ADVA expands FSP 3000 open line system for data center interconnect

ADVA introduced an expanded FSP 3000 open line system (OLS) for data center interconnect (DCI) applications.

The modular and disaggregated design of the new OLS works with all coherent and direct detect technologies, such as PAM4. High levels of software-driven automation enable the OLS to adapt to match line conditions and achieve maximum reach without manual intervention.


“The open and disaggregated design of our new DCI OLS delivers more choice and flexibility than ever before. Customers can now select the ideal components for their exact requirements and achieve the lowest cost per Gigabit mile in every possible DCI scenario,” said Paul Morkel, senior director, network architecture, ADVA. “Also, by decoupling terminal functions from the line system, our solution offers total freedom to evolve and optimize each network layer separately. By taking advantage of different component lifecycles, customers will enjoy a much faster pace of innovation and growth. Yet what really makes our DCI OLS special is its ability to automatically adjust its performance to match the characteristics of the fiber link. Not only does this simplify network planning, but it also drastically reduces operating costs and improves overall network efficiency.”

“The latest evolution of our FSP 3000 is without doubt the most comprehensive OLS solution for DCI applications on offer. There’s simply nothing else out there that delivers the same levels of flexibility and SDN control. Our team is dedicated to creating open systems for disaggregated network deployments and preventing vendor lock-in, and that’s exactly what this launch is all about. Our new DCI OLS will empower our customers to take their DCI strategy further than ever before,” said Stephan Rettenberger, SVP, marketing and investor relations, ADVA. “Now operators can select the line speeds and modulation formats that suit their specific business needs. You want the spectral efficiency of a coherent solution? Our DCI OLS can deliver. You prefer to use direct detect PAM4 technology? With our system, we’ve got you covered.”

http://adva.li/fsp-3000-dci-ols-slides
http://adva.li/fsp-3000-dci-ols-solution-brief

Read More

OE Solutions' 25G transceivers deployed for 5G rollout in South Korea

OE Solutions confirmed that its 25Gbps and 10G transceivers are being deployed in the nation-wide roll-out of 5G in South Korea, where the three largest wireless network operators have committed to build nation-wide networks that will serve 80% of the population by the end of 2020. The nationwide rollout is expected to entail more than 1M optical transceivers of various types at a cost exceeding $400 million.

OE Solutions said the deployments include both 10Gbps and 25Gbps transceivers for the fronthaul connection utilizing a mix of CWDM and DWDM to maximize the utility of the existing fiber plant. OE Solutions, which is a major supplier of transceivers for both data rates, have been delivering more than 2,000 units of 25Gbps LWDM transceivers per week to support the rapid roll-out and plan to increase the capacity further.

Custom-grid WDM transceivers in the O-band, such as LWDM (utilizing the LAN wavelength grid), offer capital and time-to-market advantages by allowing coexistence of 5G with other services on the existing fiber plant.

“OE Solutions’ customer support and custom transceiver design capabilities are critical for KT to lead the way in with our nation-wide deployment of an economical 5G wireless network infrastructure”, said Mr. Lee, Director of Network Strategy at Korea Telecom, “Their focus on 25Gbps transceivers for wireless applications matches KT’s goal of offering state-of-the-art wireless services that can scale and satisfy the bandwidth requirements as 5G matures”.

“We are pleased to work very closely with the Korean network operators on the roll-out of their nation- wide 5G network”, said Walter Lee, Head of Product Management and Strategy of OE Solutions, and continued “OE Solutions has been deeply involved with previous generations of wireless deployments in Korea, which has honed our skills anbps d built the required expertise to meet the demanding requirements of the rapidly evolving wireless infrastructure.

Read More

OE Solutions announces 10G and 25G optical transceivers for 5G fronthaul

OE Solutions introduced 10Gbps and 25Gbps DWDM optical transceivers for the O-band and C-band, respectively.

These Industrial-Temperature rated (IT) transceivers, together with the company's previously released 25G LWDM optical transceiver, increase network operators’ options for leveraging wavelength multiplexing and economically deploy new wavelengths on existing fiber plant and serve added 5G radio heads with minimal changes to the optical architecture.

OE Solutions said its growing portfolio of 10Gbps and 25Gbps offers higher spectral efficiencies with DWDM transceivers in the O-band in addition to the more conventional use of DWDM in the C-band. These products not only increase the information density in a band, such as the O-band for example, but also offers an elegant migration path by leaving connections in other spectral bands of the same fiber unaffected.

“OE Solutions’ rapidly growing portfolio of 10Gbps and 25Gbps WDM transceivers helps Samsung provide more creative optical solutions for the 5G wireless fronthaul network”, said Mr. Seo, Director of Development at Samsung, adding “These new transceivers allow us to better tailor 5G network architectures to our customers’ specific situations and more efficiently utilize existing fiber plant, which saves our customers money”.

“We are keenly aware of the network operators’ urgent need for higher capacities in the fronthaul network while minimizing capital investments”, said Per Hansen, VP of Marketing and Sales at OE Solutions, and continued “OE Solutions is diligently continuing the development of new optical transceivers that will offer higher capacities with appropriate link budgets and reaches for the existing fiber plant while meeting the typical requirements for fronthaul networks.”

http://www.oesolutions.com

Read More

ADTRAN debuts Fixed Wireless Access for 5G

ADTRAN has extended its fixed wireless access portfolio with the addition of new millimeter wave (mmWave) mesh and point-to-multipoint (PTMP) solutions for supporting dense 5G networks.

The company confirmed that it is working with a number of Tier 1 carriers and regional service providers in the U.S. and EMEA to design, deploy and manage access and backhaul networks utilizing mmWave/mesh/SON technologies.

“Multi-gigabit broadband service extension via fixed wireless is essential to a comprehensive and cost-effective 5G network and provides a tremendous speed to market advantage,” ADTRAN VP of Cable and Wireless Strategy Hossam Salib said. “Fixed wireless technologies can be easier and more affordable to deploy than fixed fibre, which makes new millimeter wave and point-to-multipoint innovations excellent choices to build the dense backhaul network 5G requires.”

“We are integrating these mmWave mesh and point-to-multipoint solutions into our Mosaic software platform to ease deployment and migration to SDN/NFV architectures as we help operators deploy fixed wireless solutions,” Salib said. “We then bring all the pieces together by leveraging ADTRAN’s network implementation service expertise, which allows operators to customize and integrate multiple wireless access technologies into their overall 5G strategy.”

Read More

Telefónica brings 5G to Barcelona'a famed Camp Nou stadium

Telefónica has installed 5G in Camp Nou, Barcelona's legendary football stadium using massive MIMO active antennas in the 3.5GHz.

