Openreach commits to "Fibre First" for the UK

Openreach announced plans to accelerate its rollout of Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) across the UK. The new "Fibre First Programme" represents a strategic shift in the way that Openreach thinks about last mile infrastructure. Going forward, the company will seek to deploy "fibre first" wherever possible, including in rural areas. Openreach said its new goal is to reach three million homes and businesses by the end of 2020. The programme will start...

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SD-WAN Video Spotlight - Tata Communications

Enterprise customers desire flexibility, agility, self-service, and clean economics in their network infrastructure. Tata Communications has invested in an SD-WAN that meets these expectations, says Bob Laskey, Senior VP and Regional Head of Americas, Tata Communications. See video: https://youtu.be/6fcYxaFDbww ...

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Eir withdraws from Ireland's National Broadband Plan tender

Eir, the former incumbent telecoms operator in Ireland, has withdrawn its bid from Ireland's National Broadband Plan (NBP) tender process. The company, which was shortlisted due to its extensive network infrastructure and business experience, cited significant commercial issues and complexity with the tender process. Eir concluded that the uncertainty on a range of regulatory and pricing issues presented too many risks to continue with a bid. In...

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ZTE boosts VDSL2 with 35b bonding

ZTE has added 35b bonding profile support to its VDSL2 CPE device. Profile 35b technology can provide downstream rates three times those of profile 17a by expanding the spectrum to 35 MHz. ZTE said the 35b bonding profile enables the CPE to deliver 500 Mbps downstream and 100 Mbps upstream rates over a 200-meter telephone line. The company noted that profile 35b and other profiles, such as 17a, can use vectoring technology in the same bundle of...

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The CEOs of Verizon and KT complete 5G video call

Verizon chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam and KT chairman and CEO Chang-Gyu Hwang conducted a pre-commercial 5G video call on Sunday, February 4, 2018. McAdam was in Minneapolis and Hwang was in Seoul.  Both participants used a prototype 5G tablet from Samsu...

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Orange Business acquires Enovacom for e-health

Orange Business Services agreed to Enovacom, a software developer based in Marseille and dedicated to e-health. Financial terms were not disclosed. Enovacom's software suite facilitates the exchange, sharing and security of data between all players in the healthcare system. Its solutions are found in over 1 500 healthcare institutions in France and abroad. In particular, Enovacom software is used to manage and secure hospitals’ electronic exchanges...

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Verizon and Ericsson complete NB-IoT Guard Band test

Verizon and Ericsson completed a series of tests of Narrowband IoT Guard band data sessions. The trials uses the latest Massive Internet of Things Ericsson software on Verizon’s 4G LTE network.  NB-IoT Guard band technology occupies a dedicated frequency of 180 kHz bandwidth designated for IoT applications which does not share spectrum resources with commercial smartphone traffic. Verizon has already launched a commercial CAT M1 IoT service...

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T-Mobile US tests NB-IoT guard band

T-Mobile U.S. successfully tested Narrowband IoT in guard bands. The carrier announced that testing has been conducted in the lab and in the field. NB-IoT is live in Las Vegas and T-Mobile aims to turn on the service nationwide by mid-year. ...

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Intel leads $100 million investment in Joby Aviation

Joby Aviation, a start-up developing an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) passenger aircraft, raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by Intel Capital. Joby Aviation is working on a 5-seat aircraft capable of flying 150 miles (240km) on a charge.  The company is based in Santa Cruz, California. Besides Intel Capital, additional investors in this funding round included Singapore-based EDBI, JetBlue Technology Ventures,...

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SK Hynix ships 72-Layer 512Gb 3D NAND Flash SSD

SK Hynix announced an enterprise SATA Solid State Drive based on its 72-Layer 512Gb (Gigabits) 3D NAND Flash chips. SK Hynix combined the 72-Layer 512Gb 3D NAND Flash with its in-house firmware and controller to provide the maximum density of 4TB.  The drive supports sequential read and write speed of up to 560MB/s (Megabytes per second) and 515MB/s, respectively, and it can perform 98,000 random read IOPS and 32,000 random write IOPS. SK Hynix...

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