Sunday, October 25, 2020

Video: It takes a Village to Build the Edge

The forces of cloud-native containerization are liberating today’s workloads, moving them closer to end-users. But delivering on the promise of the 5G edge will take a village, says Hitendra Sonny Soni, SVP Worldwide Sales, Kaloom. 

This 7-minute video shares key market drivers and requirements to build the edge. Kaloom, working in concert with Red Hat and Intel, offers a Unified Edge Solution.


https://youtu.be/kWMZFqlxwE4

NTT develops world’s fastest directly modulated laser

 Researchers at NTT have developed the world's fastest directly modulated laser with a 3-dB bandwidth exceeding 100 GHz and capable of transmitting at 256 Gbps over a distance of 2 km.

The research was carried out in collaboration with Professor Fumio Koyama at the Laboratory for Future Interdisciplinary Research of Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology.


NTT researchers developed a membrane laser on a silicon (Si) substrate with a thermal oxide film (SiO2). The company says membrane lasers have a large optical confinement factor in the active region and are compact, making it possible to realize directly modulated lasers with low power consumption. On the other hand, since the device is fabricated on a low-thermal-conductivity SiO2 layer, the temperature increase in the active layer due to current injection is large, and even if the current is increased, the relaxation oscillation frequency saturates at about 20 GHz due to saturation of the differential gain.

To suppress the increase in the active region temperature, we fabricated an indium-phosphorus (InP) based membrane laser on a silicon carbide (SiC) substrate (Fig. 3), which has a thermal conductivity approximately 500 times higher than that of SiO2. Since SiC has a lower refractive index than InP, the optical confinement factor is almost the same as that of the device on SiO2. The device was fabricated by direct bonding with ultrathin (40 nanometers) SiO2 between the InP and SiC substrate. 

Assuming a 100-mW heat source, the temperature increase in the active region of a membrane laser with an active layer length of 50 micrometers was significantly reduced from 130.9 to 16.8℃ when the SiO2 thickness was reduced from 2 micrometers to 40 nanometers.

https://www.ntt.co.jp/news2020/2010e/201020a.html

New 25GS-PON multisource agreement gets underway

A new 25G symmetric PON multi-source agreement (25GS-PON MSA) is underway with the goal of promoting and accelerating the development of 25GS-PON. 

The MSA Group has defined the 25GS-PON specification needed to address the gap between 10G XGS-PON and 50G PON in the ITU-T. The MSA was created after the ITU-T SG15/Q2 group did not reach consensus to standardize 25GSPON, which is seen as a crucial technology by many of the world’s top operators and vendors.

As a first step, the 25GS-PON MSA Group created a specification for 25GS-PON which includes optical specifications based on the IEEE 802.3ca 25G EPON standard, along with a Transmission Convergence (TC) layer that is an extension of XGS-PON. 

The MSA Group will also promote and catalyze the market development for 25GS-PON.

The founding members of the 25GS-PON MSA Group include: AOI, Chorus, Chunghwa Telecom, Ciena, MACOM, MaxLinear, NBN Co., Nokia, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd, and Tibit Communications.

http://www.25gspon-msa.org







Ligado raises $3.85 billion for its low-power L-band terrestrial network

Ligado Networks announced nearly $3.85 billion in new capital for supporting its upcoming 5G launch. The funding was led by JPMorgan Chase & Co., and included both existing and new investors.

Since its bipartisan, unanimous approval from the FCC in April 2020, Ligado has made important strides to realize the full potential of its spectrum and progress toward bringing next-generation services to market. In June 2020, Ligado’s submissions into 3GPP – the industry forum that adopts technical specifications for terrestrial spectrum – were approved and, importantly, enjoyed the support of global vendors such as Nokia, Intel, Samsung, and Sequans. This capital raise will further strengthen the company’s commercial collaboration with chipset designers, device manufacturers, and network infrastructure providers.

“Today is a great day, and now the fun begins. We’ve secured our license, we’ve raised the necessary capital, and we’re in a great position to work with the industry to get this spectrum deployed for 5G to support critical industries across the U.S.,” said Doug Smith, Ligado President and CEO.

