FCC outlines 3.5 GHz auction plan for 2020

The FCC is proposing to auction seven Priority Access Licenses (PALs) in the 3550-3650 MHz portion of the 3.5 GHz Band for each county-based license area in the country, for a total of 22,631 PALs nationwide.  Each PAL will consist of a 10-megahertz unpaired channel assigned by automated frequency coordinators, known as Spectrum Access Systems.  Consistent with the Commission’s rules, Priority Access Licensees would be permitted to aggregate up to four PALs in any license area.

The 3.5 GHz band holds the potential to be prime spectrum for 5G services.

The FCC is now seeking comment on the following proposals:

Using an ascending clock auction format (similar to the format used for Auction 102 and to be used for Auction 103), in which bidders indicate their demand for generic license blocks in specific counties;
Offering bidders the option to bid at a Cellular Market Area (CMA) level in the 172 CMAs that are classified as Metropolitan Statistical Areas and comprise multiple counties; and
Incorporating an “activity upper limit” that would allow bidders to submit bids that exceed their current bidding eligibility, to help mitigate the possibility of losing bidding eligibility under certain circumstances.

The FCC's Public Notice also proposes rules for bidding credit caps, upfront payments, bidding eligibility, minimum opening bids, bid removal and withdrawal, and other auction procedures for Auction 105, which is set to begin on June 25, 2020.

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IDC: Cloud IT Infrastructure Revenues Decline in Q2

Vendor revenue from sales of IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud environments, including public and private cloud, declined 10.2% year over year in the second quarter of 2019 (2Q19), reaching $14.1 billion, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker.

IDC also lowered its forecast for total spending on cloud IT infrastructure in 2019 to $63.6 billion, down 4.9% from last quarter's forecast and changing from expected growth to a year-over-year decline of 2.1%.

Some highlights from IDC:

• Vendor revenue from hardware infrastructure sales to public cloud environments in 2Q19 was down 0.9% compared to the previous quarter (1Q19) and down 15.1% year over year to $9.4 billion. This segment of the market continues to be highly impacted by demand from a handful of hyperscale service providers, whose spending on IT infrastructure tends to have visible up and down swings. 
• After a strong performance in 2018, IDC expects the public cloud IT infrastructure segment to cool down in 2019 with spend dropping to $42.0 billion, a 6.7% decrease from 2018. 
• Spending on private cloud IT infrastructure has showed more stable growth since IDC started tracking sales of IT infrastructure products in various deployment environments. In the second quarter of 2019, vendor revenues from private cloud environments increased 1.5% year over year reaching $4.6 billion. IDC expects spending in this segment to grow 8.4% year over year in 2019.
• Overall, the IT infrastructure industry is at crossing point in terms of product sales to cloud vs. traditional IT environments. In 3Q18, vendor revenues from cloud IT environments climbed over the 50% mark for the first time but fell below this important tipping point since then. In 2Q19, cloud IT environments accounted for 48.4% of vendor revenues. For the full year 2019, spending on cloud IT infrastructure will remain just below the 50% mark at 49.0%. Longer-term, however, IDC expects that spending on cloud IT infrastructure will grow steadily and will sustainably exceed the level of spending on traditional IT infrastructure in 2020 and beyond.
• Spending on the three technology segments in cloud IT environments is forecast to deliver growth for Ethernet switches while compute platforms and storage platforms are expected to decline in 2019. Ethernet switches are expected to grow at 13.1%, while spending on storage platforms will decline at 6.8% and compute platforms will decline by 2.4%. Compute will remain the largest category of spending on cloud IT infrastructure at $33.8 billion.
• Sales of IT infrastructure products into traditional (non-cloud) IT environments declined 6.6% from a year ago in Q219. For the full year 2019, worldwide spending on traditional non-cloud IT infrastructure is expected to decline by 5.8%, as the technology refresh cycle driving market growth in 2018 is winding down this year. By 2023, IDC expects that traditional non-cloud IT infrastructure will only represent 41.8% of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending (down from 52.0% in 2018). This share loss and the growing share of cloud environments in overall spending on IT infrastructure is common across all regions.
• Most regions grew their cloud IT Infrastructure revenues in 2Q19. Middle East & Africa was fastest growing at 29.3% year over year, followed by Canada at 15.6% year-over-year growth. Other growing regions in 2Q19 included Central & Eastern Europe (6.5%), Japan (5.9%), and Western Europe (3.1%). Cloud IT Infrastructure revenues were down slightly year over year in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ) by 7.7%, Latin America by 14.2%, China by 6.9%, and the USA by 16.3%.

