Google picks Equinix for Curie Subsea Cable Landing Station

Google has selected an Equinix data center in El Segundo, California as the cable landing station (CLS) for the new Curie subsea cable system.  In the U.S., the cable will land directly at the Equinix LA4 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center.

The Curie cable is expected to go live in 2019.

Equinix said the CLS configuration is ideal for extending the backhaul capacity of a subsea cable system directly to the ecosystems of companies in its high-density IBX data centers. The architecture provides easy access to a dense, rich ecosystem of networks, clouds and IT service providers.

Equinix has been selected as an interconnection partner in more than 25 of the current subsea cable projects.

"With the significant increase in global data traffic, we see corporations running global businesses demanding access to high-capacity, low-latency networks capable of connecting them to data centers across oceans with stringent levels of reliability. Any user of a subsea cable system that lands inside one of our Equinix global data center termination points has instant, low-latency access to a host of vibrant industry ecosystems inside Equinix, and that's a huge advantage," stated Jim Poole, Vice President, Business Development, Equinix.

Google commissions own subsea cable from CA to Chile

Tuesday, January 16, 2018  Chile, Google, Submarine Cable, Subsea, TE Subcom, Undersea  

TE Subcom has been awarded a contract by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, to build a subsea cable from California to Chile. A ready-for-service date is expected in 2019.

The Curie Submarine Cable will be a four fiber-pair subsea system spanning over 10,000 km from Los Angeles to Valparaiso. It will include a branching unit for future connectivity to Panama.

The project is believed to be the first subsea cable to land in Chile in 20 years.

“We’re proud to provide comprehensive services to Google on this project. Leveraging existing TE SubCom infrastructure through our SubCom Global Services (SGS) options put us in position to be a true partner to them. Our role in the continued growth of global connectivity and information sharing is a point of substantial pride for the TE SubCom team,” said Sanjay Chowbey, president of TE SubCom.

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Mirantis to power AT&T’s Airship for Kubernetes infrastructure

AT&T has selected Mirantis to play a key role in its implementation Airship, Kubernetes and OpenStack based Network Cloud infrastructure.

Airship is the project originally founded by AT&T, SKT and Intel under the OpenStack Foundation for enabling telcos to take advantage of on-premises Kubernetes infrastructure to support their SDN infrastructure builds.

"Replacing VM-based infrastructure with cloud-native, open technologies based on containers and Kubernetes yields order-of-magnitude efficiency improvements for telco network environments and beyond," said Adrian Ionel, Mirantis Co-Founder and CEO. "Working so closely with AT&T in the Airship community will accelerate the delivery of the benefits of Kubernetes to the broad ecosystem of telecommunications providers."

Mirantis is also collaborating with AT&T and other core contributors to develop critical features in support of the Airship community roadmap. Mirantis will primarily focus on:

Integration between Drydock and Ironic to provision bare metal Kubernetes clusters
Streamlining initial configuration experience of deploying Kubernetes-native services on premise, making it simpler for telcos to adopt
Support for multiple operating systems, to broaden the choice of VNFs and minimize lock-in

"As we roll out Network Cloud for 5G, our goal at AT&T is to run infrastructure based on open standards like Kubernetes and OpenStack," said Ryan van Wyk, AVP -- Network Cloud Software Engineering at AT&T. "Mirantis has a long track record of contributing to open source and we are glad to have them collaborate with us on the Airship project."

https://www.mirantis.com/company/press-center/company-news/mirantis-joins-openstack-foundations-airship-to-bring-kubernetes-to-telcos/

Project Airship aims for fully containerized clouds - OpenStack on Kubernetes

Sunday, May 20, 2018  Airship, AT&T, Containers, Kubernetes  

AT&T is working with SKT, Intel and the OpenStack Foundation to launch Project Airship, a new open infrastructure project that will offer a unified, declarative, fully containerized, and cloud-native platform. The idea is to let cloud operators manage sites at every stage from creation through minor and major updates, including configuration changes and OpenStack upgrades.

AT&T said the project builds on the foundation laid by the OpenStack-Helm project launched in 2017. In a blog posting, Amy Wheelus, vice president of Cloud and Domain 2.0 Platform Integration, says the initial focus is "to introduce OpenStack on Kubernetes (OOK) and the lifecycle management of the resulting cloud, with the scale, speed, resiliency, flexibility, and operational predictability demanded of network clouds."

She states that AT&T will use Airship as the foundation of its network cloud running over its 5G core, which will support the launch of 5G services in 12 cities later this year.  Airship will also be used by Akraino Edge Stack, which is a new Linux Foundation project for creating an open source software stack supporting high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications.

