Sunday, May 12, 2019

Deutsche Telekom tests 100G wireless backhaul over microwave

A test of wireless backhaul transmission over millimeter wave spectrum conducted by Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom achieved rates exceeding 100 Gbps over a 1.5 km distance.

The test, which was conducted at the Deutsche Telekom Service Center in Athens, represents a major technical breakthrough, achieving more than 10 times greater throughput speeds than current commercial solutions on similar 70/80 GHz millimeter wave spectrum. The companies said that apart from confirming the potential of microwave technology over millimeter-wave spectrum (70/80 GHz and above) as a 5G-and-beyond fronthaul and backhaul solution, the trial showed the importance of applying spectral efficient techniques, such as MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) on wireless backhaul technologies to address upcoming 5G radio access demands.

Technical details

Key technological advances included an 8x8 line-of-sight MIMO with cross polarization interference cancellation setup using commercial MINI-LINK 6352 radios and a 2.5 GHz channel bandwidth in the E-band (70/80 GHz) able to transmit eight independent data streams over the radio path. This corresponds to a breakthrough spectrum efficiency of 55.2 bps/Hz at peak.

During the mid-April trial, transmission rates measures were consistently above 100 Gbps, with telecom grade availability (higher than 99.995 percent), with peak rates reaching 140 Gbps.

Alex Jinsung Choi, SVP Strategy & Technology Innovation, Deutsche Telekom, says: “Advanced backhaul solutions will be needed to support high data throughput and enhanced customer experience in the 5G era. This milestone confirms the feasibility of microwave over millimeter wave spectrum as an important extension of our portfolio of high-capacity, high-performance transport options for the 5G era. In addition, it represents a game changing solution for future fronthauling capabilities.”

Per Narvinger, Head of Product Area Networks, Ericsson, says: ”This trial signifies the successful establishment of true fiber capacities over the air using microwave.  This means that microwave will be even more relevant for communications service providers in creating redundant networks as a back-up for fiber, or as a way of closing a fiber ring when fiber is not a viable solution. By carrying such high capacities, microwave further establishes itself as a key transport technology, capable of delivering the performance requirements of 5G.”


  • In late 2018, Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom broke the 40Gbps barrier fully using commercial equipment including Ericsson’s MINI-LINK 6352 solution, which currently provides 10Gbps capacity over a 2000MHz channel. To raise throughput by more than 10 times, this trial used a 2500MHz channel and pre-commercial baseband and MIMO processing equipment in addition to MINI-LINK 6352 radios. 

 

SpaceX to launch its first 60 satellites this week

SpaceX expects to launch the first 60 satellites for its Starlink LEO constellation this week.

In a tweet, Elon Musk disclosed that six launches of 60 satellites each are needed for "minor coverage" and 12 launches of 60 satellites each are needed for "moderate" coverage. The accompanying photo reveals an extremely tight packing of photos into the Falcon fairing.

SpaceX has disclosed plans to deploy as many as 12,000 satellites in three, low earth orbit (LEO) shells. Cost estimates for full deployment approach $10 billion.

In November 2018, the FCC granted authority to SpaceX to construct, deploy, and operate a new very-low-Earth orbit constellation of more than 7,000 satellites using V-band frequencies. This is in addition to the authorization granted in March 2018. The FCC also granted SpaceX’s request to add the 37.5-42.0 GHz, and 47.2-50.2 GHz frequency bands to its previously authorized NGSO constellation. SpaceX now has the flexibility to provide both diverse geographic coverage and the capacity to support a wide range of broadband and communications services for residential, commercial, institutional, governmental, and professional users in the United States and globally.

FCC approves SpaceX's NGSO Satellite System

The FCC voted authorized SpaceX to construct, deploy, and operate a proposed non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite system comprising 4,425 satellites for the provision of fixed-satellite service (FSS) around the world.

In July 2016, OneWeb was granted approval to build a similar constellation of MEO satellites.

Two months ago, SpaceX successfully launched the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) PAZ observation satellite on behalf of Hisdesat and two satellites of its own.  Tintin A & B are the first two demonstration satellites for SpaceX's planned Starlink broadband satellite service. Both were successfully deployed into polar orbit and are communicating with Earth stations.

