UK confirms ban on Huawei in 5G and broadband infrastructure

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has deciced to ban the purchase of Huawei equipment in 5G infrastructure in the UK after December 2020 and that already deployed equipment must be removed by 2027. The decision follows a technical review by the National Cyber Security Centre in response to U.S. sanctions against Huawei, and strengthens the previous partial-ban announced in January.

The NCSC reasoned that due to the U.S. sanctions, Huawei will need to reconfigure its supply chain and that security confidence could not be established with this unknown factor. The government is urging all UK operators to stop buying Huawei equipment immediately ahead of the legal ban at the end of the year.

For the UK's fixed access networks, where Huawei has been a supplier since 2005, the government isd advising full fibre operators to transition away from purchasing new Huawei equipment. A technical consultation will determine the transition timetable, but this period is expected to last no longer than two years.

Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden states: "5G will be transformative for our country, but only if we have confidence in the security and resilience of the infrastructure it is built upon. Following US sanctions against Huawei and updated technical advice from our cyber experts, the government has decided it is necessary to ban Huawei from our 5G networks. No new kit is to be added from January 2021, and UK 5G networks will be Huawei free by the end of 2027. This decisive move provides the industry with the clarity and certainty it needs to get on with delivering 5G across the UK. By the time of the next election we will have implemented in law an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei equipment from our 5G networks."

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/huawei-to-be-removed-from-uk-5g-networks-by-2027

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GÉANT picks Infinera's 600G for pan-European backbone

GÉANT will deploy Infinera’s 600G per wavelength transmission technology on its next-generation pan-European network, which interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and supports over 50 million users at 10,000 institutions across the continent.

GÉANT is undertaking the most significant refresh of its network in a decade as part of a major EU-funded project designed to support the needs of Europe’s research and education community for the next 15 years. The upgrade uses Infinera’s Groove (GX) Series Compact Modular Platform, FlexILS Open Optical Line System, and professional services.

“The success of the GÉANT (GN4-3N) project is essential for Europe’s research and education communities and will ensure GÉANT and our NREN partners continue to enable scientific discoveries, remote learning for millions of students, and the realization of open science,” said Erik Huizer, Chief Executive Officer, GÉANT. “Infinera continues to be one of our trusted technology partners and we value their expertise in deploying optical networks and providing the best solutions to meet and exceed our extremely demanding requirements.”

“We are excited to partner with GÉANT to meet some of the most stringent network requirements for high-capacity research and education networks,” said Nick Walden, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales at Infinera. “GÉANT provides network and collaboration services that facilitate important international cooperation between researchers and educators, and we are proud to support their efforts with cutting-edge optical technology that delivers what they need and provides peace of mind.”

https://www.geant.org/
http://www.infinera.com

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Samsung’s 6G White Paper

Samsung published a whitepaper outlining its vision for 6G, including technical and societal megatrends, new services, requirements, candidate technologies and an expected timeline of standardization.

Samsung is predicting that the completion of the 6G standard and its earliest commercialization date could be as early as 2028, while mass commercialization may occur around 2030. Both humans and machines will be the main users of 6G, and 6G will be characterized by provision of advanced services such as truly immersive extended reality (XR), high-fidelity mobile hologram and digital replica.

“While 5G commercialization is still in its initial stage, it’s never too early to start preparing for 6G because it typically takes around 10 years from the start of research to commercialization of a new generation of communications technology,” explained Sunghyun Choi, Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center. “We’ve already launched the research and development of 6G technologies by building upon the experience and ability we have accumulated from working on multiple generations of communications technology, including 5G. Going forward, we are committed to leading the standardization of 6G in collaboration with various stakeholders across industry, academia and government fields.”

Candidate technologies under the 6G umbrellas could include the use of the terahertz (THz) frequency band, novel antenna technologies to enhance the coverage of high frequency band signals, advanced duplex technologies, the evolution of network topology, spectrum sharing to increase the efficiency of frequency utilization and the use of AI in wireless communications.

The whitepaper can be downloaded here: https://cdn.codeground.org/nsr/downloads/researchareas/6G%20Vision.pdf

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Huawei reports a 13% increase in 1H sales to US$64.9 biliion

Huawei reported overall revenue of CNY454 billion (approx. US$64.9 billion) in revenue for the first half of 2020, a 13.1% increase year-on-year, with a net profit margin of 9.2%.

