Sunday, December 15, 2019

MIST subsea cable to deliver 240 Tbps from Singapore to India

NTT announced "MIST", a submarine cable between Singapore, Myanmar and India (Mumbai and Chennai) that promises a record 240 Tbps capacity with support for 400 Gbps wavelengths.

MIST will be part of a strategic joint venture for international submarine cables in South East Asia, with Orient Link Pte. Ltd. The cable is expected to be ready for service by June 2022.

MIST will span 11,000 kilometers in length with 12 fiber pairs. Wavelength Selective Switching ROADMs will be used for flexible remote switching of transmission routes to branch units.

NTT Ltd. said it plans to connect the MIST cable landing stations directly to its data centers in Singapore, Myanmar and India using large-capacity fiber which will be owned, built and operated by NTT Ltd. In addition, NTT Ltd. will centrally maintain and operate all the landing stations, aiming to further improve the service quality.


NTT also notes that MIST will connect to other cables in which it holds an interest, including Asia Submarine cable Express (ASE), Asia Pacific Gateway (APG), Pacific Crossing -1(PC-1) and JUPITER cables (under construction).
“Businesses and individuals from all over the world are experiencing the accelerated growth of digital connectivity - and this is especially true within Asia. Globally, India and South East Asia are some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. As digital investment and demand for data capacity continues to increase, providing access to reliable connectivity will remain critical to accelerate economic and social growth. The implementation of MIST will ultimately allow us to work with our clients around the world to build a truly connected future,” states NTT Ltd. Chief Executive Officer, Jason Goodall.

https://hello.global.ntt/en-us/newsroom/ntt-ltd-to-commence-construction-of-the-optical-submarine-cable-mist


JUPITER transpacific cable to carry 400G wavelengths

JUPITER, a new large-capacity, low-latency subsea cable between Japan and the United States has received the backing of SoftBank, Facebook, Amazon, PLDT and PCCW Global.

The JUPITER cable system. which will have a total length of 14,000 km, will have two landing points in Japan — the Shima Landing Station in Mie Prefecture and the Maruyama Landing Station in Chiba Prefecture — as well as a U.S. landing station in Los Angeles, California, as well as a landing station at Daet in the Philippines.

JUPITER will feature a state-of-the-art submersible ROADM employing WSS (wavelength selective switch) for a gridless and flexible bandwidth configuration. The cable system will also be designed to support 400 Gbps wavelengths. The initial design capacity is 60 Tbps.

NTT Com said its Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) and Pacific Crossing-1 (PC-1) cables will connect with JUPITER to provide a redundant three-route structure linking major cities in Asia, Japan and United States. NTT Com is also planning direct connections from the cable landing stations in Japan to data centers in Tokyo and Osaka.

JUPITER is expected to come online in early 2020.

NTT Com launches network services, builds 2 data centres in India


NTT Communications (NTT Com), the ICT solutions and international communications business within the NTT Group, announced the launch of international data network services in India through its affiliate NTT Communications India Network Services (NTTCINS).

NTT Com stated that the acquisition of its licence in India follows the launch of construction of two new Indian data centres in Mumbai and Bangalore, through subsidiary Netmagic, a provider of managed hosting and cloud services in India. As a result, NTTCINS will be able to offer infrastructure services and management and security services designed to meet companies ICT outsourcing needs.

NTT Com plans to invest $160 million in building the two data centres, which are scheduled to become operational by April 2018. The new data centres will add nearly 500,000 sq feet of gross floor space at full build out, increasing NTT Com's total gross footprint in India to 1,100,000 sq feet. The new data centres in Mumbai and Bangalore will accommodate 2,750 racks with 22 MW of power and 1,500 racks with 15 MW of power, respectively.

NTT Com noted that it became the first Japanese service provider to be awarded a Virtual Network Operator - International Long Distance (VNO-ILD) network licence for India in March. In addition, NTT Com provides Arcstar Universal One international network services in partnership with local carriers. The company also implements value-added services such as network virtualisation functions (NVF) utilising the infrastructure of its partner carriers in India.

Commenting on the launch, NTT Com president and CEO Tetsuya Shoji said, "India has been a key strategic market for NTT Com with the accelerating shift of IT services from traditional enterprise data centres into the cloud-based services… for the past few years the business in India has consistently grown over 35% annually… with the expansion of the data centre foot print and new international data network services NTT Com aims to meet the growing market needs for mobility, e-commerce, IoT, cloud and big data".




Google intros Storage Transfer Service for on-premise data

Google Cloud Platform introduced a managed Transfer Service for large-scale on-premises data.

The Transfer Service helps customers complete large-scale data transfers online, which scale to high-speed network connections—up to billions of files, multiple PB of data, and tens of Gbps. Customers do not need to custom software or off-the-shelf software for managing the large operation. Google's Transfer Service for on-premises data validates data integrity. It also includes performance optimizations from the application to the transport layer.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/storage-data-transfer/introducing-storage-transfer-service-for-on-premises-data

Google, Siemens and VMware back Automated Compliance Tooling

Google, Siemens and VMware have thrown their support behind The Linux Foundation's Automated Compliance Tooling (ACT), as well as key advancements for tools that increase ease and adoption of open source software.

