TELE Greenland rules out Huawei for 5G

TELE Greenland said in a statement that it has ruled out Huawei as a supplier for a future 5G rollout. Currently, the carrier has some Huawei gear in its network, although Ericsson is the principal supplier of its 4G network. TELE Greenland is able to provide mobile broadband to 92% of the population.

The population of Greenland is approximately 56,000.

https://telepost.gl/da/nyheder/tele-greenland-as-om-4g-mobile-first-og-5g-i-groenland

Subsea connectivity restored to northern Greenland

Sunday, May 12, 2019  Greenland, Subsea  

Following repairs to a subsea cable linking Greenland and Canada, connectivity has been restored to customers north of the town of Sisimiut.

The population of South Greenland will have to wait for another 15-20 days before the southern branch of the damaged subsea cable is repaired.


Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark with a population of about 56,000, most of whom live along fjords in the southwest.

TELE-POST is the service provider for Greenland.

The subsea cable to Canada was breached in late December 2018. The weather has been a factor in scheduling the repair ship. Since then, an old microwave radio network has been providing service via a second subsea cable to Iceland.

https://telepost.info/da

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WSJ: Huawei benefited from US$75B in state support

Huawei Technologies' spectacular rise to the top of global telecommunications was fueled in part by state support valued at tens of billions of U.S. dollars, according to an analysis published by The Wall Street Journal. The article examines records pertaining to public grants, loans, tax incentives and other forms of financial assistance awarded to Huawei by government officials in China. The Wall Street Journal estimates this support totals around US$75 billion over the past two decades. Of this total, approximately $46 billion was for credit lines and loans.

In a rebuttal posted on social media, Huawei asserts that its "relationship with the Chinese government is no different than any other private company that operates in China." Huawei insists that its working capital comes from its own business operations and external financing. The company says that R&D subsidies from the government amount to less than 0.3% of its revenues. Huawei is considering legal action against the Wall Street Journal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-support-helped-fuel-huaweis-global-rise-11577280736
https://twitter.com/Huawei/status/1210110450198671360/photo/1

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Turkcell develops its own email platform

Turkcell has developed and launched its own cloud-based email and calendaring platform.

YaaniMail is now available to consumers and business regardless of ISP, operator, country, web browser, or devices (iOS or Android). Data generated on the platform is securely stored at Turkcell’s data centers. The new email service provides customers an alternative to the provider’s global counterparts.

Turkcell said it is targeting 2 million registered users by the end of 2020.

“YaaniMail is part of a larger effort to ensure Turkey’s data is hosted in Turkey. We will offer YaaniMail through our broad digital services and solutions portfolio to other telecom operators in the world – helping them to become digital operators,” says Atac Tansug, Vice President of Digital Services and Solutions at Turkcell. “Providing the best customer experience to our users while keeping their data safe is our top priority. We will continue to enhance YaaniMail’s built-in smart features and user-friendly interface to offer the best available customer experience to our users.”

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Monisha Ghosh appointed CTO of FCC

Dr. Monisha Ghosh has been appointed Chief of the FCC, replacing Dr. Eric Burger, who has been serving at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
since October.

Dr. Ghosh has been serving as a rotating Program Director at the National Science Foundation since September 2017, in the Computer and Network System Division within the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, where she manages the core wireless research portfolio as well as special programs such as Machine Learning for Wireless Networking Systems ((MLWiNS). She is also a Research Professor at the University of Chicago, where she conducts research on wireless technologies for the Internet of Things, 5G cellular, next generation Wi-Fi systems, and spectrum coexistence. Prior to joining the University of Chicago in September 2015, she worked at Interdigital, Philips Research and Bell Laboratories, on various wireless systems, such as the HDTV broadcast standard, cable standardization and cognitive radio for the TV White Spaces. She has been an active contributor to many industry standards.

Dr. Ghosh received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1991, and her B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (India) in 1986. She is a Fellow of the IEEE.

http://www.fcc.gov

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Orchestrated Virtualized Multivendor SD-WAN Services

This PoC demonstrates the next innovation in SD-WAN, which accelerates the adoption of multi-vendor SD-WAN and value-added services through automated operations and a new digital user experience. Powered by a unified marketplace, self-service portal and NFV-based uCPE platform, MEF 70 compliant SD-WAN services from different vendors can be selected independently of the CPE hardware and seamlessly deployed with little-to-no intervention from the service provider or end-user. Through this new “digital user experience”, SD-WAN services are orchestrated, activated, assured and managed using zero touch provisioning and end-to-end service automation in alignment with MEF’s LSO framework.

This PoC won the 2019 Award for MEF 3.0 SD-WAN Implementation.

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Inphi samples first 400ZR QSFP-DD transceiver

Inphi has begun sampling its COLORZ II 400ZR QSFP-DD pluggable coherent transceiver for cloud data center interconnects (DCIs) to major cloud operators and OEMs.

Inphi cites several industry firsts for its COLORZ II 400ZR QSFP-DD:

• 400G single-chip, coherent Silicon Photonics Integrated Circuit (PIC) that includes all transmit and receive functions 
• Innovative, low cost, passive alignment of fiber to the PIC that eliminates the complicated active alignment, using traditional optics
• Low power, high performance, 7nm CMOS-based coherent DSP enabling 400ZR as well as extended reach 100/200/300/400G ZR+ modes
• Integrated industry standard firmware management interface that enables full performance monitoring previously only available in DCI or transport systems directly from the optical module

 The 400ZR standard promises to lower the cost and power consumption of metro data center interconnect (DCI) by enabling switch and router companies to offer the same density for both coherent DWDM and client optics in the same chassis. This eliminates a layer of network connectivity that was previously required and supports high capacity DWDM connectivity directly from data center switches. 

Inphi said its COLORZ II represents a massive increase in switch rack capacity, while reducing the power consumption by as much as 80%. COLORZ II delivers up to 14.4T of capacity per rack unit (RU), compared to 2.4T or 3.6T per RU on competing solutions, representing a 4-6 x increase in throughput per chassis.