In regulatory filing, SpaceX has revealed that its initial system will consist of 4,425 satellites operating in 83 orbital planes (at altitudes ranging from 1,110 km to 1,325 km).  The system will require associated ground control facilities, gateway earth stations, and end-user earth stations. The system will use Ka- and Ku-Band spectrum.  SpaceX has separately filed for authority to operate in the V-Band, where the company has proposed an additional constellation of 7,500 satellites operating even closer to Earth. To implement the system, SpaceX will utilise the availability of significantly more powerful computing and software capabilities.  On the launch broadcast for the PAZ satellite, SpaceX said quite a bit of development work remains ahead on its satellite constellation plans

Urban Computing Foundation targets traffic infrastructure

A new Urban Computing Foundation is looking to accelerate open source software that improves mobility, safety, road infrastructure, traffic congestion and energy consumption in connected cities. The forum will address issues such as the adaption of geospatial and temporal machine learning techniques and urban environments and simulation methodologies for modeling and predicting city-wide phenomena.

The project is organized by The Linux Foundation and has backing from Uber, Facebook, Google, HERE Technologies, IBM, Interline Technologies, Senseable City Labs, StreetCred Labs and University of California San Diego (UCSD).

“During moments of both technology disruption and opportunity, open development is critical for enabling interoperability and speeding adoption,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “The Urban Computing Foundation is poised to provide the compatibility tools and resources for developers to create software that can map out and operate technology services in any given urban area, ensuring safety and equitable access to transportation.”

“As a founding participant with the Urban Computing Foundation, Uber is honored to contribute Kepler.gl as the initiative’s first official project,” said Travis Gorkin, Uber Data Visualization Lead and Urban Computing Foundation TAC contributor. “Technologies like Kepler.gl have the capacity to advance urban planning by helping policymakers and local governments gain critical insights and better understand data about their cities.”

“Civic organizations and citizens alike need ready access to data about their cities to make better decisions about transportation, construction and energy consumption. The Urban Computing Foundation’s mission to make that possible is closely aligned with Google’s approach to open data. Making it easier to access, visualize and process these kinds of large data sets is indeed at the heart of Google Cloud. We are excited to join the Urban Computing Foundation as a founding contributor and work on our shared goal of improving the world we live in,” said Chris DiBona, director, Open Source and Science Outreach, Google Cloud.

https://uc.foundation/

China Mobile intros 5G-powered Smart Commercial Refrigerator

China Mobile Group Zhejiang is launching the "goBox", a 5G-powered smart commercial refrigerator developed by UTStarcom.

Fast connectivity and low latency enable the goBox smart vending machine to use facial recognition to confirm the identity of customers and autorize each transaction without carrying a mobile phone. Customers can then open the door to pick their favorite products and close the door to complete payment. 

China Mobile Group Zhejiang and UTStarcom are creating goBox applications for high-speed rail stations, hospitals, shopping malls, hotels and other fields, so that more people can enjoy the convenience of life in the 5G era. 

http://www.utstar.com

Telecom Egypt signs PEACE subsea cable

Telecom Egypt entered agreements enabling the Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) subsea cable system to cross Egypt through new diversified terrestrial routes between the Zafarana and Abou Talat cable landing stations, where Telecom Egypt will provide PEACE with brand new state of the art landing facilities. The total value of the agreement amounts to US$45 million over the lifetime of the cable. 

In addition,  PEACE will be granted an additional fiber pair to its redundant cross Egypt routes to accommodate PEACE extensive demand to Europe with a total value of US$20 million. China-based HENGTONG OPTIC-ELECTRIC, which is a backer of PEACE, has also agreed to provide Telecom Egypt with fiber optic cables of different cores based on competitive pricing. This cabling will be used in Telecom Egypt's strategic plans for fiber deployment inside Egypt.

PEACE is a 12,000 km long cable system with landings in Pakistan, Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya and France.

