Tuesday, November 21, 2017

FCC Chairman sets Net Neutrality rollback vote for December 14

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will bring his proposal to rollback Obama-era Net Neutrality rules to a vote at the commission's December 14th meeting.

Pai is calling his proposal the "Restoring Internet Freedom Order," which he believes will usher in a new era of investment for Internet infrastructure.

“For almost twenty years, the Internet thrived under the light-touch regulatory approach established by President Clinton and a Republican Congress. This bipartisan framework led the private sector to invest $1.5 trillion building communications networks throughout the United States. And it gave us an Internet economy that became the envy of the world. But in 2015, the prior FCC bowed to pressure from President Obama. On a party-line vote, it imposed heavy-handed, utility-style regulations upon the Internet. That decision was a mistake," stated Pai.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel issued the following response: “Today the FCC circulated its sweeping roll back of our net neutrality rules. Following actions earlier this year to erase consumer privacy protections, the Commission now wants to wipe out court-tested rules and a decade’s work in order to favor cable and telephone companies. This is ridiculous and offensive to the millions of Americans who use the Internet every day. Our Internet economy is the envy of the world because it is open to all. This proposal tears at the foundation of that openness."

FCC Votes 3-2 to Adopt Open Internet Rules

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to adopt a new set of Open Internet rules proposed by Commissioner Wheeler and backed by the Obama Administration. All of the new rules, which are based on the FCC's authority under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, would apply to fixed and mobile broadband alike, while leaving room for reasonable network management and its specific application to mobile and unlicensed WiFi networks.

Here are the key provisions and rules of the Open Internet Order as outlined by the FCC:

Bright Line Rules:  The first three rules ban practices that are known to harm the Open Internet.

  • No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
  • No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
  • No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind—in other words, no “fast lanes.”   This rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates. It also prohibits practices that target specific applications or classes of applications.  
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Moving Software-based Networking Forward



Verizon is working with MEF to set standards and ensuring interoperability with customers and other carriers.

Think scale and more virtualization, says Eric Cevis, President, Verizon Partner Solutions.

See video:  https://youtu.be/ZKFfSvTY5SI


Verizon Partner Solutions: Driving SD-WAN



Verizon continues to experience heavy WAN bandwidth growth.

Greg Harris, Senior Manager, Verizon Partner Solutions, talks about the new SD-WAN service and the factors driving customer demand.

See video: https://youtu.be/schQOU50F-Y




MEF 3.0 - Accelerating SD-WAN



MEF 3.0 brings together all of the components that are needed to be successful in advanced services, says Shawn Hakl, Senior Vice President, Business Products, Verizon.  Here is his perspective.

See video:  https://youtu.be/eu7JI9Q3vvM


Advanced Networking at the new CenturyLink



Adam Saenger, VP of Networking Solutions at CenturyLink, talks about advanced services now that the company has completed its strategic merger with Level 3 Communications.

See video: https://youtu.be/lU4q-x9X_10


Meg Whitman to step down as CEO of HPE

Meg Whitman will step down as Chief Executive Officer of HPE, effective February 1, 2018. Antonio Neri, current President of HPE, will become President and Chief Executive Officer, and will join the HPE Board of Directors. Whitman will remain on the Board of Directors.

Whitman joined HP in 2011. During her tenure, Whitman led the company's separation from HP Inc., which was the largest corporate separation in history.  She also led the subsequent spin off and mergers of HPE’s Enterprise Services and Software businesses, as well as strategic acquisitions including Aruba, SGI, SimpliVity and Nimble Storage.

“I’m incredibly proud of all we’ve accomplished since I joined HP in 2011.  Today, Hewlett Packard moves forward as four industry-leading companies that are each well positioned to win in their respective markets,” said Meg Whitman, CEO of HPE. “Now is the right time for Antonio and a new generation of leaders to take the reins of HPE. I have tremendous confidence that they will continue to build a great company that will thrive well into the future.”

Neri, 50, joined HP in 1995 as a customer service engineer in the EMEA call center.  He went on to hold various roles in HP’s Printing business and then to run customer service for HP’s Personal Systems unit.  In 2011, Neri began running the company’s Technology Services business, then its Server and Networking business units, before running all of Enterprise Group beginning in 2015.

Separately, HPE reported Q4 net revenue from continuing operations of $7.7 billion, up 5% from the prior year and up 5% when adjusted for divestitures and currency. Fourth quarter GAAP diluted net EPS from continuing operations was $0.23, up from GAAP diluted net EPS from continuing operations of $0.19 in the prior year.

Fiscal 2017 fourth quarter segment results

  • Enterprise Group revenue was $6.9 billion, flat year over year, up 1% when adjusted for currency, with a 10.6% operating margin. Servers revenue was down 5%, down 5% when adjusted for currency, Storage revenue was up 5%, up 5% when adjusted for currency, Networking revenue was up 21%, up 21% when adjusted for currency, and Technology Services revenue was up 2%, up 3% when adjusted for currency.
  • Financial Services revenue was $1.0 billion, up 24% year over year, net portfolio assets were up 1%, and financing volume was flat year over year. The business delivered an operating margin of 7.7%.

“With strong top line revenue growth, earnings above our previous outlook and our second consecutive quarter of sequential margin improvement, our fourth quarter results are a reflection of the progress we have made over the past two years to transform HPE into a nimble, focused and innovative organization,” said Meg Whitman, CEO of HPE.