“Inphi continues to innovate as we provide an expanding suite of choices for cloud network operators and OEMs to gain the flexibility of high bandwidth DWDM connectivity in between data centers with the ability to rapidly scale their capacity,” said, Dr. Loi Nguyen, Sr VP, Optical Interconnect, Inphi. “By meeting the needs of cloud network companies that require extended link reaches, the 400ZR opens up new possibilities for DCIs to reduce total cost of ownership of cloud networks. As a fabless company we have proven our capability to quickly increase manufacturing and market share for our COLORZ 100G DWDM modules and are ready to meet our customers demand for COLORZ II.” 

https://www.inphi.com/media-center/press-releases/inphi-sampling-new-colorz-ii-industrys-first-400zr-qsfp-dd-transceiver-for-cloud-data-center-interconnects/

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O-RAN plugfest shows progress on integrated multi-vendor solutions

The O-RAN Allianceconducted its first worldwide plugfest and proof of concept to demonstrate the functionality as well as the multi-vendor interoperability of network equipment that complies with the recently published O1, A1, and Open Fronthaul interface specifications. Thirty-five companies and operator-members jointly demonstrated 10 scenarios to verify and validate recently published O-RAN specifications in Asia, Europe and North America.

“O-RAN’s first global plugfest showcases the power of the community to document and develop truly open interface specifications with the potential to accelerate new 5G advanced services that will be multi-operator, multi-vendor, and create opportunities for the entire ecosystem,” said Andre Fuetsch, Chairman of the O-RAN Alliance and Chief Technology Officer of AT&T. “These live demonstrations represent yet another step toward the realization of O-RAN compliant 5G RAN solutions that should soon become part of the product offerings of both mainstream and niche vendors.”

ASIA

Hosted by China Mobile, the plugfest Asian Session was held in the China Mobile International Information Port, an Open Test and Integration Center, with physical attendance well over 200 attendees from over 70 companies, plus on-line attendance of over 70 participants. Representatives from global operators including British Telecom, China Telecom, China Unicom, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Reliance Jio, Telecom Italia Mobile and an operator from North America have actively participated in this event.

The plugfest tested and integrated multi-vendor solutions that comply with the O-RAN Open Fronthaul interface and exercised decoupling different hardware technologies from the RAN software:

• Cloud-based small cell running on virtualization technology was demonstrated by CertusNet, Lenovo, ChengDu NTS and Inventec. It features a VM-based O-CU and containerized O-DU cohosted on the same x86 processor plus accelerator platform.
• Multi-vendor interoperability with 5G commercial products was demonstrated by NTT DOCOMO with Fujitsu and NEC.
• A low power configuration of cloud base station running on Yocto OS and container technology was demonstrated by Altran, ArrayComm, WindRiver, Baicells and CIG. It features the open architecture baseband signal processing based on ARM processor plus accelerator computing platform.
• Soft base station with O-RAN compliant open fronthaul interface, but without virtualization, was demonstrated by Radisys, Foxconn (Taiwan), QCT and Intel. It leverages open source software including the O-RAN Open Source Community’s OFH Lib, and BBDev based Accelerator Abstraction Layer SDK API.
• The interworking of the O-RAN open fronthaul interface was demonstrated on technology provided by FHK (Shenzen) and Viavi, which performs comprehensive tests based on the test specification by O-RAN with O-RU and UE emulator in a multiple-UE test environment.
• 
  

The plugfest held in the NTT DOCOMO R&D Center presented multi-vendor interoperability between CU/O-DU and O-RU using the O-RAN Open Fronthaul interface and multi-vendor interoperability between eNB and gNB using the O-RAN X2 interface. The functionality has been successfully demonstrated by NTT DOCOMO, Fujitsu, NEC, and Nokia. NTT DOCOMO has already started 5G pre-commercial service with the presented products. An Open Test and Integration Center is planned to be established in Japan.

NORTH AMERICA

The plugfest and proof-of-concept conducted within an Open Test and Integration Center candidate in North America, 5G COSMOS, which consists of vendor and university labs in the NYC metro area, was hosted by AT&T and focused primarily on the validation of the O1 and A1 interfaces:

• Physical Network Function (PNF) Plug and Play, a 3GPP-aligned O1 use case that provides a means for service providers to collaborate with equipment vendors to have PNFs discovered by Service Management Orchestration (SMO) via a PNF registration handler, was demonstrated by Nokia, CommScope and Ericsson. Remote SMO functions were also demonstrated with connections to labs in France and Germany.
• Bulk Performance Management Data Collection was demonstrated by Ericsson and Nokia.
• O1 interface functionality for Configuration, Performance, and Fault Management of multi-vendor equipment via a vendor-agnostic SMO was demonstrated by Altiostar, CommScope, and Samsung.
• A1 interface functionality to optimize PCI/RSI for a large-scale RAN simulator using a closed loop automation framework was demonstrated by IBM, Tech Mahindra, Wipro and highstreet technologies.
• Convergence of the Open Fronthaul Management Plane specification with O1 interface was demonstrated by Samsung.

“The O-RAN Alliance has been continuously expanding its influence in the industry since its inception. It is really amazing to see such a symbolic milestone achieved just 10 months since its release of the first specification in MWC Barcelona this year,” said Zhengmao Li, EVP of China Mobile. “The successful holding of the plugfest event globally with deep contribution from over 30 partners represents a consolidated step towards a full disaggregated O-RAN compliant 5G network.”

Dr. Hiroshi Nakamura, EVP and CTO, NTT DOCOMO commented, "We believe wide adoption of O-RAN compliant products will enable more agile, flexible and cost-effective network construction, and welcome the testing and integration efforts of O-RAN standards that are being carried out across the globe. NTT DOCOMO will continue to lead O-RAN Alliance activities and expand its 5G network, and will accelerate the co-creation of 5G services and markets with vertical industry partners."

https://www.o-ran.org/resources/

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Silicon-based optical parametric oscillator transforms wavelengths

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), University of Maryland, and University of Colorado are developing a new optical parametric oscillator (OPO) light source that can produce output light at different wavelength than the input light. In addition to creating light at visible wavelengths, the OPO simultaneously generates near-infrared wavelengths that can be used for telecom applications.

