The P4 project is now under the ONF

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is now hosting the P4 Language Consortium, which the organization dedicated to the use and improvement of the P4 language.

P4 was designed to be target-independent (i.e. a program written in P4 could be compiled, without modification, to run on a variety of targets, such as ASICs, FPGAs, CPUs, NPUs, and GPUs), and protocol-independent (i.e. a P4 program can describe existing standard protocols, or be used to specify innovative, new, customized forwarding behaviors). P4 can be used for both programmable and fixed-function devices alike. For example, it is used to accurately capture the switch pipeline behavior under the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) APIs, used by the SONiC open-source switch OS. P4 is also used by the ONF Stratum project to describe forwarding behavior across a variety of fixed and programmable devices.

ONF will now host all P4 activities and working groups moving forward. The ONF will bring the P4 work under its umbrella of operator-led open source SDN projects, and, as with all ONF projects, the ONF will aim to strategically align P4 activities with the Linux Foundation to advance our shared mission of promoting open source as a tool for transformation and innovation.  The P4 project will continue to operate as before with minimal disruption while benefiting from strategic alignment with ONF and from ONF’s operational infrastructure and expertise.

“The entire ONF team is extremely pleased to be joining with the P4 community to grow our combined ecosystem.  We see great synergy between all the ONF projects and P4, and our Stratum and COMAC projects are already making use of P4 in innovative ways.  More closely aligning our activities will be of benefit to both communities, and we expect P4 to play a pivotal role as we continue to pursue the broader Next-Generation SDN agenda,” said Guru Parulkar, executive director and board member for the Open Networking Foundation.

“P4.org helped grow the fledgling P4 language into the de-facto industry standard way to describe how switches, routers and NICs process packets. The synergies with ONF are clear: Both organizations develop community-owned open-source software for networking. It’s time for P4.org to be part of a larger, more established organization that can keep it open, independent and steadily growing for many more years to come,” said Nick McKeown, Stanford Professor and co-founder and board member of the ONF and P4.org.

http://www.opennetworking.org

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Deutsche Telekom reaches 20 million broadband lines at up to 250 Mbps

Deutsche Telekom is now serving 20 million residential and business broadband lines at up to 250 Mbps. Lines to over 1.5 million households and business locations have been added in the past 4 weeks alone. Some 75,000 street cabinets have been fitted with super vectoring technology.

“20 million households and businesses are now able to #takepart and benefit from our super vectoring build-out," says Timotheus Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom. “To achieve that figure we have fitted at least one line card into over 75,000 street cabinets within 15 months. We’re building broadband for millions.”

Using other technologies, Deutsche Telekom has sped up lines of a further 105,000 households to up to 100 Mbps. The total number of households equipped to order a speed of 100 Mbps or faster has now reached 28 million.

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Bell Canada declines to buy spectrum in 600 MHz auction

The Government of Canada completed its auction of 600 MHz spectrum.

In total, 104 licences were awarded to nine Canadian companies, including 40 licences to regional providers, covering the entire country. Regional providers more than doubled their share of low-band spectrum, strengthening their ability to offer competitive services to all Canadians. In addition to improving competition, the results of this auction will improve our country's robust networks and support the deployment of current and next-generation technologies.

Bell Canada did not acquire any licenses in the auction. The company noted that it already has spectrum assets in the low, mid and high frequency bands in both urban and rural locations. Specifically, Bell holds spectrum in the 700, 850, 1900, AWS-1, AWS-3, 2500, 3500 MHz and 24 GHz bands. The previously announced shutdown of its CDMA network on April 30 also enables Bell to "re-farm" additional low band spectrum in the 850 MHz band for 5G services.

"We know that Canadians want more choice, lower prices and better service. Through this process, we have strengthened wireless competition, which will drive prices down and improve coverage. It is clear that the big winners in this auction will be Canadians in both urban and rural areas," stated Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.

Highlights:

• 600 MHz spectrum carries signals over long distances and penetrates structures better than higher-frequency bands, making it well-suited to deliver services in both urban and rural settings.
• The auction started March 12, 2019, with 12 Canadian bidders qualified to participate.
• 70 MHz of spectrum divided in blocks of 10 MHz was available in each service area, including 30 MHz set aside for regional providers in each area.
• The 600 MHz auction raised $3.47 billion, which will be remitted to the Consolidated Revenue Fund, administered by the Receiver General of Canada.
• As with the previous 700 MHz and 2500 MHz spectrum auctions, the Government of Canada successfully employed a comprehensive multistep bidding process that included rigorous security protocols to ensure the integrity of the auction.

