Huawei's first half sales were up 15%

Huawei reported revene of CNY 325.7 billion (US$47.80 billion), an increase of 15% over the same period last year. The company's operating margin in 2018 H1 was 14%. In its carrier business, Huawei said it continues to focus on end-to-end 5G solutions, driving the continuous evolution of LTE – as well as Intent-Driven Networks, cloud data centers, etc. In its enterprise business, Huawei remains committed to building integrated, innovative, and...

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Telstra appoints new leadership team

Telstra announced the following new topline organisational structure and leadership team led by current CEO Andrew Penn: Michael Ebeid joins Telstra to run the Enterprise team servicing Australian and international business and government customers.  Vicki Brady will continue to lead Consumer & Small Business designing digitally-led propositions. Nikos Katinakis joins Telstra in mid-October to lead Networks & IT focused on extending...

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Windstream Wholesale adds to its ultra long-haul net with PHX-LV route

Windstream Wholesale announced an ultra-long-haul network expansion between Phoenix and Las Vegas, adding approximately 300 miles to its existing coast-to-coast long-haul network and providing a new diverse route option for customers out of Phoenix, including unique low-latency routing to and from Reno, Salt Lake City and Silicon Valley. In addition, the extension offers Las Vegas and Reno customers direct low-latency connectivity to markets in the...

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NEC adds 5G Traffic Management

NEC launched an enhanced Traffic Management Solution (TMS) for 5G that improves the throughput of high-speed networks that support data transfer rates of more than 5 Gbps.  NEC said 5G requires greater throughput from core networks through the wireless access networks. However, there will be a mixture of networks with different communication speeds, such as 4G and 5G, and, therefore, it is necessary to assure network stability at the time of...

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Amdocs cites new wins with Comcast Business, Verizon and AWS

Amdocs announced new customer wins with Comcast Business, Verizon and Amazon Web Services (AWS).  Some highlights: Amdocs now supports Comcast Business’ commercially available software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) service,  the first business product powered by the ActiveCore SDN Platform. Amdocs provides the integration, orchestration and automation and NFV use cases needed for Comcast to reinvent its enterprise customer digital...

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Daniele Mancuso, Sparkle: Planned MEF 3.0 PoC Demos at MEF18

MEF Annual Meeting, Daniele Mancuso, Director of Innovation & Engineering, Sparkle, shares about MEF initiatives that the Italian-based operator has been involved in and provides a preview of Sparkle’s major role in the Proof of Concept Showcase at the MEF18 event, 29 Oct. – 2 Nov. in Los Angeles.  Daniele highlights planned participation in three MEF18 PoC demonstrations: 1.  Sparkle has been a key contributor to the MEF 3.0 Service...

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Qadium secures $37M by U.S. Navy's Space and Warfare Command

Qadium, a start-up based in San Francisco, has been awarded a $37.6 million contract by the U.S. Department of Defense for its cybersecurity solution. Qadium provides real-time monitoring of the entire global Internet for customers' assets. In The company said the contract was awarded by the U.S. Navy's Space and Warfare Command after the Department of Defense validated Qadium's commercial software.  Qadium has done prior work for Defense...

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Sierra Wireless debuts IoT cellular router for LTE, LTE-M, NB-IoT

Sierra Wireless introduced a compact cellular router for the IoT with support for LTE and LTE-M/NB-IoT variants The AirLink LX40 supports data processing at the edge and is designed for connecting cameras, smart lockers and point-of-sale terminals, as well as industrial remote data logging and sensing equipment in indoor or protected-outdoor locations. Sierra Wireless also said its AirLink LX40 also enables IoT edge programmability, supporting...

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MACOM's quarterly sales drop to $137.9m

MACOM Technology Solutions, which supplies high-performance RF, microwave, millimeterwave and lightwave semiconductor products, reported revenue of $137.9 million for its 3rd fiscal quarter, a decrease of 29.1% compared to $194.6 million in the previous year fiscal third quarter and a decrease of 8.3% compared to $150.4 million in the prior fiscal quarter. Fiscal third quarter revenue included $0.4 million compared to $12.4 million in the fiscal...