The research is published in Optica, The Optical Society's (OSA) journal.

“Our power-efficient and flexible approach generates coherent laser light across a range of wavelengths wider than what is accessible from direct chip-integrated lasers,” said research team leader Kartik Srinivasan. “The on-chip creation of visible light can be used as part of highly functional compact devices such as chip-based atomic clocks or devices for portable biochemical analyses. Developing the OPO in a silicon photonics platform creates the potential for scalable manufacturing of these devices in commercial fabrication foundries, which could make this approach very cost-effective.”

“Nonlinear optical technologies are already used as integral components of lasers in the world’s best atomic clocks and many laboratory spectroscopy systems,” said Xiyuan Lu, first author of the paper and a NIST-University of Maryland postdoctoral scholar. “Being able to access different types of nonlinear optical functionality, including OPOs, within integrated photonics is important for transitioning technologies currently based in laboratories into platforms that are portable and can be deployed in the field.”

The Optical Society said the silicon-based device may enable variety of photonic applications across a range of wavelengths.

Some highlights:
The OPO based on a microring made from silicon nitride.
It is fed by approximately 1 milliwatt of infrared laser power — about the same amount of power found in a laser pointer.
As the light travels around the microring it increases in optical intensity until powerful enough to create a non-linear optical response in silicon nitride.
This enables frequency conversion, a nonlinear process that can be used to produce an output wavelength, or frequency, that is different from that of the light going into the system.
The device was used to convert 900-nanometer input light to 700-nanometer-wavelength (visible) and 1300-nanometer-wavelength (telecommunications) bands.
The OPO accomplished this using less than 2 percent of the pump laser power required by previously reported microresonator OPOs developed for generating widely separated output colors.

number of compact chip lasers combined with flexible and versatile nonlinear nanophotonics.”

Paper: X. Lu, G. Moille, A. Singh, Q. Li, D. A. Westly, A. Rao, S.-P. Yu, T. C. Briles, S. B. Papp, K. Srinivasan, “Milliwatt-threshold visible-telecom optical parametric oscillation using silicon nanophotonics,” Optica, 6, 12, 1535-1541 (2019).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.6.001535

https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/home.cfm

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Ericsson's Connected Vehicle Cloud to run on Microsoft Azure

Ericsson and Microsoft formed an alliance focused on connected vehicles. The goal is to help automakers to deploy and scale global vehicle services such as fleet management, over-the-air software updates and connected safety services much easier and faster while reducing costs.

Ericsson is building its Connected Vehicle Cloud on top of the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform that is running on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Ericsson notes that its Connected Vehicle Cloud already connects more than 4 million vehicles across 180 countries worldwide - approximately 10 percent of the connected vehicle market. The platform is tailored to fit vehicle manufacturers’ growing demand for scalability and flexibility with the capability of supporting any connected vehicle service.

Ericsson’s Connected Vehicle Cloud offloads vehicle manufacturers' complexity of global 24/7 operations and lifecycle management related to connected vehicles with a guaranteed service-level agreement.

“The Ericsson and Microsoft partnership will deliver a comprehensive connected vehicle platform at scale to the market. Our integrated solutions will help automotive manufacturers accelerate their global connected vehicle solutions and offer a better experience for drivers and passengers,” says Åsa Tamsons, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Technologies & New Businesses.

“This is an exciting new offering with great benefits for the automotive industry, leveraging Ericsson and Microsoft’s technology leadership in connectivity and cloud.”

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Interxion acquires 70% share of Kenyan data center operator

Interxion agreed to acquire a controlling interest in Icolo, a Kenyan data centre operator. Interxion also entered into a strategic partnership with the Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Fund (PRIF), which will invest in Icolo and will collaborate and co-invest with Interxion on expansion initiatives across the African continent. The transaction is expected to close in 1Q 2020. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Icolo, which has two data centres in Kenya currently in operation, reports strong demand from cloud and content platforms and across the enterprise segment. Acquisitions of 25,000 sqm of land for further expansion of Icolo’s data centre footprint are in progress in both Mombasa and Nairobi, with the associated total capacity for Icolo in Kenya expected to grow to approximately 20MW. In Mombasa, Icolo is uniquely positioned to benefit from the growing number of submarine cable consortia that have expressed their intention to land in Kenya.

“We are pleased to announce this partnership with Pembani Remgro, one of the leading TMT infrastructure investment firms in Africa,” said David Ruberg, Interxion’s Chief Executive Officer. “Their deep understanding of the African communications and technology sectors is highly complementary to Interxion’s proven expertise in serving the mission-critical needs of the customers in our carrier and cloud-neutral data centres. Our ambitions in this region are substantial, reflecting the opportunity for the cloud and content platforms to bring several hundreds of millions of people online in Africa over the next decade. We look forward to working with Icolo’s founder and CEO, Ranjith Cherickel, and his team to build on the solid foundations they have created.”

Upon the closing of the transaction and taking into consideration the PRIF investment, Interxion will own approximately 70% of Icolo’s common shares with the remaining shares held by PRIF and Icolo management.

Digital Realty + Interxion merger brings scale and interconnectivity

Wednesday, October 30, 2019  Digital Realty, Interxion  

Digital Realty and Interxion agreed to a merger that would create a global provider of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions.  Under the deal, Interxion shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 0.7067 Digital Realty shares per Interxion share.  The transaction values Interxion at approximately $93.48 per ordinary share or approximately $8.4 billion of total enterprise value, including assumed net debt.

Interxion's European business currently consists of 53 carrier- and cloud-neutral facilities in 11 European countries and 13 metro areas including Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris and Interxion's Internet Gateway in Marseille. Its network reaches 700 connectivity providers, 21 European Internet exchanges, and most leading cloud and digital media platforms. Interxion has a robust pipeline of data center development projects currently under construction, with over $400 million invested to date and a total expected investment of approximately $1 billion. These projects represent roughly a 40% expansion of Interxion's standalone critical load capacity, are significantly pre-leased and are expected to be delivered over the next 24 months, representing a solid pipeline of potential future growth for the combined company.

