DISH adds Intel as a 5G infrastructure partner

 DISH will integrate Intel 5G infrastructure technology into its forthcoming virtualized, open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) 5G network deployment. Specifically, DISH has selected the Intel Xeon Scalable Processor, the Intel Ethernet 800 Series network adapter, the Intel vRAN Dedicated Accelerator ACC100 and Intel's FlexRAN software reference architecture for its deployments.

The companies are collaborating on the fully virtualized RAN, including radio reference designs, fronthaul optimization, hardware-based security, and blueprints for servers. The two companies are also collaborating to enable edge applications for enterprises and driving O-RAN standards, and are cooperating in the areas of data optimization and Machine Learning for future phases of the network buildout. 

"Intel has been a trusted advisor throughout the design of our O-RAN network, working in concert with our software vendors Mavenir, Altiostar, and many OEM hardware providers. We have tested several commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) designs from a large number of server vendors using Intel's O-RAN compliant FlexRAN architecture and are pleased by the maturity and power of the solutions, together with the cost benefits of COTS solutions," said Marc Rouanne, executive vice president and chief network officer, DISH. "We are using the power of the VMware abstraction solution and the ubiquity of Intel-based servers to load and mix different types of cloud-native workloads like distributed unit (DU), centralized unit (CU), virtual routers, mobile edge computing applications, and 5G Core containerized network functions."

"Fully-virtualized, cloud-native networks like the one DISH is building bring the same server economics that transformed the data center," said Dan Rodriguez, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Network Platforms Group. "We are excited to partner with DISH to lay the foundation for a truly agile network and have already begun working with our OEM partners who have designed FlexRAN-based servers to enable a variety of new innovative use cases and services."

http://www.newsroom.intel.com

ISH selects Blue Planet automation software for its 5G network

Thursday, September 24, 2020  Automation, Ciena  

 DISH selected inventory and service order management software from Ciena's Blue Planet division to automate its 5G network.Blue Planet's software automation delivers real-time management of all inventory, enabling on-demand provisioning and faster rollout of customer network slices. “Blue Planet is a key component within our 5G platform, allowing us to dynamically manage all of our network inventory and service orders in real-time,” said...

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DISH picks Nokia for cloud-native, 5G standalone core

Monday, September 14, 2020  Dish, Nokia  

DISH Network selected Nokia’s cloud-native, standalone Core software products to help it build the most advanced, disruptive, fully-automated, cloud-native 5G network in the U.S..The deal, which follows months of joint testing, includes subscriber data management, device management, packet core, voice and data core, as well as integration services. Nokia will also deliver additional cloud-native products that will provide 4G, 5G standalone and Voice...

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VMware intros 5G Telco Cloud Platform

Wednesday, September 02, 2020  Vmware  

VMware introduced its 5G Telco Cloud Platform, featuring Tanzu Kubernetes Grid - an embedded Kubernetes distribution - that will allow Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to reliably build, manage and run containerized workloads across private, telco, edge and public clouds. VMware said its new solution provides a cloud-first network architecture to accelerate 5G and edge innovation while delivering service agility, operational consistency and...

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DISH picks VMware for 5G cloud-native O-RAN

Sunday, August 02, 2020  Dish, Vmware  

DISH selected VMware's Telco Cloud solution for its 5G, cloud-native Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN). VMware said its Telco Cloud will enable DISH to utilize software from leading vendors to optimize and accelerate its 5G network deployment. Additionally, it will provide DISH with enhanced automation, resiliency, security and flexibility. The VMware Telco Cloud provides an abstraction layer across multiple network domains and enables DISH to leverage...

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DISH takes over Boost Mobile and its 9.3 million subscribers

Wednesday, July 01, 2020  Dish, T-Mobile  

T-Mobile US completed its previously announced divestiture of Sprint’s prepaid wireless business to DISH Network Corporation, fulfilling a commitment that T-Mobile and Sprint made to the Department of Justice and to the Federal Communications Commission as part of their merger process.' DISH paid $1.4 billion for the acquisition of Boost Mobile and its 9.3 million customers. DISH said it will continue to invest in the Boost Mobile brand. John Swieringa,...

