Huawei unveils FastReach solution

Huawei, at its recent User Group Meeting held in Xi'an, China, released the new FastReach solution, designed to enable operators to quickly and cost-effectively build and launch broadband networks and improve return on investment.

Huawei's FastReach solution is designed to help operators build broadband networks more quickly and is claimed to reduce site deployment costs by up to 70%. In addition, operators can establish operational environments faster to improve the installation rates of home broadband users, and thereby accelerate ROI.

Overall, the new Huawei solution is designed to speed network construction to help improve FTTx economics leveraging advanced engineering, by enabling infrastructure synergy, and offering enhanced O&M tools.

Huawei's model for rapid broadband network construction encompasses:

1.         Implementing deployment synergy across broadband networks and power facilities and enabling fast fibre routing.

2.         Deploying mini OLTs and wireless base stations within the same cabinet or at the same site to allow operators to reuse infrastructure resources on live networks.

3.         Performing acceptance processes via smartphone apps and without the need for meters to help ensure intelligent, automated and rapid acceptance for optical distribution networks (ODNs), and thus further improve network construction and deployment efficiency.

Huawei's FastReach solution features three core components: mini operations support system (OSS), a number provisioning map, and an app for integrated installation and O&M. These components are designed to enable operators to quickly develop broadband service operations, perform targeted development of broadband users, and improve installation rates. Huawei noted that a lightweight, mini OSS for number provisioning can be deployed in as little as three months.

Additionally, number provisioning maps provide network resource information in different dimensions, including for global position, regional position and building dimensions, allowing operators to create service packages and strategies based on the bandwidth resources available.

The smartphone app for integrated installation, maintenance and operation enables mobility for staff, so that installation and maintenance personnel can promote service packages to users during installation and maintenance tasks.

Describing the new offering, Guo Dazheng, GM of Huawei's network SingleOSS domain, said, "The biggest obstacle hindering the development of emerging markets is excessively low broadband ROI… Huawei believes that by supporting fast network construction and operation, the FastReach solution can help operators develop the broadband user base rapidly and increase installation rates…".

http://www.huawei.com/en/news

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BTL picks Huawei Marine SEUL cable in Belize

Huawei Marine and Belize Telemedia (BTL), the main telecoms operator in the country, announced the delivery of BTL's Strategic Evolution Underwater Link (SEUL) project, bringing optical submarine cable connectivity to San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, the largest island of Belize.

Spanning over 23 km from the Belize mainland to the Caye, the new optical link will support the delivery of high speed broadband to the island.

A joint project by Belize Telemedia and Huawei Marine, the new cable system represents a key milestone in BTL's previously announced four-year $100 million investment program to transform and modernise the country's mobile and landline infrastructure. With the installation of the submarine cable, BTL will be able to offer its DigiNet Broadband product, with speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s, to customers on the island of Ambergris Caye.

BTL noted that in June of this year its CEO Rochus Schreiber met with Daniel Guerrero, the mayor of San Pedro Town, to discuss the coordination of efforts for future fibre installation works and the forthcoming DigiNet service offers. BTL expects to begin offering residents and businesses on the island faster, more reliable and affordable fibre-based broadband from August 2017.

BTL is the leading telecoms provider in Belize, offering mobile (via the DigiCell brand), landline and broadband services to the residential and commercial markets, with full reach throughout the country. The company is owned 63% by the government of Belize, with the remaining shares held by domestic institutional investors and individuals.

Regarding the project, BTL CEO Rochus Schreiber, commented, "The SEUL project is an important element of BTL's transformative Network Evolution Plan, and its delivery permits high-speed network connection between Belize and the island of Ambergris Caye, which will significantly enhance the prospects for economic development on the Caye… and eventually throughout the country".

http://www.huaweimarine.com/marine/marine/commonWeb.do?method=showSortedList&catalogId=7

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Australia's nbn selects ADTRAN

ADTRAN announced the signing of a supply agreement covering software, hardware and services with nbn, the company building the national wholesale broadband network in Australia, to support the expansion of high-speed broadband access to the citizens across Australia.

ADTRAN noted that a number of key milestones have been completed, and that as part of this work with nbn it has successfully completed a GPON network interoperability proof-of-concept program. In addition, ADTRAN IT specialists have been working in a collaborative development process with the nbn IT team to implement standards-based, multi-vendor DPU management solution utilising an open microservices architecture.

ADTRAN's Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) solutions combine web-scale technology with open-source platforms and are designed to facilitate innovation in multi-technology, multi-vendor environments. SD-Access releases control and management functions from the underlying network elements, enabling a more flexible and agile services delivery framework. This flexibility leverages an open microservices architecture that helps network operations and IT development teams work together.

nbn is building a new and upgraded wholesale broadband network to provide communities across Australia with access to fast broadband service from retail service providers. The company is aiming to connect 8 million homes and businesses by 2020. nbn recently announced that one-in-two Australians were able to connect to the nbn network, with more than 5.7 million homes and businesses able to order a service from their retail provider as it continued to add up to 100,000 new properties to its footprint each week.