The companies said their combination will build upon Digital Realty's successful track record of hyperscale development and will represent an extension of the connected campus strategy that empowers enterprise customers to leverage the right products – from colocation to hyperscale footprints – to create value by efficiently deploying

In Europe, Digital Realty has an established presence in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London and Dublin. On a global basis, Digital Realty has 220 data centers in 35 top metropolitan areas,

The companies also noted that the merger will provide access to additional capital for investment.

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F5 to acquire Shape Security for $1 billion

F5 agreed to acquire Shape, a privately-held company supplying fraud and abuse prevention solutions, for approximately $1 billion in cash, subject to certain adjustments.

Shape provides protection from automated attacks, botnets, and targeted fraud. In particular, Shape defends against credential stuffing attacks, where cybercriminals use stolen passwords from third-party data breaches to take over other online accounts. Shape’s application protection platform evaluates the data flow from the user into the application and leverages highly sophisticated cloud-based analytics to discern good traffic from bad. With F5’s location in the data flow of traffic in over 80% of Fortune 500 application infrastructures, F5 provides the ideal insertion point for Shape’s security services. Together F5 and Shape will dramatically reduce the time and resources needed for organizations to deploy world-class online fraud and abuse protection.

F5 said the acquisition brings together its own expertise in protecting applications across multi-cloud environments with Shape’s fraud and abuse prevention capabilities to transform application security.

“We know from the companies we work with that applications are critical to running their business. To drive maximum business value and the best experiences for their customers, these apps need to perform flawlessly while protecting data security and user privacy. When a website or application experience is degraded by web fraud and abuse, the result is lost revenue, lost brand equity, and customers jumping ship to the competition,” said F5 President and CEO, François Locoh-Donou.

“With Shape, we will deliver end-to-end application protection, which means revenue generating, brand-anchoring applications are protected from the point at which they are created through to the point where consumers interact with them—from code to customer,” continued Locoh-Donou.

“Since Shape’s inception, we observed a consistent pattern in customer after customer: the use of F5 technology to deliver and enable their applications,” said Derek Smith, co-founder and CEO of Shape. “Now, we look forward to the opportunity to deeply integrate into F5’s platform for application delivery and security—F5 provides the optimum traffic flow insertion point for Shape’s industry-leading online fraud and abuse prevention solutions.”

https://investors.f5.com/
https://www.shapesecurity.com/

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Nokia to supply 5G in Aruba

SETAR, the leading communications provider in Aruba, picked Nokia to provide a full end-to-end 5G network across the island.

In a phased approach, the deal will see Nokia upgrading RAN access and modernizing elements of the core and data management systems.

Nokia notes that this is its first end-to-end 5G deal in Latin America.

Nokia already works with SETAR to run a 4.5G Pro-based island-wide network using Single RAN Advanced AirScale technology – a flexible network that ensures easy re-farming of spectrum as needed.

The SETAR network evolution project consists of:

• Enhancing and evolving SETAR’s network architecture with Centralized RAN and AirScale Cloud Controllers to support more capacity while managing network resources more efficiently
• Site simplification by deploying Nokia AirScale dual and triple band AirScale RRHs reducing more than 60% site space requirements
• Activation of advanced features like Carrier aggregation, 256QAM and MIMO4x4 to enable 3 to 4 times higher downlink speeds
• An upgrade to 5G in the first selected sites using Nokia massive MIMO technology with 64 antennas to enable new mobile broadband uses cases like Fixed Wireless Access, Augmented and Virtual Reality, etc/

Nokia now has 55 commercial 5G commercial contracts globally.

http://www.nokia.com

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Axiado raises $10 million for secure firewall

Axiado, a start-up based in San Jose, California, received a $10 million investment in the form of a convertible note from Orbit Venture Partners (OVP).

Axiado is developing a new secure firewall platform.

https://axiado.com/company.html

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Internet2 to move onto CenturyLink’s new low-loss optical fiber

by Benedict Chua, Assistant Editor

Internet2 will migrate the majority of its footprint onto CenturyLink's new low-loss optical fiber.

CenturyLink recently pulled new, low-loss optical fiber over a large portion of its national network. The installation uses an ITU-T G.652.D compliant single-mode optical fiber that is optimized for high bit rate coherent systems using advanced modulation schemes supporting 100G and above. CenturyLink also realigned amplifier spacing to create more efficient resources for optimized optical networks.

Internet2 said the move will support its new all-coherent open-line system. CenturyLink has also been selected to provide the professional services to migrate Internet2 to its new platform, which will be equipped with a flex-grid open-line system being provided by Ciena. The new contractual fiber-use agreements will extend through at least 2042. Internet2 will have the ability to reach anywhere on its domestic footprint with an unregenerated wavelength of up to 200G. Many high-use spans on Internet2’s Network will also support 400G and 800G wavelengths with existing technologies and higher bitrates are expected in the coming years as new DSP technology comes into production. Internet2 has been able to achieve unregenerated spans without employing Raman amplification, a reduction in complexity and improved efficiency both at installation and for ongoing operations.

“We believe the combination of the most advanced fiber from CenturyLink with the latest coherent transmission technologies from Ciena provides enormous opportunities to enable research and academic pursuits in the United States,” said Rob Vietzke, vice president of network services for Internet2. “Whether it is tracking the origins of Neutrinos in the Antarctic, comparing gene sequences or studying the climate, this new optical network, with its ability to span very long distances at very high bandwidths and improved efficiency, is essential to providing the best research infrastructure for data-intensive science on the globe.”

“One of America’s leading research and education organizations placed its trust in CenturyLink to upgrade its network to a high-speed, high-capacity, fiber-optic network that will support today’s leading-edge research projects,” said Sonia Ramsey, CenturyLink’s vice president for the state and local government and education market. “Internet2’s selection of CenturyLink recognizes the company’s long-standing relationship with the research and education community and our commitment to meet the community’s ever-increasing advanced technology needs.”     

https://www.internet2.edu/news/detail/17474/

Internet2 to deploy open line system (OLS) from Ciena

Tuesday, October 15, 2019  Ciena, Internet2  

by Benedict Chua, Assistant Editor

Internet2 will deploy a flexible grid open line system (OLS) from Ciena to transform its network to a more scalable, programmable and adaptive architecture.

