Huawei and China Telecom implement 5G Super Uplink

China Telecom Shanghai announced the implementation of a 5G Super Uplink solution featuring TDD/FDD coordination, high-band/low-band complementation, and time/frequency domain aggregation. Super Uplink, which is supported from end to end by Huawei 5G technologies, was first announced by the partners at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

The 5G Super Uplink implements the time-frequency domain aggregation of TDD and FDD in the uplink frequency band. This increases uplink spectrum resources of NR, boosts the uplink capability of the 5G network, reduces latency, and improves the utilization rate of the uplink spectrum of 2.1 GHz/1.8 GHz.

The companies said the newly launched Super Uplink solution increases uplink speeds by 20%–100% under good radio conditions, while also delivering a fourfold increase to cell-edge uplink rates.

China Telecom Shanghai plans to expand pre-commercial trials and increase research and development, network construction, and industrial cooperation.

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Embracing MEF LSO APIs for Better, Automated Customer Experience

MEF Annual Meeting – July 2019, Shawn Hakl, SVP of Business Products, Verizon, shares his excitement about MEF’s work in standardizing LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) that enable end-to-end orchestration of services across service providers and over multiple network technology domains. He is particularly excited about the potential impact of LSO Sonata API adoption for inter-provider service automation.

“We just came out of a pretty exciting Board Meeting about the progression of LSO standards at MEF. I think people should be really excited about what’s coming. I think there’s a lot more clarity on the use cases and how carriers will adopt this technology and how it will meaningfully impact our customers.”

“Where the network orchestration component comes in is how what was previously done manually or with physical settings in the equipment can now be done through automation. Network orchestration is the technology that will allow us to integrate functions and deliver outcomes through the network. And it allows for interoperability of functions between each other – the interoperability between carriers – and really builds the basis for what our customers are asking for:  a fully automated experience controlled through a software-based implementation.”

“So, what’s exciting about the work with LSO Sonata is that you’ve actually seen multiple carriers implement it…What we all recognize as an industry is that if we continue to have to invest in automation between functions at an individual, piece-by-piece fashion for every function and every NFV it is going to be incredibly inefficient and get in way of the experience.”

“Now, really there is a compelling case for the carriers to standardize the implementation across the board and drive a lot of value for our customers.”

To learn more about MEF LSO Sonata APIs for inter-provider service automation, download this FAQ document:  https://www.mef.net/images/LSO-Sonata-FAQ-August-2019.pdf.

To explore the latest on LSO innovations and engage with industry-leading service and technology experts such as Shawn Hakl, attend MEF19 (http://www.MEF19.com), held 18-22 November 2019 in Los Angeles, California.

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Broadcom announces PCIe Gen 4.0 switch and retimer

Broadcom's new PCIe Gen 4.0 ExpressFabric switch family, including switches and a retimer, has entered commercial production.

The new PEX88000 switch family ranges from 26 to 98 lanes and ports and is designed for high-throughput and low-latency applications such as deep learning, high performance computing (HPC) and NVMe all-flash arrays.

The PEX88T32 retimer is based on Broadcom's existing PCIe Gen 4.0 SerDes IP that has been used in a wide-variety of Broadcom connectivity and storage solutions, and offers seamless integration with PCIe switches.

"The growth of data center workloads and applications continues to scale at a rapid pace, as machine learning and data inference platforms create new ways to transfer, analyze, optimize, store and use data. The adoption of innovative, next-generation technologies is vital for the creation and sustainability of smarter, optimized data centers," said Jas Tremblay, vice president and general manager of the Data Center Solutions Group at Broadcom. "The PEX88000 family of switches and retimer equip the ecosystem with the critical building blocks needed to scale connectivity using PCIe Gen 4.0 inside data centers, resulting in improved performance, efficiency and throughput."

Since its initial sampling in 2018, the PEX88000 switch family has been tested extensively. The PEX88000 family of switches and retimer are essential to interconnect GPGPUs, compute accelerators, CPUs, SSDs and NICs in data intensive, and latency sensitive applications.

https://www.broadcom.com/products/pcie-switches-bridges/expressfabric/gen4 

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Dell'Oro: Worldwide telecom equipment market up 6%

The worldwide telecom equipment market grew 6 percent year-over-year (Y/Y) in the past twelve months, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group.

The majority of growth was driven by Mobile RAN and Optical Transport sales. Equipment manufacturer revenue in these two technology areas grew 10 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

The telecom equipment market shifted into a growth phase in 3Q 2018 after three years of decline. As a result, the market’s growth for the trailing four-quarter period ending 2Q 2019 was up significantly from a bottom reached in 2017. Most of the leading vendors gained revenue during this period with the highest percentage increases obtained by Samsung, ZTE, and Ciena.

Although Huawei was placed on the U.S. Entity List in late May, restricting its purchase of U.S. components without a license, the company seems to have avoided any negative impact on sales of telecom equipment. For the trailing four-quarter period (3Q18 through 2Q19), Huawei held the highest share of the telecom equipment market at 28 percent.

Nokia captured the second-highest share in the period due to its strong position in each of the seven technology segments included in the Telecom Equipment Market report. Nokia was a top 4 vendor in each product category.

