Zayo expands fiber backbone in UK

Zayo announced plans extending and upgrading a new 500-km fiber ring in the UK to enable its multinational customers to traverse the country via the most direct, low-latency paths and to provide access to the UK’s latest subsea cable crossings in both the Irish and North Seas. As part of the project, Zayo will increase the overall fiber count on its existing UK network, and add two new unique routes, spanning from coast-to-coast, in order to complete...

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Altice France sells 49% stake in SFR FTTH project for EUR 1.8B

Altice France announced an exclusivity agreement with Allianz Capital Partners, AXA Investment Managers, and OMERS Infrastructure for the sale of a minority equity stake of 49.99% in SFR FTTH for a total cash consideration of €1.8 billion based on a €3.6 billion1 equity value. SFR FTTH is the largest alternative FTTH infrastructure wholesale operator in France. The company anticipates passing 5 million homes over the next few years, including 1...

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Hengtong supplies 3,000 km of submarine cable for Chile FOA

Hengtong, a supplier of various kinds of wire and cables based in Suzhou, China, delivered 3,000km of submarine optical cable for Chile FOA Project. Hengtong said it has now manufactured and delivered over 10,000km of submarine optical cable for projects overseas. The company is also introducing a number of new products including submarine equipment fitting stations, a stereo intelligent anchor observation system, two-stage composite cables for...

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6WIND announces vRouter 2.0 with NETCONF/YANG Management

6WIND released its vRouter 2.0 software featuring a new CLI and NETCONF/YANG-based management engine. Highlights: Configuration: Offers both traditional, CLI-based management and management based on YANG, and NETCONF APIs for integration with higher level orchestrators and management frameworks. Deployment: Includes packaged images for bare metal, KVM, VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS), and leverages the Linux cloud-init and Ansible features...

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Ekinops opens North America HW in Rockville, Maryland

EKINOPS, which supplies optical transport equipment and router solutions for service providers and telecom operators, opened a new new North America headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. The company said its new facility will support all main business functions and house a lab, a 7/24 hour support function, equipment spares depot, a training facility and provide additional administrative office space. “Ekinops’ new US headquarters in Rockville will...

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MaxLinear & Innovium test 400G DR4/FR4 & 100G DR1/FR1 interoperability

MaxLinear, which supplies radio frequency (RF), analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits, and Innovium conducted interoperability testing of MaxLinear’s Telluride PAM4 DSPs with Innovium’s 12.8Tbps TERALYNX Switch ASIC. The companies said the tests successfully validated the functionality of the Telluride products in 400Gbps mode with support for breakout mode clocking in DR4 operation. Breakout mode clocking is an essential feature for hyper-scale...

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SK Telecom gears up for 5G launch this weekend

SK Telecom is preparing for its big 5G launch on December 1st. SK Telecom will commence 5G service in the Seoul metropolitan area and 6 other cities beginning at midnight on 01-December-2018. In press materials sent out ahead of the launch, SK Telecom President Park Jung-ho said, "We will lead the new ICT innovation in Korea based on 5G ∙ AI convergence with a strong sense of responsibility as a company opening the 5G era...

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Telia Carrier delivers backbone capacity to The Quilt

Telia Carrier will continue to serve as a qualified supplier to The Quilt, which is the national coalition of non-profit U.S. regional research and education networks representing 40 networks across the country. Participants in The Quilt provide advanced network services and applications to over 900 universities and thousands of other educational and community anchor institutions. Under a new contract that continues an eight-year partnership, Telia...

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IEEE releases 802.1CM-2018 spec for Fronthaul

IEEE published a new 802.1CM-2018—IEEE standard that supports fronthaul interfaces such as the recently published eCPRI specification to provide Ethernet-based fronthaul. IEEE 802.1CM Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks—Time-Sensitive Networking for Fronthaul was developed in collaboration with the CPRI Cooperation that contributed the requirements of a fronthaul transport network. IEEE 802.1CM describes how these requirements can...

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AT&T updates financial guidance for 2019

At an investor meeting in New York, AT&T updated its financial guidance for 2019 following its acquisition of Time Warner, now known as WarnerMedia. 2019 Financial Guidance Free cash flow in the $26 billion range with a solid dividend payout ratio — in the high 50% range (Free cash flow is cash from operating activities minus capital expenditures. Free cash flow dividend payout ratio is dividends divided by free cash flow.) Net-debt-to-adjusted-EBITDA...