The upgraded network, which connects several hundred universities, government agencies, and community anchor institutions across the U.S., strengthens Internet2 and the wider R&E community’s ability to conduct scientific research, enhance collaboration, and improve operations.

The OLS element will provide access to a highly reliable, contiguous coherent optical network that can facilitate wavelength delivery and efficient data transfer throughout the continental United States. The OLS also includes Ciena’s commitment to support wavelengths launched directly from Internet2’s member networks for transport to strategic endpoints beyond their regional footprints.

Specifically Internet2 will deploy Ciena’s latest-generation Waveserver – powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme – programmable 200G-800G coherent optics to enable Internet2 to deploy 800G wavelengths in metro locations and support efficient 400GE interconnect over native 400G wavelengths between Internet2 points-of-presence system-wide.

Ciena said Internet2’s deployment will reduce the overall space and power footprint of the current optical add-drop locations by as much as two-thirds, contributing to a lower cost and greener network that supports substantially more capacity. Internet2 will be able to tune, control and dynamically adjust optical capacity across any path using Ciena’s Liquid Spectrum ™ analytics software. Additionally, Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan domain controller will help improve network management and operations.
Executive Comments:

“Ciena put forth a great proposal that met Internet2’s objectives to efficiently increase capacity, increase optical reach, and support open line system use cases. Together with superior coherent modems and a proven support system, the openness, flexibility and greener profile of this network will play a key role in our ability to accelerate discoveries in the research and education community. We are delighted to have Ciena as a partner in tackling the great research and education challenges of the next decade,” stated Howard Pfeffer, President and CEO, Internet2.

“Internet2 is a trailblazer in the R&E community. They are also leaders in developing collaborative environments that are shaping how future high performance, high capacity networks will be created to fuel the digital society. Ciena worked with Internet2 to establish America’s first nationwide 100G R&E network and this latest initiative will significantly enhance Internet2’s services,” said Rod Wilson, Chief Technologist for Research Networks, Ciena.

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Next-Gen-SD-WAN: 2020 Predictions with Nuage's Sunil Khandekar

Nuage Networks saw a lot of traction for SD-WAN in 2019 with their engagement with service providers in all three tiers across the globe. Sunil Khandekar, CEO of Nuage Networks, shares three predictions for SD-WAN and what we can expect to see in 2020.

https://nginfrastructure.com/sd-wan/

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CENIC deploys first 400G circuit in Los Angeles

CENIC, the organization that provides global connectivity for education and research institutions in California, has deployed a 400 Gbps single-carrier optical circuit between Los Angeles and Riverside. This marks one of the first-ever 400G superchannels to be deployed by a US regional research and education network. Construction included upgrading nodes in Los Angeles, Tustin, Oceanside, San Diego (home to the San Diego Supercomputer Center), Escondido, Sun City, and Riverside to 400G capabilities.

CENIC upgraded network infrastructure to flex spectrum Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) and the NCS 1004 transponder platform. CENIC used Cisco-loaned equipment for the validation in production and is now implementing the permanent infrastructure.

“This is an important networking milestone for CENIC,” said President and CEO Louis Fox. “With increasing demands for 100G services among our community, from research scientists working with big data sets to educators leveraging technology to transform the classroom, network capacity should not limit the work or ambitions of our researchers, teachers, or students.”

CENIC plans to expand its 400G provisioning capabilities along its coastal fiber path from Los Angeles to Sunnyvale by mid-2020.

CENIC’s network traffic continues to grow by roughly 60% each year. Between May 2018 and May 2019, the network moved an exabyte of data.

http://www.cenic.org

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Telstra deploys Ericsson's container-based EPC core

Ericsson and Telstra successfully deployed a live cloud-native container-based Evolved Packet Core for 4G and 5G services -- an industry first and a significant milestone in network orchestration and automation, according to the companies..

Ericsson's cloud-native container-based Evolved Packet Core was deployed in Telstra’s production Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVi). It is fully integrated into Telstra’s mobile core network and is carrying live 4G and 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) traffic.

Highlights of Telstra’s cloud-native Evolved Packet Core :

• Ericsson Packet Core Controller and Ericsson Packet Core Gateway support 4G and 5G Non-standalone (NSA) control and user plane functions in both a centralized configuration and edge-breakout configurations.
• Ericsson’s Packet Core Controller is deployed as a cloud-native container-based Mobility Management Entity (MME) in an existing MME pool.
• Both the Ericsson Packet Core Controller and Packet Core gateway are designed from the ground up to be fully cloud-native container-based solutions. They run on Ericsson’s Cloud Container Distribution (CCD) that is part of Ericsson’s NFVI solution or on other Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) aligned distributions.
• Ericsson CCD provides container management and orchestration for the latest Ericsson cloud native applications. CCD can be run on bare metal or within a Virtual Machine in an OpenStack deployment.

Emilio Romeo, Head of Ericsson Australia and New Zealand, says: “Telstra and Ericsson are leading the mobile industry with this first container-based cloud-native Evolved Packet Core in Telstra’s production environment and carrying live traffic. This is an important step towards fundamentally changing the way both companies deploy and operate mobile core networks. Core networks will become much more flexible and agile, allowing operators such as Telstra to quickly create and deploy compelling new services for their customers. This in turn helps operators build new revenues.”

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Silver Peak and Ciena expand NFV partnership

Silver Peak announced expanded collaboration with Ciena to integrate Silver Peak network functions virtualization (NFV) and Ciena universal customer premise equipment (uCPE) to create new service delivery models for communications service providers (CSPs) that bring new levels of flexibility to global enterprise customers.

The companies said Silver Peak EdgeConnect NFV supported by Ciena’s ability to host multiple virtual network functions (VNFs) and Ethernet connectivity services frees CSPs to offer a virtually limitless portfolio of connectivity and enhanced managed SD-WAN services to medium and large enterprises, accelerating new revenue streams.