ACT aims to ensure compliance with the terms of open source's licensing.

ACT is composed of five primary projects:

  • FOSSology: An open source license compliance software system and toolkit allowing users to run license, copyright and export control scans from a REST API. As a system, a database and web UI are provided to provide a compliance workflow. License, copyright and export scanners are tools available to help with compliance activities. FOSSology is an existing Linux Foundation project that will move under ACT.
  • OSS Review Toolkit (ORT) enables highly automated and customizable Open Source compliance checks the source code and dependencies of a project by scanning it, downloading its sources, reporting any errors and violations against user-defined rules, and by creating third-party attribution documentation. ORT is designed for the CI/CD world and supports a wide variety of package managers including Gradle, Go modules, Maven, npm and SBT. The project is being contributed to ACT by HERE Technologies.
  • Quartermaster (QMSTR), originally contributed by Encode, integrates into the build systems to learn about the software products, their sources and dependencies. Developers can run QMSTR locally to verify outcomes, review problems and produce compliance reports. By integrating into DevOps CI/CD cycles, license compliance can become a quality metric for software development. The project is being contributed to ACT by Endocode.
  • SPDX Tools: Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) is an open standard for communicating software bill of material information including components, licenses, copyrights and security references. The main SPDX specification will remain separate from, yet complementary to, ACT, while the SPDX tools that meet the spec and help users and producers of SPDX documents will become part of ACT. SPDX is an existing Linux Foundation project.
  • Tern: Tern is an inspection tool to find the metadata of the packages installed in a container image. It provides a deeper understanding of a container’s bill of materials so better decisions can be made about container-based infrastructure, integration and deployment strategies. Tern was created by VMware, who are contributing the project to ACT, to help developers meet open source compliance requirements for containers. Tern 1.0 has just been released.

“One of the most exciting parts of the ACT Project is its integration with pre-existing activities around the Linux Foundation Open Compliance Project,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “This includes the OpenChain Reference Tooling Work Group, with its focus on addressing real world challenges as efficiently as possible, an area where targeted investment is critical. The end result of these activities will ensure that open source tooling for open source compliance is more mature, more effective and easier to adopt for entities of all sizes.”

“To do open source compliance well, at scale, we need to ensure the community has easy access to advanced automation and tooling,” said Will Norris, Open Source Engineering Manager at Google. “Google has invested heavily in our own compliance tooling, and we are proud to be a part of the Automated Compliance Tooling project to share our experience and expertise with the broader community. We look forward to helping make it easier for everyone using open source code to do so respectfully and in accordance with open source licenses.”

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press-release/2019/12/the-linux-foundations-automated-compliance-work-garners-new-funding-advances-tools-development/

AT&T ahead of schedule on asset monetization program

AT&T said it is ahead of schedule with its asset monetization program - part of its effort to reduce its debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio target.

Specifically, AT&T had a 2019 target to sell $6 billion to $8 billion of non-core assets. With the completion of the recent $4.5 billion sale of a preferred equity interest in a subsidiary that holds cell tower assets, AT&T now has completed a net $15 billion in asset monetization initiatives this year. It has also announced nearly $4 billion in monetization initiatives that are expected to close by mid-2020.

Some additional updates:

  • AT&T’s board of directors approved a 2% increase in the company’s quarterly dividend from $0.51 per share to $0.52 per share. On an annualized basis, this equates to a full-year dividend of $2.08, up from $2.04. The increase is consistent with AT&T’s capital allocation strategy announced in October calling for continued modest annual increases in the dividend.
  • The company began retiring shares in the fourth quarter and has entered into a $4 billion accelerated share repurchase (ASR) agreement. Through purchases under the ASR, AT&T plans to retire about 100 million shares in the first quarter of 2020.
  • AT&T’s board of directors also declared a dividend of $170.1388889 per share on the company’s 5.000% Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series A (representing $0.1701388889 per Depositary Share, each representing a 1/1000th interest in the 5.000% Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series A). 

Videotron picks Samsung for 4G/5G in Quebec

Videotron has selected Samsung Electronics to provide 4G LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) and 5G radio access networks solutions.

Starting in early 2020, Samsung will deliver 4G LTE-A solutions across Quebec and Ottawa in which the solutions from Samsung include Massive MIMO and Dual-band base stations, supporting the operator’s 4G LTE frequencies, and 5G solutions for both 3.5GHz and 28GHz spectrum.

Videotron anticipates commercial launch in late 2020.

“We have been all over the world to find the best supplier suited to meet the evolving needs of our customers. This partnership will allow us to deliver the most advanced telecommunications solutions to Quebecers. While 4G technology has profoundly transformed telecommunications in the world, LTE Advanced and 5G will undoubtedly revolutionize the way we interact with our loved ones and the environment around us,” said Jean François Pruneau, President and Chief Executive Officer of Videotron.