Monday, June 8, 2020

TIP's Open Optical and Packet Transport advances GNPy toolkit

A new open source software is gaining traction as a design tool for planning and assessing optical transport networks.

GNPy (Gaussian Noise model in Python), which was developed in the framework of the Telecom Infra Project's Open Optical and Packet Transport Group, can be used to help to compare vendors’ solutions. Orange was a primary contributor to GNPy and has used the software during recent RFPs, including for its West African backbone project to benchmark and challenge bidders' designs.



https://telecominfraproject.com/orange-steps-towards-open-optical-networks-with-gnpy/

Orange to assemble West African backbone

Orange will assemble a new international backbone serving West Africa by building a terrestrial fiber optic network coupled with submarine cables.

Orange said its new network will provide large-scale international capacity to the rest of the world via connections with other submarine cables. The new network will link up all the main capital cities in the region: Dakar, Bamako, Abidjan, Accra, and Lagos. Commercial launch of the West African backbone is planned for the second quarter of 2020.

Alioune Ndiaye, CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa, said: “For Orange, this West African backbone network represents a major investment that will secure availability of international connectivity and will enable us to meet the demand for increased bandwidth necessary for the continued digital development of regions within the zone.”

Jérôme Barré, CEO of Orange Wholesale and International Networks, said: “Through this project, Orange is clearly demonstrating its leadership and expertise in the design, deployment and operation of international network infrastructure. We are delighted to be able to offer our West African customers’ reliable, secure and high-quality international connectivity that connects them to the rest of the world.”

Orange is an investor in the MainOne submarine cable connecting Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire to Europe.

https://www.orange.com/en/Press-Room/press-releases/press-releases-2019/Orange-accelerates-the-development-of-connectivity-in-Africa-with-a-new-secure-international-network-connecting-eight-countries-in-West-Africa

New branches to extend MainOne cable to Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal

Two additional branches are planned to extend MainOne’s subsea cable system to Dakar (Senegal) and Abidjan (Cote D’Ivoire). With this development, MainOne will have landing points in five markets – Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire and Portugal, in addition to Cameroon.

MainOne, which is a 7,000km cable system that spans from Portugal to Nigeria, entered service in 2010. Technology updates will boost potential capacity to 10 TBps of capacity. The upgrades are expected to become operational in November 2019.

TE SubCom is lead contractor on the project. MainOne has also selected SubCom’s WSS ROADM for the new branches. SubCom will light the new branches with Ciena’s transmission equipment.

Google Cloud simplifies cross-region replica for Cloud SQL

Google introduced a simplified cross-region replication capability for Cloud SQL customers.

The capability allows applications and databases to quickly restart service in another available region if a Google Cloud region fails.

Cloud SQL cross-region replication, which is available for MySQL and PostgreSQL database engines, simplifies the creation of a fully managed read replica in a different region than that of the primary instance.



https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/introducing-cross-region-replica-for-cloud-sql

Broadband Forum offers certification for XGS-PON ONUs

Broadband Forum has expanded its BBF.247 Optical Network Unit (ONU) Certification Program to include XGS-PON.

The Broadband Forum said XGS-PON extensions add to its BBF.247 G-PON initiative – which has now certified nearly 100 products since its launch in 2011. The new test plan will see ONUs undergo rigorous testing at Broadband Forum’s official certification program test laboratory Laboratoire des Applications Numeriques (LAN Laboratory), using MT2’s ONU testing solution. The work will confirm conformance to the latest PON ITU-T standards, providing network operators with assurance that they can deliver efficient networks and a high-quality customer experience. New additions to the technology are also now tested, including extended OMCI messages format, Enhanced Unicast & Multicast Operations, and Capacity Tests & Performance Monitoring. This increases the number of certification test cases by more than 50% compared to the previous version.

Eight products, including single or multi-user port ONUs/L2 and Residential Gateways from Altice Labs, CommScope, Huawei, Humax, KAONMEDIA, Sagemcom, Sercomm and ZTE have already been certified under the new BBF.247 certification program.

A future XGS-PON interoperability test event will take place at LAN Laboratory, in Tauxigny, France, from October 5 to 9, 2020, allowing vendors worldwide to exercise their OLT or Optical Network Terminal (ONT) solutions against each other. The event will give all equipment vendors the opportunity to improve the interoperability of their products by testing them against the other solutions presented at the event.

“Our existing G-PON certification has made a significant impact on ensuring products meet standards, and this latest expansion of the program will give operators the confidence to roll out mass XGS-PON deployments,” said Robin Mersh, CEO at Broadband Forum. “We now want to instill this same assurance in the industry for upcoming ITU PON technology, including XGS-PON and NG-PON2. XGS-PON is a major step in network evolution, supporting the expansion of 5G and through BBF.247 certification, we can ensure network interoperability.”

Thierry Doligez, Director of LAN Laboratory, said: “Both operators and vendors increasingly recognize the importance of certification in order to speed up deployment and we are proud to partner with Broadband Forum on this extension of its G-PON certification program. As operators move to upgrade their networks to meet increasing consumer demand, the new testing will make sure they are investing in trusted products which will guarantee a certain level of service. ONU manufacturers will also benefit from this substantial program update as it will give them the chance to prove their conformance against enhanced features.”

https://www.broadband-forum.org/

Ericsson takes a US$109 million write-down for 5G in China

Ericsson announced write-downs of approximately SEK 1 billion (~US$109 million) related to pre-commercial product inventory for the Chinese market. The cost will be reported in segment Networks, impacting gross margin.