“As enterprises advance digital transformation and cloud initiatives to gain business agility and competitive edge, many understand the foundational requirement for a modern WAN edge,” said Fraser Street, vice president of technical alliances at Silver Peak. “Cloud-first enterprises are increasingly turning to service providers for turnkey managed SD-WAN services that unite advanced network functions like the EdgeConnect NFV, enabling them to retire legacy WAN infrastructure and fully leverage the power of software that delivers a multiplier effect on cloud investments.”

“With an ongoing surge in demand for network connectivity and services, driven by high-bandwidth content and business-critical applications, the industry is witnessing firsthand how digital transformation impacts the network,” said Brian Lavallée, senior director of portfolio marketing at Ciena. “CSPs and enterprises are actively modernizing their network assets to be increasingly intelligent, agile, and adaptive. Together with Silver Peak, we make this journey possible.”

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EE activates 5G in six more UK cities

EE switched on its first 5G sites in six new cities across the UK, bringing its 5G rollout to a total of 50 cities and large towns in 2019.

EE launched with 5G coverage in London, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester in May. The new activation includes Hull, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Sunderland, surpassing its target of introducing 5G to 16 UK cities in 2019. EE has also switched on its first 5G sites in Northampton, Stevenage and Wakefield.

Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s consumer division, said: “We switched on the UK’s first 5G network in May, and this is another milestone towards keeping our customers connected 100% of the time. We’re leading the way in the UK, with 4G and 5G coverage in more places than any other operator. Adding 5G to more cities and towns – and expanding our 5G coverage in each place – is helping us to always deliver the best mobile experience to our customers.”

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Telefónica tests flexiWAN SD-WAN on whitebox CPE.

by Benedict Chua

flexiWAN, which offers a modular and opensource SD-WAN, confirmed that with Telefónica os testing its solution.

“Telecom operators should position themselves as Value Added Services (VAS) creators by leveraging their vast commercial and technology ecosystems,” said Juan Campillo, Connectivity Innovation Director at Telefónica. “flexiWAN’s product vision is aligned with Telefónica’s current open networks strategy. Thanks to the openness of solutions like flexiWAN, Telefónica can better control the value chain fostering innovation, reducing complexity as well as adapting the product to companies with less networking knowledge and to a larger variety of enterprise networking needs.”

“Our work with Telefónica allows us to benefit from their vast experience and market reach to enterprises of all sizes and segments as well as to technology companies,” commented Amir Zmora, CEO and Co-founder of flexiWAN. “With this, we enjoy access to leading technology companies for integration and cooperation for enhancing flexiWAN as well as better understanding of the enterprise market needs.”

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Orange teams with American Tower on new mobile sites in France

Orange, the leading mobile network operator in France, and ATC France, a subsidiary of American Tower Corporation, signed an agreement concerning the deployment of between 900 and 2,000 new mobile network sites located mainly in rural areas and along transport routes over the period 2020-2024.

Orange and ATC France have been working together since 2012 for the deployment and operation of mobile network infrastructure and have thus further reinforced that existing partnership. This agreement makes it possible for ATC France and Orange to pool their expertise for the benefit of their customers and to improve network coverage in France.

The contract with ATC France will enable Orange to support the accelerated deployment of its mobile network and increase the density of its coverage. It will achieve this while allowing Orange to maintain its expertise in the design and construction of network infrastructure and ensuring that the Group retains the necessary mid-term investment capacity to consolidate its leadership across the entire network.

A 20-year hosting service agreement between the two partners means that Orange will benefit from the excellence of ATC France's management and marketing services for mobile network infrastructure and will therefore ensure that the quality of its services across the country will be maintained.

ATC France hosts nearly 5,500 operator contracts across the totality of its sites in operation. Strengthening its partnership with Orange is fully in line with its infrastructure development strategy for its customers and will support the deployment of digital services across the country.

Fabienne Dulac, Deputy CEO of the Orange Group and CEO of Orange France, said: "The nationwide deployment of the network, particularly in rural areas, is a priority for Orange.  We are delighted to be able to enter into this agreement with ATC France, which has proven expertise in terms of infrastructure management. This partnership will enable us to accelerate deployment in these key areas while retaining our capacity for differentiation and our ability to invest in the networks, whether they are fixed or mobile."

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Fortinet tops 21,000 SD-WAN customers

Fortinet announced a company milestone: 21,000 organizations across different industries and verticals have adopted its Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution.

Fortinet delivers full-featured SD-WAN via the FortiGate next-generation firewall.

Fortinet said its security-driven networking approach to SD-WAN seamlessly integrates enterprise-grade SD-WAN, advanced security, and advanced routing in a unified offering to modernize customers’ WAN edge and help achieve their digital innovation goals with FortiManager Orchestration that can scale to support up to 100,000 SD-WAN sites.

https://nginfrastructure.com/sd-wan/

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Ericsson and Mediatek test 5G Voice over New Radio (VoNR)

Ericsson has collaborated with MediaTek on performing interoperability tests spanning Stand Alone New Radio (SA NR), 5G Core and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to ensure that voice support is enabled as service providers evolve their 4G networks to 5G. The two partners have also successfully tested Evolved Packet System (EPS) Fallback for situations where SA is not available.

The interoperability test, which was conducted at the Ericsson Lab in Kista in early December, involved the use of an end-to-end solution from Ericsson and Dimensity 1000 commercial chipset from MediaTek deployed on a 3.5GHz TDD band.

With Standalone New Radio (SA NR), a 5G-enabled device does not need to rely on 4G technology to make 5G voice (VoNR) calls. With the arrival of standalone NR access, voice and other communication services will need to be provided, requiring the 5G network to support native voice calling services for 5G smartphones. Using VoNR on SA architecture, service providers will be able to offer voice services on 5G-voice-capable devices as well as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) services to consumers and business users.

Hannes Ekström, Head of Product Line 5G RAN, Ericsson, says: “Although 5G is closely associated with superior data-transfer capabilities, voice services remain essential for mobile users. So 5G phones are expected to provide all the capabilities of 4G phones in addition to new 5G features and services. Ensuring continued voice services on 5G devices must therefore be addressed properly.

