MEF 3.0 - a Bigger Picture

MEF 3.0 is a milestone opportunity to build on the success of Carrier Ethernet to transform the industry, says Michael Strople, President, Enterprise Networks, Zayo Group; Chairman, MEF.

MEF 3.0 is a bigger idea because it incorporates networking, big bandwidth, and adds agile, assured, and orchestrated.  It broadens the expanse of MEF and will bring in a larger community.

See video:  https://youtu.be/8aZ4l9ttisw

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MEF 3.0 - a Generational Leap for the Industry

MEF 3.0 is a transformational milestone for the industry and for the MEF itself, says Kevin O’Toole, Senior Vice President of Product Management, Comcast Business.

“As a MEF board member, I am extremely proud that our organization has taken this critical first step in establishing the MEF 3.0 Transformational Global Services Framework. This move validates our belief that technologies such as LSO, SDN and NFV are moving into the mainstream of the networking world, as well as the universal need for standardized terminology, service components, reference architectures, and service definitions.”

See video: https://youtu.be/KoF4wRVnBBw

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Digging deeper into MEF 3.0

MEF 3.0 is a really important framework because it allows operators across the world to undertake a transformational journey in step with the digital economy, says Pascal Menezes, MEF's CTO.

MEF 3.0 has four major pillars.  A summary is provided here.

See video: https://youtu.be/2-PZd3PyTzg

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Intel outlines its 5G radio modem portfolio

Intel outlined its product roadmap for 5G silicon. First up is Intel XMM 8000 series, a family of 5G new radio (5G NR) multi-mode commercial modems, and the Intel XMM 7660 LTE modem.

Highlights of Intel’s wireless roadmap:

• Intel XMM 8000 series: will operate in both sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave global spectrum bands. Intel is aiming to enable a range of devices to connect to 5G, including PC, phones, fixed wireless consumer premise equipment (CPE) and vehicles.
• Intel XMM 8060: will offer multi-mode support for the full 5G non-standalone and standalone NR, as well as various 2G, 3G (including CDMA) and 4G legacy modes. It is expected to ship in commercial customer devices in mid-2019. Intel is targetting broad deployment of 5G networks in 2020.
• Intel XMM 7660: Intel’s latest LTE modem delivers Cat-19 capabilities, supports speeds up to 1.6 Gbps, and features advanced multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), carrier aggregation and a broad range of band support. It will ship in commercial devices in 2019.

Intel also announced it has successfully completed a full end-to-end 5G call based on its early 5G silicon over the 28GHz band. Intel says it is participating in dozens of 5G trials around the world.

“Intel is committed to delivering leading 5G multi-mode modem technology and making sure the transition to 5G is smooth,” said Dr. Cormac Conroy, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Communication and Devices Group. “Our investments in a full portfolio of modem technologies and products are critical to achieving the vision of seamless 5G connectivity.”

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Telefónica works on plastic fibre and 60GHz Wi-Fi

Telefónica is testing plastic optical fibre (POF) and 60GHz Wi-Fi as solutions for home connectivity.

The advantages of POF, which is a fibre with an 1mm core and a total diameter of 2.2mm, are seen to be easy installation and up to 1 Gbps capacity for customers. Installation is simpler that glass fibre because POF can be sliced with a cutter and installed without connectors. The basic elements for the installation, in addition to the plastic fibre, are the media converter and the KDPOF chipset inside it. The media converter holds the plug, provides two Ethernet ports and permits the connection of two different POF branches.

The 60GHz Wi-Fi technology can offer theoretical connectivities of up to 4600 Mbps.

Telefónica has conducted a plastic optical fibre pilot scheme in about 30 homes, each with up to four fibre outlets, with the deployment of a hybrid POF network (wired backbone) + Wi-Fi, with a smart Wi-Fi amplifier as the access point to expand the coverage. KDPOF is Telefónica’s technological partner.

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AT&T runs with LTE-LAA in Indianapolis

AT&T has deployed commercial LTE-Licensed Assisted Access (LTE-LAA) in downtown Indianapolis.

LAA offers theoretical peak speeds of up to 1 Gbps. In previous field tests, AT&T observed actual peak wireless speeds of 979 Mbps.

The Samsung Galaxy Note8 supports LTE-LAA.

AT&T describes LTE-LAA as a stepping stone to 5G, which it aims to commercialize as early as late 2018. The progression includes upgrading cell towers with 5G Evolution technologies like 256 QAM, 4x4 MIMO and 3-way carrier aggregation.

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China Unicom picks Nokia for small cells

China Unicom has selected Nokia to supply its Flexi Zone small cells and an AirScale low power radio head for deployment in 31 provinces in China. Nokia will leverage its global services expertise to optimize small cell deployments for China Unicom, including network planning and optimization, equipment commissioning and care in warranty services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Nokia provides the ability to upgrade the small cell portfolio via software to deliver narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT), enabling support for sensors for the delivery of many smart city services, including smart transport and metering systems as well as the introduction of smart healthcare.

China Unicom has gained or migrated approximately 55 million subscribers to 4G this year for a total of 160 million.

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DT opens European Smart Solutions Center in Budapest

Deutsche Telekom company has established a European Smart Solutions Center (ESC), based in Budapest with the goal of consolidating its smart city expertise and activities across the Deutsche Telekom Group.

DT is looking to promote smart city solutions to municipalities in Europe. The new center covers central functions such as marketing, partnering, pre-sales and delivery governance, and works closely with local smart city sales & delivery experts. The center also offers a unique competence in consulting cities to utilize funds for urban development, allocated by the European Union.

DT noted that the European Commission has allocated a budget of 120 million euro to promote free access to wireless connectivity in public places across Europe such as parks, squares public buildings, libraries, health centers and museums. DT is working with Cisco on a package for cities to implement a tailor-made, secure and user-friendly WiFi4EU solution.

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Updates for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform for hybrid clouds

The latest release of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (v3.7), which is the company's enterprise-grade Kubernetes container application platform, includes native integrations with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Service Brokers. These enable developers to bind services across AWS and on-premise resources to create modern applications while providing a consistent, open standards-based foundation to drive business evolution. AWS services are now accessible directly from Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

Red Hat said its OpenShift Container Platform provides a single platform to build, deploy, and manage applications consistently across hybrid cloud infrastructures.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.7 features the OpenShift Service Catalog, which enables IT organizations to connect any application running on the OpenShift platform to a wide variety of services, regardless of where that service runs. This helps users search for, provision, and bind application services to OpenShift applications while providing a more secure and consistent way for administrators to provide new services to end users.

Also included with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.7 is OpenShift Ansible Broker for provisioning and managing services through the OpenShift Service Catalog by using Ansible to define OpenShift Services.

AWS services through Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.7 include:

• Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
• Amazon Relational Database Services (RDS)
• Amazon Route 53
• Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3)
• Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
• Amazon ElastiCache
• Amazon Redshift
• Amazon DynamoDB
• Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR)

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Movistar Argentina launches 5G trial with Ericsson

Movistar Argentina, which is a subsidiary of Telefónica, has conducted a 5G trial in conjunction with Ericsson.

The trial, which took place in Buenos Aires, used Ericsson’s mmWave 28GHz 5G Test Bed solution. The companies report a peak speed of 20Gbps.

Base stations and device prototypes were used to show advanced 5G technologies, including Massive MIMO, massive beamforming, Distributed MIMO, Multi-user MIMO, and beam tracking, which together offered multi-gigabit data rates and ultra-low latency that are key requirements for future consumer mobile broadband and industrial use cases.

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