While the company reiterated its recent 5G contract wins with all 3 major Chinese operators, it said the deployment of 5G in China will continue to be dilutive to gross margins of its Segment Networks business in the short-term. Ericsson expects the 5G market in China will contribute positively to gross and operating income from the second half of 2020.

Ericsson is maintaining its financial targets for 2020 and 2022.

Ericsson confirms its 5G contracts with China Telecom and China Unicom

Ericsson confirmed that it will supply 5G solutions to China Telecom and China Unicom. This includes the Ericsson Radio System products, as well as Ericsson Spectrum Sharing solutions.

Ericsson said it will provide outdoor and indoor site solutions to build capacity and coverage in the 3.5GHz and 2.1GHz bands. Network services including provisioning, installation and testing will be provided to meet the CSPs’ technical needs and enable them to build and share 5G networks. The Ericsson Radio System product portfolio will facilitate the CSPs’ Standalone (SA) 5G RAN build. 3.5GHz and 200MHz wideband 5G radio solutions will serve shared network building needs for high-call-volume while 2.1GHz 5G radio solutions will support the mixed deployment of 3G, 4G and 5G networks. This will help China Telecom and China Unicom to quickly achieve coverage breadth and depth.

China Telecom has also selected Ericsson 5G Core portfolio solutions. These include Cloud Packet Core, Cloud Unified Data Management and Policy products, built on cloud-native technology for operational efficiency and agility to launch new 5G services. The Ericsson 5G Core network will be deployed on Ericsson Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) along with Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration.

China Unicom + China Telecom pick Huawei and ZTE 

China Unicom and China Telecom announced the winners of its 5G Stand Alone (SA) tenders, which were valued at a combined CNY183.5 billion. Vendor shares are as follows:

Huawei - 35.9%
ZTE - 35.9%
Ericsson - 17.9%
Datand Mobile Communications - 10.3%

Nokia did not win any share of the contracts.

Telefónica Deutschland sells 10,000 towers to Telxius for EUR 1.5 billion

Telxius will acquire approximately 10,100 tower sites from Telefónica Deutschland. The agreement includes the commitment to build 2,400 additional sites (BTS), ensuring exceptional future growth in Europe's largest market.

The transaction, subject to regulatory approvals, amounts to a total of 1.5 billion euros.

The sale of these towers has been closed at a multiple of c.23x EV/EBITDA, reflecting favourable market conditions for infrastructure deals.

With this deal, Telxius will double the size of its tower portfolio to over 32,800. Approximately 80% of its sites are in Europe, while the rest of the portfolio is in Latin America.

Telxius will finance 90% of the value of the acquisition via a capital increase -to be subscribed by its current shareholders in proportion to their participation in the company- and through internally generated resources. The remaining 10% will be financed through incremental debt.

Telxius is owned by Telefónica (50,01%), KKR (40%) while the remaining (9.99%) stake is owned by Pontegadea. 

This transaction will reduce Telefónica Group's net debt by approximately 500 million euros between 2020 and 2021, due to the contribution made by Telefónica’s partners in Telxius, net of the corresponding tax impacts.

Telefónica claims a 50% reduction in its global CO2 emissions in 2019

Telefónica achieved a 50% reduction in its global CO2 emissions in 2019, fulfilling in advance the company's target for 2025. The company claims that it is now on target to reach its ultimate goal of zero net emissions in its four main markets by 2030. This goal was previously planned for 2050.

"Telefónica wants to support the Race to Zero campaign to accelerate the opportunity to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible," explained Ángel Vilá. "Digitalisation is essential to decarbonise the economy and is part of the solution. The digital solutions we offer our customers, as well as the greater efficiency of our networks, are helping to reduce emissions".

Vídeo https://youtu.be/7gnRPENTAYE



Three winning bidders in Finland 5G spectrum auction

Finland's Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) conducted a spectrum auction for the frequency range of 25.1-27.5 GHz. Licenses are granted for national use in mainland Finland in three 800 megahertz bands. The spectrum can be used for the construction of 5G networks from 1 July 2020. The licenses expire in 2033.

There have been four previous spectrum auctions in Finland. The 2500-2690 MHz frequency band was auctioned in 2009, while the 791-831 MHz/832-862 MHz auction was held in 2013, the 703-733/758-788 MHz auction in 2016, and the 3410-3800 MHz auction in 2018.

Here are the auction results.



https://www.traficom.fi/en/communications/communications-networks/spectrum-auction-26-ghz-frequency-band

Orange Marine completes repair of TAT-14 subsea cable

Orange Marine published a journal of recent repair work carried out on the TAT-14 cable in the North Sea by its ship Pierre de Fermat.

The 16-day mission in April, which involved a crew of 60, required extra precautions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.



https://www.orange.com/en/news/2020/June/At-sea-they-watch-over-our-internet-connections