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CommScope adds sub-6 GHz and mmWave 5G to its FWA gateway

CommScope added support for sub-6 GHz and mmWave 5G New Radio (NR) wireless connectivity on its NVG558 fixed wireless access (FWA) gateway platform, which already supports 4G LTE and 3.5 GHz CBRS connectivity.

CommScope’s NVG558 offers:

• Dual-band or tri-band 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) and 802.11ax Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi 6) options
• CommScope HomeAssure™ for smart, whole-home Wi-Fi
• Optional IoT service capability
• Docker container support for simplified application deployment
• Deep Packet Inspection support for advanced Wi-Fi management, Quality of Service,and Parental Controls
• IPTV video optimization
  

The platform also offers subscriber self-install capabilities to help operators reduce truck-rolls and customer installation wait times, lowering costs and improving the overall customer experience. In addition, all NVG500 Series gateways support Docker® containers. This enables operators to rapidly prototype and deliver new broadband applications and services without having to take the time to integrate them into the platform’s firmware and complete lengthy lab approvals and field trials.

“As operators build out their 5G networks, many want to maximize the value of these networks by using them to offer fixed wireless broadband services to customers,” said Joe Chow, senior vice president and segment leader, Customer Premises Equipment at CommScope. “The new version of the NVG558 offers these operators a flexible platform for delivering customers smart-home devices, video streaming, gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, and other next-generation services using high-speed 5G NR wireless networks.”

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Samsung readies production of Baidu's KUNLUN AI silicon

Baidu’s first cloud-to-edge AI accelerator chip has completed development and will be mass-produced early next year by Samsung Electronics.

Baidu KUNLUN chip is built on the company’s advanced XPU, a home-grown neural processor architecture for cloud, edge, and AI, as well as Samsung’s 14-nanometer (nm) process technology with its I-Cube (Interposer-Cube) package solution.

The chip offers 512 gigabytes per seconds (GBps) memory bandwidth and supplies up to 260 Tera operations per second (TOPS) at 150 watts. In addition, the new chip allows Ernie, a pre-training model for natural language processing, to inference at three times faster than that of conventional GPU/FPGA-accelerating model.

“Baidu KUNLUN is an important milestone for Samsung Foundry as we’re expanding our business area beyond mobile to datacenter applications by developing and mass-producing AI chips. Samsung will provide comprehensive foundry solutions from design support to cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, such as 5LPE, 4LPE, as well as 2.5D packaging.”

“We are excited to lead the HPC industry together with Samsung Foundry,” said OuYang Jian, Distinguished Architect of Baidu. “Baidu KUNLUN is a very challenging project since it requires not only high level of reliability and performance at the same time, but is also a compilation of the most advanced technologies in the semiconductor industry. Thanks to Samsung's state of the art process technologies and competent foundry services, we were able to meet and surpass our goal to offer superior AI user experience.”

“We are excited to start a new foundry service for Baidu using our 14nm process technology,” said Ryan Lee, vice president of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “Baidu KUNLUN is an important milestone for Samsung Foundry as we’re expanding our business area beyond mobile to datacenter applications by developing and mass-producing AI chips. Samsung will provide comprehensive foundry solutions from design support to cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, such as 5LPE, 4LPE, as well as 2.5D packaging.”

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Cisco amplifies legal case against former employees now at Poly

Cisco is extending its legal case agaist three former employees, James He, Wilson Chung, and Jedd Williams, who are accussed of trade secret misappropriation. Cisco filed the complaint in federal court a few weeks ago and is now amending the case to include their new employer, Poly.

In a blog post, Mark Chandler, Executive Vice President, Legal Services, and General Counsel for Cisco, says the action was taken because of Poly's "repeated efforts to receive and use Cisco trade secrets and confidential information in their business."

https://blogs.cisco.com/news/why-does-poly-protect-employees-who-took-cisco-info

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IEEE P802.11ax meets 5G Indoor Hotspot requirements

The IEEE P802.11ax draft standard meets or exceeds requirements specified by the International Telecommunications Union for the 5G Indoor Hotspot and Dense Urban test environments of the enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) usage scenario.

IEEE said this establishes P802.11ax as a foundation for an advanced Wi-Fi technology capable of supporting 5G network performance.

“Achieving 5G performance at the cost points associated with Wi-Fi supports the continued advancement of wireless technology, as well as the exponential growth of mobile wireless device utilization,” said Dorothy Stanley, IEEE 802.11 Working Group chair. “The successful evaluation of IEEE P802.11ax meets the ever-increasing needs of wireless communication, providing higher data rates, increased reliability, and lower latency to better serve the entire industry.”

The methodology specified in the IMT-2020 requirements provides network descriptions, channel models, traffic patterns and other parameters necessary to benchmark performance. The benchmark for compliance to the IMT-2020 requirements for the specific scenario and environments consists of:

• Minimum acceptable downlink/uplink peak performance,
• Average user experience,
• Cell-edge user experience,
• Mobility performance and latency performance.
• IEEE P802.11ax was shown to satisfy all the Medium Access Control and Physical Layer (MAC/PHY) requirements for Indoor Hotspot and Dense Urban test environments of the eMBB usage scenario.

https://www.ieee.org/

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Kaloom appoints McGinn as Chairman of Board

Kaloom, a start-up offering a programmable and automated data center fabric,  recently appointed Richard A. McGinn as Board Chairman.

McGinn previously served as CEO of VeriFone Systems, one of the world's largest point of sale terminal vendors and a leading provider of payment and commerce solutions, and CEO of Lucent, a multinational telecommunications equipment company. While at Lucent, McGinn oversaw and directed engineering, research and investments of more than $4 billion annually, and was involved in the acquisition of, or investment in, more than 30 technology companies. McGinn was also a founder and Investor of Sky Capital from 2014 to 2016. Additionally, he was a General Partner of M.R. Investment Partners from 2010 to 2014 and of RRE Ventures from 2001 to 2010.