Adel Hamed, Telecom Egypt’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer said: “I am very pleased with the signing of the landing party and crossing agreement as this marks the addition of another cable system to Telecom Egypt’s huge network of submarine cables crossing Egypt exhibiting clearly that Egypt is the ideal digital route and partner of choice for international traffic from the East to the West. Telecom Egypt boasts several differentiation factors in the submarine cable industry that will enable it to realize its vision to become a regional and African digital hub for content providers. These include Egypt’s premium geographic location and the company’s efforts in continuously modernizing and expanding its international network through the addition of new landing stations and the establishment of highly reliable diversified crossing routes.”

Liquid Telecom to invest US$400 million in deal with Telecom Egypt


Liquid Telecom will invest 8 billion Egyptian Pounds (US$400 million) in Egypt over the next three years as part of its partnership with Telecom Egypt on network infrastructure and data centres. Specifically, Liquid Telecom will make an initial investment of US$50 million in data centres and cloud services. Liquid Telecom plans to invest an additional US$350 million in broadband and financial inclusion initiatives, as well as high capacity data...

Telecom Egypt boosts Delta  DWM backbone to 200G with Nokia


Telecom Egypt has doubled the line capacity of its its Delta Region DWDM backbone network to 200G using Nokia's Photonic Service Engine (PSE) technology and its existing Nokia PSS 1830 switches. Commercial deployment of the new high-speed service started in June and represents the first 200G long distance, single carrier transmission service in Africa. Specifically, Telecom Egypt is upgrading its backbone network using the Nokia 500G DWDM Muxponder,...


Telecom Egypt and Liquid Telecom signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to complete the first terrestrial fibre network stretching all the way from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo, Egypt. Under the MoU, Liquid Telecom will link its network from Sudan into Telecom Egypt’s network via a new cross border interconnection – bringing together a 60,000km network that runs from Cape Town, through all the Southern, Central, and Eastern African countries,...

Telecom Egypt obtains US$200 million facilitated by Huawei


The Bank of China and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure) will provide US$200 million in long-term financing to Telecom Egypt. The financing was facilitated by Huawei. It is intended to finance the roll-out of Telecom Egypt's 4G network and the deployment of transmission and core networks. Mr. Terry Liu, CEO of Huawei Egypt Office said: “Throughout the years Huawei has been successful in building and maintaining a strong...

Telecom Egypt acquires MENA cable for $90 million


Telecom Egypt announces that its 50% owned subsidiary, Egyptian International Submarine Cables Company (EISCC), will acquire the Middle East and North Africa Submarine Cable (MENA) for a total value of US$90 million from Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding S.A.E. Telecom Egypt said the decision to acquire MENA Cable comes in line with its strategy to achieve a short-term return from this investment and to preserve the revenue stream of...

Subsea connectivity restored to northern Greenland

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

CoreSite's Cloud Exchange offers AWS Direct Connect at 1/2/5/10G

CoreSite announced the availability of Hosted Connections with 1, 2, 5, or 10 Gbps of capacity for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect.

These connectivity capacities are available through the CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange, enabling direct, private, virtual connectivity into AWS.

The CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange establishes direct, secure, virtual connections between enterprises, networks and cloud providers, including major public clouds such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud.

“We’re excited to expand our offering of Hosted Connections through AWS Direct Connect with bandwidth capabilities now up to 10 Gbps,” said Gerry Fassig, Vice President of Sales. “With AWS Direct Connect services and CoreSite’s Open Cloud Exchange, we can provide access to the cloud and multiple regions from any CoreSite location. As our customers grow their digital strategies we can serve their needs through flexible, powerful hosted or direct connect capabilities.”

SK Telecom and Microsoft to collaborate on 5G and AI

SK Telecom signed an MoU with Microsoft to collaborate on 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud.

The companies will work on combining the capabilities of SK Telecom’s AI platform (NUGU) with Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant. Collaboration will also focus on creating better customer experiences in the field of media and entertainment.

In addition, SK Telecom will adopt Microsoft 365 for its own workforce. Eventually, SK Telecom will expand Microsoft 365 to other ICT companies under the SK Group umbrella.