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The MulteFire Alliance adds SoftBank to Board

SoftBank has joined The MulteFire Alliance's board of directors, joining Boingo Wireless, CableLabs, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia and Qualcomm.  Yoshioki Chika, senior director of SoftBank’s Solution Strategy Office, will serve as the board director. “SoftBank has been an active member of the MulteFire Alliance since 2016 and I’m very pleased to announce its addition to the MulteFire Alliance board,” said Mazen Chmaytelli, president, MulteFire...

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Nokia lands $3.5 billion, multi-year 5G deal with T-Mobile

T-Mobile US awarded a $3.5 billion contract to Nokia for the deployment of its nationwide 5G network. Specifically, Nokia will help build T-Mobile's nationwide 5G network with 600 MHz and 28 GHz millimeter wave 5G capabilities compliant with 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) standards. The agreement covers Nokia's end-to-end 5G technology, software and services portfolio. This includes Nokia's AirScale radio platforms and cloud-native core, AirFrame hardware,...

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MEF 3.0 -- Overview and Mid-2018 Update with Verizon's Shawn Hakl

MEF 3.0 is the spec that defines how carriers will talk to each other in the age of software-defined services. In this video, Shawn Hakl, Senior Vice President Business Products, Verizon, provides a general overview of MEF 3.0 and then gives a technical update on the latest development as of mid-2018. Filmed at the MEF Annual Members Meeting in Nashville. See video: https://youtu.be/6J5BZ-L_Zpo ...

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MEF introduces SDN and NFV Professional Certifications

MEF is launching an SDN/NFV Professional Certification program. Nearly 6,000 people have completed MEF's Carrier Ethernet certification. A Network Foundations certification was recently introduced. This new SDN/NFV certification builds on this base. Dan Pitt, SVP at MEF, introduces the professional certification program. Learn more at http://www.mef.net/certification ...

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MEF's 2018-2019 Board draws from global service providers

MEF announced its 2018-2019 Board of Directors, representing a broad geographic distribution of major service providers. MEF Board of Directors and Advisory Director Nan Chen, Executive Vice Chairman, CENX Frederick Chui, Senior Vice President, Global Data Sales and Presales, PCCW Global Shawn Hakl, Senior Vice President Business Products, Verizon Aamir Hussain, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, CenturyLink Scott Mansfield,...

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Altice to sell its towers in the Dominican Republic

Altice Europe will sell off its communications tower business in the Dominican Republic to Phoenix Tower International, a portfolio company of Blackstone, for US$170 million. The deal covers 1,049 sites currently operated by Altice Dominicana. In addition, Altice Dominicana will enter into a 20-year master agreement to lease back the facilities. Altice forms tower infrastructure companies in France and Portugal Thursday, June 21, 2018  Altice   Altice...

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TE Connectivity' next-gen connectors ready for 56G PAM4

TE Connectivity (TE) introduced its next-generation, 0.8mm free height board-to-board connectors designed for higher-speed, mezzanine board systems. The company says its mezzanine connectors are capable of delivering 25 Gbps and higher signals for supporing PAM4 and PCIe Gen 5 architectures. The new free height connectors are also said to deliver higher reliability through a stronger plug/receptacle mechanical design, maintaining the same performance...

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Serverless raises $10M

Serverless, a start-up based in San Francisco, announced $10 million in Series A funding for its open source Serverless Framework. The company's mission is to provide a single toolkit offering everything teams and enterprises need to operationalize serverless deployments. The company said it takes a vendor-agnostic approach across major platforms and cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Functions, Kubernetes, etc. The funding was...

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Telefónica sells 10% stake in Telxius to long-term partner

Telefónica will sell a 9.99% equity stake in Telxius, its infrastructure arm, to Pontegadea for a total of 378.8 million euros.  This transaction represents a price of 15.2 euro per share of Telxius. Telefónica said the deal incorporates a long-term partner in a holding company that controls its infrastructure arm.  The sale has been structured via Telefónica’s subsidiary, Pontel Participaciones, which owns 60% of Telxius’ capital stock....