In addition, Kaloom appointed Hitendra Sonny Soni as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing.  Soni has previously held executive positions at Snaproute/Infoblox, HPE, CliQr/Cisco, ServiceMesh/DXC, VCE, Accelerated Networks/Calix and Xylan/Alcatel-Lucent.


https://www.kaloom.com/

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Intel acquires Habana Labs for $2 billion - AI chipset

Intel has acquired Habana Labs, an Israel-based developer of programmable deep learning accelerators for the data center, for approximately $2 billion.

Habana’s Gaudi AI Training Processor is currently sampling with select hyperscale customers. Large-node training systems based on Gaudi are expected to deliver up to a 4x increase in throughput versus systems built with the equivalent number of GPUs. Gaudi is designed for efficient and flexible system scale-up and scale-out.

Additionally, Habana’s Goya AI Inference Processor, which is commercially available, has demonstrated excellent inference performance including throughput and real-time latency in a highly competitive power envelope. Gaudi for training and Goya for inference offer a rich, easy-to-program development environment to help customers deploy and differentiate their solutions as AI workloads continue to evolve with growing demands on compute, memory and connectivity.

Habana will remain an independent business unit and will continue to be led by its current management team. Habana will report to Intel’s Data Platforms Group, home to Intel’s broad portfolio of data center class AI technologies.

“This acquisition advances our AI strategy, which is to provide customers with solutions to fit every performance need – from the intelligent edge to the data center,” said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group at Intel. “More specifically, Habana turbo-charges our AI offerings for the data center with a high-performance training processor family and a standards-based programming environment to address evolving AI workloads.”

Habana Labs chairman Avigdor Willenz will serve as a senior adviser to the business unit as well as to Intel Corporation after Intel’s purchase of Habana.

“We have been fortunate to get to know and collaborate with Intel given its investment in Habana, and we’re thrilled to be officially joining the team,” said David Dahan, CEO of Habana. “Intel has created a world-class AI team and capability. We are excited to partner with Intel to accelerate and scale our business. Together, we will deliver our customers more AI innovation, faster.”

Interview: Habana Labs targets AI processors

Monday, September 17, 2018  Habana, OND  

Habana Labs, a start-up based in Israel with offices in Silicon Valley, emerged from stealth to unveil its first AI processor. Habana's deep learning inference processor, named Goya, is >2 orders of magnitude better in throughput & power than commonly deployed CPUs, according to the company. The company will offer a PCIe 4.0 card that incorporates a single Goya HL-1000 processor and designed to accelerate various AI inferencing workloads,...

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Habana Labs raises $75M for AI processors, including Intel investment

Thursday, November 15, 2018  AI, Funding, Habana, Start-Ups  

Habana Labs, a start-up based in Tel-Aviv, Israel, raised $75 million in an oversubscribed series B funding for its development of AI processors.

Habana Labs is currently in production with its first product, a deep learning inference processor, named Goya, that is >2 orders of magnitude better in throughput & power than commonly deployed CPUs, according to the company. Habana is now offering a PCIe 4.0 card that incorporates a single Goya HL-1000 processor and designed to accelerate various AI inferencing workloads, such as image recognition, neural machine translation, sentiment analysis, recommender systems, etc.  A PCIe card based on its Goya HL-1000 processor delivers 15,000 images/second throughput on the ResNet-50 inference benchmark, with 1.3 milliseconds latency, while consuming only 100 watts of power. The Goya solution consists of a complete hardware and software stack, including a high-performance graph compiler, hundreds of kernel libraries, and tools.

Habana Labs expects to launch an training processor - codenamed Gaudi - in the second quarter of 2019.

The funding round was led by Intel Capital and joined by WRV Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Ventures and others, including existing investors. This brings total funding to $120 million. The company was founded in 2016.

“We are fortunate to have attracted some of the world’s most professional investors, including the world’s leading semiconductor company, Intel,” said David Dahan, Chief Executive Officer of Habana Labs. “The funding will be used to execute on our product roadmap for inference and training solutions, including our next generation 7nm AI processors, to scale our sales and customer support teams, and it only increases our resolve to become the undisputed leader of the nascent AI processor market.”

“Among all AI semiconductor startups, Habana Labs is the first, and still the only one, which introduced a production-ready AI processor,” said Lip-Bu Tan, Founding Partner of WRV Capital, a leading international venture firm focusing on semiconductors and related hardware, systems, and software. “We are delighted to partner with Intel in backing Habana Labs’ products and its extraordinary team.”

https://habana.ai/

Intel ships its Nervana Neural Network Processors

Tuesday, November 12, 2019    

Intel announced the commercial production of its Nervana Neural Network Processors (NNP) for training (NNP-T1000) and inference (NNP-I1000).

The new devices are Intel’s first purpose-built ASICs for complex deep learning for cloud and data center customers. Intel said its Nervana NNP-T strikes the right balance between computing, communication and memory, allowing near-linear, energy-efficient scaling from small clusters up to the largest pod supercomputers. Both products were developed for the AI processing needs of leading-edge AI customers like Baidu and Facebook.

Intel also revealed its next-generation Movidius Myriad Vision Processing Unit (VPU) for edge media, computer vision and inference applications. Additionally, Intel’s next-generation Intel Movidius VPU, scheduled to be available in the first half of 2020, incorporates unique, highly efficient architectural advances that are expected to deliver leading performance — more than 10 times the inference performance as the previous generation — with up to six times the power efficiency of competitor processors.

“With this next phase of AI, we’re reaching a breaking point in terms of computational hardware and memory. Purpose-built hardware like Intel Nervana NNPs and Movidius Myriad VPUs are necessary to continue the incredible progress in AI. Using more advanced forms of system-level AI will help us move from the conversion of data into information toward the transformation of information into knowledge,” stated Naveen Rao, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Intel Artificial Intelligence Products Group.

“We are excited to be working with Intel to deploy faster and more efficient inference compute with the Intel Nervana Neural Network Processor for inference and to extend support for our state-of-the-art deep learning compiler, Glow, to the NNP-I,” said Misha Smelyanskiy, director, AI System Co-Design at Facebook.

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