RIP: Larry Roberts, Pioneer of Packet Switching, 1937-2018

Dr. Lawrence Roberts, who pioneered the use of packet switching in the ARPANET and the X.25 protocol, passed away on December 26 at his home in Redwood City, California, of a heart attack. He was 81. Roberts received his bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and later worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In 1967, he became program manager for the ARPANET. Roberts is credited with applying concepts...

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Sandra D. Motley to head Nokia's Fixed Networks Business

Sandra D. Motley as President of Nokia's Fixed Networks Business Group effective January 1, 2019. She replaces Federico Guillén, who as previously announced has been named President of Customer Operations, EMEA & APAC. Motley will report to Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri. Motley started her career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, held a range of R&D and sales leadership positions at Alcatel-Lucent in both fixed and wireless businesses,...

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NETGEAR completes divestiture of its Arlo division

NETGEAR completed its previously announced distribution of 62,500,000 shares of Arlo common stock (NYSE: ARLO) owned by NETGEAR, representing approximately 84.2% of the outstanding shares of Arlo common stock. After the completion of the distribution, NETGEAR no longer owns any shares of Arlo common stock. In addition,  Patrick C.S. Lo resigned as a director of Arlo, and the Board of Directors of Arlo reduced the size of the board from seven...

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Zayo signs global SaaS provider

Zayo signed a global Software as a Service (SaaS) for data center colocation at one of its Midwestern data centers. The deal doubles the customer’s data center footprint with Zayo. “This expansion is a testament to the customer’s impressive growth and success,” said Bruce Garrison, senior vice president of Zayo’s zColo business segment. “Our ability to scale to meet their continued demand, coupled with our high-quality data center footprint, is...

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CenturyLink hit by widespread outage

Beginning on December 27 at around 10am MST CenturyLink was hit by a widespread outage impacting consumer and businesses across the United States. Numerous communities reported a loss of 911 service. Businesses reported a loss of mission-critical cloud services. Residential customers complained about the loss of broadband connectivity. CenturyLink's network status page posted the following brief message: "We are investigating an incident affecting...

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NEC acquires KMD, the largest Danish IT company

NEC agreed to acquire KMD A/S, the largest Danish IT company, for approximately 8 billion Danish Kroner (DKK) from Advent International, a global private equity firm. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of February 2019. KMD mainly provides software and IT services in Denmark through business models that generate profit continuously on a recurring basis, such as software as a service (SaaS) offerings. Specifically, KMD has a...

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MPEG LA prevails in patent case against Huawei and ZTE in Germany

MPEG LA announced today that patent holders in MPEG LA’s AVC/H.264 Patent Portfolio License have enforced verdicts of injunction in German District court (“Landgericht Dusseldorf”) cases finding that Huawei Deutschland GmbH (“Huawei”) and ZTE Deutschland GmbH ("ZTE") infringed patents by their use in mobile phones that implement the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) Standard. As a result, Huawei and ZTE must cease and desist from offering in Germany AVC/H.264...

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NEC to acquire majority stake in Transatel

NTT Communications (NTT Com) agreed to acquire a majority stake in Transatel (HQ: Paris, France, CEO: Jacques Bonifay), a global Internet of Things (IoT) cellular connectivity management provider and Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE). Financial terms were not disclosed. Transatel, established in 2000, has since 2012 been a pioneer in deploying its own worldwide data MVNO network compliant with Embedded SIM (eSIM*2) technology to address three...

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Italy's IRIDEOS announces 400G super-channels based on Infinera

IRIDEOS, an Italian infrastructure provider with 12 data centers and 30,000 km of optic fiber deployed along motorways, announced the ability to support connections up to 400 Gbps following an upgrade to its transport network. The IRIDEOS network is based on ultra-low latency, direct optical paths ensuring high performance, and on an ASON architecture and GMPLS protocols for dynamic protection of services. IRIDEOS said the use of integrated super-channels...

