Samsung hits 8.5Gbps with 5G mmWave with MU-MIMO

Samsung Electronics achieved speeds of 8.5 Gbps across its 5G mmWave Access Unit with MU-MIMO (Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output) technology.

Using two test mobile devices, the demonstration achieved approximately 4.3Gbps speeds on each, reaching an industry peak speed of 8.5Gbps across both devices.

Samsung said the demonstration highlights the use of mmWave spectrum to deliver multi-gigabit speeds.

“Samsung will continue to be at the forefront in advancing 5G mmWave technology,” said Hyunho Park, Senior Vice President, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This successful demonstration proves mmWave’s potential to deliver new kinds of business use cases and open up opportunities for mobile operators. We look forward to building on this significant technical breakthrough to fuel our continuous journey towards an innovative and vibrant mmWave ecosystem.”

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-demonstrates-the-full-potential-of-5g-mmwave-with-speeds-of-8-5gbps-across-multiple-devices

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Rakuten leverages Cisco's Virtual Ultra Packet Core for roaming

Rakuten Mobile is using Cisco’s Virtual Ultra Packet Core for an inter-network roaming service with KDDI mobile networks across Japan.

The LTE roaming service, defined by 3GPP and based on the S10 signaling interface standard, connects mobility management entities (MMEs) between Rakuten Mobile and KDDI. The MMEs track relevant user data sessions to ensure smooth handover from one operator’s network to the next. The data path will be managed by connecting the KDDI network with Cisco’s System Architecture Evolution Gateway VNF supporting a Control and User Plane Separation architecture.

“With the launch of our S10 roaming service, we are setting a new experience standard for service and device continuity over multiple networks,” said Tareq Amin, Representative Director, Executive Vice President and CTO, Rakuten Mobile. “With KDDI’s collaborative support, Rakuten Mobile and Cisco are showcasing new ways to combine our technology and talent to bring big benefits to the people who rely on our networks to stay connected every day.”

“Adding S10 handover between Rakuten Mobile and KDDI offers Rakuten Mobile subscribers a seamless mobility experience with undetected transition as they move between networks,” said Jonathan Davidson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mass Scale Infrastructure, Cisco. “This functionality is rare to activate between operators, and we are proud to have come together on the vision to build, test and make this happen in record timing. With the industry-leading cloud-delivered mobile packet core, Cisco continues to redesign mobile networks to support the internet of the future, today.”

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Source Photonics secures $40 million for optical tranceivers

Source Photonics recently closed more than $40 million in equity to support its production of optical transceivers.

Source Photonics said its new investment amidst the coronavirus pandemic reflects the investors’ confidence in the company’s long-term vision and business strategy. The latest funding will be used to further expand the company’s 5G product line and upgrade its own EML laser chip production facilities while continuing to strengthen the research and development of its low-cost solutions and next-generation technologies.

The company notes that its factory in Chengdu, China, has been operational since early February and that its proactive response to opening its production earlier than most companies in the region proved its commitment to supply chain continuity as its products are deemed essential to Internet and telecommunications systems. In addition, its factories in Jintan, Mainland China, and in Hsinchu, Taiwan, are also up and running.

“We value our investors’ trust and confidence in Source Photonics especially during these challenging times of public health and economic crisis,” says Weiming Li, CEO and President of Source Photonics. “Their enthusiasm and confidence in us prove that our team is on the right track as we focus on responding rapidly to our customers’ needs and developing advanced technologies to cope with the increasing demand for bandwidth. Our next step is to seize the global market opportunity as demand for networking and cloud services skyrocketed as millions of people around the world are working and learning from home.”

Source Photonics’ integrated manufacturing approach is critical in managing the entire value chain from laser production through transceiver assembly. This gives Source Photonics a differentiated capability that allows flexibility during this time of COVID-19 pandemic. With the latest funding, the company is well-positioned to enhance speed to market, yield manufacturing innovations, and offer flexibility our customers need to address the increase in demand for more bandwidth.

http://www.sourcephotonics.com

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Turkcell has virtualized 60% of mobile core service using Affirmed's NFVi

Turkcell has selected Affirmed's Service Orchestration and Automation platform and its virtualized Wi-Fi gateway.

Turkcell, which has been working with Affirmed for the past three years, has deployed a single, unified NFVi (Network Function Virtualization infrastructure) architecture. The installation is one of the largest commercial, virtualized mobile networks in the EMEA region. Turkcell has now virtualized 60% of its mobile core services on its telco cloud, which features 20 unique virtualized network functions (VNFs), and is on target to meet its 75% goal by the end of 2020.

The selection of Affirmed's Enterprise and Mobile Wi-Fi solution will provide Turkcell with new opportunities to monetize its flexible and dynamic virtual infrastructure, while connecting its 4G/LTE network to trusted Wi-Fi networks, enabling seamless network connectivity and a better customer experience.

"At Turkcell, we provide resilient and reliable connectivity to our customers, backed by our state-of-the-art infrastructure. The combination of virtualization, automation and new revenue-generating services has enabled Turkcell to become a market leader and meet the needs of our customers most effectively. Affirmed has been a true strategic partner and the key enabler in us undertaking this unique network transformation," said Gediz Sezgin, Turkcell CTO.

