Following widely reported outages impacting O2's 4G network in the UK and Softbank's mobile network across central Japan, Ericsson issued an urgent bulletin attributing the issue to two specific software versions of the SGSN–MME (Serving GPRS Support Node – Mobility Management Entity).
The main issue was an expired certificate in these software versions. Ericsson said a complete and comprehensive root cause analysis is still in progress.
Ericsson said the issue impacted a number of customer networks but did not elaborate.
Börje Ekholm, President and CEO, Ericsson, says: “The faulty software that has caused these issues is being decommissioned and we apologize not only to our customers but also to their customers. We work hard to ensure that our customers can limit the impact and restore their services as soon as possible.”
Softbank is on the cusp of completing an initial public offering (IPO) for its mobile business in Japan. Bloomberg reported that the offering is valued at 2.65 trillion yen (US$23.5 billion)
Here's an update on the SDN Enabled Broadband Access reference design developed by Open Networking Foundation (ONF), presented by ADTRAN's Kurt Raaflaub.
SEBA is a lightweight platform based on a variant of R-CORD. It supports a multitude of virtualized access technologies at the edge of the carrier network, including PON, G.Fast, and eventually DOCSIS and more. SEBA supports both residential access and wireless backhaul and is optimized such that traffic can run ‘fastpath’ straight through to the backbone without requiring VNF processing on a server.
U.S. revenue is estimated at more than $282 million for Managed SD-WAN services in 2018, according to a new report from Vertical Systems Group covering service migration, network connectivity and market sizing.
This figure is based on billable U.S. customer sites and WAN access connections installed and under management.
A Managed SD-WAN Service is defined as a carrier-grade network offering for enterprise and business customers, which is managed by a network operator, and delivered over a Software Defined Network (SDN) service architecture that has separate control (overlay) and data (underlay) planes. Not included in this analysis are DIY (Do It Yourself) SD-WAN solutions purchased directly from an SD-WAN technology supplier or a systems integrator.
“Carrier-grade Managed SD-WAN Services in the U.S. began to generate notable revenue in the second half of 2018. Prior to this, most providers supported customers with pilot SD-WAN services that were not substantively monetized,” said Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “For 2019, we expect a major boost in revenue with network operators fully ramped up to sell, deliver and support Managed SD-WAN Services. Moreover, a key driver for managed services is the growing appreciation that migration to SD-WAN is considerably more complex than the promise of ‘easily deployed’ plug-and-play DIY solutions.”
Providers actively selling Managed SD-WAN services in the U.S. include the following companies (in alphabetical order): Aryaka, AT&T, CenturyLink, Cogent, Comcast, Fusion Connect, GTT, Hughes, Masergy, MetTel, Sprint, Verizon, Windstream and Zayo. Other network operators throughout the world offer or plan to offer Managed SD-WAN Services in the U.S. market.
ADTRAN has acquired SmartRG Inc, a supplier of open-source connected home platforms and cloud services for broadband service providers. Financial terms were not disclosed.
SmartRG, which is based in Vancouver, Washington, offers a portfolio of cloud-management, analytics, Wi-Fi-enabled residential gateways along with a SmartOS software platform.
SmartRG counts more than 3 million devices in service and over 1.3 million devices under management in North America, the Caribbean and South America. The company expects to scale and drive growth through its differentiated software solutions as more customers shift from closed, proprietary options to SmartOS—its open-source-based, cloud-enabled solution suite.
ADTRAN said SmartRG's Smart OS, together with its own ADTRAN Mosaic platform, provides full end-to-end management and orchestration solutions from cloud edge to subscriber edge. Service providers understand that bandwidth must now be delivered not only to the doorstep but down to every device within a home to meet consumer expectations.
“We are very excited to welcome everyone at SmartRG—a growing and profitable enterprise—and look forward to their contributions to our team,” ADTRAN Sr. Vice President of Technology and Strategy Jay Wilson said. “SmartRG’s expansive customer base exemplifies its market leadership and we are committed to a smooth transition, as we move toward full collaboration and integration with our award-winning Mosaic platforms.”
“As fiber-based, virtually future-proof residential networks become a reality and bandwidth is no longer the gating factor, value creation will come from the ability to optimize the subscriber experience,” SmartRG President and CEO Jeff McInnis said. “Our ability to deliver against this need will enable ADTRAN and SmartRG customers to lower costs, simplify and scale networks and grow revenue by creating higher-value and lasting relationships with their customers.”