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Juniper to Acquire HTBASE for Enterprise Multicloud Solutions

Juniper Networks agreed to acquire HTBASE, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, that offers a software platform for integrates compute, networking and storage across public and private clouds. Juniper said the acquisition will add multicloud storage to the network and compute orchestration capabilities of its Contrail Enterprise Multicloud. HTBASE’s unique value is its platform’s ability to make the complete infrastructure layer (compute,...

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MEF adds CenturyLink CTO Andrew Dugan to its Board

MEF announced that Andrew Dugan, Chief Technology Officer at CenturyLink, has joined the MEF Board of Directors. Dugan Dugan recently became CenturyLink’s CTO after serving as the company’s Senior Vice President of technology planning, network architecture, and security. Prior to joining CenturyLink, he served in CTO and other roles at Level 3 Communications. MEF Board of Directors & Advisory Director: Nan Chen, CENX Advisor, Ericsson Frederick...

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Palo Alto Network posts revenue of $656 million, up 31%

Palo Alto Networks reported revenue for its fiscal first quarter 2019, ended October 31, 2018, of $656 million, up 31 percent year over year compared with total revenue of $501.8 million for the fiscal first quarter 2018. GAAP net loss for the fiscal first quarter 2019 was $38.3 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, compared with GAAP net loss of $63.2 million, or $0.70 per diluted share, for the fiscal first quarter 2018. Non-GAAP net income for...

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Google Fi expands to IoS

Three years after launching Project Fi, Google is expanding its wireless connectivity service to iPhones. The service, which has been renamed to Google Fi, provides no-contract connectivity with data coverage in 170 countries and territories, spam protection, and data-only SIMs for additional devices. Google Fi uses unique technology to seamlessly switch between 3 leading 4G LTE networks and 2 million+ secure Wi-Fi hotspots. https://blog.goog...

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Sprint to offer HTC's 5G Mobile Smart Hub

Sprint will offer a 5G mobile smart hub from HTC in the first half of 2019. The device will be powered by silicon from Qualcomm. Product details and pricing are not yet available. Sprint said it is on track to launch its mobile 5G network in the first half of 2019 beginning in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., with additional markets to be announced. "We're excited to continue...

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HPE to acquire BlueData for containerized ML software

Hewlett Packard Enterprise agreed to acquire BlueData, a software developer focused on artificial intelligence and big data analytics. Financial terms were not disclosed. BlueData, which is based in Santa Clara, California, uses container technology to make simplify the deployment of large-scale machine learning and big data analytics applications. “BlueData has developed an innovative and effective solution to address the pain points all companies...

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AWS re:Invent: Highlights from Day 3

In perhaps its most significant announcement at this week's re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Amazon Web Services unveiled plans to offer pre-configured compute & storage hardware racks for deployment in customers' private data centers. The hardware will be fully managed by AWS, allowng customers to run compute and storage on-premises, while seamlessly connecting to the rest of AWS’s broad array of services in the cloud.  The service is...

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Australia's NBN Co deploys ADTRAN's in-ground G.fast DPUs

Australia's NBN Co will deploy ADTRAN's 2nd generation G.fast Distribution Point Units (DPUs) in the next phase of the country’s national broadband access network. ADTRAN confirmed that it has shipped hundreds of thousands of the most advanced generation of G.fast ports for this project. Financial terms were not disclosed. The first G.fast DPUs are being installed in the Sydney suburb of Rockdale, where the newest phase of the wholesale nbn is...

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Infinera boosts open line system (OLS) capabilities

Infinera introduced significant enhancements to the open line system (OLS) capabilities of the Infinera Groove G30 Network Disaggregation Platform, which enables network operators to configure optical transport functionality in a performance- and cost-optimized way within an ultra-dense one rack unit (1RU) platform. Open line systems, like the Groove G30, disaggregate wavelength-division multiplexing transport into best-in-class functional blocks...

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Cignal AI: Optical hardware sales surging in Asia

Optical hardware sales throughout Asia surged in 3Q18, fueled by double digit increases in China and Japan, and a turnaround in India, according to the third quarter 2018 (3Q18) Optical Hardware Report from research firm Cignal AI, which is raising its market estimates for Asia. CignalAI said sales in North America continued to decline for the eighth consecutive quarter, as weakness in the traditional operator market was not offset by strong sales...

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Qualcomm Launches $100M AI Investment Fund

Qualcomm announced a $100 million venture fund focused on AI start-ups Specifically, the Qualcomm Ventures AI Fund will focus on startups that share the vision of on-device AI becoming more powerful and widespread, with an emphasis on those developing new technology for autonomous cars, robotics and machine learning platforms. “At Qualcomm, we invent breakthrough technologies that transform how the world connects, computes, and communicates,”...

