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 focused on O-RAN and NTT's IOWN initiative. Specific objectives include:

• The companies will develop and sell globally a compact Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip with world-leading performance and low power specifications. The companies will develop optical transmission equipment based on this DSP.
• Working with global operators and communication equipment vendors, the companies will promote O-RAN Alliance specifications while developing and selling globally competitive products compliant with such O-RAN specifications. In the future, the companies aim to attain top global market shares under NEC's leadership. Through development, the companies will realize ultra-high speed processing, ultra-low latency and ultra-low power consumption in these products at a level that has never been attained before, by applying innovative devices utilizing optical and wireless technologies to base station equipment.
• The companies will develop innovative technologies and optical/wireless devices contributing to the realization of NTT's IOWN initiative. As part of the development, the companies will enable greater capacity, higher functionality and lower costing submarine cable systems, large capacity, low latency and automatic/autonomous space communication, and more sophisticated technologies to ensure infrastructure network security.

As part of the alliance, NTT will acquire 13,023,600 shares of NEC's common stock through the issuance of new shares and disposition of treasury stock by way of third-party allotment conducted by NEC (4.8% of its outstanding shares after the third-party allotment).

https://www.ntt.co.jp/news2020/2006e/200625b.html

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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 matters.

Singtel and JVCo will be assigned 100MHz of 3.5 GHz spectrum each. Singtel, StarHub and M1 will also be assigned 800 MHz of mmWave spectrum each.

Both Singtel and JVCo have provided plans for network rollout and performance, coverage, resilience, cybersecurity and vendor diversity. Singtel and JVCo can now proceed to deploy nationwide 5G standalone networks that deliver full-fledged 5G capabilities. These networks are complemented by localised mmWave deployments to provide high capacity 5G coverage.

TPG Telecom Pte Ltd (TPG) has also applied for and is being allocated the remaining frequency spectrum in the millimeter wave band to roll out 5G networks on a localised basis. This would allow TPG to roll out localised 5G networks.

Wholesale arrangements for the use of 5G networks provided by Singtel and JVCo will be available to TPG and mobile virtual network operators, which can in turn offer retail 5G services to end users.

Mr S Iswaran, Minister for Communications and Information, said, “This 5G Final Award marks the closure of a robust and rigorous CFP process. With this, it sets the stage for the development of a world-class, resilient and secure 5G infrastructure which will be the backbone of Singapore’s digital economy. We remain on track for nationwide 5G standalone deployment by 2025. We will build upon this infrastructure to create a vibrant 5G ecosystem, offering exciting opportunities and benefits for individuals, workers and businesses in Singapore’s digital future.”

"We are excited to get this greenlight to lead and shape 5G in Singapore by building a world-class, secure and resilient 5G network that will serve as the backbone of Singapore’s digital economy. More than a business investment, we see this as a significant investment in Singapore’s digital future as 5G spurs innovation among enterprises and industries, creating new businesses, jobs and economic value in the process,” said Singtel Group CEO Ms Chua Sock Koong. “This licence is also very timely in light of Covid-19 and the ensuing reliance on robust infrastructure and connectivity. Our existing network capabilities have allowed us to pivot quickly to the needs of the public and businesses at this critical time and 5G will help extend and accelerate the digital adoption we’ve witnessed as we navigate our way out of Covid-19 towards recovery."

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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 in the first quarter, said IDC, as widespread lockdowns across the world and staged reopening of economies triggered increased demand for cloud-based consumer and business services. This led to additional demand for server, storage, and networking infrastructure utilized by cloud service provider datacenters. As a result, public cloud was the only deployment segment escaping year-over-year declines in 1Q20 reaching $10.1 billion in spend on IT infrastructure at 6.4% year-over-year growth. Spending on private cloud infrastructure declined 6.3% year over year in 1Q to $4.4 billion.

Some highlights:

• The pace set in the first quarter will continue through rest of the year as cloud adoption continues to get an additional boost driven by demand for more efficient and resilient infrastructure deployment. 
• For the full year, investments in cloud IT infrastructure will surpass spending on non-cloud infrastructure and reach $69.5 billion or 54.2% of the overall IT infrastructure spend. 
• Spending on private cloud infrastructure is expected to recover during the year and will compensate for the first quarter declines leading to 1.1% growth for the full year. 
• Spending on public cloud infrastructure will grow 5.7% and will reach $47.7 billion representing 68.6% of the total cloud infrastructure spend.
• Compute platforms will remain the largest category of spending on cloud IT infrastructure at $36.2 billion 
• Storage platforms will be fastest growing segment with spending increasing 8.1% to $24.9 billion. 
• The Ethernet switch segment will grow at 3.7% year over year.
• At the regional level, year-over-year changes in vendor revenues in the cloud IT Infrastructure segment varied significantly during 1Q20, ranging from 21% growth in China to a decline of 12.1% in Western Europe.

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS46639820

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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 in SD-WAN and UCaaS for enterprise customers.

