NTT and NEC alliance to build optical and 5G solutions

NTT and NEC agreed to form a capital and business alliance to develop optical and wireless technologies. The companies said their joint effort will contribute to the industrial competitiveness of Japan and further ensuring safe and reliable communication infrastructure. To promote open architectures such as O-RAN and to realize the IOWN initiative, NTT and NEC will set up a research and development structure at an early stage of their alliance...

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Singapore awards 5G spectrum to Singtel and StarHub/M1

Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) issued 5G spectrum licenses to Singtel Mobile Singapore Pte Ltd (Singtel) and the Joint-Venture Consortium (JVCo1) formed by StarHub Mobile Pte Ltd (StarHub) and M1 Limited (M1). The Final Awards were issued to Singtel and JVCo after they completed the required regulatory processes, including the selection of their preferred frequency spectrum lots, vendor partners and other technical and legal...

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IDC: Cloud IT infrastructure spending up 2% in Q1

Vendor revenue from sales of IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud environments, including public and private cloud, increased 2.2% in the first quarter of 2020 (1Q20) while investments in traditional, non-cloud, infrastructure plunged 16.3% year over year, according to IDC's newly updated Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker. COVID-19 was the major factor driving infrastructure spending...

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Chapter 11 plan to cut Windstream's debt by $4 billion

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has confirmed Windstream's Plan of Reorganization.  Windstream expects to emerge from Chapter 11 in late August as a private company, having reduced its debt by more than $4 billion or approximately two-thirds. The new company will have access to approximately $2 billion in new capital to expand 1 Gig Internet service in rural America and maintain its product and software leadership...

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Broadband Forum offers User Services Platform certification

Broadband Forum is now offering User Services Platform (USP) Agent Certification for the Connected Home market. This helps service providers and consumer electronics companies by testing any broadband or consumer connected device against the Conformance Test Plan for User Services Platform Agents (TP-469) standard. Certification is expected to accelerate interoperability by streamlining companies' ability to perform repeatable, automated testing...

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Colt’s SD-WAN now offers multi-cloud connectivity

Colt Technology Services is now offering multi-cloud access via its SD-WAN platform across Europe, enabling enterprises to use a single connection to multiple Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), including cloud-to-cloud connections, with enhanced security, agility and latency compared with connecting via the public internet. Colt said its SD-WAN leverages application recognition and traffic steering to increase the availability and performance of access...

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Verizon ramps up its fixed 5G home service

Verizon announced further expansion of its 5G Home Internet service in parts of Houston. The service has also rolled out in parts of Detroit, Indianapolis and Los Angeles. By the end of 2020, Verizon's 5G Home Internet will be available in 10 cities nationwide. Verizon also confirmed that it is working with Pivotal Commware, Inc., a Verizon Ventures portfolio company, to conduct trials in Dearborn, Michigan that improve 5G coverage and performance...

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Champion ONE 10G SFP+ - a pluggable FTTx solution

Champion ONE began shipping 10G SFP+ transceivers for 10G EPON and XGS-PON applications, developed by Tibit Communications, that can function as an alternative to dedicated OLT equipment. The OLT solution embedded in a transceiver can plug directly into a commercially available Ethernet switch with SFP+ ports. Champion ONE said its design makes an ideal fit for virtualized PON (vPON) solutions and software-defined networking (SDN) implementations....

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Telenor begins Open vRAN trial with Cisco

Telenor and Cisco are expanding their partnership to include security, 5G, Open vRAN, B2B expansion, distributed cloud and furthering Telenor Group’s digital transformation to support its flexible working hours approach. The companies have started an Open vRAN trial at Telenor headquarters in Norway to further investigate using a virtualized, open infrastructure to improve cost efficiency for service rollouts.  Cisco and Telenor also announced...

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Canada's PM rejects calls to end extradition proceedings of Huawei exec

In a press briefing on Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would not move to end extradition proceedings to the U.S. of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's CFO, in exchange for the release of two Canadians being held by the government of China. “If countries around the world, including China, realize that by arbitrarily arresting random Canadians they can get what they want out of Canada, politically, well that makes an awful lot more...

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Central Bank of Austria deploys ADVA FSP 3000

The Central Bank of Austria is deploying ADVA's FSP 3000 for its data center interconnect (DCI) network over dark fiber. The Central Bank of Austria’s new network can transport up to 200 Gbps on a single wavelength. It supports a wide range of services on one platform, including 1, 10, 25, 40 and 100 Gbps Ethernet as well as 8, 16 and 32 Gbps Fibre Channel. Austria’s most sensitive financial data is now being safeguarded by encryption at the...

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Keysight buys Eggplant for software test automation

Keysight Technologies has acquired Eggplant, a developer of software test automation tools, from The Carlyle Group for US$330 million. Eggplant had 2019 revenue of US $38 million and its CEO, John Bates, will join the Keysight leadership team reporting to Soon-Chai Gooi, president of Keysight’s Electronic Industrial Solutions Group. Eggplant's software test automation platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics to automate test creation...

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Deutsche Telekom tests Mavenir's 5G core

Mavenir has tested its containerized 5G Core solution on Deutsche Telekom’s Cloud network infrastructure. In addition to 3GPP 5G functionality, the collaboration focused on automation, on-boarding, cloud native principles, CI/CD and other non-functional areas such as resiliency, fault tolerance and performance (load and stress tests). Furthermore, together Mavenir and Deutsche Telekom have validated the combo nodes, with its 4G micro services, to...

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