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Proximus boosts mobile core with 7750 Nokia Service Router-14s

Belgium-based Proximus is one of the first operators in the world to carry customers' traffic on the Nokia 7750 Service Router-14s (SR-14s). The deployment increases capacity in the network core by 10x.  The multi-terabit router, Nokia 7750 SR-14s, featuring the new Nokia FP4 network processor.

The carrier's new IP backbone will support innovative new broadband and mobile services with improved capacity, scalability and programmability.

Proximus previously announced its TITAN (Terabit IP Transport and Aggregation Network) backbone network upgrade with 165 out of 600 buildings connected and 30% of 50,000 optical fibres migrated after only seven months.

Patrick Delcoigne, Director Network Engineering & Operations at Proximus, said: "Titan is laying the foundations of a hyper scale network, propelling Proximus into the terabit era. The track record of Nokia and Proximus in IP network innovation is extending today with our tandem becoming among the world's pioneers in activating the biggest equipment ever deployed in a telecom operator network and so defining the new capacity reference standards. I'm really proud of the R&D crews and of the project teams of both companies, who did a fantastic job to create the future standards."

Sri Reddy, President of IP/Optical Networks at Nokia, said: "We have a long and proud history of partnering with the team at Proximus and so are especially pleased to be working closely with them to help ensure the TITAN network upgrade project continues flawlessly. With the Nokia 7750 SR-14s as the foundational technology of this smart, dynamic network fabric, Proximus is laying the groundwork to meet the future digital demands of their consumer, enterprise and mobile customers.

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Ceragon installs a 240km microwave backhaul link -- longest to date

Ceragon Networks has deployed what is believed to be the longest known microwave backhaul link to connect an island in Equatorial Guinea back to its capital. The link spans 240km over the Gulf of Guinea. Ceragon has also been selected to upgrade the network of MUNI S.A., the mobile operator.

The project is valued at $3.4 Million, with shipments commencing in Q1 2019. Ceragon expects this project to be completed within 2019. Ceragon noted that difficult environmental conditions in tropical Africa make it difficult for microwave signals to travel this distance over water.

"We are delighted to have partnered with Ceragon Networks to transition our 2G/3G services to 4G," said Oumar Bonkoungou, CEO at MUNI S.A. "Ceragon has successfully met our challenge in order to provide high speed 4G wireless backbone between our country's island capital and the mainland. With this remarkable achievement, we can also increase our subscriber base and improve our 4G services to our customers in the 2 largest cities of the country."

"Ceragon is proud to have been selected to help light up a 4G mobile broadband network for the people of Equatorial Guinea," said Ira Palti, President and CEO of Ceragon. We are happy to be part of the initiative to bridge the digital divide to a significant part of the population that has been waiting for mobile broadband services in the country's island capital. This accomplishment is a testament to the quality of our professional services and deployment teams, and of course our leading wireless backhaul technology. With a current mobile penetration rate of only 60%, Equatorial Guinea has great growth potential, and Ceragon is pleased to enable MUNI S.A to provide nationwide connectivity and expand its customer base."

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Penn State researchers develop new germanosilicate glass

Researchers at Penn State have developed a new composition of germanosilicate glass by adding zinc oxide has properties good for lens applications.

The researchers invented a new family of zinc germanosilicate glass that has a high refractive index comparable to that of pure germania glass. The samples also showed high transparency, good ultra-violet-shielding properties, and good glass forming ability, making them suitable for lens applications.

Germanosilicate glass is essential in the manufacture of optical amplifiers, waveguides, and solid-state lasers.

The researchers published their results in a recent issue of the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids.

https://news.psu.edu/story/567138/2019/04/03/research/new-family-glass-good-lenses

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Telekom Srbija picks Ericsson for Core network virtualized functions

Telekom Srbija has virtualized some of its Core Network functions.

Under the terms of the Network Functions Virtualization contract, Ericsson’s full portfolio of network function solutions and related services have been harnessed to deploy Ericsson Cloud Core solutions.  This includes the Serbia’s first live Ericsson virtual Home Location Register (vHLR) based on virtual User Data Consolidation (vUDC). Added to the existing virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) and virtual Home Subscriber Server (vHSS), this means Telekom Srbija are able to optimize their network depending on present and future needs, making it a very cost-effective solution.