“We were able to reach this important milestone thanks to the support of our financial stakeholders, as well as our customers, vendors and business partners. The Court’s confirmation of our Plan puts us on a definitive path to emerge from restructuring with a stronger balance sheet and healthy liquidity position to continue making network and software investments for the benefit of our customers,” said Tony Thomas, president and chief executive officer. “I want to thank the entire Windstream team for remaining focused on our customers and for tirelessly providing essential communications services during the reorganization process.”

Mr. Thomas continued, “We look forward to beginning this new chapter for Windstream. When we emerge, our lenders will become our new owners and strategic partners and are aligned with our long-term strategy and mission to deliver quality and reliable services. As a private company, Windstream will have increased flexibility to invest in our network, accelerate our transformation and return to growth. Together, we will emerge from this process as a stronger company able to successfully compete in the communications marketplace.”

https://investor.windstream.com/news/news-details/2020/Windstream-Restructuring-Plan-Confirmed-by-Court/default.aspx

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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 on their own while preserving the integrity of the results and overall value of certified products by testing against rigorous standards.

Companies can self-test their products using an accredited test tool, which provides secure results for validation by a Broadband Forum approved laboratory or can submit products directly to the approved laboratory for testing. Products that have been validated will be recognized with a logo and certification ID and posted on Broadband Forum's product registry website along with a list of the product’s supported features.

"Consumer demand for connected home services is growing, as is the number of products and services coming to the market but in order for mass deployment to be realized, a unified, standardized, and interoperable platform to develop value-add solutions for the connected home is needed," said Robin Mersh, CEO of Broadband Forum. "USP Agent certification will give developers and product managers confidence in their products, ensure interoperability, and prove to their customers that their products will work seamlessly with USP-enabled applications in this new and powerful ecosystem."

The first approved tool is the CDRouter automated test solution from QA Cafe.

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is the first approved test agency. Additional labs are expected to join the program in the coming weeks.

https://www.broadband-forum.org/testing-and-certification-programs/bbf-369-usp-certification

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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 to multi-cloud services. This new offering is underpinned by the Colt IQ Network, which is comprised of 29,000 on net buildings and over 900 data centres, serving more than 25,000 customers globally. Colt’s fully-owned and operated dense fibre network allows enterprises to benefit from an end-to-end, seamless connection to the cloud.

Colt’s public and private peering with CSPs globally, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft’s Azure Cloud means that whichever combination of cloud platforms an enterprise choses, application traffic will be optimised to take the most direct path.

Colt’s Vice President Product Portfolio, Peter Coppens said, “As more and more enterprises are shifting their business-critical workloads to the cloud, and using multiple cloud environments to do so, working with a connectivity partner that can provide high-performance, rapidly scalable and highly secure cloud connectivity to one or many cloud environments has never been more important.

“Colt is a leader in delivering quality of experience, exceptional performance, and business resiliency to customers throughout Europe, Asia, and North America,” said Michael Wood, CMO, Versa Networks. “We are excited to partner with Colt and their innovative multi-cloud connectivity offer which leverages Versa Secure SD WAN to enable a best in class experience for businesses around the globe.”

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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 for residents and visitors by strategically placing intelligent repeaters to enhance and boost Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wide Band signal.

The trials in Dearborn focus on providing coverage to larger, multi-unit dwellings such as apartments or dormitories with multiple buildings and floors where repeaters are particularly helpful. Repeaters are small, consume less power than a small cell or macro site and do not require a fiber connection.

“Compared to lower spectrum bands, 5G over mmWave offers far more speed and throughput, is more energy efficient, experiences less signal interference over the air, and has a much greater capacity for expansive scalability,” said Kevin Smith, Vice President of Network Planning for Verizon. “As we’ve known since our very early trials, high band spectrum provides more limited coverage from macro cells. Introducing repeaters like the ones we are trialing from Pivotal will help us expand the footprint of our new 5G Ultra Wide Band network and provide another tool in the toolbox for robust network design.”

http://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/home

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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. The OLT and open-architecture management solution can interoperate with 3rd party ONUs. This interoperability includes pairing with Ethernet-pluggable ONU solutions for a plug-and-play PON deployment without manual provisioning and SLA configuration.

“We are excited to have Champion ONE as an integration partner. They are a proven innovator in both carrier and enterprise solutions which are they key target marker for our MicroPlug™ OLT,” said Jay Teborek, VP Sales and Marketing at Tibit Communications. “Champion ONE continually demonstrates a high level of support for their customers and we’re proud to be a Champion ONE partner. With their product line breadth, they have the unique capability of delivering and servicing the needs of a complete 10G PON solution to their clients.”

