Sparkle announces BlueMed subsea cable - up to 240 Tbps

Sparkle announced plans for a massive subsea cable along the west coast of Italy, linking Genoa and Palermo.

BlueMed will be a multi-fiber cable spanning 1,000 kilometers and with a design capacity of 240 Tbps. It will cross the Tyrrhenian Sea connecting Sparkle’s Sicily Hub open data center in Palermo, which serves eighteen international cables, with Genoa’s new open landing station, directly connected to Milan’s rich digital ecosystem. BlueMed will also include multiple branches within the Tyrrhenian Sea and is set to support further extensions southbound of Sicily.

With a capacity up to 240 Tbps and about 1,000 km long, BlueMed will provide advanced connectivity between Middle East, Africa, Asia and the European mainland hubs with up to 50% latency reduction than existing terrestrial cables connecting Sicily with Milan.

BlueMed is expected to enter service in 2020.

Sparkle also noted that its new open landing station in Genoa is set to become the alternative priority access for other upcoming submarine cables to Europe.

“The investment on the deployment of BlueMed and of the landing station in Genoa represents the first phase of a wider plan aimed at consolidating Sparkle’s leadership in the Mediterranean basin through the extension and enhancement of its regional backbone”, says Mario Di Mauro, CEO of Sparkle.

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Telstra broadens its Global Media Network

Telstra Broadcast Services is expanding the reach of its Global Media Network (GMN) by adding new partners in the Americas and Europe.

Telstra’s GMN is a media contribution and distribution network that enables the delivery of live, linear and file-based media content worldwide, helping sports and entertainment companies reach viewers and sports fans in Asia and around the world. The GMN utilises Telstra’s global infrastructure including fibre cable networks, data centres and cloud platforms, combined with the networks, media assets and broadcast operations of partners.

The expansion brings together Telstra’s GMN with its first Latin American partner,

New partners include Gold Data, one of Latin Americas's leading telecommunications providers, Zayo Group, a major provider of American and global communications infrastructure, and Norkring, a division of Telenor that provides broadcast and connectivity services across the Nordic region.

The new partners join a growing Telstra GMN partner alliance that includes The Switch, AT+T, TDF Group, NEP Connect, MTI Teleport Munchen, GlobalConnect, Nexion, Softbank, PCCW and China Unicom.

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Samsung Electronics' 5nm EUV tech is ready for sampling

Samsung Electronics confirmed that its 5-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology is complete in its development and ready for customers’ samples.

Compared to 7nm, Samsung’s 5nm FinFET process technology provides up to a 25 percent increase in logic area efficiency with 20 percent lower power consumption or 10 percent higher performance as a result of process improvement to enable us to have more innovative standard cell architecture.

In addition to power performance area (PPA) improvements from 7nm to 5nm, customers can fully leverage Samsung's highly sophisticated EUV technology. Like its predecessor, 5nm uses EUV lithography in metal layer patterning and reduces mask layers while providing better fidelity.

Another key benefit of 5nm is that we can reuse all the 7nm intellectual property (IP) to 5nm. Thereby 7nm customers' transitioning to 5nm will greatly benefit from reduced migration costs, pre-verified design ecosystem, and consequently, shorten their 5nm product development.

“In successful completion of our 5nm development, we’ve proven our capabilities in EUV-based nodes,” said Charlie Bae, Executive Vice President of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. “In response to customers' surging demand for advanced process technologies to differentiate their next-generation products, we continue our commitment to accelerating the volume production of EUV-based technologies.”

• In October 2018, Samsung announced the readiness and its initial production of 7nm process, its first process node with EUV lithography technology. The company has provided commercial samples of the industry’s first EUV-based new products and has started mass production of 7nm process early this year.

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David Chen of Applied Optoelectronics (AOI) discusses on-board optics

David Chen of AOI explains how Cobo provides a nice single platform for a very flexible integration path from 400G, 800G to 1.6T Modules at OFC in March 2019.

https://youtu.be/jBjEzU07FFc

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AT&T sells its minority stake in Hulu

AT&T sold its minority stake in Hulu back to the streaming video joint venture. The transaction valued Hulu at $15 billion, with AT&T’s 9.5% interest valued at $1.43 billion.