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2019 Network Predictions - The campus becomes hot again

Michael Bushong,  Juniper Networks’ VP of Enterprise and Cloud Marketing  Network automation will hit the curve in the proverbial hockey stick. Despite years of talking about automation, the vast majority of enterprise operations are still manual, CLI-driven activities. In 2019, adoption will shift from linear to something more aggressive. This will be driven in part by a general need to automate the network to keep pace with the dynamic...

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2019 Network Predictions - 5G just can’t ‘contain’ itself

by John English, Director of Marketing, Service Provider Solutions, NETSCOUT 5G just can’t ‘contain’ itself  In 2019 as virtualized network architectures are rapidly adopted to support 5G we expect to see containers emerge as the de-facto platform to run new applications and workloads The excitement around 5G is building as we hear more news about network deployments, trials and handsets. However, one 5G-related issue that hasn’t yet been...

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2019 Network Predictions - Operators must ‘scale or fail’ for 5G

by Heather Broughton, Sr. Director of Service Provider Marketing, NETSCOUT Operators will ‘scale or fail’ to meet the 5G demand in 2019 5G will be faster, smarter and more efficient than 4G, but in order to meet demand and to support new architectures, networks will have to scale. While most of the scale in the core network will be cloud and software-based, there will still be a need for hardware and equipment at the network edge, and in a 5G environment...

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Cloud Constellation raises $100M for data centers in orbit

Cloud Constellation Corporation, a start-up based in Los Angeles, announced a funding commitment of $100 million from HCH Group Company for its "SpaceBelt" series of data centers in orbit. Cloud Constellation’s SpaceBelt is described as "an innovative cloud service for the protection of an organization’s strategic, mission-critical data assets." The company plans to deploy a network of eight satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) to store mission-critical...

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Philips sells Laser Diode Division to TRUMPF

Philips will sell 100% of its Photonics GmbH division to TRUMPF. Financial terms were not disclosed. Philips Photonics, which iss headquartered in Ulm, Germany, designs, manufactures, markets and sells VCSEL-based solutions for data communications, consumer and industrial applications. Its product portfolio ranging from high speed VCSELs (vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers) for data communication to infrared illumination modules for security,...

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Tigo Senegal picks Ericsson for network modernization - 1,000+ sites

Tigo Senegal has selected Ericsson for its nationwide network modernization project, which will bring LTE across the country. The 3-year contract covers upgrades to over 1,000 existing sites using the latest Ericsson Radio System (ERS) technology. The project will also expand Tigo’s mobile backhaul network with Ericsson’s MINI-LINK. Ericsson will also provide Cloud Packet Core and Cloud Data Management and Policy solutions for the modernization...

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Cambridge Mobile Telematics announces $500M backing from Softbank

Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), which is known for its DriveWell platform used by insurers, fleet operators, cellular carriers, and large entreprises to measure driving risk, announced a $500 million investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund. CMT, which is located steps from the MIT campus, said the investment will boost its growth in automated crash and claims management, video analytics, and safety for emerging vehicle and mobility systems....

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Korea Internet Neutral eXchange implements Ciena's Waveserver

Korea Internet Neutral eXchange (KINX) is leveraging Ciena’s Waveserver platform to provide connectivity between its data centers and offer new levels of flexibility and scalability for global leading internet content providers. KINX is the only carrier-neutral internet exchange provider in Korea, specializing in internet infrastructure, content delivery networks and providing cloud computing services to prominent domestic and international carriers,...

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Keysight submits 5G TTCN-31 conformance test case

Keysight Technologies has submitted the industry’s first 5G TTCN-31 conformance test case to 3GPP RAN52 for 5G new radio (NR) device certification. The 5G NR Non-Standalone (NSA) test case submission was made using Keysight’s 5G Protocol Conformance Toolset, part of Keysight’s 5G Network Emulation Solution portfolio. It is the first 3GPP conformance test case at mmWave frequencies (28 GHz) using an over-the-air (OTA) test methodology. Protocol conformance...

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2019 Network Predictions

by Angelique Medina, senior product market manager, ThousandEyes 2018 has seen the acceleration of modern infrastructure from public cloud, SaaS, hybrid and SD-WAN. 2019 will see enterprises feeling the impact of this dramatic shift more than ever. Internet unpredictability impacts become more visible as SD-WAN projects spread and mature SD-WAN adoption is on the rise, and with it, the enterprise’s growing dependence on the Internet. Before moving...

