MAREA redefines the transAtlantic subsea bandwidth equation

Construction of the highest-capacity subsea cable to cross the Atlantic is now complete.

The 6,600 km MAREA subsea cable, which was jointly funded by Microsoft and Facebook, links Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain. The cable will be managed by Telxius, Telefónica’s new infrastructure company. The cable features eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160 Tbps.

The cable takes a more southern route than other transatlantic cables, which mostly connect northern Europe to the New York/New Jersey region.

“Marea comes at a critical time,” says Brad Smith, president of Microsoft. “Submarine cables in the Atlantic already carry 55 percent more data than trans-Pacific routes and 40 percent more data than between the U.S. and Latin America. There is no question that the demand for data flows across the Atlantic will continue to increase and Marea will provide a critical connection for the United States, Spain, and beyond."

• TE SubCom served as the system supply partner for MAREA.

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Frontier says its FiOS buried fiber proved more reliable in hurricane

Frontier Communications claims that its FiOS All-Fiber Network in Florida proved to be more reliable than competing services during Hurricane Irma.

“The resiliency of Frontier’s buried all-fiber network was a significant differentiator in the market,” said Melanie Williams, Frontier’s Senior Vice President for Operations in Florida. “Where power was available, the services of the majority of Frontier’s FiOS-based customers remained operational despite Irma’s impact. Frontier customers who lost power saw their FiOS services automatically restored once electricity was available.”

Frontier’s central office and remote office facilities remained online throughout the storm, either because electricity was available or generator power kicked in, added Williams.

Frontier's serve has returned to near normal levels in the company’s six-county Florida service area (Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Polk, Manatee and Sarasota). Once the storm had passed, Frontier had 630 service technicians in the field restoring damaged facilities.

The company listed its storm preparations:

• activation of Frontier’s Emergency Response Center
• equipping fleet vehicles with extra fuel, fluids and lighting
• double-checking all safety equipment, ensuring all back-up power supplies and generators are fully operational
• ensuring supplies were available for plant and network restoration
• and placing emergency network supplies throughout company facilities.
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Microsoft Azure introduces Availability Zones

Microsoft Azure has begun offering Availability Zones across its global cloud infrastructure.

Availability Zones are fault-isolated locations within an Azure region, providing redundant power, cooling, and networking.

The ability to designate an availability zone promises higher availability and fault tolerance for data center failures.

To date, Microsoft has announced 42 data center regions worldwide, which is more than any other cloud provider/ Availability Zones are now in preview in two regions, East US 2 in Virginia and West Europe in the Netherlands, with plans to offer preview to additional regions in the US, Europe, and Asia before the end of the year including our new France Central region in Paris.

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Source Photonics opens new laser fab in China

Source Photonics, which is headquartered in West Hills, California, continues to expand its manufacturing capabilities.

The company has just announced the establishment of a new optical laser facility in Jintan, China. The new facility will more than double the company’s current output of Indium Phosphide lasers and related components. It will include wafer MOCVD, chip processing, and related component production. This new facility will augment its existing fab in Hsinchu, Taiwan which has more than doubled its output over the past three years and introduced more advanced devices required for the current 100G and emerging 400G markets. Source Photonics expects initial production in the new facility to commence in Q2 2018.

“The new facility in Jintan will allow us to improve our service levels to our customers and bring productive and leading edge technology to market.  It will be a world-class facility, the first of its kind in China. We are pleased to work with the city of Jintan to accelerate our investments in this critical technology,” said Doug Wright, CEO of Source Photonics.

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Procera rebrands as Sandvine now that the merger is complete

Procera Networks completed its previously announced acquisition of Sandvine. The combined company will operate under the Sandvine name.

Sandvine, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, was founded in 2001 by a team that had worked together on a previous start-up called PixStream, a video networking start-up that Cisco acquired that same year for C$554 million. Sandvine's core expertise is in network policy management, including the control of spam, usage-based billing, quality of service, and P2P throttling over any type of access network, including cable/DOCSIS, DSL/FTTx, Satellite, 3G, LTE, WiFi, and fixed wireless.

Procera Networks, based in Fremont, California, was founded in 2002 and includes significant operations in Sweden. Its PacketLogic platforms use deep packet inspection (DPI) to deliver analytics, traffic management, and enforcement use cases for broadband network operators, mobile operators and academic institutions. In 2007, Procera completed an IPO and in 2013 bought Vineyard Networks, a Canadian DPI company, for C$28 million. In 2015, private funds managed by Francisco Partners Management, a technology-focused private equity firm, acquired Procera Networks in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $240 million.


The new company will serve over 400 communications service provider customers, with over 1 billion subscribers in more than 100 countries, as well as over 500 enterprise customers and more than 100 OEM and channel partners. It will be led by Procera's CEO Lyndon Cantor, and Procera CFO Richard Deggs.

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Tata Com hires Bob Laskey to head its America's operations

Tata Communications has appointed Bob Laskey as Regional Head of Americas - its largest revenue generator outside of India.

Laskey has more than 20 years of experience with companies such as CenturyLink, Microsoft, Oracle and Accenture. He will be based in Chicago.

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Cisco completes acquisition of Springpath

Cisco completed its previously-announced acquisition of Springpath, a start-up specializing in hyperconvergence software for $320 million in cash and assumed equity awards.

Springpath, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, has developed a distributed file system purpose-built for hyperconvergence that enables server-based storage systems. Cisco and Springpath have worked together since early 2016 to launch HyperFlex, a fully integrated hyperconverged infrastructure system.

Cisco said the acquisition will allow it to continue to deliver next-generation data center innovation to its customers.

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WBA publishes paper on Wi-Fi and 5G integration

5G will be a combination of licensed and unlicensed technologies – with Wi-Fi and its current evolution playing a leading role; the convergence of services and coexistence of technologies are vital to the 5G roadmap, according to a new whitepaper published by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA).
The whitepaper explores the opinions of more than 65 companies across the globe.

Among other key finding, the three highest ranking industry verticals – by priority – were smart cities, IoT sensor networks and safety/surveillance.

“While plans to roll out 5G networks are well on their way, the industry still needs to agree upon the standards for the technology before 2020,” said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO, Wireless Broadband Alliance. “The WBA has put together this report to highlight the significant impact that Wi-Fi is having on the definition of 5G and what we as an organisation can do to bridge the gap between licensed and unlicensed technologies within this timeframe.”

http://www.wballiance.com/resources/wba-white-papers/

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