Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers to merge

Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers have agreed to combine their operations and properties into a pan-India company with over 163,000 towers across all 22 of the nation's telecom service areas. Indus Towers currently operates in 15 telecom service areas (“Circles”) and Bharti Infratel’s operations are focused on the remaining 7 Circles.

The combined company, which will use the name Indus Towers Limited and be listed on the Indian stock exchanges, will be the largest tower company in the world outside of China.

Indus Towers is currently jointly owned by Bharti Infratel (42%), Vodafone (42%), Idea Group (11.15%) and Providence (4.85%). It is intended that Idea Group will sell its 11.15% shareholding for cash concurrent with the completion of the deal. Vodafone will be issued with 783.1m new shares in the combined company, in exchange for its 42% shareholding in Indus Towers.

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Wind Tre picks Ericsson to virtualize its core network

Wind Tre, which serves over 32 million mobile and fixed broadband customer lines in Italy, has selected Ericsson to virtualize its core network as part of the evolution of its network to 5G Core.

Ericsson will supply its core network and Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVi) solution, enabling the fast introduction of new services and providing full-service continuity. The five-year contract, which gets underway during the Q2 2018, includes the delivery of a self-contained project to deploy a virtualized core network and orchestration capabilities according to European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) open source NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO). The solution includes Ericsson Orchestrator, the virtual infrastructure manager Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment based on OpenStack, Ericsson Cloud SDN and software-defined infrastructure based on Ericsson HDS 8000. Ericsson will also be the prime system integrator and provide support services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Benoit Hanssen, Chief Technology Officer Wind Tre, says: “This is another big step in the journey that Wind Tre is making to provide the best quality network and high value services to our customers. We are transforming to be ready for the digital revolution that 5G and IoT will bring. We are pleased to partner with Ericsson on this important deal which secures a deep knowledge of the existing technology and will provide a state-of-the-art virtualized network.”

The contract encompasses Ericsson’s virtual EPC, virtual IMS and virtual UDC (User Data Consolidation). They will be deployed on Ericsson´s proven system verified NFVi solution which aligns with the ETSI NFV Architectural Framework and the ETSI Management and Orchestration (MANO) architecture.

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NTT demos its photonic crystal fiber with high-powered lasers

NTT and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) have demonstrated a kW class, high-power single-mode laser transmission over tens to hundreds of meters --
representing a breakthrough for laser processing technology.

The innovation leverages NTT's photonic crystal fibers (PCF) and MHI's high power laser processing technology.

NTT's photonic crystal fiber transmits light by using the confinement effect of air holes. PCF consists of silica glass and multiple air holes, and offers novel properties impossible with conventional optical fiber.

Laser processing requires the transmission of light whose power is more than 10,000 times that of conventional telecommunication light. However, maximizing the optical power and transmission distance encounters the physical limit created by optical nonlinearity. Applications include a range of infrastructure products, including in transportation, manufacturing, and precision cutting.

The achievement will be reported at the 89th lecture of Japan Laser Processing Society, which will be held at Suita Campus, Osaka University at 23-24 May 2018.

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