Ericsson is the main radio supplier for Telefónica Spain, including the city of Barcelona.  Currently, the Camp Nou stadium has a dedicated 3G and 4G coverage system based on Ericsson Micro Radio Units and the Radio Dot System in the VIP areas. This solution makes Camp Nou one of the best stadiums in Europe in terms of mobile capacity and performance.

In addition, Telefónica and Ericsson with other partners announced a 5G-based television production solution that enables immediate TV coverage with professional quality. 

Read More

ADTRAN joins Telefónica's 10G PON demonstration

ADTRAN joined in Telefónica’s 10G PON demonstration at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The demo leveraged an SDN-Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) architecture, including a virtualized control plane, to deliver converged residential, business and mobile backhaul services. ADTRAN supplied its SDX 10G PON OLTs to aggregate multi-vendor ONTs as part of the demonstration.

ADTRAN SD-Access 10G PON offers an open, disaggregated network by utilizing virtualized access software from the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). This capability enables multiple OLT and ONU vendors to seamlessly interoperate in any environment and allows Telefónica to more easily accelerate the deployment of programmable, software-based service architectures.

“As an ONF partner, ADTRAN provides access solutions for the open networking ecosystem so that service providers around the world can streamline the creation and deployment of revenue-generating services,” ADTRAN Americas CTO Robert Conger said. “Telefónica is leveraging ADTRAN’s SD-Access portfolio with flexible 10G PON to support existing FTTH subscribers while seamlessly providing a path to higher-bandwidth services.”

Read More

Dell’Oro: Cable infrastructure investments to hit $2B by 2023

Investments in cable infrastructure is projected to reach $2 billion by 2023, according to a newly published report by Dell’Oro Group.

“Global cable operators are investing heavily in distributed access architectures to make their networks more efficient, offer premium bandwidth, and stay ahead of fiber-based competitors,” noted Jeff Heynen, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Today’s investments in DAAs will prepare cable operators for a future of 10 Gbps services using a combination of extended spectrum DOCSIS, full duplex DOCSIS 3.1 and, ultimately, fiber to the home,” continued Heynen.

Additional highlights from the Broadband Access 5-Year Forecast Report:

• Sales of cable broadband access equipment will increase from $1.5 billion in 2019 to $2 billion in 2023, driven by spending on remote PHY and MACPHY devices, as well as virtual CCAP platforms. Spending on cable equipment will grow faster than PON equipment over the same period.
• XGS-PON will outpace NG-PON2 deployments throughout our forecast period, owing to lower component and equipment costs.
• VDSL Profile 35b and Gfast will offset some—not all of the revenue loss from declining ADSL port shipments. Some major Gfast deployments are already seeing signs of shrinking, as governments lobby operators to increase their investments in fiber.

Read More

Clearfield introduces new Fiber Active Cabinets

Clearfield introduced a new line of FieldSmart Fiber Active Cabinets for outdoor enclosures.

The new designs blend fiber-optimization with capacity for any active components in a Telcordia GR-487 tested outdoor enclosure for emerging applications like Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC), requiring low-latency fiber connections at the edge of the network in a secure location.

The FieldSmart Fiber Active Cabinet (FAC) is designed for modularity and flexibility while maintaining a maximum cooling capability for the active electronics investment. The outdoor cabinets are designed for the harshest outdoor conditions, providing a sealed internal environment where external air and humidity are completely isolated from the electronic equipment. The FieldSmart FAC product line includes the following elements.

• FieldSmart FAC 400 features a 19” vertical frame, accommodating up to 4RU of active electronics and 192 internal fiber distribution ports for deployment.
• FieldSmart FAC 900 features a 19” vertical frame that can accommodate up to 9RU of active electronics and up to 576 internal fiber distribution ports for deployment.
• FieldSmart FAC 3200 features two front and rear 16RU 23” frames that can accommodate up to 32RU of active electronics while providing up to 432 internal fiber distribution ports for deployments.
• FieldSmart FAC 5400 features two swing frame front and rear 27RU 23” frames that can accommodate up to 54RU of active electronics and provides up to 960 internal fiber distribution ports for deployments.

“Current and future broadband technologies require active equipment be placed deeper in the network. These same technologies require that fiber be placed right there alongside them to quickly transport and backhaul content with the lowest latency possible,” said Johnny Hill, Clearfield’s chief operating officer. “Our customers are expanding their fiber networks, preparing to meet the insatiable bandwidth demands from new technologies like 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). So, having one partner that’s able to work with them on any deployment is a benefit.”

“Over the last few decades, cabinets once thought to provide extensive services became obsolete or unusable as supplier technologies advanced, leaving customers with stranded investment,” said Brent Stucker, co-owner of Datacom Solutions. “With the FieldSmart Fiber Active Cabinet universal approach, service providers not only get cost-effective and proven deployment capabilities but also position themselves to prepare for the unforeseen needs of the future.”

Read More

Qualcomm offers Mesh Wi-Fi design kit for Amazon Alexa

Qualcomm is introducing a development kit for mesh Wi-Fi networks, qualified by Amazon, to integrate the Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS). This helps manufacturers to quickly create mesh Wi-Fi systems with Alexa for bringing the convenience of voice control to connected devices throughout the home.

Voice control is becoming a new way for consumers to be able to more easily manage their smart home devices. The addition of Alexa, integrated via the ClearVoice far-field voice enhancement software solution from Meeami Technologies, makes it easy for mesh networking manufacturers to provide leading voice capabilities to their customers layered on the Qualcomm Wi-Fi mesh platforms.

“Mesh networks have become the new standard to support the best possible connected experience in the home. By adding Amazon’s advanced voice capabilities through the Alexa Voice Service, we are unlocking new opportunities for customers to enable exciting new smart home experiences controlled with the simplicity of voice,” said Nick Kucharewski, vice president and general manager, Wireless Infrastructure and Networking, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “By integrating our mesh platform with Alexa, we create a powerful development kit that is designed to enable device manufacturers to quickly and economically bring innovative new products to market and meet the development speed of this fast-growing market.

Read More

Infovista expands 5G testing and planning capabilities

Infovista announced new versions of its TEMS Investigation and Planet network planning and test solutions for mobile operators.

With this release, Infovista introduces support for 5G smartphones based on the Qualcomm X50 chipset. With initial support of Qualcomm based devices and plans for agnostic device support, customers will be able to choose between different test devices and scanners to support 5G NR network testing. This allows early adopters of 5G NR to gain insight into the performance of different smartphones and their interaction with real 5G NR networks ensuring QoE for subscribers. Infovista is now delivering this solution to a number of 5G NR Mobile Operators and to several global infrastructure suppliers.

