Infinera advances optical capacity with 100GBaud and 1024QAM milestones

Infinera announced two milestones for advanced coherent technologies:

• pushing optical transmission to 100 gigabaud (GBaud) - this compares with typically deployed baud rates of 32 GBaud with the quadrature phase shift keying modulation carrying 4 bits per baud. Industry opto-electronics are moving to 66 GBaud development demonstrations. Infinera has surpassed this by being the first to showcase 100 GBaud using 32QAM to achieve a single-wavelength 1 terabit per second (Tb/s) data rate using multi-channel indium phosphide-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) integrated with electronic driver and amplifier application-specific integrated circuits. This result was presented at the 2017 European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC).
• pushing modulation technology to 1024QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) -- at ECOC, Infinera showcased the higher-order modulation scheme of 1024QAM using advanced constellation shaping algorithms and Nyquist subcarriers, allowing wavelengths to be spaced close to each other to maximize the data rate for a certain reach. The Infinera test bed used 66 GBaud at 1024QAM to reach 1.32 Tb/s, yielding spectral efficiency of 9.35 bits per second per hertz over 400 kilometers (km), an industry first.

The milestones are significant because they increase they enable the delivery of the highest possible capacity on a single wavelength for varied distances.

Optical transmission capacity is also a function of channel count, where multiple parallel wavelengths are combined on a single module to create a coherent super-channel. Infinera noted that as baud rates increase, placing optical components closer together on an integrated chip reduces component size and power while increasing reliability.  Its PIC technology uniquely enables high-channel-count coherent super-channels.

“Infinera is delivering optical engines at a faster cadence to help operators achieve exceptional capacity and reach performance on their transport network infrastructures,” said Dr. Dave Welch, Infinera Co-Founder and President. “As 5G wireless and cable video services take off, Infinera offers significant value to transport network operators by designing industry-first solutions.”

https://www.infinera.com/infinera-makes-terabit-waves-ecoc-2017/

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Video: MEF and ONAP collaboration

It's all about carrier automation. MEF and ONAP recently announced a partnership to accelerate the rollout of agile, assured, and orchestrated services across automated, virtualized, and interconnected networks. Service providers, cloud providers, and enterprises are challenged to provide on-demand services profitably and competitively. This video features Pascal Menezes, CTO of MEF, and Dan Pitt, Senior VP of MEF, commenting on these developments.

See video: https://youtu.be/fSaF6syhZSU

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One Month later, 70% of cell sites still down in Puerto Rico

One month after Hurricane Maria, 70% of cell sites in Puerto Rico remain out of service. By the FCC count, 1,901 cell sites are offline out of a total 2,723 cell sites before the disaster struck.

Thanks to a roaming pact between the five carriers, approximately 61% (slightly up from 60% last week) of the population was reported to be covered by the wireless carriers in Puerto Rico.

Coverage has also improved somewhat with Satellite Cells on Light Trucks (COLTs) now stationed in ten locations. Terrestrial Cells on Wheels (COWs)/COLTs are also now in four locations.

In the U.S. Virgin Islands, 52% of cell sites remain non-functional. Approximately 88% (up from 79% last week) of the population was reported to be covered by the wireless carriers in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

For its part, on October 14th, AT&T reported that it was processing more than 12 million calls and 6 million texts a day in Puerto Rico. AT&T has portable cell sites in Yabucoa, Rio Grande, Quebradillas, Arecibo, Manati, Yauco, Cayey, Isabela, Mayaguez Mesa, San German, Fajardo, Guayama, Vega Baja, Luquillio, and Coama Sur. AT&T is using portable satellite units at the base of clusters of cell towers in Utuado, Luquillio, and Rincon Pueblo. AT&T said it is working to repair hundreds of miles of damaged fiber and to restore power or bring generators to other sites. The company also cited a new wireless roaming agreement with a company called Vanu that currently has three satellite-based cell sites up and running in Puerto Rico and 30 more arrived October 11.

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NTT Group seeks growth through diversification – part 1

by James E. Carroll

The NTT Group ranks among the top carriers worldwide by nearly any metric, whether by revenue, subscribers, traffic, corporate debt, overseas investments or industry influence.  We know the acronym stands for Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, the incumbent telecom provider of Japan that still owns most of the last mile infrastructure of the company and is a leading innovator in optical and mobile networking technologies.  Recently, however, company executives, spelled out the acronym as follows:

Next value partner for

Transformation of business models and lifestyle by

Trusted Solutions of global, secure, end-to-end and full-line ICT services.

There are many key words in this new rendition of the company name but chief among them is “partner”. In its corporate strategy presentation, NTT executives now routinely emphasize the company’s willingness and ambition to seek partners both in Japan and abroad for the many opportunities it sees with artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data, telematics, IoT, entertainment, and even the management of modern sport stadiums.