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New Zealand blocks Huawei from 5G Infrastructure

The government of New Zealand will block Huawei from participating in 5G infrastructure. Spark New Zealand disclosed that the Director-General of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) has notified the company of the decision based on national security concerns. Spark was planning on deploying Huawei equipment in its 5G RAN rollout. Spark said is disappointed by the decision but remains on track to launch 5G services by mid-2020....

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IEEE releases 802.19.1 spec for Network-Based Coexistence Methods

IEEE published a new 802.19.1 standard that specifies radio technology independent methods for network-based coexistence among dissimilar or independently operated networks. The standard is defined for geolocation-capable devices operating under general authorization such as TV band White Spaces (TVWS), 5 GHz license-exempt bands, and 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service lightly licensed bands. The standard introduces the following: Methods...

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EU approves acquisition of Tele2 Netherlands by TMobile NL

The European Commission approved the acquisition of Tele2 Netherlands by T-Mobile Netherlands without any conditions. The combined company will have pro-forma revenues in excess of EUR 2.0 billion (last twelve month as of Q3/2017) and around 4.3 million mobile postpaid subscribers and expects to generate annual run-rate synergies of around EUR 150 million p.a. within three years from closing. Upon closing of the transaction, Tele2 will receive...

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Spirent intros WLAN 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) test kit

Spirent Communications introduced an WLAN 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) testing solution. The Spirent TestCenter WLAN 802.11ax testing solution can be employed for functionality, feature, and performance testing of IEEE 802.11ax Access Points (APs) and end-to-end testing of WLAN ecosystems, including WLAN access controllers and gateways. It emulates a large number of realistic WLAN clients through both the in-chassis 2.5G/5G Ethernet and 802.11ax Wi-Fi test...

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Cisco predicts global IP traffic to grow over 3X from 2017-2022

Global IP traffic across public and private networks is expected to reach 396 exabytes per month by 2022, up from 122 exabytes per month in 2017, according to Cisco's newly updated Visual Networking Index (VNI). Essentially, global IP traffic will triple in the 5 year period driven by more users, devices, higher resolution video and other trends. "Since we first started the VNI Forecast in 2005, traffic has increased 56-fold, amassing a 36 percent...

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AWS re:Invent: Highlights from Day 2

AWS is launching a new Ground Station service allowing customers to purchase capacity at a satellite ground station on a pay-as-you-go basis. The company says that while the cost of launching a satellite into low-earth orbit has come down, capturing data from the satellite and transmitting it to the cloud is more difficult and expensive than it should be. The new AWS Ground Station service begins operations with a pair of ground stations, and plans...

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ADVA intros service aggregation devices for data center and metro edge

ADVA introduced two new devices for bringing 100 Gbps service aggregation to the edge of data center and metro networks: the ADVA FSP 150-XG480, is a 1.6 Tbps (800 Gbps full-duplex) service aggregation device designed to support simple, cost-efficient migration from 1 to 10GbE services.  The ADVA FSP 150-XG480 maps 10GbE and 25GbE into 100 Gbps aggregated bandwidth, which helps communication service providers (CSPs) scale their edge networks...

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Dell'Oro: WDM equipment market grew 15% in 3Q 2018

The Optical Transport WDM equipment market grew 15 percent year-over-year in 3Q 2018, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. coherent wavelength shipments grew 30 percent. “The Optical market outperformed in the third quarter,” said Jimmy Yu, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “All of the growth was driven by rising demand for coherent wavelengths in metro and long haul WDM systems.  Shipment of 100 Gbps wavelengths continued to rise,...

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Amphenol to acquire SSI Controls Technologies for $400 million

Amphenol Corporation agreed to acquire SSI Controls Technologies (SSI), the sensor manufacturing division of SSI Technologies, Inc., for approximately $400 million plus a performance-related contingent payment. SSI is a leading designer and manufacturer of sensors and sensing solutions for the global automotive and industrial markets, with annual sales of approximately $180 million. The company is based in Wisconsin and operates manufacturing facilities...

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Windstream Enterprise expands Cloud Connect

Windstream Enterprise is expanding the number of network on ramps to meet the demands of customers who need dedicated, predictable connectivity to third-party cloud service providers (CSPs). The company said its newest route anticipates continued growth and importance of Dallas-Fort Worth.  Expansion of this route affords customers access to major markets in Texas as well as easy access to other growing markets like Phoenix, Las Vegas and cities...

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