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DISH picks Fujitsu for 5G radio units and Altiostar for virtualized RAN

Tuesday, June 30, 2020  Dish  

DISH confirmed a large purchase of 5G radio units (RUs) from Fujitsu and a multi-year agreement with Altiostar to deliver a cloud-native Open vRAN software solution. DISH, which is committed to use O-RAN architecture in its 5G network, will be utilizing Fujitsu's Low Band Tri-Band RU and Mid Band Dual-Band RU, both industry firsts for O-RAN radios, across the company's spectrum portfolio. In addition to radio units, Fujitsu will provide support...

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Vantage Data Centers opens data center campus near Frankfurt

Vantage Data Centers inaugurated its first 15MW data center in Germany along with partners Energieversorgung Offenbach (EVO) and DataCenter-Group (DCG). 

The campus, located in Offenbach, will house three multi-story data centers totaling 55MW of critical IT capacity and 650,000 square feet (60,000 square meters) when fully developed. The opening of the Frankfurt campus is a key milestone in Vantage’s strategy to expand across Europe.

"The development of this campus in one of the most sought-after markets in Europe is the first milestone in our USD $2 billion European expansion strategy,” said Antoine Boniface, president, Vantage Europe. “Many of our customers need to be in Europe for a variety of reasons, whether it’s to reduce latency or to comply with local privacy laws. Offenbach is an ideal location, located within one kilometer of the main peering points and just 15 minutes from Frankfurt’s international airport."

The Frankfurt campus was part of the acquisition of Etix Everywhere in February 2020, which Vantage announced along with greenfield developments in Berlin, Milan, Warsaw and Zurich.

Vantage Data Centers gains strategic backing from Colony Capital

Tuesday, July 07, 2020  Data Centers, Vantage  

Vantage Data Centers announced a strategic partnership valued at $3.5 billion to accelerate the expansion of its wholesale data centers throughout North America and Europe.

Specifically, the Colony-led investor group will invest $1.2 billion in Vantage’s diversified portfolio, including 12 stabilized North American data centers, which span more than 1.4 million gross square feet and 150MW of IT capacity across key strategic markets in Santa Clara, California; Quincy, Washington; Montreal and Quebec City, Canada.

Vantage’s management team, led by Sureel Choksi, president and CEO, will continue to manage and operate these assets as part of its global data center footprint. Vantage will maintain the same level of superior service to its valued customers in each market, while simultaneously developing and operating additional data centers throughout North America and Europe. The capital provided by this transaction will support Vantage’s strategy to expand and enhance its global footprint.

http://www.vantage-dc.com

Vantage Data Centers to acquire data center campus in Wales

Tuesday, April 07, 2020  Data Centers, Mergers And Acquisitions, UK, Vantage  

Vantage Data Centers  signed a definitive agreement with InfraVia Capital Partners, along with the two founders of the business, to acquire Next Generation Data (NGD), which operates a data center campus located on 50-acres in the Cardiff Capital Region in South Wales, UK.

The existing NGD data center campus is a Tier III 180MW facility, including an existing 72MW capacity and 108MW of expansion capacity. It uses 100% renewable energy and is rich in fiber delivered by many Tier 1 service providers. Latency between Wales and London is less than 1.5 milliseconds. In addition, NGD Cloud Gateway provides multiple access services, including Express Route and Connect, and NGD recently became a new hosting facility for LINX Wales. The highly secure site meets the U.K. government’s highest standards, and is one of many reasons that multiple blue-chip, high growth companies currently house their IT infrastructure within NGD’s 750,000 square foot facility.

Upon closing, Wales will mark Vantage’s sixth strategic market in Europe following its entrance into five markets (Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan, Warsaw and Zurich) announced in February 2020, including the acquisition of Etix Everywhere.

The transaction will be funded with equity commitments from Digital Colony Partners and other investors in Vantage, as well as acquisition debt financing.

Vantage Data Centers launch $2 billion European expansion strategy

Monday, February 10, 2020  Data Centers, Vantage  

Vantage Data Centers has launched a $2 billion expansion into Europe with the aim of establishing itself in the hyperscale market.