NTT is certainly a big group. As of March 2017, it had 944 subsidiary companies and 274,850 employees.

Some current metrics on NTT and its User Base

In financial terms, the last quarterly report confirms that NTT continues to grow modestly. For Q2, operating revenues amounted to 2.809 billion yen, an increase of 93 billion yen over the same period in 2016, representing growth of 3.4% year over year. Net income amounted to 271.5 billion yen, up 11.4% year over year.

NTT Group’s highest growth rate occurred in its overseas operations. Overseas sales amounted to US$4.6 billion in Q2, up 21.2% year over year. Overseas operating income amounted to $0.19 billion, up 43% year over year.

Home market

Mobile Subscriptions: 75.11 million mobile subscriptions (net increase of 0.23 million) (Included in the above) Kake-hodai & Pake-aeru: 38.34 million subscriptions (net increase of 1.28 million)

FTTH Subscriptions: 20.29 million subscribers (net increase of 0.24 million) (Included in the above) Hikari Collaboration: 9.57 million (net increase of 0.83 million) Ø Growing number of Wi-Fi area owners*1: 612 (net increase of 55)

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ECI delivers its Universal CPE solution

ECI, a global provider of Elastic Network solutions for service providers, critical infrastructures and data centre operators, began shipping a new line of "Mercury" uCPE (universal customer premises equipment) -- the first member of a new family of products enabling virtualization across CPE and the service provider’s PoP.

The Mercury uCPE  delivers on-demand virtualized business services by streamlining multiple customer premises networking functions into a single software-configurable appliance.  Network functions can then be delivered virtually (VNFs) via centralized management and orchestration (MANO).

ECI said it developed its solution with the goal of reducing operational complexities and lowering both CapEx and OpEx for service providers. ECI’s Mercury uCPE supports self-installation. Users are able to control the service directly via a self-service portal. Service providers can allow their business customers to select and combine best-of-breed VNFs from a library of ECI or certified third-party VNFs, supporting internet access, VPN services, voice services, cyber security (such as universal threat management), WAN optimization, LAN monitoring, storage services, etc.

• In July, ECI announced the launch of its Hybrid Virtualization Platform, designed to support multiple NFV-based use cases to help communication service providers simplify operations, reduce opex and enhance SLAs. By supporting delay-sensitive services and enabling improved security and termination of flows at the network edge, the new ECI platform is designed to support a variety of applications including modernised business services, as well as future Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G services. The platform features ECI's vE-CPE family, which is set to provide virtualisation across customer premises (uCPE) and service provider Edge PoP (MEC). The Hybrid Virtualization Platform comprises the Mercury NFVI platform, open source NFV management and orchestration (MANO), which runs ECI's carrier-grade PaaS system, and a suite of virtualised network functions (VNFs) that includes edge routing, session border control, WAN optimisation, LAN monitoring and caching functions.

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Verizon sees gains in mobile and FiOS

Citing strength in consumer wireless and wireline services, Verizon reported Q3 consolidated revenues of $31.7 billion, up 2.5 percent from a year earlier, but down 2.3 percent on a comparable basis excluding divestitures and acquisitions (Yahoo). Verizon reported EPS of 89 cents in the quarter, compared with 89 cents in third-quarter 2016.

Cash flow from operations totaled $17.2 billion during the first nine months of 2017, and year-to-date capital expenditures have totaled $11.3 billion. CAPEX for the full year is now expected to at the lower end of the range of $16.8 billion to $17.5 billion.

Some selected highlights from the Q3 financial report

Wireless

• There was a net increase of 603,000 retail postpaid connections in third-quarter 2017. 
• Net phone additions of 274,000 included 486,000 smartphones in the quarter, compared with 242,000 smartphone additions in third-quarter 2016. The 603,000 postpaid net adds included tablet net adds of 91,000 and net adds of other connected devices, led by wearables, of 238,000. The company had 109.7 million retail postpaid connections and 5.6 million retail prepaid connections at the end of the quarter.
• Verizon now has approximately 78 percent of its postpaid phone base on unsubsidized service pricing plans, compared with 60 percent in third-quarter 2016.
• Just over 50 percent of Verizon’s available low- and mid-band spectrum portfolio is being used for 4G LTE.

Wireline

• Total Fios revenues grew 4.8 percent, and consumer Fios revenues grew 4.6 percent, comparing third-quarter 2017 with third-quarter 2016 and including the impact of two marquee pay-per-view events in the current quarter. Fios Gigabit Connection, which offers high-speed broadband, continues to gain traction with customers.
• In third-quarter 2017, Verizon added a net of 66,000 Fios Internet connections and lost a net of 18,000 Fios Video connections, reflecting the ongoing shift from traditional linear video to over-the-top offerings. At the end of the quarter, Verizon had 5.8 million Fios Internet connections and 4.6 million Fios Video connections.