"We are pleased to bring continued innovation with Airship, extending the work we started in 2016 with the OpenStack and Kubernetes communities to create a continuum for modern and open infrastructure. Airship will bring new network edge capabilities to these stacks and Intel is committed to working with this project and the many other upstream projects to continue our focus of upstream first development and accelerating the industry," stated Imad Sousou, corporate vice president and general manager of the Open Source Technology Center at Intel.

http://airshipit.org

AT&T seeds Akraino project for carrier-scale edge computing

Tuesday, February 20, 2018  Akraino, Linux  No Comments

The Linux Foundation will host a new Akraino project to create an open source software stack supporting high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications.

To seed the project, AT&T is contributing code designed for carrier-scale edge computing applications running in virtual machines and containers.

“This project will bring the extensive work AT&T has already done to create low-latency, carrier-grade technology for the edge that address latency and reliability needs,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation. “Akraino complements LF Networking projects like ONAP in automating services from edge to core. We’re pleased to welcome it to The Linux Foundation and invite the participation of others as we work together to form Akraino and establish its governance.”

“Akraino, coupled with ONAP and OpenStack, will help to accelerate progress towards development of next-generation, network-based edge services, fueling a new ecosystem of applications for 5G and IoT,” said Mazin Gilbert, Vice President of Advanced Technology at AT&T Labs.

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Germany's M-net tests Nokia's probabilistically shaped wavelengths

M-net Telekommunikations GmbH, a German service provider, has conducted the first field trial of probabilistically shaped wavelengths using Nokia Photonic Service Engine 3 (PSE 3) super coherent technology. 

Specifically, M-net and Nokia enabled a 500 Gbps, single, probabilistically shaped wavelength over a regional DWDM network spanning the German state of Bavaria.

M-net used probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) to shape the signal from its maximum capacity of 600G to a rate optimized for the specific fiber route used in the test.

Dr. Hermann Rodler, CTO at M-net, said: "This field trial clearly underlines the innovative strength of M-net. We are very proud to collaborate with Nokia to push the technology envelope on our state-of-the-art fiber-optic network, and to be the first carrier to publicly test the PSE-3 and its probabilistic constellation shaping technology."

Sam Bucci, head of optical networking at Nokia, said: "We're excited to partner with M-net on the implementation of its new fiber optic backbone network. The Technical University of Munich played a key role in the development of PCS, and the PSE-3 was largely developed at Nokia's R&D facility in Nuremberg, so it's only appropriate that the first field trial of PSE-3 technology would take place in Bavaria."

Nokia's PSE-3 chipset leverages probabilistic constellation shaping

Tuesday, March 06, 2018  Nokia  

Nokia unveiled its Photonic Service Engine 3 chipset featuring probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) that pushes fiber-optic performance close to the Shannon limit to fully exploit channel capacity.

PCS is a new modulation technique pioneered by Nokia Bell Labs that the company says enables maximum capacity over any distance and on any fiber - from metro to subsea - increasing capacity up to 65% over currently deployed networks while reducing power by 60%. This includes 200G rates over most terrestrial and subsea links, as 400G over most shorter distances.

The PSE-3 chipset, which is the first coherent digital signal processor to implement PCS, provides finely adjustable wavelength capacity from 100G to 600G with a single, uniform modulation format, baud rate, and channel size. This simplifies network operations and planning.

"This is a breakthrough in how we can maximize the performance of optical networks and, at the same time, vastly simplify operations. The Photonic Service Engine 3 is the culmination of a decade of research and first-hand experience building the largest, highest capacity optical networks in the world. By introducing this extreme and yet remarkably simple programmability, our customers can now maximize the capacity of every link in their network, whether that's 10 km, 10,000 km or beyond. They will be able to keep their costs under control while handling the huge bandwidth demands that video, cloud, and soon 5G will be throwing at them."

Nokia is planning to introduce the PSE-3 chipset across ist packet-optical portfolio, including a new version of the 1830 Photonic Service Interconnect, a compact modular WDM platform for data center interconnect. The 1830 PSI-M will use modular chassis architecture with high-performance modules based pm the PSE-3. Commercial availability is expected in Q3 2018.

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T-Mobile US sees revenue grow 6% in 2019

T-Mobile US reported Q4 2018 serve revenues of $8.2 billion, up 6% in Q4 2018. Annual revenue was also up 6% to $32.0 billion.  Diluted earnings per share amounted to $0.75 and $3.36 in Q4 2018 and 2018, respectively.

“This never gets old! T-Mobile finished another year with record-breaking financials and our best-ever customer growth! Record revenues, strong net income, record Adjusted EBITDA, our lowest-ever Q4 postpaid phone churn that was better than AT&T for the very first time!” said John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile.