Speaker: Shahar Steiff, AVP, New Technology, PCCW Global.
A typical Communications Service Provider (CSP) owns and delivers a combination of network connectivity, compute, and storage services that are bundled into billable product offerings. It is most likely that such product offerings rely on partner CSPs that use each other’s resources to complement geographical or service capability coverage. To meet its potential, the market needs solutions that will dramatically streamline the commercial interactions between the CSP partners in the supply chain delivering such products. Those interactions typically include establishment of legal and commercial relationships, inquiries about availability of services, requests for quotes, placement of orders, billing, and settlement. As new and ever more complex products enter the market, commercial interactions based on manual intervention and processing using, for example, phone-calls, emails, and fax, will continue to consume significant time, thus delaying the delivery of these high margin services and holding back market growth.
Secure automation of these commercial interactions is highly significant for the availability of services supporting the growth of productivity and the global economy. In the immediate term, demonstrations of automation of billable connectivity/compute/storage services are of great significance to CSPs and vendors of commercial and business platforms.
This PoC provides a powerful demonstration of the dramatic reduction in time and resources required by service providers and partner operators throughout the commercial and business phases of the lifecycle of each service, as well as the ability to offer new products and services with deployment times significantly shorter than the current typical weeks or months. The PoC is based on the distributed ledger paradigm where commercially-sensitive transactions and information are managed using blockchain technology. Although blockchain is popularly perceived as being synonymous with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, blockchain can be used for a large variety of applications of distributed ledgers, including global supply chain verticals. The PoC illustrates the automation of commercial interactions, including product offer discovery, recursive quoting, and blockchain-based settlement and clearing across a network of seven wholesale/transit operator domains.
In addition, automated commercial interactions require machine-to-machine interfaces standardized and designed in such a way that they can be used by most, if not all, the suppliers and customers of these connectivity, compute, and storage billable services. MEF is making progress in standardizing business interaction interfaces (LSO Sonata APIs) which form an important part of this demonstration. These APIs have been combined in this demonstration with smart contract technology in which pre-standardized commercial and business service attributes are captured and expressed dynamically in machine form. This combination of MEF-defined APIs, smart contract technology, and the secure distributed ledger paradigm based on blockchain technology will enable the dramatic reduction of time and human resources in querying, quoting, ordering, billing, and settlement between stakeholders in the WAN-based services market, as well as the explosive growth of new services based on end-to-end, multi-domain, automation.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - Blockchain-Based Carrier Marketplace for LSO Sonata. PoC Participants: Colt Technology Services & Zeetta Networks.
Speaker: Joan A. Garcia Espín, Director of Product Management, Zeetta Networks.
Today, carriers have to build formal agreements with every off-net provider with which they want to do business. This limits the commercial engagement to providers with whom we place a larger number of off-net orders. Engaging with more off-net providers with whom we only will place a handful of orders is expensive, and the cost (especially in terms of manpower) of doing so more than outweighs the potential benefit. As a result we pay more for off-net circuits than we could because we use larger providers as intermediaries to do business with smaller providers. These “aggregators” add their own margin in these transactions, which effectively acts as a “tax” that carriers pay for working in this model.
Blockchain could be used to establish a circle-of-trust that service providers, large and small, can join that gives each access to a larger market of suppliers with whom to do business with directly, whilst in tandem bringing about a massive reduction of the overhead of bilateral agreements.
We would achieve this by providing capability -- building on LSO API work happening in MEF to which Colt is contributing -- to be able to find a provider that can meet a specific off-net requirement, evaluate their track-record in the market in delivery and assurance (reputation), get quotes, and place orders on a fully automated basis. This would allow providers like Colt to ensure they are getting a good balance of price and quality of service when buying off-net services as well as using the reputation we build through the quality of IQNet and our service-centric approach in the market to increase the number of sales when selling.
Each transaction -- and specifically SLA compliance in producing quotes, delivering orders, and in-life performance -- will be stored on the blockchain so that operators can evaluate the performance, in a secure environment, of a potential partner in their own selection process. An opaque copy of the financial contract established between the providers will also be stored on the blockchain to later support settlement.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
The main goal of this PoC is to demonstrate the automated & assured orchestration of MEF services across multiple operators’ domains on production networks. The PoC demonstrates the ordering and fulfillment of a complex service comprising connectivity services and VNFs. The showcase demonstrates the feasibility of using NFV-based Service Activation and Testing solutions for MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet services via LSO Presto APIs.