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Dell'Oro forecasts fast growth for next-gen PON technologies

The worldwide PON market will grow to over $7 billion by 2022, according to a newly published report by Dell’Oro Group, driven by next-generation PON technologies, including 10 Gbps EPON, XGS-PON, and NG-PON2. This represents a compounded annual growth rate of almost 40 percent from 2017 to 2022. “Where PON technologies are used for residential broadband services, 2.5 Gbps GPON will remain as the dominant technology due to its lower price and sufficient...

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FCC appoints Babette Boliek as chief economist

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today announced the appointment of Dr. Babette Boliek as chief economist for the Federal Communications Commission. She earned her doctorate in economics from the University of California, Davis, and her law degree from Columbia University School of Law.  “Our work at the FCC often sits at the intersection between law and economics.  It seems only fitting, then, that our new chief economist has deep experience in...

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The Carlyle Group sells some of its shares in CoreSite to Citi

CoreSite Realty Corporation (NYSE:COR) announced the sale of 2,250,000 shares of its common stock by investment funds affiliated with The Carlyle Group to Citigroup and Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, as the underwriters in connection with the offering. Share of COR closed at $113.03 on 30-July-2018, valuing the transaction at around $254 million. CoreSite noted that investment funds affiliated with The Carlyle Group will continue to hold an...

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Cloudify appoints Ariel Dan as CEO

Cloudify, which specializes in IT operations automation technology, named Ariel Dan as its new CEO, replacing Zeev Bikowsky, who has been serving as Chief Executive Officer for nearly a decade. Prior to Cloudify, Ariel led two companies to M&A, and has extensive experience in building sustainable cloud & SaaS operations. While leading Cloudify, Bikowki was also the driving force behind establishing GigaSpaces. Cloudify is based in Herzliya,...

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Caixin: The Wake-Up Call for China’s Chip Industry

The near-death experience of ZTE due to the 88-day ban imposed the U.S. Department of Commerce is a wake-up call for China's semiconductor industry, according to an article in the business journal Caixin. The article the foreign joint venture model, Chinese investments/acquisitions of tech companies abroad, and government-supported initiatives to build a strong, domestic ecosystem for semiconductor design and fabrication. https://www.caixinglo...

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Bloom Energy completes IPO - fuel cells

Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE:BE) completed its initial public offering of 18,000,000 shares at a price to the public of $15.00 per share, raising $270 million.  Bloom Energy, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, offers a solid oxide fuel cell product called the "Bloom Energy Server" that converts standard low pressure natural gas or biogas into electricity through an electrochemical process without combustion.  The company says...

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Global cloud provider upgrades with dark fiber and 100G from Zayo

Zayo announced that a global cloud provider customer has selected it to expand its long-haul dark fiber network and to upgrade optical wavelength capacity across the U.S.  Zayo did not disclose the name of the cloud company but said the plan represents an expansion of its existing relationship. The dark fiber solutions include leasing of multiple long-haul dark fiber routes, including fully redundant paths to meet growing diversity requirements....

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Huawei brings 5G demo to Bangladesh

Huawei conducted a demonstration of 5G technology in Bangladesh in collaboration with local operator Robi and government's Posts & Telecommunications Division, Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology. Huawwei said the purpose of the event was to show how a 5G ecosystem can be cultivated in Digital Bangladesh and how to use 5G to respond to the economic transformation of Bangladesh as well as the operators. Speaking...

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xRAN Fronthaul Control, User and Synchronization spec 2.0 approved

The xRAN Forum (xRAN) announced the approval and release of the xRAN Fronthaul Control, User and Synchronization (CUS) Plane Specification Version 2.0 and the xRAN Fronthaul Management Plane (MP) Specification Version 1.0. The approvals allow vendors to develop new RRUs and BBUs for a wide range of deployment scenarios, which can be easily integrated with virtualized infrastructure & management systems using standardized data models. The second...

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