On the earnings conference call, T-Mobile execs said there a big revenue aspirations for 5G but not through price increases compared its 4G smartphone service. T-Mobile expects to use its coming 5G network to build a broadband business, expand IoT capabilities, and to pursue enterprise opportunities. Some highlights:

• Record 2.4 million total net additions in Q4 2018 — 7.0 million in 2018
• 1.4 million branded postpaid net additions in Q4 2018, best in the industry — 4.5 million in 2018
• 1.0 million branded postpaid phone net additions in Q4 2018, best in industry — 3.1 million in 2018
• 135,000 branded prepaid net additions in Q4 2018, expect to be best in the industry — 460,000 in 2018
• Q4 record-low branded postpaid phone churn of 0.99% in Q4 2018, down 19 bps YoY — 1.01% in 2018, down 17 bps from 2017
• Branded postpaid phone Average Revenue per User (ARPU) remained generally stable in Q4 2018 at $46.29, down 0.2%.
• T-Mobile is building out standards-based 5G in six of the Top 10 markets, including New York and Los Angeles. The network will be ready for the introduction of the first standards-based 5G smartphones in 2019. The carrier anticipates the delivery of a nationwide standards-based 5G network next year.
• At the end of Q4 2018, T-Mobile owned a nationwide average of 31 MHz of 600 MHz low band spectrum. 
• As of December 31, 2018, T-Mobile had cleared approximately 135 million POPs and the company expects to clear spectrum covering approximately 272 million POPs by year-end 2019. 
• T-Mobile now covers more than 325 million people with 4G LTE, up from 322 million at the end of 2017. 

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Turkcell builds unified telco cloud on Red Hat OpenStack

Red Hat confirmed that its OpenStack Platform and Ceph Storage solution powers Turkcell's centralized virtualization infrastructure (NFVi), which is called the Turkcell Unified Telco Cloud. Red Hat Consulting helped Turkcell design its Unified Telco Cloud and train up its network team, in collaboration with Affirmed Networks in the role of main systems integrator.

Turkcell serves more than 35 million subscribers with 99 percent population coverage in Turkey, making it a leading mobile operator in Turkey and the surrounding region.

Turkcell states it has now virtualized 18 percent of its overall data and voice services capacity on its telco cloud and is on target for its three-year goal of 40 percent. Live VNFs include PCRF and AAA for policy and charging, Data Optimization for differentiated quality of experience for customers, DPI for traffic management and enhanced VAS (value-added services), IMS and RCS for next-generation voice services and CG-NAT for IP address management, from multiple vendors. Turkcell is able to deliver workloads of more than 1.8 terabits per second (Tbps) of traffic and is currently carrying near to 1 Tbps of live traffic from customers across the region.

“With the competitive landscape of the telecommunications industry rapidly evolving around us, Turkcell is impressive in its push to become a leader in digital services innovation, already demonstrating this drive with the likes of its instant messaging, video streaming and personal storage offerings and we’re proud to collaborate with Turkcell to help execute its unified telco cloud strategy," states Darrell Jordan-Smith, vice president, Communications Service Providers, Red Hat.

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5G European Validation program gets underway

A 5G European testing validation platform known as 5G-EVE (5G European Validation platform for Extensive trials) will develop and interconnect four existing European sites - in Greece, Spain, France and Italy. The goal is to create a unique 5G end-to-end facility. The sites are complemented by advanced labs, such as the Ericsson lab in Kista, Sweden.

Ericsson Spain hosted 5G-EVE's first plenary from February 4-6.

The program currently has twenty-eight partners from seven countries, including four of the main European operators, and six vertical companies.

Luisa Muñoz, Head of Ericsson R&D Center Spain, says: "Ericsson's alliance with Telefónica, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and IMDEA Networks through 5TONIC, with the stimulus of the European 5G-EVE project, will help consolidate the Madrid-based 5G lab as a European landmark and increase the number of vertical collaborators within the 5G innovation ecosystem."

https://www.5g-eve.eu/

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A10's revenue rises to $62 million, up 11%

A10 Networks reported Q4 2018 revenue of $61.8 million, compared with $55.5 million in fourth quarter 2017. GAAP gross margin was 77.7 percent and non-GAAP gross margin of 78.2 percent. GAAP net loss was $1.6 million, or $0.02 per basic and diluted share, non-GAAP net income was $4.1 million, or $0.05 per diluted share.

"We are building solid momentum in the market with our advanced suite of 5G, security and multi-cloud solutions. Revenue increased 11 percent year-over-year to $61.8 million and our security product revenue grew to reach 38 percent of product revenue for the year, achieving our goal for the year. We also continue to make good progress with our sales transformation initiative and drove double-digit year-over-year product revenue growth in North America, Japan, APAC and Latin America,” said Lee Chen, president and chief executive officer of A10 Networks.

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