Infovista also announced a new version of its RF planning tool, Planet. Planet now provides customers with new, unprecedented levels of accuracy and performance including, enhanced 3D capabilities, and its ability to use big data to predict data traffic. Infovista has also improved accuracy by producing high-definition GeoData and 5G antenna patterns.

https://www.infovista.com/products/tems-portfolio

Read More

DOCOMO Ventures Invests in Shoof for IoT tracking

NTT DOCOMO Ventures has made an equity investment in Shoof Technologies, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California that is developing advanced wireless technology designed for the Industrial IoT.

Shoof claims its technology for asset monitoring and tracking overcomes the unreliable nature of current wireless technology. It offers a cloud platform and equipment such as base stations and tags to track assets in motion in any location in real time. It is applicable to a wide range of industrial markets with unmatched advantages, including scalability, ability for both indoor and outdoor tracking, a long communication range, blockchain-capable security authentication, open-network infrastructure, and is free of maintenance.

Read More

Gamma picks Metaswitch for VoWiFi

Gamma has selected Metaswitch's cloud-native VoWiFi core infrastructure solution, expanding its offerings with a portfolio of advanced and innovative new services to business users in the UK. The Metaswitch solution includes an easily branded VoWiFi client that allows Gamma to extend the service beyond IR.51-compliant devices.

Gamma provides a broad range of communication services to small, medium and large-sized businesses, the public sector and not-for-profit organizations. These services include SIP trunks, hosted voice and unified communications, broadband and data connectivity and mobile voice and data.

The solution includes the following cloud native key components:

• Clearwater vIMS Core – a virtual IMS core built on a microservices architecture and open source framework that runs on any cloud infrastructure.
• Rhino Telecom Application Server (TAS) – an extensible carrier-grade TAS designed for cost-effective, agile delivery of consumer and enterprise MMTel services for LTE and 5G.
• Perimeta Session Border Controller (vSBC) – a virtual SBC that distributes signaling and media functionality across commodity hardware in the cloud.

“Innovative providers like Gamma are constantly looking to bring more services to their target customers,” said Metaswitch Chief Marketing Officer Ian Maclean, “and there is clear synergy with Metaswitch’s own approach of rapid innovation, customer focus and business agility. Working with Gamma is further evidence of our mobile credentials and the ability to empower leading service providers with our portfolio of innovative technology and services.”

http://www.metaswitch.com

Read More

Airstream picks AT&T 4G for "silver bullet" trailers

Airstream, maker of the iconic “silver bullet” travel trailer, is working with AT&T to offer more 4G LTE data plans specifically for Airstream vehicles.

The two companies already enable 2019 Airstream Classic travel trailers with embedded 4G LTE connectivity for Wi-Fi hotspots and more. A new premium solution includes an external, high-gain roof-mounted antenna, mobile router, and an embedded GPS locator.

“Our owners view their Airstream as a home-away-from-home and connectivity is part of so many households today,” said Airstream President and CEO Bob Wheeler. “Solving for this in a mobile environment brings the flexibility to stay connected with family and friends, offers increased peace of mind, and provides the ability to work from anywhere. We’re thrilled to collaborate with AT&T to revolutionize the camping experience for every Airstream owner.”

http://www.att.com

Read More

Fujitsu delivers 600G single wavelengths with 1FINITY T600

Fujitsu Network Communications announced commercial availability of the 1FINITY T600 blade, a next-generation optical transponder capable of 600 Gbps single wavelength optical transmission in data center interconnect (DCI) and 5G transport networks.

The 1FINITY T600 blade leverages high-performance coherent DSP1 technology for optimized reach, performance and power consumption.

The T600 delivers 600 Gbps single-wavelength transmission using 64QAM modulation at 75 GHz channel spacing. For campus, metro and long-haul DCI networks, the flexible T600 provides programmable modes from 200 to 600 Gbps, as well as improved optical performance and extended reach across all configurations supported by innovative modulation format and various FEC and baud rates. This new transponder also enables the highest spectral efficiency in the industry, achieving up to 76.8 Tbps per single fiber by extending C-band transmission to the adjacent L-band, with comparable performance.

Fujitsu also notes that the core system software of the 1FINITY T600 offers open management interfaces and tools to allow for the highest levels of automation. Standard interfaces are complemented by newer M2M interfaces such as RESTful APIs, NETCONF and gNMI (gRPC Network Management Interface). To embrace various open industry initiatives the T600 supports YANG models from OpenConfig, Open ROADM and IETF. Operational automation of the T600 is further extended by supporting zero-touch provisioning (ZTP), streaming telemetry and LLDP snooping.

“Disaggregated WDM systems such as Fujitsu’s 1FINITY transport product address a fast-growing market need for a stackable form factor that balances capacity and reach within an open environment,” said Jimmy Yu, Vice President, Optical Transport Market Research, Dell’Oro Group. “As such, we forecast demand for Disaggregated Transponder Units will grow at a five-year compounded annual growth rate of 27 percent, driven largely by data center interconnect and the migration to higher wavelength speeds.”

Read More

Infinera intros TIP-compliant Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway

Infinera introduced a Disaggregated Cell Site Gateways (DCSG) that conforms to the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) DCSG specification, which was developed by the Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT) Project Group within TIP in collaboration with Tier 1 global mobile operators, including Vodafone, Telefonica, TIM Brasil, BT and Orange.

The new gateway can be used for the backhaul of cell site traffic and is based on an open and disaggregated architecture for existing 2G/3G/4G and future 5G mobile infrastructure. The platform runs Infinera’s Converged Network Operating System (CNOS), a disaggregated carrier-class routing software stack,

"We are pleased to welcome Infinera to our DCSG open networking ecosystem, which is expanding the scope and value of disaggregation beyond optical transport networks,” said Luis Martin Garcia, Co-Lead, Disaggregated Cell Site Gateways project group, TIP. “Open networks can help operators as they build out 5G infrastructure by reducing costs, expanding and leveraging automation so they are more agile in introducing new services."

“As part of our ongoing commitment to open networking, we are excited to demonstrate the value of our disaggregated CNOS software within the framework of TIP’s DCSG specification,” said Mikko Hannula, Vice President, Engineering & Product Management at Infinera. “Our DCSG solution is enhanced by our comprehensive portfolio of software-defined networking-capable networking solutions and end-to-end system integration capabilities.”