Commenting on the agreement, nbn's chief network deployment officer Kathrine Dyer said, "The rollout of the nbn network is one of the most complex and ambitious telecoms projects to be undertaken… nbn is working with ADTRAN on bringing the network into reality, including working together on its fibre-to-the-kerb/curb (FTTK/C) network that is set to serve more than one million homes and businesses by 2020".

http://portal.adtran.com/web/page/portal/Adtran/wp_newsroom_newsreleases

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Dell'Oro estimates cumulative $6bn 5G RAN market to '21

Dell'Oro Group finds in its latest Mobile RAN 5-year Forecast Report that while overall RAN market conditions are expected to remain challenging in the near-term, growing adoption of LTE small cells and 5G macro technologies will drive a return to market growth towards the end of the forecast period, and predicts that cumulative 5G RAN investment will exceed $6 billion by 2021.

Further highlights from Dell'Oro's mobile RAN forecast report include:

1.         LTE and 5G small cell RAN revenue is expected to increase 4-fold over the forecast period to 2021.

2.         Millimetre-wave technology is expected to account for less than 5% of the overall 5G equipment market by 2021.

3.         Almost half of 5G RAN market revenue will feature C-RAN and cloud-RAN architectures by 2021.

Dell'Oro notes that cumulative revenue for the total RAN market between 2017 and 2021 looks set to experience the weakest five-year period since it began tracking the market in 2000.

Regarding the report, Stefan Pongratz, senior director at Dell'Oro Group, said:

"A stronger focus than initially envisioned on the sub-3 and -6 GHz 5G macro layers, coupled with a robust outlook for LTE small cells, form the basis for a more optimistic view of the overall RAN market in the outer part of the forecast".

"Although the IoT impact on the RAN market remains highly uncertain, the demand for enhanced mobile broadband is expected to remain robust, resulting in strong 5G macro uptake in the advanced mobile broadband markets, with China, Japan, Korea, and North America accounting for more than 90% of the 5G market by (2021)".

http://www.delloro.com/news

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Equinix appoints Charles Meyers as president, strategy, services & innovation

Equinix, the global interconnection and data centre company, has announced the appointment of Charles Meyers to the newly created role of president of Strategy, Services and Innovation, effective August 1st, responsible for leading the strategic business teams supporting the company's next phase of growth as it focuses on addressing the changing needs of customers and partners.

Encompassed within the new Strategy, Services and Innovation unit are the office of the CTO, business development, product management and product engineering. The unit also includes new business teams that are being formed to position Equinix for the future by: optimising the company's position as a strategic enabler of cloud services; identifying key growth areas that align to its long-term strategy; and evaluating and translating key market, competitive and technology trends into actionable business requirements.

Equinix noted that as the leader of the new Strategy, Services and Innovation group, Mr. Meyers, who currently serves as COO, will shift his focus from the core operations of the business to ensuring that Equinix keeps pace with the changing customer requirements in an increasingly 'cloud-first' world. He will also focus on identifying key growth areas and applying expertise and resources to addressing these opportunities while aligning them with the company's long-term strategy. He will report to CEO Steve Smith.

Charles Meyers joined Equinix in 2010 as president of the Americas region; in 2013, he was promoted to the role of COO, where he has overseen global sales, marketing, operations and client services activities. In this role, Mr. Meyers has played a key role in enhancing Equinix's operating disciplines globally, identifying and driving best practices, and delivering a more consistent global experience for customers.

http://www.equinix.com/newsroom/

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6WIND and ALAXALA expand 10-year partnership

6WIND, a supplier of high-performance networking software, announced that Japan-based ALAXALA, a networking company delivering switching and routing technologies and a joint venture between Hitachi and NEC, has expanded the existing 10-year partnership to increase performance for ALAXALA's carrier grade switch and router products.

6WIND noted that over the past decade ALAXALA has based its networking equipment on 6WIND's 6WINDGate packet processing software. 6WINDGate is designed to meet the feature, performance and capacity requirements of ALAXALA switches and routers that support the operations of carriers/ISPs and provide core functions in the backbone networks of large enterprise and public systems.

To enhance packet processing capacity and performance across its next-generation of telecom networking solutions, ALAXALA is expanding its partnership with 6WIND to encompass support for new generation multi-core network processors and additional software modules. In addition to 6WIND's software, ALAXALA is able to leverage 6WIND's network software design skills, software development capabilities and licensed support.

Under the extended partnership, ALAXALA gains access to the following 6WIND software and capabilities including: networking performance acceleration and portability; accelerated Layer 2 to 4 networking stacks for application performance and portability across hardware platforms; and scalable software that supports a full range of products to facilitate ease-of-use.

http://www.6wind.com/news-events/press-releases-2017/

* 6WIND recently announced that its Turbo IPsec network software could be combined with the new Intel Processor Scalable family and Xeon Platinum 8170 processors to meet the demands of data centre and managed network operators seeking to address performance-oriented applications.

6WIND Turbo IPsec is a high-performance, ready-to-use IPsecurity VPN software designed to be deployed in bare metal environments or as a virtual machine on COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) servers.

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