As part of this PoC, several LSO:SOF implementations are used (e.g. ONAP, proprietary) in a single MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet service deployment interacting via LSO Sonata and LSO Interlude APIs.
Use Case: A Tata Communications customer uses the Tata service portal to order a service to Tata cloud service. However, one of the customer’s sites is not located on a Tata network and hence this request is sent to Tata’s operator partners for serviceability checks.
This PoC is part of a multi-year MEF 3.0 Implementation project that provides feedback to the MEF technical committees on a range of aspects of LSO orchestration of complex services comprising connectivity and virtual entities (SDN + NFV) across multiple operator domains.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
Internet Exchange Australia (IX Australia) has deployed Smartoptics' DCP-M40 Open Line System and Pluggable DWDM QSFP28 PAM4 transceivers to provide high capacity links to metro locations in Sydney.
The new, automated, network was delivered by Independent Data Solutions (IDS) and provides IX Australia with lowest cost 40 x 100 Gb/s traffic capability over a single pair of fibers.
The new Smartoptics DCP-M40 Open Line System enables up to 40x100G wavelengths over spans exceeding 50km with fully automated addition of new channels for ease of use.
Oslo-based Smartoptics AB said space and power considerations were important factors in the technology choice due to the cost of colocation and available power in hosting facilities. The 1U form factor and max 45W power consumption for a fully loaded 40 channels system were significantly differentiating factors over more traditional coherent transponders.
Magnus Grenfeldt, CEO Smartoptics, commented, “In winning this important network expansion project, Smartoptics demonstrates continued success in commercializing PAM4 technology, our unique open line system and network automation technology as new foundation for Data Centre Interconnectivity. IX Australia has seamlessly expanded the capabilities of its network selecting the most optimal technology for their interconnects. Selecting PAM4 over coherent technology for less than 80km interconnects is clearly significantly advantageous in terms of cost, complexity, availability and latency.”
Telia activated Sweden's first 5G network on the campus of KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
The 5G network will serve as an innovation and research platform for the academia and partner companies. Telia is using a test spectrum license.
Ericsson is the technology provider.
Börje Ekholm, President and CEO, Ericsson, says: “This is the first 5G network in Sweden using commercial and standardized radio and core products. This project serves as an important step toward launching early commercial 5G services. Building a 5G network in one of Sweden’s most creative environments, the KTH campus, demonstrates Ericsson’s and Telia Company’s joint commitment to drive innovation.”
CyrusOne has acquired land from Schiphol Area Development Company N.V., just outside Amsterdam, on which it will build a new data center campus. CyrusOne will develop up to 360,000 square ft with an estimated 72 MW of power capacity on the site.
This is the second major expansion announcement for CyrusOne in the Netherlands. In October 2018, CyrusOne announced an agreement with Agriport A7 for the development of up to 270 MW on an 83-acre campus approximately 25 miles north of central Amsterdam in Middenmeer.
LeanIX, a start-up based in Bonn, Germany, closed $30 million in Series C funding.
LeanIX offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application for Enterprise Architecture (EA), which enables organizations to make faster, data-driven decisions.
The funding round was led by Insight Venture Partners. Previous investors DTCP (Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners), Capnamic Ventures, and Iris Capital also participated in the round. The closing brings LeanIX’s total funding to nearly $40 million since its founding in 2012.
“Today’s enterprises face data overload, overwhelmed by archaic IT landscapes that cripple productivity and business opportunity. Organizations need clear, actionable insights, and more than ever, enterprises are opting for IT modernization and demanding innovative EA tools,” said André Christ, CEO, and co-founder of LeanIX. “Together with our investors, we aim to become the category leader for EA in modern technology business management. While Agile, DevOps and Cloud are becoming mainstream in enterprises, we provide the best technology for a successful adoption and continuous management.”
The main issue was an expired certificate in these software versions. Ericsson said a complete and comprehensive root cause analysis is still in progress.
The main issue was an expired certificate in these software versions. Ericsson said a complete and comprehensive root cause analysis is still in progress.