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Ovum: 1.3 billion connections by the end of 2023

Global mobile connections will total ten billion by 2023 according to forecasts provided by Ovum and published by 5G Americas. Also, by the end of 2023, global 5G connections are expected to reach 1.3 billion, an industry trade organization composed of leading telecommunications service providers and manufacturers. “Growth of LTE is unabated, as LTE added 239 million connections worldwide in the third quarter of 2018,” stated Kristin Paulin, Senior...

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Digital Realty earns ENERGY STAR Certifications for its 24 data centers

Digital Realty earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR certification for superior energy performance in 24 data centers in 2018.  The certifications indicate Digital Realty data centers rank in the top 25 percent of similar facilities nationwide for energy efficiency.  Digital Realty said its ENERGY STAR-certified data centers are now saving a total of 720,000 megawatt hours relative to industry-average data centers,...

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Vanu offers Global Wireless Connectivity Maps

Vanu, which supplies access equipment for mobile network operators, announced VanuMaps, a mapping resource capable of detailing where connectivity is lacking and can be provided profitably throughout Africa, select countries in Asia and the rest of the world. The new mapping tool will enable Vanu’s mobile network operator customers to quickly and accurately identify communities in need and the most effective strategies to address their connectivity...

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LightOn raises EUR 2.9 million for optics-based data processing for AI

LightOn, a start-up based in Paris, announced EUR 2.9 million (US$3.3 million) in seed funding for its work in developing optics-based data processing technology for AI. LightOn is building Optical Processing Units (OPUs) for sensing. The core technology, licensed by PSL Research University, was originally developed at several of Paris’ leading research institutions. The company said it is already working with OVH, Europe’s leading cloud provider. The...

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CityFibre secures £1.12 billion loan for its full fibre rollout across UK

CityFibre has arranged for debt package of £1.12 billion from seven major financial institutions including ABN AMRO, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Bank plc, Natixis, NatWest, Santander and Société Générale. CityFibre notes that this is the largest debt financing package dedicated to full fibre rollouts in the UK’s history and represents an important milestone in CityFibre’s plan to improve the country’s digital future. The debt package will be used to...

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UK's Gigaclear picks Ciena for 100G transport network

Gigaclear Network selected Ciena for a 100G transport network across multiple countryside locations in the UK. The network leverages Ciena’s 6500 Packet Optical platform powered by WaveLogic coherent optics. It also uses Ciena’s  Blue Planet Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller software, which will automate network and service management and provide real-time visibility into network operations.  With this new network upgrade,...

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MACOM intros Ultra Low Phase Noise Amplifier

MACOM introduced a new portfolio of wideband, ultra low phase noise amplifiers. The first device in the series (MAAL-011151) is suited for use as a low phase noise amplifier stage for signal generation applications spanning a host of system designs targeting test and measurement (T&M), EW, ECM, and radar. MACOM said phase noise is a critical specification in defining the frequency stability of a signal source, with significant implications for...

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Keysight, Qualcomm test 5G NR Standalone Data Transfer

Keysight Technologies and Qualcomm have demonstrated a 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) standalone (SA) mode IP data transfer. The testing, which used Keysight’s 5G network emulation solutions and a mobile smartphone form-factor test device consisting of a 5G modem and antenna modules from Qualcomm, was achieved using a network configuration that combines the latest 3GPP Release 15.3.0 5G NR technologies. The companies described the achievement an important...

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AT&T to launch 5G mobile on Dec 21 priced at $70 for 15GB

AT&T will launch its mobile 5G network on December 21. The first offering will be a mobile 5G hotspot device from Netgear priced at $499. The service is priced at $70 per month for 15 GB of data. Expected data speeds were not disclosed. “This is the first taste of the mobile 5G era,” said Andre Fuetsch, president, AT&T Labs and chief technology officer. “Being first, you can expect us to evolve very quickly. It’s early on the 5G journey...

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