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Initial Specs for Common NFV Infrastructure published

The Common NFVI Telco Taskforce (CNTT), which is an open industry taskforce hosted by Linux Foundation and GSMA, has published its initial common Reference Model and first Reference Architecture with the goal of building of operationally-efficient, open source, SDN and NFV infrastructures.

“This initial release represents the first tangible output of CNTT,” said Heather Kirksey, vice president, Community and Ecosystem Development, the Linux Foundation. “In the short time since ONS North America, the community has already reached milestones around creation of the Reference Model and first Reference Architecture. We have also initiated significant discussion around Reference Implementation along with commencement of enhancements to OVP within OPNFV.  I am very pleased to see the focused delivery of this group and our ability to align the industry and accelerate innovation, especially in the advance of 5G. It’s incredible to witness such deep collaboration and integration among operators and vendors from across the globe.”

“The speed with which this group has been established and produced its first tangible results are testament to the close cooperation and collaboration of its industry members,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer, GSMA. “A common framework and approach will accelerate adoption and deployment in the 5G era and we look forward to aligning further with our partners on this important project.”

Initially organized early in 2019, CNTT held its first community-wide, face-to-face gathering in Paris this July, with more than 80 operator and vendor participants in attendance; the successful three-day event enabled collaborative discussion on next steps.

Following that initial meeting, the CNTT is working closely with taskforce members to refine the  NFVI Reference Model, define a limited number of Reference Architectures, develop testing and verification requirements, and work with the OPNFV Verification Program (OVP) to define a global VNF compliance and validation lifecycle. This work will shorten the on-boarding effort for VNFs, accelerate time to revenue, and reduce costs for both VNF vendors and operators. Relying on a ground breaking collaborative model between the GSMA, the Linux Foundation, and the telecommunications vendor ecosystem, the group is creating a suite of tangible specifications to be hosted by the GSMA, and code to be created and hosted within OPNFV. 

Preliminary documentation — including the first Reference Model — are available in CNTT GitHub repository 

“Since its formation earlier this year, the CNTT community has made tremendous progress in building out the foundational elements of a NFVI and VFN lifecycle framework, as well as creating alignment on a discrete, compliant and verified set of NFV infrastructures for the telco ecosystem,” said Mark Cottrell, assistant vice president, Network Cloud, AT&T Labs.

https://cntt-n.github.io/CNTT/doc/ref_model/chapters/chapter01.html#1.3

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LF Edge takes on two new projects: Baetyl and Fledge

by Benedict Chua, Assistant Editor
LF Edge, which is part of the Linux Foundation, is taking on two new projects.

Baetyl, an existing project contributed by Baidu and previously known as “OpenEdge,” extends cloud computing, data and services seamlessly to edge devices.

“In the era of 5G and IoT, edge computing will have tremendous opportunities to play a role in all fields and industries,” said Watson Yin, Vice President of Baidu and the General Manager of the Intelligent Cloud business group. “As a founding member of LF Edge, Baidu Intelligent Cloud decided to donate Baetyl, the intelligent edge computing framework, to the community, hoping to reciprocate the open-source community while continuously contributing cutting-edge technologies to the global technology ecosystem.  The leading edge-computing technology and framework will further accelerate the implementation of cloud + AI in a wider range of industries with a bigger scale and lead the global AI industry into a new chapter of industrialized production.”

