network of 179 data centres in 44 markets, as part of the CommScope MTDC Alliance Equinix can offer enterprise customers the optimal data centre deployments that best fit their needs".



  • Previously, in May CommScope announced the introduction of a High Speed Migration platform, designed to help data centre managers develop faster, more agile, high-density migration plans. The High Speed Migration portfolio is designed for duplex and parallel applications and allows customers to adopt the most effective approach to delivering the data centre architecture that meets their specific requirement.

  • The High Speed Migration platform initially features the following CommScope solutions: MPO connectivity options, fibre optic panels, ultra-low loss (ULL) pre-terminated components, LazrSPEED WideBand OM5 solutions and the imVision automated infrastructure management system (AIM).

HPE selects Mellanox for 25/50/100 GBE fabric switch

Mellanox Technologies, a supplier of high-performance, end-to-end smart interconnect solutions for data centre servers and storage systems, announced that its Spectrum Ethernet switch ASIC has been selected to power the first Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Synergy Switch Module, supporting native 25, 50 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

The Mellanox Spectrum switch module serves to connect the HPE Synergy compute module with an Ethernet switch fabric offering high performance and low latency, as demanded for cloud, financial services, telco and HPC environments.

Mellanox noted that the new switch module is designed to help HPE support the transition to the next generation of Ethernet performance by providing 25 Gbit/s connectivity options for the Synergy platform. The Mellanox SH2200 Synergy switch module enables 25 and 50 Gigabit Ethernet compute and storage connectivity while also enabling 100 Gbit/s uplinks.

The capabilities of the Mellanox switch allows the HPE Synergy fabric portfolio to deliver high performance Ethernet connectivity for and expanded range of applications, for example financial trading and analytics, scientific computing, cloud and NFV (network function virtualisation), where line rate, zero packet loss and 300 ns latency offers advantages.

HPE Synergy offering features compute, storage and built-in management, as well as the new advanced Ethernet fabric option. The SH2200 HPE Synergy Fabric, based on Mellanox's Spectrum Ethernet switch, offers a key building block in helping make enterprise applications more efficient and enabling data centre operators to analyse data in real-time. HPE Synergy compute modules with the Mellanox SH2200 Synergy switch are due to be available in the third quarter of 2017.


Regarding the solution, Paul Miller, vice president of marketing at HPE, said, "HPE Synergy is the first composable infrastructure, a new category of infrastructure designed to accelerate application and services delivery for both traditional and new cloud native and DevOps environments on the same infrastructure… with Mellanox, HPE can offer higher performance networking as an integrated component of the Synergy platform".

Access One launches managed SD-WAN solutions using TELoIP

Chicago-based Access One, a national provider of network communications for small and medium-sized businesses, announced it has partnered with TELoIP, a developer of software defined WAN (SD-WAN) solutions, to offer SD-WAN as a service on a national scale.

Access One is a privately-held business technology and communications services provider that provides high-speed data and Internet to voice and integrated communications, colocation and managed IT support.

TELoIP offers SD-WAN solutions for locations requiring high availability for business-critical applications. TELoIP's cloud-managed networks are used by retailers to build carrier-agnostic networks that can help to reduce costs, by financial organisations for secure communications, by healthcare to remotely connect clinics, and by service providers to deliver SD-WAN services.

In April, TELoIP announced that X10 Networks based in Canada, an advanced network security systems integrator, had selected its solution to offer SDWAN as a managed service. TELoIP's SD-WAN solutions are delivered through a Virtual Intelligent Network Overlay (VINO), offered as-a-service through certified channel partners such as X10 Networks.

As part of the solution, VINO licenses feature access to TELoIP's carrier-class managed cloud infrastructure and centralised orchestration through the VINO Portal. The VINO platform includes patented, per-packet capabilities enabling hitless failover, inbound QoS and diverse carrier aggregation.

Also, earlier in the year, California Telecom, a provider of enterprise-class managed services, partnered with TELoIP to deliver fully-managed SD-WAN solutions for business customers in southern California and beyond. Delivering enterprise-class Internet and MPLS solutions, California Telecom designs and manages voice and data services for multi-site customers.