As part of its expansion strategy, Vantage has acquired Etix Everywhere, which has 50MW of built data center capacity across its footprint and is building a 55MW hyperscale data center campus in Frankfurt, Germany. Financial terms were not disclosed. In conjunction with the Etix acquisition, Antoine Boniface, former CEO of Etix, has joined the Vantage executive team to serve as president, Europe.

In addition, Vantage Europe has secured land and is planning to develop hyperscale data center campuses in Berlin, Milan, Warsaw and Zurich. The facilities, which are currently underway, are in the following European markets:

• Berlin: 64MW campus on 13 acres (5 hectares)
• Milan: 32MW campus on 17 acres (7 hectares)
• Warsaw: 64MW campus 12 acres (5 hectares)
• Zurich: 40MW campus on 7 acres (3 hectares)

Vantage said intends to invest USD $2 billion in its planned European expansion, including more than USD $800 million in new equity capital provided by Vantage’s current investors and a new commitment from Digital Colony Partners.

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Arista debuts 750 Series campus switches

Arista Networks announced its 750 Series systems within its Cognitive Campus portfolio, the first 100G ready. The introduction includes high-density 1G to 10G modular PoE (Power over Ethernet) switches, built for security, modern IoT and real-time telemetry and the 720 Series 96 port.

The Arista 750 Series and 720 Series 96 port switches are shipping in Q4 2020.

CCS 750 Series Highlights

• First modular campus systems with 100G uplinks for a total of 400G of capacity
• High-density 1G to 10G and 90W PoE
• 5-slot system supports up to 240 ports with 5 line cards in 7 rack units
• 8-slot model allows up to 384 ports with 8 line cards in 10 RU

CCS 720 Series 96 port Highlights

• Delivers higher capacity than fixed 1U systems
• 96 mGig ports with 60W PoE
• 25G and 100G uplinks for simpler deployments in modern campuses

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NeoPhotonics: 400G and up sales rise 91% yoy excluding Huawei

NeoPhotonics reported Q3 revenue was $102.4 million, down 1% sequentially and up 11% year-over-year. Gross margin was 23.8%, down from 32.5% in the prior quarter and from 28.4% in the prior year. Non-GAAP diluted net income per share was $0.11, in comparison to $0.16 in the prior quarter and to $0.11 in the same period last year.

“We are pleased to report another strong, non-GAAP profitable quarter, driven by our highest speed products. We took decisive actions to better align our capacity and production infrastructure with expected demand levels without relying on future revenue contributions from Huawei, resulting in a restructuring charge of approximately $9.4 million in this quarter. Excluding Huawei, our products for 400G and above applications grew 91% year to date, and were 44% of Q3 revenue,” said Tim Jenks, NeoPhotonics CEO. “Going forward we believe we will rapidly grow the business excluding Huawei by supporting the highest speed over distance solutions at 400G and above for telecom equipment providers, and expand our business by ramping our 400ZR and 400ZR+ coherent modules to Cloud and hyper-scale customers starting in 2021,” concluded Mr. Jenks.

http://www.neophotonics.com

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Arista posts Q3 revenue of $605 million, down 7.5% yoy

Arista Networks reported Q3 revenue of $605.4 million, an increase of 12.0% compared to the second quarter of 2020, and a decrease of 7.5% from the third quarter of 2019. GAAP gross margin was 63.6%, compared to GAAP gross margin of 63.7% in the second quarter of 2020 and 63.8% in the third quarter of 2019. Non-GAAP net income was $192.0 million, or $2.42 per diluted share, compared to non-GAAP net income of $217.1 million, or $2.69 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2019.

“Our customers are validating our traction as we migrate from legacy to cognitive client to cloud deployments with a cumulative of 40 million cloud networking ports shipped by Q3 2020. Despite some COVID-19 turbulence, we believe Arista will only emerge stronger,” stated Jayshree Ullal, President and CEO of Arista Networks.

Commenting on the company’s financial results, Ita Brennan, Arista’s CFO said, “We saw continued improvement in underlying business trends in the quarter, with the Arista team working diligently with customers, supply chain and other partners to navigate the new COVID-19 operating environment.”