“This new round of funding from existing and new investors validates our 5G plans to deploy this spectrum,” said Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman of Ligado’s Board of Directors. “We look forward to making continued progress to build the commercial ecosystem and fully execute on our vision for this spectrum as authorized by the FCC.”

  • On May 22, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), acting on behalf of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Transportation (DoT), petitioned the FCC to reconsider, clarify or amend its recent decision regarding Ligado. Specifically, NTIA is requesting the FCC to rescind the approval of the mobile satellite service (MSS) license modification applications conditionally granted to Ligado, stating that these will cause irreparable harms to federal government users of the Global Positioning System (GPS). Separately, NTIA is seeking a stay in the proceedings to prevent Ligado from deploying its network until this petition is addressed and harmful interference concerns are resolved.

    In response, Ligado stated "This rehash of arguments put before the FCC over two years ago contains no new information or technical data to support its request that the FCC reconsider its recent unanimous, bipartisan decision.  The entire petition is premised on the tired 1 dB argument, which is just another way of the DoD saying, “we want this spectrum for our own use.”  The FCC carefully analyzed and dismantled that argument in its 74-page Order, and we are confident that it will affirm its decision upon review." 

FCC approves Ligado for low-power L-band terrestrial network

The FCC voted unanimously to approve with conditions Ligado’s application to deploy a low-power terrestrial nationwide network in the L-Band that will primarily support 5G and Internet of Things services.

“I thank my colleagues for coming together on a bipartisan basis to support Ligado’s application,” said Chairman Pai.  “The vote at the Commission reflects the broad, bipartisan support that this order has received, from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr on the one hand to Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Congresswoman Doris Matsui of California on the other.  This vote is another step forward for American leadership in 5G and advanced wireless services.”

Among the conditions that Ligado must abide by:
  • Ligado must provide a significant (23 megahertz) guard-band using its own licensed spectrum to separate its terrestrial base station transmissions from neighboring operations in the Radionavigation-Satellite Service allocation. 
  • Ligado is required to limit the power levels of its base stations to 9.8 dBW, a reduction of 99.3% from the power levels proposed in Ligado’s 2015 application. 
  • Ligado must protect adjacent band incumbents by reporting its base station locations and technical operating parameters to potentially affected government and industry stakeholders prior to commencing operations, continuously monitoring the transmit power of its base station sites, and complying with procedures and actions for responding to credible reports of interference, including rapid shutdown of operations where warranted. 


  • Ligado Networks is a privately-backed company based in Reston, Virginia, with investors including Centerbridge Partners, Fortress Investment Group and JPMorgan Chase & Co. From the big hitting industry execs on the leadership team it is clear the company is serious. Ivan Seidenberg, a former chairman of Verizon Communications, serves as chairman. Also on the board of directors is Timothy Donahue, former executive chairman of Sprint Nextel and former president and CEO of Nextel Communications, and Reed Hundt, the former Federal Communications Commission. Doug Smith serves as Ligado's president and CEO; he is known for his work in engineering and launching nationwide networks for GTE, Nextel, Sprint Nextel and Clearwire.

Ribbon offers STIR/SHAKEN-as-a-Service and Reputation Scoring


Ribbon Communications expanded its Call Trust identity assurance portfolio with the addition of two new managed as-a-service offerings: STIR/SHAKEN-as-a-Service and Reputation Scoring. Both are both enabled by Ribbon's Identity Hub, a cloud-native platform designed to deliver a suite of managed services for identity assurance.