Read More

Airtel picks Nuage for data center automation

Bharti Airtel is deploying  Nokia's Nuage Networks VSP solution in 15 circles (service areas) in the northern and southern part of the country to automate its data center networks. Once deployed, the Nuage Networks VSP solution will allow Airtel to provide Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) applications.

Overview:

• Nuage's Virtualised Services Assurance Platform allows service providers to improve network monitoring, troubleshooting and fault correlation leading to improved network experience for the subscribers 
• Nuage Virtualized Services Assurance Platform allows service providers to improve network monitoring, troubleshooting and fault correlation leading to improved network experience for the subscribers

Randeep Sekhon, CTO at Bharti Airtel, said: "We are committed to providing innovative and best customer services to our subscribers. The upcoming technologies, including 5G and IoT, demand that we move the data centers closer to our customers, so we are able to provide ultra-high speeds and extremely low latency. This is crucial for a number of new-age use cases such as Virtual Reality, autonomous driving and remote surgery. We are confident that this partnership with Nokia will allow us to upgrade our data center and will enable us to continue to provide the best-in-class services to our subscribers." 

Sanjay Malik, Head of India Market at Nokia, said: "Bharti Airtel is our longstanding partner and we are thrilled to support them in this endeavor to automate their data center network. Nokia's Nuage Networks products and solutions have emerged as a clear leader in helping service providers in their journey to leverage virtualization and SDN for better operational efficiency and quality of experience. It promotes an open ecosystem which enables multi-vendor deployment and allows seamless integration with the deployed infrastructure at massive scale."

Read More

NeoPhotonics ships MEMS Based Variable Optical Attenuator

NeoPhotonics announced the general availability of a new ultra-compact FVOA-9000 MEMs based variable optical attenuator targetted at mini-EDFAs, pluggable coherent modules and compact line cards.

The new FVOA-9000 builds on NeoPhotonics' FVOA-5000/8000 product line which has been in volume production for more than a decade.  The new device improves key performance measures while achieving a significant size reduction of nearly 70% in the global component footprint. NeoPhotonics says the new FVOA-9000 achieves response times of less than 2 milliseconds along with lower wavelength dependent loss, making it well-suited for transient suppression in EDFA optical amplifiers. 

In addition to a reduction in the size of the TO can hermetic package, the FVOA-9000 does not require an external ESD protection board, further decreasing its overall use footprint in system design.  Its compact size is a significant advantage when used in next-generation applications where size is a critical factor, such as Mini-EDFAs, compact pluggable coherent modules and compact line cards and transponders.

“We are very excited to see very strong customer adoption of this new compact FVOA-9000 and enhancing our long-running line of MEMS VOAs, continuing our commitment to optical components for system control,” said Tim Jenks, Chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics.  “This exciting innovation expands our existing line of passive multiplexers, demultiplexers and power monitors to support next-generation systems for telecom, data center interconnects and 5G wireless,” continued Mr. Jenks.

Read More

Saudi Telecom Co. signs Nokia for 5G

Saudi Telecom Company (STC) signed a deal to deploy a 5G network with Nokia's end-to-end 5G solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Nokia's equipment, software and services will be used to set up a 5G network first in the western and southern part of Saudi Arabia, including the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. The rollout phase is already ongoing and is expected to be completed by end of 2020.

Nokia's full 5G portfolio will provide STC subscribers with ultra-high bandwidth and low latency services, as well as new applications in areas such as virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

The deal involves multiple firsts in STC's network, including the introduction of cloud RAN and AirScale, as well as the deployment of the Wavence platform in the microwave and the AirScale indoor radio.

Nasser Al-Nasser, STC Group CEO, said: "We are excited to work with Nokia on the Aspiration project which will help us realize our dream to be the first one to launch 5G services in the region. Once completed our subscribers will be able to enjoy innovative high bandwidth consuming use cases. The project underscores our support and commitment to the National Transformation Plan 2020 and the Government's Vision 2030 to drive Saudi Arabia's digital transformation into a knowledge economy. The leadership of our longstanding partner, Nokia, in the development of 5G is crucial for our launch of 5G services."

Read More

Siklu intros Multi-Gigabit MultiHaul Mesh Node

Siklu, which specializes in millimeter wave wireless solutions, introduced a 360-degree coverage mesh node as part of its MultiHaul series.

The new MultiHaul N360 is topology independent and can be deployed in PtMP or a mesh topology with a built-in wireless backhaul. The node can be installed as an enhanced Base Unit in a PtMP topology, with the advantage of only one install required for >90° coverage and the wireless backhaul connection. If the target region is a neighborhood of Single Family Units, where take rates are uncertain, the N360 can be used as a self-organizing (SON) mesh node, adding nodes as the network expands and densifies. It provides built-in wireless backhaul via other N360 devices or the ability to connect to a network POP via fiber or a Siklu EtherHaul link with up to 10Gbps On the subscriber side, the N360 delivers a gigabit to either of the currently available Siklu MultiHaul Terminal Units.

When deployed in a mesh topology, Siklu's self-organizing protocols centrally controlled from SmartHaul SON, ensure "light-touch" deployments and on-going optimizations, eliminating service disruptions.

"Siklu continues to be the leader in mmWave systems, offering the broadest portfolio of PTP (EtherHaul™), PtMP (MultiHaul™), SaaS tools and now mesh products in the market." said Eyal Assa, Siklu's CEO. "When deploying Gigabit connections to customers it is not a one size fits all scenario. At Siklu we understand this and with the N360 we continue to provide solutions that deliver robust and sustainable ROIs to carriers and smart cities across the globe."

Read More

Telenor expands partnerships with Cisco

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Telenor Group CEO Sigve Brekke signed a Joint Purpose Agreement 2.0 expanding their collaboration across cybersecurity, cloud and the digital workplace. Telenor will also explore Open Virtualized RAN (vRAN) solutions for 5G with Cisco.

“Cisco is focused on innovating to help our customers evolve their networks to be more flexible and programmable as we look to 5G, and the billions of connections this new era will make possible. Telenor Group shares our vision for the digital future, and we look forward to continuing to deliver on our mutual commitments to benefit both of our customers,“ said Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO, Cisco.

“We’re in the midst of modernising Telenor, preparing both ourselves and our customers for continued digitalisation. Doing so, we’re happy to further enhance our collaboration with a key technology partner such as Cisco for solutions within cybersecurity, cloud and open vRAN for 5G. We’re already working closely together on a number of innovative projects and are looking forward to a deeper engagement on some of the areas that matter most to our customers: fast, reliable, efficient and secure connectivity,” said Sigve Brekke, President & CEO of Telenor Group.

