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 open digital platforms for its customers. The company said its focus is on cloud computing, IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), and big data.

In its consumer business, Huawei has maintained a tight focus on technological innovation, including its P20 series smartphones, its GPU Turbo graphics processing acceleration, and its MateBook X Pro notebooks.

In the cloud domain, Huawei has picked up the pace of its innovation in cloud infrastructure. Two major focuses include providing stable, reliable, secure, trusted, and sustainable cloud services for customers, and building an AI platform that is affordable, intuitive, and secure for all users.

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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 the company’s network superiority and enabling digital experiences.
• Brendon Riley will become the CEO of Telstra InfraCo, which will leverage the InfraCo assets and drive growth in the wholesale market.
• David Burns, currently with the Enterprise team, will lead Global Business Services (GBS).
• Robyn Denholm will move to the role of Chief Financial Officer & Head of Strategy. 
• Alex Badenoch, Transformation & People will lead the T22 strategy transformation execution as well as drive the way the company works and operates, strengthening employee engagement. 
• Carmel Mulhern, Legal & Corporate Affairs will continue in her role engaging external stakeholders, including relationships with government and community.

“Last month I announced the T22 strategy to the market and today I am making furtherannouncements on Telstra’s structure and leadership to ensure we deliver rapidly and effectively on all of the commitments we made to our customers, the market and our team. At the heart of these changes is the simplification of our products and services built on newtechnology. By mid-next year we will have fully rolled out our market leading products and services. To help deliver these changes, we are announcing a new end-to-end products and technology division of Telstra. It means we will significantly increase our technical capabilities around product development and management," stated Andrew Penn.

Telstra to spin-off fixed infrastructure, focus on 5G

Wednesday, June 20, 2018  Australia, Telstra  

Almost exactly 8 years after signing a historic agreement with nbn Co Limited (NBN Co), the consortium established to design, build and operate Australia's wholesale-only national broadband network (nbn), Telstra has just announced plans to spin-off its remaining fixed network infrastructure, including long-haul fibre, data centres, and subsea cables, into a separate company.

The nbn Co agreement reached in 2010 ensured that Telstra provides access to its facilities, which has remained a steady source of income over the years. Nevertheless, Telstra is embarking on a major reorganization and radical transformation of its customer plans and pricing. The company says it is looking ahead to a "post-nbn rollout" world in which very fast access speeds are ubiquitous across the country and multiple competitors run over the same fixed infrastructure.

The strategy, named Telstra2022, has four key pillars:

• Radically simplify product offerings, eliminate customer pain points and create all digital experiences
• Establish a standalone infrastructure business to drive performance and set up optionality post the nbn rollout
• Greatly simplify the corporate structure and ways of working to empower our people and serve our customers
• Cost reduction programme and portfolio management

Andrew Penn, who has now been CEO of Telstra for three years, says "The rate and pace of change in our industry is increasingly driven by technological innovation and competition. In this environment, traditional companies that do not respond are most at risk. We have worked hard preparing Telstra for this market dynamic while ensuring we did not act precipitously. However, we are now at a tipping point where we must act more boldly if we are to continue to be the nation’s leading telecommunications company.”

The corporate restructuring will result in a net reduction of 8,000 employees and contractors, and the elimination of 2-4 layers of management.

The infrastructure spin-off, tentatively called Telstra InfraCo, will begin as a wholly-owned subsidiary on 1 July, although over time, Telstra may seek a strategic investor or separate listing. Its assets will include Telstra’s fixed network infrastructure including data centres, non-mobiles related domestic fibre, copper, HFC, international subsea cables, exchanges, poles, ducts and pipes. Its services will be sold to Telstra, wholesale customers and nbn co.

Telstra InfraCo will also comprise Telstra’s nbn co commercial works activities and Telstra Wholesale, with a total workforce of approximately 3,000. It is expected this new Business Unit will control assets with a book value of about $11 billion and have annual revenues and EBITDA of about $5.5 billion and $3 billion respectively.

The new business unit will not include the mobile network assets including spectrum, radio access equipment, towers and some elements of backhaul fibre, which will remain integrated with Telstra’s core customer segment.  Telstra itself will seek to be a premium brand with its future tied to mobile connectivity and the upcoming 5G launch.

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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 Southern U.S. including Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami.

In addition to Wavelengths, Ethernet Solutions and Dedicated Internet Access, Windstream Enterprise and Wholesale offers a range of complementary network and communications solutions to wholesale and resale customers including SD-WAN Wholesale, proprietary OfficeSuite White Label and Cloud SIP and PRI.

Windstream Wholesale boosts fiber presence at NJFX

Sunday, June 17, 2018  NJFX, Windstream  

Windstream Wholesale is fortifying its fiber transport network at NJFX’s Tier 3 carrier-neutral colocation campus, located at the cable landing station in Wall, NJ.