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Huawei updates its 5G progress

Huawei Technologies issued the following update regarding its 5G momentum:

• 50 commercial contracts signed to date
• 28 contracts from Europe, 11 from the Middle East, 6 from Asia-Pacific, 4 from the Americas, 1 from Africa
• 200,000 5G base stations shipped to date
• As of June 2019, HUAWEI CLOUD and its partners have opened 23 regions with a total of 44 availability zones, and launched over 180 cloud services and 180 solutions.
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MEF's LSO Developer Community & Service Automation

MEF Annual Meeting – July/Aug 2019, Daniel Bar-Lev, Director, Office of the CTO, MEF, discusses the importance of LSO APIs for enabling end-to-end automation of communications services across multiple providers and over multiple network technology domains. He also provides an overview of MEF's newly introduced LSO Developer Community whose primary purpose is to accelerate the adoption of MEF data models and APIs as defined for each of the reference points in the MEF LSO Reference Architecture (MEF 55).

LSO Developer Community
The LSO Developer Community - composed of software developers and IT staff primarily from MEF member companies - is focused on accelerating production of software development kits (SDKs) to bolster the integration of LSO APIs into service provider networks. MEF is looking for more industry professionals to participate in the process of developing and deploying SDKs for LSO Sonata, LSO Presto, and LSO Legato. If you are interested in participating, please contact the Community Manager at community_manager@mef.net

LSO Sonata APIs for Inter-Provider Service Automation
LSO Sonata APIs relate to the interface reference point within MEF’s LSO Reference Architecture that supports business-to-business interactions between service providers. The full suite of planned LSO Sonata APIs deals with serviceability (address validation, site queries, product offering qualification), product inventory, quoting, ordering, trouble ticketing, contracts, and billing.

In June 2019, MEF introduced LSO Sonata SDK (Software Development Kit) Release 3, which includes a set of deliverables that enable market adoption of LSO Sonata APIs for serviceability (address validation, site queries, and product offering qualification), product inventory, quoting, and ordering. The SDK includes published and draft standards listed below covering business requirements, use cases, and attributes that serve as the basis for the associated APIs and data models. Available on the MEF public GitHub (https://github.com/MEF-GIT/MEF-LSO-So...), the SDK also includes Swagger data models, product payload specifications composed of MEF 3.0 services, and other artifacts that enable a developer to rapidly build out these Sonata LSO APIs within their business systems.

• Ethernet Ordering Technical Standard: Business Requirements and Use Cases (MEF 57.1)
• Address, Service Site, and Product Offering Qualification Management: Requirements and Use Cases (MEF 79 Draft Standard)
• Quote Management: Requirements and Use Cases (MEF 80 Draft Standard)
• Product Inventory Management: Requirements and Use Cases (MEF 81 Draft Standard)

To learn more about MEF LSO Sonata APIs, download this FAQ document:  https://www.mef.net/images/LSO-Sonata... 

To explore the latest on LSO innovations and engage with industry-leading service and technology experts, attend MEF19 (http://www.MEF19.com), held 18-22 November 2019 in Los Angeles, California.

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KPN deactivates ISDN in Netherlands

KPN officially deactivated its ISDN service on 01-September-2019.

ISDN, which offers two high-quality 64 kbps channels over a single connection; was first introduced in the Netherlands in the early 1990s.

Other providers also offer ISDN services based on KPN’s (Wholesale) network. KPN is offering a grace period for these telecom providers to migrate customers to another service. KPN expects all lines to be phased out in the first quarter of 2020, after which ISDN will no longer be available as a service.

https://overons.kpn/en/news/2019/the-end-of-isdn

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U.S. and Poland sign 5G Pact

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki signed a 5G cooperation pact that call for all network equipment vendors to be given a “rigorous evaluation”, including whether they are controlled by a foreign government, and be subject to “independent judicial review”.  Huawei is not mentioned by name.

The Trump administration is pushing U.S. allies to impose a ban on Huawei.

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ZTE’s Sergio Parolari elected 3GPP RAN2 Vice Chairman

Sergio Parolari has been elected Vice Chairman of 3GPP RAN2.

As a key contributor in 3GPP for 17 years, Sergio Parolari has been a regular RAN2 delegate since January 2010. Sergio has been active in many LTE and NR topics, including carrier aggregation, dual connectivity, machine-type communications, proximity services, NB-IoT and 5G NR. Moreover, he is the rapporteur of the 5G Stage 2 specification TS37.340 on “Multi-connectivity”.

At 3GPP, besides holding the Vice Chairman positions in RAN2 and RAN3, ZTE is the main driver of various technical standards, such as NOMA, 2-Step RACH, CoMP, ATSSS and 5G slicing enhancement. Meanwhile, ZTE is also holding positions of chief editor of a number of technical standards, such as multiple connectivity, NG-RAN data transmission and NR electromagnetic compatibility.

“Congratulations to Sergio Parolari! By means of the joint efforts of the industry, we hope that 3GPP will continue to develop high-quality global standards for 5G NR and future mobile communications.” said Wang Xinhui, ZTE Vice President and Director of Wireless Standardization and Industrial Relationship. “ZTE is honored to work with the rest of 3GPP community to contribute to the success of the wireless industry."

#MWC18, ZTE  

ZTE, now one of the world’s major network equipment suppliers, recently reported 2017 operating revenue of RMB 108.82 billion, 7.49% higher than a year earlier, but n

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