"Affirmed's Service Orchestration and Automation platform radically simplifies service creation and service provisioning while dramatically reducing time to create, deploy, test, modify and launch new services," said Ron Parker, CTO from Affirmed Networks. "Implementing this platform, combined with our Wi-Fi solution, will allow Turkcell to create new network slices, help their enterprise customers to on-board and provision new customer premise equipment and enable new subscriber services to be deployed quickly, seamlessly and more reliably."

Turkcell is Turkey's leading mobile network operator and currently serves more than 48 million subscribers.

Microsoft to acquire Affirmed Networks for telco cloud vEPC

Thursday, March 26, 2020  Affirmed Networks, Mergers And Acquisitions, Microsoft  

Microsoft agreed to acquire Affirmed Networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Affirmed Networks, which is based in Acton, Massachusetts, supplies virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) solutions for mobile operators. Affirmed’s virtualized evolved packet solution capabilities include CUPS, 5G NSA, network slicing, integrated virtual probe, virtualized DPI, GiLAN, analytics and security services, virtualized Wi-Fi, and service automation platform. The company claims 76 deployments, including announced projects with AT&T, Etisalat, and Vodafone.

Microsoft said the acquisition will boost its efforts "to work with the telecommunications industry, building on our secure and trusted cloud platform for operators. With Affirmed Networks, we will be able to offer new and innovative solutions tailored to the unique needs of operators, including managing their network workloads in the cloud."

https://www.affirmednetworks.com/

Turkcell builds unified telco cloud on Red Hat OpenStack

Thursday, February 07, 2019    

Red Hat confirmed that its OpenStack Platform and Ceph Storage solution powers Turkcell's centralized virtualization infrastructure (NFVi), which is called the Turkcell Unified Telco Cloud. Red Hat Consulting helped Turkcell design its Unified Telco Cloud and train up its network team, in collaboration with Affirmed Networks in the role of main systems integrator.

Turkcell serves more than 35 million subscribers with 99 percent population coverage in Turkey, making it a leading mobile operator in Turkey and the surrounding region.

Turkcell states it has now virtualized 18 percent of its overall data and voice services capacity on its telco cloud and is on target for its three-year goal of 40 percent. Live VNFs include PCRF and AAA for policy and charging, Data Optimization for differentiated quality of experience for customers, DPI for traffic management and enhanced VAS (value-added services), IMS and RCS for next-generation voice services and CG-NAT for IP address management, from multiple vendors. Turkcell is able to deliver workloads of more than 1.8 terabits per second (Tbps) of traffic and is currently carrying near to 1 Tbps of live traffic from customers across the regio

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Broadcom supplies SmartNIC to Baidu

Broadcom has supplied its Stingray 100G SmartNIC to Baidu Cloud.

The Baidu Cloud team worked closely with Broadcom to deliver advanced cloud native applications, network function virtualization, and distributed security, leveraging the Stingray SmartNIC’s programmability and extensive offload features for networking, storage and security.

Broadcom's Stingray adapter offers eight ARM A72 CPU cores running at 3GHz, 300G of memory bandwidth and a 100G NetXtreme Ethernet NIC. Security features includes silicon root of trust and a 100G hardware encryption engine.

“Baidu is partnering with Broadcom for its SmartNIC product offering,” said Liu Ning, director of the Systems Department at Baidu. “Broadcom’s Stingray allows us to offload network and storage workloads from expensive x86 CPU cores, while at the same time delivering strict secure separation between infrastructure workloads and customers’ workloads. The powerful and flexible Stingray System-on-Chip allows us to easily deliver new features to our customers with unmatched feature velocity and cost savings.”

“Running software defined services for storage and networking places an enormous strain on server CPUs, prompting data center operators to rethink their server architectures,” said Dan Harding, vice president of marketing for the Compute and Connectivity Division at Broadcom. “These services require complex I/O processing, consuming up to 35 percent of server CPU and memory resources, degrading application performance and reliability. With Stingray, Baidu is able to move its I/O processing entirely off the CPU and onto the SmartNIC adapter, ensuring that its customer applications run unaffected by these essential but taxing workloads, making their data center more scalable, secure and cost-effective.”

https://www.broadcom.com/products/ethernet-connectivity/smartnic

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Rakuten employs Keysight for 5G network and channel emulation

Rakuten Mobile has selected Keysight Technologies' 5G network and channel emulation solutions for testing, validation and optimization of infrastructure and devices to speed introduction of its 5G services.

“We are excited to partner with world-class companies such as Keysight as we push the boundaries of technology to redefine the way mobile networks are designed,” said Tareq Amin, representative director, executive vice president and CTO of Rakuten Mobile, Inc. “Keysight’s technologies and experience will allow us to provide high quality and highly resilient mobile 5G experiences to our users.”

Keysight said its suite of 5G network and channel emulation solutions, including the company’s recently launched 5G Device Benchmarking Toolset, will enable Rakuten Mobile to efficiently validate 5G devices and network infrastructure – end-to-end – in over-the-air (OTA) test environments. Keysight’s solution suite provides access to a comprehensive set of test cases validated by the Global Certification Forum (GCF). This enables Rakuten Mobile to accelerate protocol and radio frequency (RF) device acceptance, according to the 3GPP 5G new radio (NR) standard.