“What Windstream Wholesale offers at the NJFX colocation campus is a reliable, high-quality option for organizations coming in internationally, looking for connectivity options in the U.S,” commented Joe Scattareggia, president of Windstream Wholesale. “This newest project is an overbuild of a system with newer, updated technology. As a more cost-effective and efficient solution, our customers will now have even greater access to the cable landing station in Wall, NJ. We are building a diverse path—particularly the Ashburn route, which avoids the busy Philadelphia metro—along with an upgrade of existing services, with increased and accelerated installation time frames,” stated Scattareggia.

Windstream Wholesale offers protected backbone network services, along with a portfolio of data, cloud and managed services.

NJFX’s facility is strategically located where subsea cables from the U.S., Europe and South America meet at the United States’ easternmost edge.

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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 a terminal's handover between different types of networks.

NEC's enhanced TMS features advanced component software that increases the performance and accuracy of analytics. Moreover, Dynamic TCP Optimization, a function that enables control in response to changing network conditions, has extended its scope to the ultrahigh-speed range of 5Gbps or more.

The company claims its enhanced TMS in a 5G test environment has improved 5G communications quality by increasing throughput by approximately 24% in the ultrahigh-speed range of 5Gbps or more; reducing download time during the handover from 4G to 5G by approximately 27%; and reducing the time to reach the maximum speed during the handover from 4G to 5G by approximately 64%.

"NEC contributes to a better experience for end users and more efficient network operations for CSPs by continuing to enhance TMS," said Kazuhiro Tagawa, General Manager, Network Solutions Division, NEC Corporation. "Our TMS has been adopted by over 20 CSPs worldwide and we look forward to seeing it drive the further advancement of 5G."

https://www.nec.com/en/press/201808/global_20180801_01.html

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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 experience and build its own cloud-based network with the ability to design the services their customers require
Vubiquity, an Amdocs company, has been selected by Verizon Managed Services to supplement its expansive collection of on-demand content across existing and future formats, including but not limited to 4K and HDR. Vubiquity will also make this media and entertainment available in a variety of business models, including TV on-demand, rental, PPV and EST.
Amdocs, together with Amazon Web Services (AWS), will enable large Philippines telco Globe Telecom, to deliver cloud-based intelligent omnichannel routing and interactions management to quickly adapt to fast-changing consumer demands and truly transform their customer engagements.

Separately, Amdocs reported revenue for the third fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2018 of $1.0 billion, up 1.0% or $9.9 million sequentially from the second fiscal quarter of 2018 and up 3.7% as compared to last year’s third fiscal quarter, including  a negative impact from foreign currency movements of approximately $9 million. The Company's GAAP net income for the third quarter of fiscal 2018 was $91.5 million, or $0.64 per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $119.3 million, or $0.81 per diluted share, in the prior fiscal year’s third quarter. Net income on a non-GAAP basis was $147.5 million, or $1.03 per diluted share, compared to non-GAAP net income of $150.4 million, or $1.02 per diluted share, in the third quarter of fiscal 2017.

"We are pleased to report a solid performance in our third fiscal quarter. Revenue exceeded $1 billion for the first time in our history and was in line with the midpoint of our guidance adjusting for currency. On a regional basis, North America showed some early signs of stabilization while Europe and Rest of World delivered solid year-over-year growth that reflected the benefit of recent customer awards and our continued focus on project delivery and execution,” said Eli Gelman, president and chief executive officer of Amdocs Management Limited.

Gelman continued, “Q3 included positive developments relating to Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). First, we are today excited to announce that Amdocs is supporting the commercial availability of Comcast’s software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) service for enterprise businesses which leverages Amdocs’ leading NFV portfolio of orchestration, fulfillment and automation capabilities. Second, Telstra has partnered with Amdocs to implement a next generation OSS platform for its B2B line of business that will enable Telstra’s network domains to evolve toward virtualization while minimizing the impact to its existing support systems.”

Amdocs to acquire Vubiquity for video content management

Wednesday, January 31, 2018  Amdocs  

Amdocs agreed to acquire Vubiquity, a Los Angeles-based company that provides professional video content management services, for approximately $224 million in cash.

Vubiquity works with over 600 leading film studios, television networks, and independent producers. It manages a 150,000+ asset library, providing superior quality distribution

Amdocs said Vubiquity's capabilities are of increasing importance to its 350+ communication and media service provider partners.

“This acquisition uniquely positions Amdocs at the center of increased convergence across the content community and video distributors including major OTT providers,” said Eli Gelman, Amdocs President and CEO. “Our joint offerings address the media and entertainment industry’s challenge in balancing the incredible growth of content and the many ways to consume content with making programming easier, faster to deliver and ultimately watch, while also delivering profits.”