“Champion ONE is excited to partner with Tibit Communications to bring the market leading Pluggable 10G OLT / ONU MicroPlug™ to the North American market,” said Tim Yanda, Director of Engineering at Champion ONE. “The ability to support 10G PON technologies from a traditional Ethernet switch is an excellent opportunity to expand in the last mile fiber connectivity market segment.”

https://www.championone.com/press/champion-one-launches-pluggable-10g-microplug-olt-transceivers-powered-by-tibit-communications
https://tibitcom.com/technology/

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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 a new round of financing of the joint venture, WG2. WG2 offers a carrier grade, cloud-native mobile core solution that enables rapid service innovation for mobile network operators (MNOs), mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) and enterprises. Using open APIs and cross-network interoperability, WG2 radically transforms the ability of mobile operators to innovate quickly. The new financing will be used to accelerate WG2’s growth in Europe, North America and Asia, and to extend its innovative solutions in 5G, IoT and private networks.

“The cooperation with Cisco over the years has delivered great results for both companies, especially within the area of security and mobility,” said Sigve Brekke, President and Chief Executive Officer, Telenor. “Our partnership in WG2 builds towards a future where programmable networks are the key to creating value for 5G, IoT and private networks. Ongoing developments in our agreement with Cisco continue to be forward leaning, addressing the most innovative and in-demand transformation topics in our industry.”

Working Group Two targets wholesale, cloud-managed mobile network on AWS

Sunday, February 24, 2019  Cisco, WG2  

Working Group Two (WG2), which is a new venture backed by Telenor Group and Digital Alpha (a financial fund supported by Cisco) announced a wholesale cloud-managed mobile network platform that will run both control and user plane on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The WG2 platform includes Cisco’s virtualized Ultra Packet Core, delivering 2G/3G/4G/5G mobile services, hosted on AWS.

WG2 said its platform allows mobile operators and enterprises to create and monetize a new breed of business and consumer mobile services that control the network through a simple cloud-based API.

“WG2 believes that AWS infrastructure and Cisco packet core can provide enhanced scalability, security, and redundancy. Working with AWS gives us agility and execution speed – capabilities we believe are becoming more important than the scale and size of the team. While still early on our journey, we have proven that the speed of development, cost and pace of innovation is radically better than if we had taken traditional technology choices,” said Erlend Prestgard, CEO, Working Group Two.

“WG2’s cloud platform including Cisco’s virtualized packet core represents a next generation architecture for mobile network operators to provide superior flexibility, scalability, and performance over traditional hardware-based networks. Today, operators across the world are transforming their infrastructure to leverage dynamic cloud scalability for both the control and user plane. This will serve as the foundation for high speed low latency networks, enabling an accelerated ability to deliver new innovative applications for end customers and cost effectively scale their network,” said, Jean-Philippe Poirault, Head of AWS Telecom, Amazon Web Services, Inc.

https://wgtwo.com/

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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 Canadians who travel around the world vulnerable,” stated Trudeau.

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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 lowest network layer, guaranteeing resilient protection with none of the latency and performance problems that come with other security methods.

ADVA notes that its FSP 3000 ConnectGuard Optical was the first encryption solution on the market to support Fibre Channel speeds up to 32 Gbps. It’s still the only one capable of such speeds to achieve BSI-approved status, enabling its use for EU and NATO restricted data.

“Our FSP 3000 platform gives the Central Bank of Austria exceptionally fast, agile and robust disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities. And with our ALM technology, it delivers precise, real-time insight into the bank’s fiber plant so that any impairments or breaks can be rapidly repaired with minimal disruption. In fact, our ALM has already repaid the bank’s investment by identifying an issue at the service provider end and preventing outages from occurring,” commented Hartmut Müller-Leitloff, SVP, sales, EMEA, ADVA.

“For a major national bank leasing dark fiber, secure connectivity is of paramount importance. With the low-latency, physical-layer encryption of our FSP 3000 ConnectGuard, customers throughout Austria can now be sure of a frictionless experience and complete peace of mind when accessing their financial data.”

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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 and test execution. Eggplant’s Digital Automation Intelligence platform can test any technology on any device, operating system or browser at any layer, from the user interface (UI) to application programming interfaces (APIs) to the database.

“As a recognized leader and trusted advisor in layer 1-7 design and test, Keysight is excited to add Eggplant’s test capabilities for the software application layer, aligning with our strategy to grow our first-to-market software-centric solutions,” said Ron Nersesian, Keysight chairman and CEO. “We’re thrilled to welcome the Eggplant team to the Keysight family and look forward to working together in the fast-growing intelligent software test market with differentiated software-as-a-service technologies.”

“Joining forces with Keysight gives Eggplant the ability to scale our intelligent automation platform and reach more organizations across the globe,” said Dr. John Bates, CEO of Eggplant. “We share a vision to accelerate innovation and together we will be able to help customers on their digital transformation journey. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished through our employees and partners' contributions, and we’re excited about this next chapter.”

http://www.eggplantsoftware.com

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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 validate seamless 5G to 4G handover on a next generation web-scale core.

“The move to 5G is a paradigm shift for our industry. To support 5G use cases and 5G scale and required automation, Mavenir has developed a cloud-native microservices-based 4G-5G combo-core,” said Pardeep Kohli, President, and CEO of Mavenir. “With the use of web-scale technologies, operators are capable of supporting new 5G subscribers and their existing 4G subscribers with the same solution.”

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