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Ciena appoints Mary Yang as chief strategy officer

Ciena appointed Mary Yang as senior vice president and chief strategy officer with responsibility for driving Ciena’s overall corporate strategy as well as execution of corporate development activities, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and related integrations.

“Mary brings an exceptional combination of business acumen and strategic insights in the technology arena, specifically around driving leading-edge innovation and new technologies to market. Through deep analysis of market trends and industry dynamics, Mary will help accelerate Ciena’s strategy and further solidify our industry leadership position in delivering solutions that address the world’s connectivity needs,” said Gary B. Smith, president and CEO.

Yang brings more than 25 years of experience in technology through a career focused on advising companies on strategic investments, alliance opportunities and global M&A activity. Before joining Ciena, she served as vice president of corporate and business development at NIO, a leader in the design and development of smart, high-performance electric vehicles. She previously held senior leadership roles in strategy and corporate development at leading communications companies, including Fortinet, Cisco and Nortel.

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Cellnex to acquire mobile towers in Portugal

Cellnex agreed to acquire approximately 2,000 mobile towers in Portugal from NOS. The deal includes a portfolio of telecommunication towers and rooftop antennas, located in urban (40%), suburban and rural (60%) areas throughout the country.

The transaction represents an initial payment of approximately EUR 375 million (EV), in addition to expansion Capex of up to about EUR 175 million related to perimeter increase (up to 400 new sites, including a Build-to-Suit program) and other agreed initiatives over the next 6 years. The acquisition will be financed with available cash.

Cellnex and NOS also signed an initial 15-year contract, extendible by successive additional 15-year periods, under which NOS will continue to use the sites that Cellnex will operate, locating its voice and data signal transmission equipment there.

Cellnex CEO Tobias Martinez underlined “the capacity of Cellnex teams, both at corporate level and in Portugal, to continue progressing in new agreements with our customers, even at a particularly complex and sensitive scenario as the one we are currently facing.”

“The agreement reached with NOS reinforces the nature and the neutral and independent operator profile that characterises the Cellnex model. Following the very recent agreement to acquire OMTEL, also in Portugal, this transaction exemplifies the sense of being an operator which, precisely due to its neutral and independent nature, can consolidate long-term collaboration projects with the various MNOs and telecom operators who access our infrastructures to roll out their telecommunications networks.”

Cellnex Telecom already operates 61,000 sites in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Portugal.

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Cisco offers $2.5 billion in financing support to customers

Cisco is launching a Business Resiliency Program that offers $2.5 billion in financing support to customers.  The program aims to provide cash flow flexibility to customers as they respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

"Cisco's customers and partners are under enormous pressure to keep their businesses connected while remaining productive and secure," said Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO of Cisco. "Whether it's technology, financing or helping those most in need, Cisco is committed to working together to fight this pandemic on every front."

The new Business Resiliency Program offered by Cisco Capital includes an up-front 90-day payment holiday and allows a customer to defer 95 percent of the cost of a new product or solution until 2021, which in turn protects their business and increases their existing cash flow. Starting in January 2021, customers would then make a monthly payment based on the total financed amount and the remaining term of the financing. All Cisco solutions are eligible for this program, including hardware, software and services as well as up to five percent of partner provided services, such as installation.

The program also offers support to Cisco’s 60,000 partner ecosystem. The Business Resiliency Program will help partners provide an additional solution to better serve customers, without any change to their own financial situation, in this challenging business environment. It will accelerate their sales cycles and allow partners to offer their customers payment solutions to better manage their cash flow.

https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=2069370

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Huawei UK appoints former Chairman of BT to its board

Huawei Technologies UK has appointed Sir Michael Rake, former President of the Confederation of British Industry and former Chairman of BT group, to its board. Rake has been an adviser to the company since 1 January 2019.

Victor Zhang, Huawei Vice-President said: “Sir Michael brings a wealth of relevant experience to our boardroom and I look forward to working with him as we enter the next phase of our partnership with Britain. We’re working round the clock to keep the UK connected through the current crisis and bring affordable, reliable 5G to every corner of the country – so millions more can benefit from fast digital connections. I am delighted Sir Michael has agreed to join the board and help us continue this important journey.”

https://www.huawei.com/uk/press-events/news/uk/2020/huawei-technologies-uk-appoints-sir-michael-rake-to-its-board

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NTT forms partnership with Taiwanese smart device manufacturer

NTT Ltd. announced a partnership with a leading smart device manufacturer in Taiwan to support a client's digital transformation journey and enhance business performance with hybrid cloud adoption.

Over the next six years, NTT Ltd. will act as a single point of contact between a local cloud provider and a SAP managed service provider, to simplify IT operations for the client as it optimizes operations in a hybrid cloud environment. As a result, the client will be able to move and manage data, services and workflows across multiple clouds with increased flexibility and speed, strengthening the organisation’s competitiveness in today’s fast-paced digital economy.

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