Fledge, an existing project contributed by Dianomic and previously known as “Fog Lamp,”  is an open source framework and community for the industrial edge focused on critical operations. Baetyl and Fledge join the organization’s founding projects: Akraino Edge Stack, EdgeX Foundry, Home Edge, Open Glossary of Edge Computing, and Project EVE. Concurrently,  IOTA Foundation, SAIC Foundation (TESRA), Thunder Software, and Zenlayer join as General members.

Fledge is an open source framework and community for the industrial edge focused on critical operations, predictive maintenance, situational awareness and Fledge works closely with both Project EVE and Akraino. Project EVE provides system and orchestration services and a container runtime for Fledge applications and services. Fledge’s verticals (manufacturing, energy, etc.) are starting to roll out 5G and private LTE networks; using Akraino blueprints, Fledge applications and services can be consistently managed as they utilize 5G and private LTE networks.

“It’s incredible to witness such strong industry support for collaborative innovation to create an open source framework at the edge,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge & IoT, the Linux Foundation. “In just nine months, LF Edge has seen tremendous growth across the board. We couldn’t be more pleased to welcome our newest members and projects.  Added expertise in industrial edge, manufacturing, energy, and more brings the community and ecosystem closer to a more comprehensive edge stack, delivering shared innovation across technology sectors at the edge.”

http://www.lfedge.org

LF Edge announces Project EVE Seed Code

Wednesday, May 15, 2019  Edge, LF Edge, Linux Foundation  

LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, announced Project Edge Virtualization Engine (EVE) seed code contributed by LF Edge founding member ZEDEDA.

With Project EVE, edge gateways and devices run a variety of edge workloads simultaneously, decoupling application management from the underlying hardware. Applications can be deployed in standard virtual machines (VM) or container environments and be managed through a standard set of APIs.

“With Project EVE, the goal is to create a single virtualization standard for edge devices for the industry to build around so that we can enjoy the benefits of cloud-native applications sooner rather than later,” said Said Ouissal, co-founder and CEO of ZEDEDA. “Imagine how much more impact we can achieve now that edge applications can be reliably managed and secured.”

Additionally, LF Edge welcomes new Associate and Liaison member organizations Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), the LIONS Center at the Pennsylvania State University, OTAinfo, and University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL).

"We are excited to see the LF community continue to collaborate on building unified edge solutions,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager,  Networking, IoT and Edge Computing, the Linux Foundation. “We appreciate ZEDEDA’s leadership in helping us advance On-Prem Edge IoT with initiatives like Project EVE, and are eager to showcase the broad capabilities of LF Edge onsite in Santa Clara while welcoming our newest members."

Linux Foundation targets Unified Open Source Framework for the Edge

Thursday, January 24, 2019  Linux Foundation  

The Linux Foundation is unifying a number of its projects into a new umbrella organization to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system. The goal is the formation of a software stack that brings the best of telecom, cloud, and enterprise (representing location, latency and mobility differentiation).

LF Edge is initially comprised of five projects: Akraino Edge Stack, EdgeX Foundry, and Open Glossary of Edge Computing, formerly stand-alone projects at The Linux Foundation. The initiative also includes a new project contributed by Samsung Electronics, which will create a hub for real-time data collected through smart home devices, and another project from ZEDEDA, which is contributing a new agnostic standard edge architecture.

“The market opportunity for LF Edge spans industrial, enterprise and consumer use cases in complex environments that cut across multiple edges and domains. We’re thrilled with the level of support backing us at launch, with 60 global organizations as founding members and new project contributions,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, the Linux Foundation. “This massive endorsement, combined with existing code and project contributions like Akraino from AT&T and EdgeX Foundry from Dell EMC, means LF Edge is well-positioned to transform edge and IoT application development.”

