Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Verizon goes all in with One Fiber program, NG-PON2

We are big believers in taking fiber all the way to the customer, said Lee Hicks, Verizon, speaking at ADTRAN's Broadband Business Solutions event in Huntsville, Alabama. Verizon's One Fiber program is its multiyear strategy to build a common fiber plant for all services, including consumer, business and mobile backhaul. The carrier starts with a deep base fiber, having invested in its FiOS FTTH network for years. In April 2017, Verizon awarded...

Amazon EC2 launches burstable T3 instances for microservices

Amazon Web Services announced commercial availability of T3 instances, the next generation of burstable general-purpose instances for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), providing up to 30% improved price performance than previous generation T2 instances. The new T3 instances are designed for applications with variable CPU usage that experience occasional spikes in demand – such as microservices, low-latency interactive applications, small...

Nokia sets 5G license fee at EUR 3 per mobile phone

Nokia plans to set a licensing rate of EUR 3 for mobile phones which implement the 5G New Radio standard. Nokia holds a significant portfolio of standard-essential patents (SEPs) for 5G. The company has committed to license on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, in line with the applicable intellectual property rights policies of relevant standard-setting organizations (SSOs). Beyond mobile phones, Nokia believes that there will...

Slack rakes in $427 million in series H funding

Slack, the San Francisco-based start-up offering collaboration apps and services, announced $427 million in a series H funding round. The company has previously raised $827 million in its previous funding rounds. The company says the new level of investment reflects a post-money valuation of more than $7.1 billion. Slack claims more than 8 million Daily Active Users (DAUs) and more than 70,000 paid teams The Series H equity round was led by Dragoneer...

Pure Storage acquires StorReduce for cloud-optimized deduplication

Pure Storage has acquired StorReduce, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California that offers a cloud-first software-defined storage solution for managing large scale unstructured data. StorReduce's cloud-optimized technology reduces storage and bandwidth costs, enabling flash plus cloud solutions across a variety of use cases, including data tiering, migration, and protection. Pure Storage said the acquisition adds sophisticated deduplication technology...

Pure Storage revenues rip ahead to $308.9 million, up 37% yoy

Pure Storage reported revenue of $308.9 million for its second quarter ended July 31, 2018, up 37% Y/Y, exceeding the high end of its previously issued guidance. Gross margin was 66.7% GAAP; 68.0% non-GAAP, "Pure has delivered another exceptional quarter, with all measures exceeding our Q2 guidance ranges," said Charles Giancarlo, CEO, Pure Storage. "Our continued focus on enabling customers to succeed in a data-centric world is working and validated,...

Proof of Concept: Blockchain for intercarrier service enablement

A number of service providers, including CBCcom, PCCW Global, Sparkle and Tata Communications, together with technology vendors Clear Blockchain Technologies and Cataworx, are building a Proof of Concept (PoC) to show how telcos can introduce next-generation services thanks to innovations in blockchain technology, artificial intelligence and intent-based customer interfaces. The PoC uses MEF LSO Cantata and Sonata inter-carrier interfaces for automation...

CENX lands Tier 1 European contract for service assurance

CENX announced a contract to provide its hyper-scale service assurance platform to a globally recognized European Tier 1 operator. CENX's hyper-scale service assurance platform enables closed-loop assurance automation across virtual and hybrid networks. Under the contract, CENX will support the launch of new digital services and business models across fixed, wireless and data center infrastructure. CENX will enable the operator to assure and monitor...

Twenty-two states petition to restore Net Neutrality

Twenty-two states are petitioning a U.S. appeals court to reinstate net neutrality rules that were recently overturned by the FCC under Ajit Pai. Additional petitioners include the District of Columbia, Mozilla Corp., Public Knowledge, Open Technology Institute at New America, National Hispanic Media Coalition, NTCH, Benton Foundation, Free Press, Coalition for Internet Openness, Etsy, and INCOMPAS. FCC votes 3-2 to end Net Neutrality...

MBNL extends managed services contract with Ericsson

Ericsson won a two-year network managed services contract extension from MBNL, the network-sharing joint venture between UK mobile operators Three and EE. Ericsson has been MBNL’s managed services provider since 2009. The new extension covers Design, Plan and Deploy projects from June 2018 until May 2020. Pat Coxen, Managing Director at MBNL, says: “The agreement to extend the Design, Plan and Deploy services contract with Ericsson, for a further...