Read More

Ixia launches 5G User Equipment Emulation Solution

Ixia is introducing a new scalable 5G User Equipment (UE) Emulation Solution that provides network equipment manufacturers and solution providers with end-to-end, scalable testing of 5G base stations to ensure that devices and network services meet customer expectations for latency, reliability, and high-speed broadband at scale.

Keysight’s 5G UE Emulation solution features the XAir3 platform, a powerful test product delivering functional layer-by-layer testing, as well as load, scale, and performance testing. XAir3 is the successor to XAir2 4G LTE-Advanced UE emulation platform. The XAir3 platform supports both Non-Stand Alone and Stand Alone modes, sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave radios as well as xRAN architectures. With this solution, users can perform capacity tests, analyze cell throughput, measure voice and video quality and model a wide variety of mobility scenarios in the lab prior, during and after service roll-out from a single tool without the need for real devices.

“The industry needs a scalable and flexible UE emulation solution that simulates complex network configurations and real subscriber behavior,” said Mark Pierpoint, president, Ixia Solutions Group, Keysight Technologies, Inc. “Keysight’s XAir3 UE platform successfully enables network equipment manufacturers and service providers to test for a wide range of demanding requirements and a variety of configurations for 5G to ensure their products and services meet the promises of 5G -- low latency, ultra-reliability and high speed at scale. We're pleased that Keysight provides the solution for NTT DOCOMO to validate 5G base station."

Read More

Lenovo unveils Edge Computing Portfolio, invests in IoT

Lenovo Data Center Group (DCG) introduced its ThinkSystem SE350 edge server, the first of a family of edge servers to come from the firm. The company is also showcasing a Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) platform along with Wind, WizR, Vertiv and Intel.

The new edge server is just slightly larger than a ThinkPad, making it suitable for deployment in tight spaces, mounted on a wall, stacked on a shelf or mounted in a rack. In addition to Ethernet, connectivity options include Wi-Fi and LTE.

“There is tremendous opportunity to help customers realize the power that edge computing can bring to their organizations,” said Kirk Skaugen, Executive Vice President, Lenovo and President of Lenovo Data Center Group. “We’ve made significant focused investments in our IoT and Telco offerings over the past year with several strategic partners, enabling connectivity from edge to data center. We are committed to supporting industry open source initiatives, including the Open RAN, and Lenovo looks forward to co-chairing the Open RAN (O-RAN) Cloudification and Orchestration groups.”

In IoT, Lenovo is working with Pivot3 to drive smart city capabilities.  In collaboration with SecureTech, a leading integrator of video security solutions, Lenovo and Pivot3 helped a leading Middle East hospitality customer secure their sprawling hotel complex meeting their mission-critical requirements for resilience, security and manageability.

Read More

Rambus intros 32G SerDes PHY

Rambus released a 32G Multi-protocol SerDes PHY on GLOBALFOUNDRIES 22nm FD-SOI (22FDX) platform for high-volume, high-performance applications.

Rambus' SerDes PHY delivers data rates up to 32 Gbps and supports multiple standards including PCIe 4.0, JESD204B/C, CPRI, and Ethernet. The device is designed to meet the performance requirements of high-speed wireline, wireless 5G infrastructure & data center applications.

“Boasting increasingly high performance and network density, Rambus 28G and 32G SerDes will be critical to 5G infrastructure, wireless base stations and remote radio heads, autonomous vehicles, data center optical switches and highly anticipated technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning inferencing, smart cities, and more,” said Hemant Dhulla, vice president and general manager of IP Cores at Rambus. “By developing our high-speed interfaces on GF’s leading 22FDX process, we are able to deliver the high performance alongside reduced power and area required for these applications.”

http://www.rambus.com

Read More

Huawei resolves AVC patent disputes

Huawei Technologies and Huawei Device Co. have become licensees to MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License.

As a result of this agreement, all legal disputes related to patent enforcement actions brought by patent holders in MPEG LA’s AVC License against Huawei have been resolved.

https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/FINAL-Huawei-ZTE-Infringement-PrsRls-2018-11-16.pdf

MPEG LA prevails against Huawei and ZTE in Germany

Thursday, December 27, 2018  Germany, Huawei, Patents, ZTE  

MPEG LA announced today that patent holders in MPEG LA’s AVC/H.264 Patent Portfolio License have enforced verdicts of injunction in German District court (“Landgericht Dusseldorf”) cases finding that Huawei Deutschland GmbH (“Huawei”) and ZTE Deutschland GmbH ("ZTE") infringed patents by their use in mobile phones that implement the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) Standard. As a result, Huawei and ZTE must cease and desist from offering in Germany AVC/H.264...

READ MORE

Read More

Ericsson and OPPO sign initial patent license agreement

Ericsson and OPPO, the fifth largest smartphone vendor in the world with business operations in more than 40 markets globally, have signed a global patent license agreement. This initial agreement includes a cross license covering the 2G, 3G and 4G patent portfolios from both companies.

OPPO will make on-going royalty payments to Ericsson based on a substantial part of their annual sales.

In addition to a cross license, the agreement between OPPO and Ericsson includes business cooperation on a number of projects related to 5G, like device testing, customer engagements, etc.

Read More

AT&T tests Microsoft Azure edge cloud capabilities

AT&T is working with Microsoft to test Azure cloud capabilities at the edge of the AT&T 5G network.

The testing aims to substantially reduce latency and improve user experience by deploying advanced cloud services in specific geographic locations closer to business sites.

Specifically for this trial, network edge compute (NEC) capabilities are deployed at the AT&T Foundry in Plano, Texas. The companies are working with Israel-based Vorpal, a start-up building a drone detection and geolocation tracking solution. The service can be useful to commercial drone monitoring, airports, public safety law enforcement agencies and others needing the ability to identify drone and operator locations in near-real time, enhancing monitoring and mitigation.

“We’re creating new ways for our customers to directly access a multitude of cloud options closer to where they do business,” said Mo Katibeh, chief marketing officer, AT&T Business. “Using the blazing speeds of our fiber, LTE and 5G mobile connections, we’re paving the way for how low-latency pathways to cloud services like Microsoft Azure can accelerate business transformation – for both enterprise and small business applications.”

Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president, Azure Networking, Microsoft Corp. said, “Our collaboration will pave the way to enable Microsoft Azure cloud services to connect to more customers and devices across the U.S. through AT&T’s nationwide wireless network.  Our two companies are working together to achieve the low latency connectivity needed for the explosion of devices and immense amount of data being created by computing at the edge.”