France-IX deploys Coriant Groove G30 Network Disaggregation Platform

France-IX, the leading Internet Exchange in France, has deployed the Coriant Groove G30 Network Disaggregation Platform in major data center sites in the Paris metro area to support high-capacity, low latency nx100G optical connectivity. Initially, three data center sites were connected this summer. The deployment will continue on the entire France-IX backbone during 2018.

Coriant said its G30 solution enables France-IX to simplify network operations and deliver affordable 100G services to its member community, which includes major carriers, high-growth international carriers, public cloud providers, content delivery networks, content and hosting service providers, as well as video game developer and digital distribution companies.

“A key part of our strategy is to anticipate Internet traffic growth and maximize the performance of our network to meet our members’ expectations for reliable and affordable Internet exchange services – today and into the future,” said Simon Muyal, Chief Technical Officer at France-IX. “After rigorous analysis of competing DWDM solutions, we selected the Coriant Groove G30 for its cost-competitive system density, power efficiency, and ease of operations that enables us to quickly scale optical capacity as the service demand cycles of our member community accelerate.”

Talari Networks names Patrick Sweeney as CEO

Talari Networks, which specializes in SD-WAN solutions, named Patrick Sweeney as its new Chief Executive Officer, replacing Mark Masur, who will remain as chairman on Talari’s board of directors.

Previously, Sweeney served in multiple executive roles over his 16 years at SonicWall and Dell. Sweeney helped take network security company SonicWall private under Thoma Bravo in 2010, and in 2012 sold the company to Dell where he served as Vice President of Security Marketing in the Dell Software Group. In 2016, Sweeney helped spin out SonicWall from Dell as an independent company under private equity firm Francisco Partners.

“Talari is one of the original founders of the SD-WAN space. We have a huge base of loyal customers with thousands of deployments around the world. Our customers have given us an industry-leading Net Promoter Score, validating that our solutions and support are enterprise-class,” said Sweeney, CEO, Talari. “Now the market has kicked into hyper-growth gear, timing is everything and we intend to take full advantage of this moment! We will accelerate our success by increasing our sales capacity, implementing a 100% channel model, and continuing to lead with SD-WAN technical innovations in cloud, mobility and the distributed workforce.”

Talari is based in San Jose, California.

GCP trims pricing for cloud GPUs, SSDs

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is trimming the cost of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs attached to on-demand Google Compute Engine virtual machines by up to 36 percent. In US regions, each K80 GPU attached to a VM is priced at $0.45 per hour while each P100 costs $1.46 per hour.

This lowers the cost of running highly parallelized compute tasks on VMs and GPUs.

GCP is also lowering the price of preemptible Local SSDs by almost 40 percent compared to on-demand Local SSDs. In the US this means $0.048 per GB-month.


Netflix and Deutsche Telekom reach international deal

Deutsche Telekom announced an international partnership with Netflix covering all Deutsche Telekom subsidiaries.

  • Netflix is now available in 4K to EntertainTV customers in Germany.
  • In Poland, Netflix is available as part of T-Mobile offers since 2016. Most recently the parties launched a new offer where T-Mobile Netherlands combined its strong Unlimited data offer with a Netflix promotion giving customers a six months gift offer for the Netflix service.
  • Additionally Deutsche Telekom customers in Germany, Poland, Croatia, Greece and Romania can get unlimited streaming of Netflix over mobile networks with the participation of Netflix in the respective video zero rating offers (StreamOn) providing Deutsche Telekom customers the ultimate mobile video experience.

“We want to ensure the best content offering and TV experience for our customers and will work with Netflix to further expand our great partnership”, noted Thomas Kicker, Senior Vice President Group Partnering of Deutsche Telekom.

EUTELSAT 172B enters service over Pacific

Eutelsat Communications’ EUTELSAT 172B satellite, which was launched in June, went into full commercial service covering a vast region stretching from the West coast of the Americas to Asia, Oceania and across the Pacific.

EUTELSAT 172B, which is the fastest satellite to reach geostationary orbit using electric propulsion (in only four months) is optimised for in-flight connectivity across the Pacific and offers 11 spotbeams.

Panasonic is the major client of the High Throughput Service (HTS) payload.

EUTELSAT 172B also offers C-band capacity as well as flexible Ku-band capacity spread across five interconnecting Widebeam service areas. Ku-band can be used for maritime, video, enterprise, cellular backhaul and government services, or as an overlay to deliver live television to passengers in flight.

Rodolphe Belmer, Eutelsat CEO, said: “As EUTELSAT 172B begins commercial activity that will stretch into the 2030s, this is a key moment to thank the men and women at Eutelsat and our colleagues at Airbus for collaborating passionately on a programme that sets a new industry standard. In addition to taking our 172° East location to a new level of performance for clients in the Asia-Pacific, EUTELSAT 172B further validates the value of electric propulsion for high-capacity satellites that are core to providing cost-competitive services in the telecoms marketplace.”

Deutsche Telekom and Fraunhofer IML open NB-IoT Lab

Deutsche Telekom and the Fraunhofer-Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML have opened an IoT lab in Dortmund, Germany.

The Telekom Open IoT Lab will host up to six scientists from Fraunhofer IML and three IoT experts from Deutsche Telekom to develop and test industrial Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and get them market ready. The research will concentrate on solutions based on NB-IoT technology.

Deutsche Telekom is now offering NB-IoT commercially throughout all of Germany.