AT&T will use proceeds from this transaction, along with additional planned sales of non-core assets, to reduce its debt.

“We thank AT&T for their support and investment over the past two years and look forward to collaboration in the future. WarnerMedia will remain a valued partner to Hulu for years to come as we offer customers the best of TV, live and on demand, all in one place,” said Hulu CEO Randy Freer.

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HPE and Nutanix enter global partnership for hybrid cloud

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Nutanix have formed a global partnership to deliver an integrated hybrid cloud as a Service (aaS) solution to the market.

The partnership combines Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software including its built-in, free AHV hypervisor, delivered through HPE GreenLake to provide a fully HPE-managed hybrid cloud.

As part of the deal, Nutanix will enable its channel partners to directly sell HPE servers combined with Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software.

“Our customers tell us that it’s their applications that matter most. Our partnership with HPE will provide Nutanix customers with another choice to make their infrastructure invisible so they can focus on business-critical apps, not the underlying technology,” said Dheeraj Pandey, founder, CEO and chairman of Nutanix. “We are delighted to partner with HPE for the benefit of enterprises looking for the right hybrid cloud solution for their business.”

https://www.nutanix.com/documents/datasheets/ds-nutanix-hpe.pdf

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Keysight continues to refine its 5G Conformance Toolset

Keysight Technologies'5G Conformance Toolset now supports additional validated Global Certification Forum (GCF) and PTCRB protocol, as well as radio frequency (RF) conformance test cases, for both 5G new radio (NR) non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) mode, as reaffirmed at the recent GCF meeting.

Keysight said its 5G Conformance Toolset was used to submit 5G NR non-standalone RF test cases – targeting spurious emission testing in the sub-6Ghz frequency range (FR1) – to GCF. Early access to a comprehensive set of test cases on a common platform enables the mobile ecosystem to validate the performance of new 5G designs.

“This achievement confirms Keysight’s continued 5G conformance test case leadership in GCF and PTCRB and enables designers to confidently evolve with the latest 5G NR specifications,” said Kailash Narayanan, vice president and general manager of Keysight's wireless test group. “As 5G NR NSA and SA deployments are progressing in parallel, we’re excited to play a foundational role in accelerating 5G mobile device certification for both modes of operation, addressing global requirements.”

Keysight’s 5G Conformance Toolset forms part of Keysight's suite of 5G network emulation solutions that leverages the company’s UXM 5G Wireless Test Platform to address device development workflow from early design to acceptance and manufacturing. These compact solutions support the device certification process and scale to facilitate mobile device verification, as well as certification across RF, radio resource management (RRM) and protocol. Mobile operators and their ecosystems use Keysight's 5G network emulation solutions to validate new devices across sub-6GHz and mmWave frequency bands.
https://about.keysight.com/en/newsroom/pr/2019/15apr-nr19060.shtml

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Palo Alto Networks appoints Lorraine Twohill and Sir John Key to Board

Palo Alto Networks announced the appointment of Lorraine Twohill, chief marketing officer at Google, and the Right Honorable Sir John Key, former member of Parliament and prime minister of New Zealand, to the company's board of directors.

Lorraine Twohill currently leads global marketing for all of Google's products and services. She is responsible for managing the company's brand and bringing Google's products to life for billions of users every day. Previously, she ran marketing at Google for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and helped build the company's European business and operations. Prior to joining Google, Lorraine held various positions, including head of marketing at European travel site Opodo and general manager Northern Europe for the Irish Tourist Board. In 2018, she was named the Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year, using her platform to advocate for greater representation of women in the advertising industry.

Sir John will bring to the board extensive experience in foreign affairs, investment banking and finance. He was a member of Parliament for Helensville in New Zealand until April 2017 and served as prime minister of New Zealand from November 2008 to December 2016. Prior to his political career, Sir John spent nearly 20 years in international finance, primarily for Bankers Trust of New Zealand and Merrill Lynch in Singapore, London and Sydney.

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