AT&T outlines three pillars of 5G in business

Monday, January 21, 2019    

AT&T is pursuing a three-pillar approach for 5G business solutions including:

Mobile 5G - AT&T is on track to launch a standards-based nationwide mobile 5G network in early 2020, with seamless handoffs between Wi-Fi, LTE and 5G. The network is currently active in parts of the 12 cities.

Fixed Wireless - within the next few weeks, AT&T Wireless Broadband will offer multiple speed tiers up to 50 Mbps. This solution builds on AT&T's fiber distribution -- over 8 million business customer locations sit within 1,000 feet of the company's fiber/ Nearly 2.2 million locations are currently connect with fiber today.

Edge Computing -- AT&T Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) uses the software-defined network to enable faster access to data processing, and gives flexibility in how businesses manage their cellular traffic through on-premise hardware and software. With MEC, businesses can process low-latency, high-bandwidth applications closer to where they’re used to help create new outcomes and capabilities.

Read More

Intel launches FPGA-based accelerator for 5G core and vRAN

Intel is introducing an FPGA-based acceleration card for 5G core and virtualized radio access network solutions.

The Intel FPGA Programmable Acceleration Card N3000 is designed to accelerate network traffic for up to 100 Gbps and supports up to 9GB DDR4 and 144MB QDR IV memory for high-performance applications. Programmability and flexibility of an FPGA allow customers to create tailored solutions by utilizing reference IPs for networking function acceleration workloads such as vRAN, vBNG, vEPC, IPSec and VPP.

Affirmed Networks is using Intel’s FPGA PAC in a new solution for 5G core network (CN)/evolved packet core – a 200 Gbps/server that provides smart load balancing and CPU cache optimizations.

Rakuten, the soon to be the operator of Japan’s newest mobile network, is including Intel x86 and FPGA-based PAC for acceleration from the core to the edge to provide the first end-to-end cloud-native mobile network. Intel FPGA PAC N3000 is the distributed unit accelerator next to Intel® Xeon Scalable processor where Layer 1 functions, such as forward error correction and front haul transmission, are offloaded onto an Intel FPGA.

“As the mobile and telecommunications industry gears up for an explosion in internet protocol traffic and 5G rollouts, we designed the Intel FPGA PAC N3000 to provide the programmability and flexibility with the performance, power efficiency, density and system integration capabilities the market needs to fully support the capabilities of 5G networks,” stated Reynette Au, Intel vice president of marketing, Programmable Solutions Group.

“5G is a transformative technology, and it requires advanced network virtualization infrastructure coupled with an agile software architecture. Working with an Intel FPGA PAC N3000, we have developed a cloud-native, containerized solution for the 5G core and EPC – the first true 100G/CPU socket solution. The FPGA acceleration allows us to process this traffic load with 50 percent less CPU utilization2, providing significant room for growth,” said Ron Parker, chief architect at Affirmed Networks. “Intel FPGAs optimize software performance, lowering power consumption and latency for diverse quality of service characteristics across multiple 5G network slices.”

Read More

NeoPhotonics intros Coherent Modulator and Receiver for 800G+ waves

NeoPhotonics introduced Class 50 versions of its Micro-Modulator (CDM) and Coherent Receiver to its suite of High Bandwidth Coherent components. The new devices enable 800G+ wavelengths over data center interconnect (DCI) distances.

Class 50 Coherent components improve on the currently shipping Class 40 components, and allow increasing the symbol rate from the current 64 Gbaud rate to market leading 90-100 Gbaud rate.

NeoPhotonics said its new Class 50 components for 100 GBaud transmission are designed to work with the emerging new generation of coherent Digital Signal Processors based on the 7 nanometer Silicon process node and triple the symbol rate over standard 100Gbps (32 GBaud) coherent systems.   Higher symbol rates increase data capacity while maintaining superior optical single to noise ratio (OSNR), spectral density and reach performance.   All of these components are available in compact form factor packages suitable for use in pluggable modules and compact daughter cards.

• Class 50 CDM:  NeoPhotonics Class 50, polarization multiplexed, quadrature coherent driver modulator (CDM) features a co-packaged InP modulator with a linear, high bandwidth, differential driver, and is designed for low V-Pi, low insertion loss and a high extinction ratio.   The compact package is designed to be compliant with the form factorof the OIF Implementation Agreement #OIF-HB-CDM-01.0.
• Class 50 Micro-ICR:  NeoPhotonics Class 50 High Bandwidth Micro-Intradyne Coherent Receiver (Micro-ICR) is designed for 90-100 GBaud symbol rates, tripling the rate of standard 100G ICRs. The compact package is designed to be compliant with the OIF Implementation Agreement OIF-DPC-MRX-02.0.

In addition, NeoPhotonics has introduced a “Nano” ultra-narrow linewidth external cavity tunable laser, which cuts the size approximately in half compared to current Micro-ITLAs, while featuring industry leading linewidth with low electrical power consumption.

“We are currently providing our customers with a matched suite of high speed Class 40, 64 Gbaud, optical components to support current 600G per wavelength systems, and the addition of Class 50 versions will continue to support our customers as they move to 90-100 Gbaud and nearly 1 Terabit per wavelength,” said Tim Jenks, Chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics.  “As new generations of electronics become available, it is crucial that the optical components are available to complete the suite, in this case realizing near 1 Terabit per second on a single wavelength,” continued Mr. Jenks.

https://www.neophotonics.com/

Read More

Source Photonics opens new laser fab and assembly facility

Source Photonics, a leading supplier of optical components and transceivers, has opened a new fabrication facility in Jintan, China to support its global growth.

The new Jintan facility will double Source Photonics’ capacity of Indium Phosphide (InP) lasers and related components. The fabrication plant includes a fully integrated laser chip production capability, high-precision TO operations, and an advanced R&D facility to support the company’s global technology roadmap and regional customers. Its chip capabilities include base wafer, regrowth, and chip processing, while its TO operations will support the advanced requirements emerging for high-speed PON and 5G markets.

The Jintan facility augments the company’s existing fab in Hsinchu in Taiwan, which has itself doubled its output over the past three years. Recent investments in the Taiwan facility include significant expansion in MOCVD and advanced coating technologies. The Taiwan facility also recently completed expansions to support transceiver assembly in support of customers’ demands for resiliency in their supply chains.

Source Photonics said its manufacturing prowess is a key advantage in the optical communications industry in which a majority of manufacturers are fabless.