LF Edge is already supported by the following founding members: (Premier) Arm, AT&T, Baidu, Dell EMC, Dianomic Inc., Ericsson, HP Inc., HPE, Huawei, IBM, Intel, inwinStack, Juniper Networks, MobiledgeX, Netsia, Nokia Solutions, NTT, OSIsoft, Qualcomm Technologies, Radisys, Red Hat, Samsung Electronics, Seagate Technology, Tencent, WindRiver, Wipro, ZEDEDA; and (General) Advantech Co., Alleantia srl,  Beechwoods Software Inc., Canonical Group Limited, CertusNet, CloudPlugs Inc., Concept Reply, DATA AHEAD AG, Enigmedia, EpiSensor, Foghorn Systems Inc., ForgeRock US Inc., Foundries.io, Hangzhou EMQ Technologies Co. Ltd., IOTech Systems Ltd., IoTium, KMC, Linaro, Mainflux, Mocana, NetFoundry, Packet, Pluribus Networks, RackN, Redis Labs, VaporIO, Vitro Technology Corp., Volterra Inc., Wanxiang Group; and (Associate) Automotive Edge Computing Consortium (AECC), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Infrastructure Masons, Inc., and Project Haystack.

More about LF Edge projects:

• Akraino Edge Stack -- creating an open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications;
• EdgeX Foundry -- focused on building a common open framework for IoT edge computing.
• Home Edge Project -- seed code contributed by Samsung Electronics, is a new project that concentrates on driving and enabling a robust, reliable, and intelligent home edge computing framework, platform and ecosystem running on a variety of devices in our daily lives.
• Open Glossary of Edge Computing -- provides a concise collection of terms related to the field of edge computing.
• Project EVE (Edge Virtualization Engine) -- contributed by ZEDEDA, will create an open and agnostic standard edge architecture that accommodates complex and diverse on- and off-prem hardware, network and application selections.

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DE-CIX upgrades at EdgeConneX Munich

DE-CIX is upgrading its current equipment within the EdgeConneX facility in Munich, Germany, to a capacity of more than 1 terabyte.

DE-CIX has maintained network and peering infrastructure at Landsberger Strasse 155 – now the EdgeConneX Munich facility -- for the past ten years. Thanks to a growing number of customers with 100 Gigabit Ethernet connections serving over 140 Autonomous System Numbers, peak traffic now exceeds 36 Gbps. 

“Expanding our capacity with EdgeConneX was a natural choice in a competitive market known for tight data center real estate,” adds Dr. Thomas King, CTO at DE-CIX. “For businesses of all sizes and industries, the ability to interconnect to networks locally and access cloud onramps is more important than ever. This is a trend we see not just in Munich but in our other German markets as well. With our infrastructure upgrade in the EdgeConneX Munich facility, we are further driving our customers’ abilities to peer regionally while remotely accessing our other locations including Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, New York, Madrid, Marseille, Lisbon, Palermo and Istanbul.”

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Keysight and Qualcomm eye Dynamic Spectrum Sharing

Keysight Technologies announced an extended collaboration with Qualcomm to accelerate commercialization of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) technology.

DSS enables a mobile operator to flexibly use existing spectrum allocations across low-, mid- and high- frequency bands by dynamically switching between LTE and 5G NR coverage based on traffic demand. Mobile operators can leverage DSS to deliver the best possible performance and coverage for a mix of 4G and 5G devices.

The collaboration utilizes Keysight’s 5G network emulation solutions to accelerate the development of Qualcomm Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF System to support DSS, an emerging technology that is part of the 3GPP Release 15. By 2020, mobile operators are expected to start implementing DSS on existing 4G LTE base stations, speeding nationwide deployments of 5G services. DSS allows mobile operators to transform LTE base stations via a software upgrade to create hybrid 4G/5G base stations. As a result, users of DSS-capable 5G NR devices can access 5G services in urban and rural environments.

“Our continued collaboration with Keysight on 5G technology, which was initiated in 2015, has enabled Qualcomm Technologies to accelerate the implementation of DSS, a critical feature that will help mobile operators quickly transition to 5G,” said Jon Detra, vice president, engineering, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Keysight helps us develop and validate our Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF System designs at a pace that will help accelerate 5G commercialization.”

http://www.keysight.com/find/5G

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