Huawei's carrier, enterprise, and consumer businesses achieved CNY159.6 billion, CNY36.3 billion, and CNY255.8 billion in revenue, respectively.

The company issued the following statement: "As countries around the globe are grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, information and communications technologies (ICT) have become not only a crucial tool for combatting the virus, but also an engine for economic recovery. Huawei reiterated its commitment to working with carriers and industry partners to maintain stable network operations, accelerate digital transformation, and support efforts to contain local outbreaks and reopen local economies."

"The complex external environment makes open collaboration and trust in global value chains more important than ever. Huawei has promised to continue fulfilling its obligations to customers and suppliers, and to survive, forge ahead, and contribute to the global digital economy and technological development, no matter what future challenges the company faces."

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Crosslake Fibre plans high-capacity cable across English Channel

Crosslake Fibre an international network provider and developer of unique subsea and terrestrial fibre networks, announced plans for a high-fibre count cable across the English Channel.

The non-repeatered, CrossChannel Fibre cable, which will connect Slough, United Kingdom and Paris, will contain 96 fibre pairs, each providing over 20 Tbps.  The system is expected be ready for service in the fall of 2021.

Crosslake Fibre has engaged EGS, a leading global provider of marine surveys and services, to undertake the marine and burial surveys for the project. Crosslake Fibre has placed the marine survey contract into force and survey activities have commenced.

“We are excited to launch this historic subsea project and deliver a new, much-needed connection across the English Channel connecting the critically important data hubs of Slough and Paris. This new fibre infrastructure has been optimized to create the shortest path between the two data hubs, providing users with an enhanced technical solution and materially lowering operating costs. With the continued increase in bandwidth demand further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, subsea cables have never been more critical to the functioning of the backbone of the Internet,” comments Mike Cunningham, CEO for Crosslake Fibre. “The marine survey is an essential milestone in the development of subsea projects. That is why key partners such as EGS are important, as they have the expertise and knowledge to ensure a successful survey of the route and ultimately pave the way for an optimal deployment of the cable.”

In addition, Crosslake Fibre’s capital partner, Tiger Infrastructure Partners, has invested additional capital into the Crosslake platform to support the CrossChannel Fibre system and advance the growth and development of new projects.

Crosslake Fibre activates Toronto – New York network

Tuesday, October 22, 2019  Subsea  

Crosslake Fibre activated commercial services on the first submarine cable across Lake Ontario from Toronto, Canada to Buffalo, New York.

The diverse, ultra-low latency route connects Toronto’s largest carrier hotels, Equinix TR2 at 45 Parliament Street and 151 Front Street West, to Equinix NY4 in Secaucus, New Jersey with multiple extensions to various points-of-presence in both cities. Crosslake Fibre provides lit and dark fiber services interconnecting Toronto, Secaucus, NJ and Buffalo, NY using the route.

The historic cable traverses Lake Ontario from Toronto to New York State utilizing a specialized 192 fiber strand submarine cable that is 36 miles (58 km) in length.  Using current technology, the cable, which is less than 2 inches in diameter, can provide up to several thousand terabits per second of capacity throughput.

“The new network provides the lowest latency performance, physical geographic diversity, and ultra-high capacity throughput for customers,” states Mike Cunningham, CEO of Crosslake Fibre.  “This backbone Internet infrastructure benefits the financial markets, data centers, content delivery networks, the gaming eco-system, payment processing, and Internet download speeds, in addition to being a catalyst for economic development.”

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FiberLight upgrades with Fujitsu 1FINITY

FiberLight, which operates 14,000 route miles of fiber networks with clients in over 30 metropolitan areas in the U.S., has selected the Fujitsu 1FINITY platform and Virtuora Network Control Solution to enable transport speeds of 100G and above while increasing efficiency through automation.

Since 2019, FiberLight has deployed the modular Fujitsu 1FINITY platform, including 1FINITY T300/T310 Transport and 1FINITY L100 Lambda series blades in a network capable of exceeding 400G speeds throughout Texas and Oklahoma. This solution is fully compatible with FiberLight’s existing base of Fujitsu FLASHWAVE 9500 packet optical networking equipment, allowing smooth network evolution with pay-as-you-grow scalability. FiberLight will also use Virtuora PD, a planning and design application that provides a representation of the actual network topology, models optical performance and designs optical circuits in real time.