“These new investments support our integrated manufacturing approach which is critical to meeting the ever-growing needs of our customers” said Doug Wright, CEO. “Managing the entire value chain from laser production through transceiver assembly gives SP differentiated capability that enhances speed to market, yields manufacturing innovations, and offers flexibility our customers demand”.

http://www.sourcephotonics.com

Read More

Qualcomm shows 5G PC with Snapdragon 7nm CPU and modem

Qualcomm introduced the first commercial 5G PC Platform, powered by its Snapdragon 8cx 5G compute platform and its Snapdragon X55 5G modem.

The premium thin and light PC will take advantage of the multigigabit capabilities of new 5G networks.

Qualcomm said its Snapdragon 8cx 5G platform will extreme performance, extreme battery life, and extreme connectivity. Snapdragon 8cx 5G platform promises multi-day battery life and multi-gigabit connectivity, in new thin, light and fanless designs. The company predicts that with the introduction of Snapdragon 8cx 5G, private 5G small-cell networks will proliferate in the enterprise.

"Our platforms were the first to bring gigabit, and now multi-gigabit LTE to the PC,” said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, Mobile, Qualcomm Technologies,Inc. “We also brought multi-day battery life to the PC, and with the Snapdragon 8cx 5Gcompute platform, we innovate once again to bring the best of our computing and connectivity technologies into a single platform to modernize the enterprise.”

Read More

Airtel picks Ciena to build Photonic Control Plane Network

Bharti Airtel has selected Ciena to build one of the world’s largest photonic control plane networks in India as part of Project Leap, its network transformation program.

Airtel’s new backbone network will support its rapidly growing 4G/5G/FTTH architectures, making the most efficient use of available fiber resources.

The upgraded back will be capable of re-computing and re-routing traffic based on available network resources.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO – Bharti Airtel said: “Airtel has always pioneered the introduction of cutting-edge network technologies to serve its customers. We are pleased to work with Ciena to build one of world’s largest optical spine and leaf networks, which is also a big step towards 5G readiness by leveraging our huge fiber assets. This will not only scale our network for massive capacity but also protect traffic and enhance service delivery to all our customers. It will also help Airtel further strengthen its position as a key enabler of digital experiences in an increasingly connected world.”

Ryan Perera, Vice President and General Manager, Ciena India said: “Airtel has an established reputation for embracing innovative technology to enrich the lives of its subscribers. The combination of Ciena’s coherent optical, advanced software and control plane capabilities gives Bharti a scalable and robust infrastructure that can dynamically adapt to keep up with ever-changing user demands.”

Read More

Optiva's BSS Revenue Management Suite now on Google Cloud

Optiva's end-to-end  BSS solution is now available on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

As the next generation of the Optiva Turnkey Converged Billing (TCB) solution, Optiva Revenue Management Suite offers CSPs tools to retain and increase their customer base. The suite provides features for charging, billing, product catalog and order management and is available for deployment in both private and public cloud environments. When deployed on the public cloud via GCP, Optiva Revenue Management Suite provides up to 80 percent lower total c

ost of ownership (TCO) by leveraging the auto-scaling capabilities of the public cloud.

Optiva said its BSS suite is ideally suited for CSPs looking for a solution that is quick to deploy, easy to upgrade and runs natively in the cloud as a turnkey solution.

“This is another significant step forward in Optiva’s $100 million cloud transformation plan, bringing innovation and big savings to telcos,” said Danielle Royston, CEO of Optiva. “Optiva now has two cloud offerings for CSPs: the best-in-breed Optiva Charging Engine for CSPs who need 10x faster transaction processing speed and, now, the best-in-suite Optiva Revenue Management Suite geared for CSPs looking for the lowest cost, end-to-end turnkey solution. Cloud is coming to telco — not in 2029 — but today, in 2019. Soon CSPs of all sizes will be embracing the benefits of the public cloud.”

Read More

Linux Foundation takes on Pyro Probabilistic Programming

The LF Deep Learning Foundation (LFDL), a Linux Foundation project, has launched the Pyro project, started by Uber, as its newest project.

Pyro, which built on top of the PyTorch framework, is a deep probabilistic programming framework for facilitating large-scale exploration of AI models, making deep learning model development and testing quicker and more seamless. It was designed with four key principles in mind:

• Universal: Pyro can represent any computable probability distribution.
• Scalable: Pyro scales to large data sets with little overhead.
• Minimal: Pyro is implemented with a small core of powerful, composable abstractions.
• Flexible: Pyro aims for automation when you want it, control when you need it. 

This is the second project LF DL has voted in from Uber, following last December’s Horovod announcement.

“Pyro was originally created at Uber AI Labs to help make deep probabilistic programming faster and more seamless for AI practitioners in both industry and academia,” said Zoubin Ghahramani, head of Uber AI Labs. “By incorporating Pyro into the LF DL portfolio, we hope to facilitate greater opportunities for researchers worldwide and make deep learning and Bayesian modeling more accessible.”

Read More

Fibocom intros 5G module based on Intel XMM 8160 modem

Shenzhen-based FIBOCOM Wireless introduced an Intel-powered 5G module for vertical applications in global markets.

FG100 is a multi-mode 5G module that includes EN-DC (LTE+5G), 5GNR-FDD/TDD, LTE-FDD/TDD and 3G WCDMA, supports 5G Sub-6 GHz internally, and mmW through an external antenna module. The module supports peak downlink speeds of up 6Gbps on mmW and 4Gbps on Sub-6 GHz.

“We at Fibocom are proud to present our first 5G module based on Intel’s XMM 8160 5G modem. 5G allows for enhanced experience in speed and capacity with ultra-low latency”, says Tiger Ying, CEO Fibocom. “Building upon our established M.2 modules portfolio with Intel modems, our FG100 enables our customers the natural migration with easy integration from 4G to 5G.”

Partners including D-Link, Gemtek and VVDN will deliver gateway platforms using the Fibocom L860 gigabit LTE M.2 module with plans to upgrade to the FG100 5G M.2 module when available.
Sampling is expected this year, with commercial availability in 2020.

http://www.fibocom.com

Read More

NETSCOUT’s InfiniStreamNG provides visibility in 5G

NETSCOUT SYSTEMS'  InfiniStreamNG Smart Data platform is now supporting the entire 5G life cycle including planning, rollout, and optimization.

The solution can be used ro assure new virtual infrastructures and deploy next-generation services over 5G. NETSCOUT said its Smart Data provides unified, precise and early visibility into the risks to applications and services while addressing technology borders formed within the modern hyper-converged, hybrid cloud environment.

The latest release of the ISNG 5G solution is 3GPP Release 15 compliant, with support for non-standalone 5G networks, end-to end, with or without Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS). ISNG provides continuity for existing services by providing monitoring, visibility, and troubleshooting for 4G LTE/5G New Radio (NR) deployment options with or without CUPS. The solution supports virtualization of the mobile network with orchestration, edge-cloud and network slicing, providing carriers with visibility across their complex, hybrid network.