Other

Enterprise solutions revenue, excluding XO, decreased 5.0%, while growth in fiber-based products continues. On a constant currency basis, revenue was down 5.3%. 

Telematics revenue was over $220 million in the quarter, including Fleetmatics and Telogis. Total IoT revenue on an organic basis increased approximately 13% in the quarter.

On the analyst conference call, Matt Ellis Verizon's EVP and CFO, said development spending is focused on the Verizon Intelligent Edge Network, which extends from the wireless or wireline access networks to an intelligent distributed computing platform to a highly automated software-enabled core network

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Intel Capital invests $60M in 15 start-ups

Intel Capital announced new investments in 15 start-ups from the United States, Canada, China, Israel and Japan. The investments total more than $60 million. Areas of focus for these ventures include artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and autonomous machines.

Intel noted that this latest group of new portfolio companies brings its year-to-date investing to more than $566 million.

Analyzing Data

Amenity Analytics -- a text analytics platform that allows customers to identify actionable signals from unstructured data. (New York, New York)

Bigstream -- provides hyper-acceleration technology that delivers orders of magnitude performance gains for Apache Spark using hardware and software accelerators.  (Mountain View, California) 

LeapMind -- makes learning with deep neural networks “small and compact” for easy use in any environment.  (Tokyo, Japan) 

Synthego -- is a leading provider of genome engineering solutions. The company’s product portfolio includes software and synthetic RNA kits designed for CRISPR genome editing and research.  (Redwood City, California) 

Capturing Data

AdHawk Microsystems -- developed a camera-free eye tracking system that enables truly mobile data capture and paves the way for a new generation of highly immersive AR/VR experiences.  (Kitchener, Ontario, Canada) 

Trace -- a sports artificial intelligence company working in the domains of soccer, mountain sports and water sports.  (Los Angeles, California)  

Bossa Nova Robotics --  autonomous service robots for the global retail industry (San Francisco, California) 

EchoPixel --  develops 3D medical visualization software (Mountain View, California) 

Managing Data

Horizon Robotics -- provides integrated and open embedded artificial intelligence solutions of high performance, low power and low cost.  (

Reniac -- solves IO bottlenecks resulting in latency reduction and increased throughput for critical workloads in public cloud, hybrid and on-premise data centers without software changes to existing applications. The company’s Distributed Data Engine is architected to benefit databases, file systems, networking and storage solutions while freeing more CPU resources to creating business value.  (Mountain View, California) 

TileDB Inc -- a novel system for managing massive, multidimensional array data that frequently arise from scientific applications.  (Cambridge, Massachusetts) 

Securing Data

Alcide --  a network security platform for any combination of container, VM and bare metal data centers operated by multiple orchestration systems. (Tel Aviv, Israel) 

Eclypsium --  provides technology that helps organizations defend their systems against firmware, hardware and supply chain attacks. The company offers organizations improved visibility for monitoring systems in their infrastructure for firmware threats and supply chain compromise, detection of firmware vulnerabilities, and improved firmware update management in endpoint systems and servers. (Portland, Oregon) 

Intezer  -- develops cybersecurity solutions that apply biological immune system concepts to the cyberspace, creating the world’s first “Code Genome Database,” by mapping billions of small fragments of malicious and trusted software. (Tel Aviv, Israel) 

Synack --  provides customers a scalable, continuous, hacker-powered testing platform that uncovers security vulnerabilities that often remain undetected by traditional penetration testers and scanners.  (Redwood City, California)

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Intezer raises $8M for malware analysis

Intezer, a start-up based in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, Israel, announced $8 million in series A funding for its malware analysis and detection solution.

The funding round was led by Intel Capital with co-investors Magma and Samung NEXT. This round will be used to expand the company's global sales efforts and open new opportunities in targeted markets.

Intezer said its approach to cyber security is to replicate the concepts of the biological immune system. The idea is to map and identifying the DNA of every single piece of code within seconds. The company has demonstrated the effectiveness by detecting code similarities in the latest high profile attacks such as WannaCry, Turla and NotPetya.

“Intezer has developed the most advanced technology for detecting code-reuse, effectively performing ‘DNA mapping’ for software. With this technology, we are able to identify every single piece of code running in the organization, enabling us to detect the most sophisticated cyber attacks and help security teams to respond immediately,” stated Itai Tevet, co-founder and CEO of Intezer.

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ZTE's 9-month revenues rise 7% YoY

ZTE Corporation's revenue in the first nine months of 2017 increased to RMB 76.580 billion (US$11.57 billion), 7.01% higher than last year.

ZTE published guidance calling for a 36.58% increase in net profit for the nine months ended 30 September 2017. Net profit attributable to holders of ordinary shares of the listed company in the first nine months was RMB 3.905 billion, based on the preliminary figures.

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