In a Customer-Centric Network, the virtual UDC solution eliminates the complexity of managing subscription by consolidating subscriber information from the different network silos into one common repository, creating a Unified Profile. This allows for a simpler and more scalable network topology, more efficiency on managing the network database resources and it also gives more flexibility to introduce new services.

Filip Bankovic, Chief Technology Officer, Telekom Srbija says: “Ericsson’s portfolio of VNF enables us to become more agile where efficiency, reliability and scalability are of top priority. This project is an important step in our transformation journey towards 5G, future-proofing our core network. It provides us with state-of-the-art virtual core applications that serve mobile and fixed access and extend the lifecycle of our legacy network.”

Antonio Passarella, Head of Ericsson Serbia says: “Ericsson is a long-term partner to Telekom Srbija and this achievement strengthens that partnership by evolving their existing network to the cloud, ensuring continued exceptional services to their customers. Telekom Srbija subscribers will benefit from best-in-class applications with full-service continuity of current high-quality communication services.”

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TSMC gets ready for the arrival of 5 nanometer

TSMC has delivered a complete version of its 5 nanometer (nm) design infrastructure to design partners.

TSMC said its kit enables 5nm systems-on-chip (SoC) designs in next-generation advanced mobile and high-performance computing (HPC) applications, especially for 5G and AI.

“TSMC’s 5-nanometer technology offers our customers the industry’s most advanced logic process to address the exponentially growing demand for computing power driven by AI and 5G,” said Cliff Hou, Vice President of Research & Development/Technology Development at TSMC. “5-nanometer technology requires deeper design-technology co-optimization. Therefore, we collaborate seamlessly with our ecosystem partners to ensure we deliver silicon-validated IP blocks and EDA tools ready for customer use. As always, we are committed to helping customers achieve first-time silicon success and faster time-to-market.”

TSMC’s 5nm process is already in risk production and offers IC designers a new level of performance and power optimization targeted at the next generation of high-end mobile and HPC applications.

http://www.tsmc.com

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T-Mobile US to launch video service

T-Mobile US is preparing to launch TVision Home service featuring a set-top box that is an upgraded version of Layer3 TV. The service will offer content from Amazon Prime, Netflix and other providers.

“5G will transform entertainment, and the New T-Mobile will transform 5G if our merger with Sprint is approved,” said Mike Sievert, President and COO of T-Mobile. “Having Prime Video on board with TVision speaks volumes about 5G’s potential to disrupt entertainment and give customers better ways to get the content they care about.”

Vision Home is launching in Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. metro areas, as well as Longmont, CO, with other markets coming later this year.

T-Mobile also announced that Netflix and other streaming apps will be available on TVision Home, and the Un-carrier shared plans for TVision to run on popular third-party TV platforms in the future.

Following on its deal with Viacom last week, T-Mobile also announced they will launch nationwide streaming services later in 2019 “We love giving our customers more ways to conveniently access Prime Video and are thrilled to work with T-Mobile,” said Andrew Bennett, Director of Worldwide Business Development for Prime Video. “The launch will give Prime members easy access to new favorites like Hanna and upcoming seasons of Bosch, Good Omens and Sneaky Pete.”

http://www.tvision.com

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Silicon Line releases new ICs for Active Optical Cables

Silicon Line GmbH introduced a new line of integrated circuits (ICs) with transmission speeds of 16 to 18 gigabytes per seconds (Gb/s).

The new chips will be produced in single-channel and four-channel versions, enabling the production of active optical cables with speeds up 72 Gigabytes per Second.

Likely applications for the ICs include active optical cables for HDMI- and DisplayPort-enabled devices, as well as customized cable solutions for virtual reality headsets, 4K and 8K TV and commercial products. Silicon Line is the global leader in developing and providing innovative optical link technology for consumer, commercial and industrial electronics.

Ruud van der Linden, CEO, also announced Silicon Line sales had doubled for the second consecutive year in 2018 and that the company, which recently completed an expansion of its production capacity at its Hasselt, Belgium facility, will add another shift to the plant's production schedule this fall. The Hasselt factory manufactures Silicon Line's patented optical components which are combined with the company's ICs to fabricate modules used inside the housings at either end of active optical cables.

"Module sales to existing customers continue to grow, as do the number of customers we serve," van der Linden said. "With bandwidth specifications for connectivity standards only increasing, we see a very bright future for active optical technology and our company."

Earlier this year, Silicon Line demonstrated the first active optical cables with the company's embedded proprietary technology supporting all features of the recently released HDMI 2.1 specification.

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Silicon Line GmbH announced the first active optical cables with embedded t

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