“Our customers must be ready to compete in this 5G world with NFV-ready monitoring solutions for new services including IoT that are running in the edge-cloud,” said Bruce Kelley, senior vice president, chief technology officer, NETSCOUT. “These new services demand Visibility Without Borders, which translates into having a consistent and precise view into the health and performance of service levels. This gives service providers visibility across complex environments, including virtual and physical resources, making it possible for service providers to effectively plan for, launch, and operationalize 5G offerings with confidence.”

Read More

Blue Danube's Massive MIMO delivers 2.5X LTE boost

Blue Danube Systems, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, announced significant results from multiple new FDD deployments in commercial networks with live traffic.

The company said its multi-unit installations show more than 2.5 times higher cellular capacity and significantly increased user throughputs for both legacy LTE terminals as well as new generation smartphones.

Specifically, Blue Danube’s BeamCraft 500 antennas were deployed in LTE networks in dense urban megacities and other areas with high traffic load nearing full bandwidth utilization. The performance was measured directly from the operators’ network performance management systems.

Blue Danube said the test results exhibit increasing gains with the number of units deployed and highlight the benefits of multi-site optimization and coordination. Consistent performance improvements were observed across all multi-site deployments where BeamCraft units faced each other and intercell coordination can be fully exploited, with capacity gains reaching and exceeding 2.5X over the whole cluster. In addition, the Blue Danube deployments increased average user download speeds and extended 4G LTE service to previously underserved areas, providing improved indoor coverage to high demand location including hospitals, mass transit terminals and high-rise buildings with vertical beamforming.

Blue Danube’s Coherent Massive MIMO system has been deployed by five 4G LTE operators worldwide and has been in commercial network operation in North America since 2016 serving thousands of users and carrying hundreds of gigabytes of data traffic daily.

“Today’s results clearly showcase the unmatched performance of our Coherent Massive MIMO technology,” said Mark Pinto, President and CEO of Blue Danube Systems. “There are no other solutions available in the market with the same level of performance in live commercial operation. The flexibility of our solution enables unique capabilities from vertical beamforming to on-demand capacity with dynamic time-of-day beamforming. We have proven our technology for FDD mode and are now expanding our capability to TDD as well as higher frequency bands.”

http://www.bluedanube.com

Read More

Telefónica and Microsoft envision telco of the future

Telefónica and Microsoft outlined a strategic partnership to leverage the Microsoft Azure AI platform alongside the Telefónica global network to design services telcos will offer in the future.

Specifically, Telefónica and Microsoft will expand the use of Azure Cognitive Services for customer engagement and business processes, create new AI-powered, in-home experiences for customers and explore the use of intelligent technologies to transform the network.

“Telefónica has been a leader in using AI to transform customer engagement, and the strategic partnership we announced today builds on this history of innovation,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Together, we will apply the power of Azure and Azure AI to create new, innovative experiences for millions of Telefónica customers around the world and shape the future of Telefónica’s network.”

José María Álvarez-Pallete, chairman and CEO of Telefónica, said “Telefónica is applying cutting-edge technology to its ongoing transformation, pioneering virtualization and softwarization to develop smart, liquid networks ready to be powered by AI. Specifically, we are already using AI to enhance our customer relationships and are really excited to work with Microsoft to further harness the power of Azure AI. This agreement strengthens our relationship and our common belief that AI technology and the use of data should be based on solid ethical principles and empower people to control their digital lives.”

Read More

Ericsson to acquire Kathrein's antenna business

Ericsson agreed to acquire Kathrein’s antenna and filters business. The purchase price was not disclosed. Preliminary and unaudited revenues from the acquired part of Kathrein were approximately EUR 270 million in 2018, excluding sales to Ericsson.

Kathrein, with headquarters in Rosenheim, Germany, founded in 1919, specializes in antenna and filter technologies and is an existing Ericsson supplier. The antenna and filters business has a strong R&D organization with extensive experience in antenna design and research, coupled with a strong IPR portfolio. In addition to broadening Ericsson’s portfolio of antenna and filter products, the acquisition will bring vital competence for the evolution of advanced radio network products. The acquisition will add around 4,000 highly-skilled professionals in R&D, production, and sales based in more than 20 locations, including Germany, Romania, the U.S., Mexico and China.

Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Business Area Networks, Ericsson, says: “Strengthening our in-house antenna competence is another important step in our Networks portfolio strategy. The acquisition of Kathrein’s antenna and filters business will expand our capabilities and competences in the advanced active and passive antenna domain further. With the additional focus on the antenna and filter business led by Kathrein professionals, we will broaden our offering to further optimize site space, which is vital for the introduction of 5G.”

Read More

Qualcomm intros 5G gateway for sub-6GHz and mmWave fixed

Qualcomm introduced its first 5G customer premise equipment (CPE) reference design for sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave (mmWave) 5G fixed wireless broadband (FWB) products.

The reference design features the newly announced second generation Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G modem and next-generation Qualcomm RF  front-end (RFFE) components and modules for sub-6GHzand mmWave deployments, providing a  5G modem-to-antenna solution.

"Qualcomm Technologies is committed to enabling our customers to develop the next-generation of 5G products and services and this reference design will allow manufacturers and ISPs to accelerate the deployment of fixed wireless broadband services using 5G,” said Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager, 4G/5G, Qualcomm.

“With support for both mmWave and sub-6GHzspectrum bands manufacturers can address multiple operators needs as they look to improve network performance, increase range, provide an unsurpassed user experience, and expand fixed broadband coverage by taking advantage of 5G infrastructure.”

Read More

Qualcomm builds its Snapdragon automotive 4G, 5G solutions

Qualcomm is introducing new wireless solutions for next-generation connected vehicles.

The Snapdragon Automotive 4G and 5G Platforms feature integrated C-V2Xdirect communications, high-precision multi-frequency global navigation satellite system (HP-GNSS) and RF Front-End (RFFE)functionalities to support major operators across key spectrum bands globally.

These capabilities enable rich in-vehicle experiences, including dual SIM dual active(DSDA)(included on the Snapdragon Automotive 5G Platform), precise positioning for lane level navigation accuracy, multi-gigabit cloud connectivity, vehicle-to-vehicle(V2V) and vehicle-to-roadside infrastructure (V2I) communications.

The new SnapdragonAutomotive 4G and 5G platforms are expected to sample later this year and are planned for production vehicles in 2021.

Read More