  • STIR/SHAKEN is an industry standard that stands for Secure Telephony Identity Revisited (STIR) and Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (SHAKEN). Implementation of STIR/SHAKEN is a regulatory mandate in the United States and Canada enabling the authentication, signing and verification of caller identity to prevent call spoofing. Ribbon's STIR/SHAKEN-as-a-Service is specifically designed to make it operationally easy and cost-effective for communications service providers to comply with the regulatory mandate without having to implement STIR/SHAKEN in their own network.
  • Reputation Scoring delivers real-time multi-dimensional scores and recommendations for call handling to prevent unwanted nuisance and fraud calls. It provides this information per call, in real-time, for any service provider, regardless if the call terminates on an IP or TDM/legacy network. With Reputation Scoring, per-call insight and actionable intelligence is available to determine the best option for call termination, such as normal call completion, modifying caller name before completion, redirecting the call to voice mail, or outright blocking a potential nuisance or fraud call to prevent it from reaching the called party.

"Ribbon's Identity Hub leverages our advanced analytics capabilities to determine both a caller's intent and the context of a call," said Tony Scarfo, EVP and General Manager, Cloud and Edge Business Unit for Ribbon. "This allows us to deliver real-time insights, on a per-call basis and gives our service provider customers the ability to quickly make call routing decisions to help their customers restore the trust that the phone calls they received are legitimate. We believe this provides us with a distinct competitive advantage by delivering valuable network insights to our customers."


SpaceX completes 15th Starlink launch

 On Saturday, SpaceX successfully completed its 15th Starlink launch mission, delivering a further 60 satellites to orbit, bringing the total number of Starlink satellites launched to date to over 890. The number of Starlink satellites currently in ordit may be a bit lower, as media reports indicate that the company could have de-orbited a small number of its earliest satellites. 

Following Saturday's launch, the booster rocket successfully landed on a drone ship off the Florida coast. This launch occurred less than a week after the previous Starlink mission.


AT&T and Cisco team on IoT

AT&T and Cisco are expanding their collaboration to manage Internet of Things (IoT) devices for enterprises. Specifically, AT&T and Cisco are working together to bring new IoT solutions in Low Power Wide Area Networking and 5G. 

AT&T Control Center powered by Cisco gives businesses near real-time visibility of all the devices on their network and enhances their ability to gather and use device data to drive business outcomes. Together, the companies manage millions of connected devices spanning manufacturing, utilities, transportation, public sector, retail and  healthcare industries as well as public safety on FirstNet, built with AT&T. 



For more than a decade, the companies have worked together to manage services for U.S. enterprises and support through the AT&T Global SIM for international roaming that provides IoT connectivity in more than 200 countries and territories. 

“We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Cisco with a new multi-year agreement,” said Robert Boyanovksy, vice president, Internet of Things and Mobility, AT&T Business. “Together we can help businesses deploy IoT devices and applications faster and more securely and get more value out of devices they use.”

“Through our work with AT&T, we are helping enterprise customers accelerate their digitization initiatives and drive business outcomes with simplicity, scale and faster time to market," said Dave Wilson, Managing Director, Global IoT Sales, Cisco. 

Fujikura intros a Phased Array Antenna Module for 5G mmWave

Fujikura introduced a Phased Array Antenna Module (PAAM) for 5G mmWave operating in 3GPP bands n257 (28 GHz), n258 (26 GHz) and n261 (27 GHz). 

The Fujikura PAAM is a high performance phased array antenna module with a novel integrated antenna, and supports concurrent dual polarized beams in both transmission and reception. 

Fujikura is using mmWave-ICs developed in-house using a SiGe BiCMOS process. 

The PAAM features extremely low noise figure (NF) characteristics and enables a large link margin for expanded coverage. Tunable true-time-delay-type phase shifters support precise and independent phase and amplitude control over a wide frequency range. The unique phase shifter not only enables simple beam-steering control which allows accurate beam steering with fine resolution, but also allows calibration-free operation making PAAM installation much easier. The phase shifter also maintains the transmitted or received signals undistorted by providing invariant group delay and unchanged beam direction in a wide frequency range. In addition, Fujikura PAAM provides superior digital reconfigurability allowing (1) flexible choices in the trade-off space between NF and linearity --- this enables a wide range of coverage applications simply through digital reconfiguration of the PAAM, and on-chip support for 1000s of beam configurations. These are exactly the features highly desired by 5G wireless equipment manufacturers.

Sampling is expected by the end of 1Q 2021 with volume production in 2H 2021.