“At FiberLight, we have more than 20 years of dedicated experience designing, engineering, and optimizing large-scale fiber networks,” said Jay Anderson, chief engineer, FiberLight. “This enhancement of our network with the Fujitsu 1FINITY platform not only supports our mission of building high-capacity, custom fiber networks that ignite digital transformation, it also helps drive greater speed, reliability and lasting value for customers and partners throughout our Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Corpus Christi, Laredo, McAllen and Oklahoma markets.”

“We are pleased to strengthen our long-standing relationship with FiberLight and support them as they position their network to deliver continued innovation, meeting digital service demands today and well into the future,” said Annie Bogue, head of sales and marketing, Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc. “The combination of 1FINITY and Virtuora offers FiberLight an ideal solution that easily integrates with their existing infrastructure, providing speed, scalability and efficient automation that will grow with their business.”

https://www.fujitsu.com/us/about/resources/news/press-releases/2020/fnc-20200714.html

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Nokia releases radio software upgrade for 4G/LTE to 5G/NR

Nokia released a software update to enable its 4G/LTE radios to be migrated seamlessly to 5G/NR.

Nokia said 5 million legacy 4G radios are eligible for the upgrade. The company expects its customers to bring this support for approximately one million radios immediately, reaching 3.1 million by the end of the year and over 5 million in 2021. The upgrade will help to streamline the process of refarming 4G/LTE spectrum into 5G/NR. Nokia estimates that this solution will save the telecommunications industry potentially tens of billions of euros in site engineering and re-visit costs as communication service providers are able to upgrade their networks to 5G/NR on FDD with software. 

Most of the 5G/NR deployments to date have been performed with TDD cmWave and TDD mmWave deployment but the next big wave of 5G/NR rollouts will be delivered by refarming existing FDD bands to 5G/NR. TDD spectrum benefits from enlarged coverage and capacity when combined with already deployed FDD network infrastructure and spectrum bands via TDD/FDD Carrier Aggregation.

Nokia also confirmed that its Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) is already live networks covering 2G/GSM-3G/WCDMA-4G/LTE and that the DSS capability was recently introduced for 4G/LTE-5G/NR. This capability completes a DSS solution, covering all access technologies and making the radio frequency refarming to 5G/NR a simple and efficient process.

Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “We already provide market- leading LTE radios to hundreds of customers around the world. This is an important solution because it will help our customers, quickly and efficiently upgrade their existing LTE radios so that they are 5G ready saving them time and money.”

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ADVA partners with OTN Systems on industrial connectivity

ADVA is partnering with OTN Systems to offer joint end-to-end networking solutions for the industry sector, including transportation, oil and gas, mining and electrical power utilities.  The plan is to help customers transition from their legacy SONET/SDH infrastructure and realize the benefits of packet transport.

The solutions will feature OTN Systems’ XTran MPLS-TP layer combined with ADVA FSP 3000 OLS technology. The tailor-made solutions are ruggedized for the harshest environments and also provide stringent synchronization and comprehensive in-service monitoring, ensuring the levels of availability needed for the most advanced industrial demands.

”By joining forces with ADVA, we’re giving customers the full benefits of our combined innovation and expertise. Our companies share a goal of helping all industries on their digital transformation journeys. By delivering integrated end-to-end networks that precisely meet sector-specific requirements, we’re empowering our customers to take that next step,” said Jurgen Michielsen, CTO, OTN Systems. “From transportation to electric utilities, today’s industrial networks operators are looking for a seamless way to evolve their old SONET/SDH infrastructure to high-capacity packet-based network technology. The joint solution allows customers to make the jump to the next generation of telecom architecture simple, risk-free and extremely cost-effective.”

“We’re teaming up with OTN Systems to deliver industrial connectivity with a unique set of benefits. Together we can provide the most reliable and secure end-to-end networking solutions on the market – solutions that are fully optimized for next-generation industrial applications and specifically designed to withstand the most extreme environments,” commented Christoph Glingener, CTO, ADVA. “Our FSP 3000 enables industrial networks to minimize both cost per bit and operational efforts. Our joint customers can also further enhance performance and reduce operating costs with our ADVA ALM fiber monitoring solution. This gives industrial network operators full control with real-time insight into the fiber plant. What’s more, our Oscilloquartz technology range ensures the precise synchronization needed for ultra-low latency use cases.”

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