“Vubiquity has successfully been connecting content owners and distributors across many diverse platforms and evolving business models at the core of its support to the media community,” said Vubiquity CEO Darcy Antonellis, who will, upon completion of the deal, be joining Amdocs as head of the Amdocs Media Division.

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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 Fulfillment and Activation project, which is implemented on MEFnet and is expected showcased at MEF18. This project focuses on developing answers to the challenge of orchestrating services across multiple service providers.  Sparkle is acting as a transit service provider and has developed test case scenarios related to the LSO Sonata, LSO Interlude, and LSO Cantata reference points and associated APIs.

 2.  Sparkle and a partner plan a MEF18 POC demo focused on a technology-vendor agnostic SD-WAN implementation with the goal of leap-frogging beyond standard universal CPEs based on virtual machines to a new solution that could serve as a baseline for multi-vendor, orchestrated SD-WAN.

3. In another MEF18 PoC demo, Sparkle is working with other service providers and technology vendors to build a circle of commercial trust built on blockchain technology.

Filmed at the MEF Annual Members meeting in Nashville.

See video: https://youtu.be/AMqBNRfvMjs

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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 Department entities including U.S. Cyber Command, the Defense Information Systems Agency, Fleet Cyber Command, Army Cyber Command and the DoD CIO office.

"The Defense Department used to love to build its own IT, often poorly and at high cost to taxpayers," said Qadium CEO and CIA veteran Tim Junio.  "The times are finally changing.  In the face of the greatest cybersecurity challenges in our nation's history, we're seeing the government and private tech companies coming together, making both sides better off."

Investors in Qadium include New Enterprise Associates, TPG, Institutional Venture Partners and Founders Fund.

http://www.qadium.com

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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 the field-proven ALEOS Application Framework for embedded applications, as well as tightly integrated cloud services and APIs. These features, combined with LTE-M/NB-IoT connectivity and a rich set of I/O options for data acquisition and sensor aggregation, enable critical data to be processed at the edge to drive application insight and create event-driven situational awareness, while optimizing data transmission. LTE-M/NB-IoT support also provides five to 10X enhanced coverage in remote locations or buildings, while reducing monthly data plan costs by up to 10X.

“Enterprises are gathering business intelligence by deploying IoT solutions over a diverse range of locations and assets, from security cameras in a warehouse to manufacturing equipment on a factory floor,” said Jason Krause, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Solutions, Sierra Wireless. “AirLink LX40 represents the evolution of our router portfolio, starting with the LX60, to bring the same secure connectivity experience as our rugged performance portfolio, but in an even more compact form factor that is optimized for enterprise IoT applications.”

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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 second quarter from the LR4 subassembly business divested on May 10, 2018.

Gross profit was $48.2 million, a decrease of 48.0% compared to $92.6 million in the previous year fiscal third quarter and a decrease of 26.6% compared to $65.6 million in the prior fiscal quarter. The net loss from continuing operations was $85.2 million, or $1.31 loss per diluted share, compared to net loss from continuing operations of $14.0 million, or $0.22 loss per diluted share, in the previous year fiscal third quarter and net loss from continuing operations of $15.5 million, or $0.50 loss per diluted share, in the prior fiscal quarter.

"Overall the quarter played out largely as expected," commented John Croteau, President and CEO of MACOM. "We made tangible progress in yield improvements for our 25G lasers and are now starting to execute a controlled ramp, scaling into high volume production. Based on our expected higher production volumes of 25G lasers, we added a new white-box transceiver customer, thereby launching our Data Center solutions business model. This business model provides dedicated transceiver manufacturing capacity and a ready-made supply chain to the end markets, and for MACOM, a dedicated customer which we anticipate will consume our Data Center semiconductor components as we scale production in the second half of calendar 2018. With increasing availability of our lasers, we believe that we are well positioned to step and repeat, scaling our solutions business model by enabling multiple, high-volume manufacturing customers to begin production ramps to meet industry demand over the course of the coming quarters.

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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 Alliance, and senior director of business development, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “As a leading mobile operator, SoftBank complements the expertise of the existing board and will help lead efforts to bring MulteFire to commercial deployment. Mr. Chika brings valuable experience in leading the efforts to promote unlicensed TD-LTE band in Japan – the 1.9 GHz band – that MulteFire will be able to leverage.”

“We see great opportunities for deploying MulteFire in unlicensed spectrum to meet the growing wireless connectivity demands of our subscribers, and also to use in billions of new IoT devices,” said Mr. Chika. “I look forward to collaborating with the fellow board members on advancing MulteFire as the right wireless connectivity solution for multiple applications in Japan and around the globe.”

The MulteFire Alliance is currently working on its Release 1.1 specification that adds IoT optimizations for NB-IoT and eMTC, as well as adding new support for the unlicensed 1.9 GHz band in Japan, the global 2.4 GHz band, and sub-1 GHz bands. The specification is targeted for completion in October 2018.

http://www.MulteFire.org

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