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Ericsson completes Cradlepoint acquisition

Ericsson completed its previously-announced acquisition of Cradlepoint for approximately US$1 billion.

Cradlepoint will operate as a stand-alone subsidiary within Ericsson and continue to build on the current market momentum as 5G is speeding up digital transformation and increasing the need for advanced connectivity services for enterprises. Cradlepoint will be part of Ericsson’s Business Area Technologies & New Businesses.

Ericsson acquires Cradlepoint for $1.1 billion

Friday, September 18, 2020  Ericsson, Mergers And Acquisitions  

Ericsson has acquired privately-held Cradlepoint, a provider of Wireless Edge WAN 4G and 5G Enterprise solutions, for US$1.1 billion.

Cradlepoint operates a subscription-based cloud platform that uses wireless edge routers designed to connect fixed and mobile sites, vehicles, field forces, and loT devices over LTE and 5G. The service hepls enterprises connect branch, mobile and IoT endpoints on one WAN. Cradlepoint, which is based in Boise, Idaho, will become a fully owned subsidiary of Ericsson while continuing to operate under its existing brand and be part of Ericsson’s Business Area Technologies & New Businesses. Cradlepoint currently has more than 650 employees. The company was founded in 2006.  In addition to its headquarters in Boise, the company operates a research and development center in Silicon Valley, California, and new market offices in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Ericsson said the acquisition advances its ongoing mission to capture market share in the rapidly expanding 5G Enterprise space. Cradlepoint complements Ericsson’s existing 5G Enterprise portfolio which includes Dedicated Networks and a global IoT platform.

Cradlepoint’s sales for 2019 were SEK 1.2 b. with a gross margin of 61%. Ericsson’s operating margins are expected to be negatively impacted by approximately 1% in 2021 and 2022 - where half is related to amortization of intangible assets which arise from the acquisition. Cradlepoint is expected to contribute to operating cash-flow starting in 2022. Ericsson’s 2022 group financial targets remain unchanged. 

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Oracle debuts cloud-based customer experience management

Oracle introduced a cloud-based customer experience (CX) management solution for the communications industry. 

Oracle Digital Experience for Communications, which runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, is a suite of industry-specific applications that capture and analyze customer-interaction data from front and back-office operations. 

"While every industry is unique, there is a common challenge facing all organizations: the need to unify data to address rapidly changing customer expectations," said Rob Tarkoff, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Cloud CX and Data Cloud. "To help the communications industry solve its toughest customer challenges, we have brought together our CX and industry expertise to develop Digital Experience for Communications. This isn't a wrapper on CRM; this is a new solution that has been developed based on extensive customer feedback."

Key functions:

• Launch: gives service providers a 360-degree customer dashboard and simple business user tools to quickly create and launch more relevant products and promotions without IT assistance. 
• Care: offers natural language processing and digital engagement tools, as a smart agent desktop and guided workflows. With these features, customers can find answers faster on their own and service agents have the intelligence and context needed to resolve issues faster.  
• Buying: delivers data-driven recommendations so service providers can provide more personalized omnichannel commerce experiences. For example, if a customer does not take advantage of their land (home) line but continually go over their mobile minute limits, the module can suggest that sales agents offer the option of dropping the home line, increasing mobile minutes, and trying a new entertainment package free for three months. 

The Launch and Care modules are available today, with the Buying application available within the next 12 months.

https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/oracle-helps-communications-industry-110220.html

 

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ADTRAN posts Q3 revenue of $133.1 million, up 16.7% yoy

ADTRAN reported Q3 revenue of $133.1 million, up 16.7% from the same period a year ago. Non-GAAP net income was $7.9 million and non-GAAP earnings per share, assuming dilution, was $0.16 per share. 

ADTRAN Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tom Stanton stated, “We had a solid quarter with outstanding customer traction, securing 38 new service provider customers, ranging from global Tier-1 operators to electric co-operatives and utilities, municipalities, cable MSOs and regional broadband providers. We are also making great progress with the Tier 1 fiber access projects we announced earlier this year and we continue to have very strong momentum on new customer acquisition across a broad base of market segments. We continue to introduce new fiber access and software innovations that have been well timed as we enter the early stages of a generational communications infrastructure network upgrade cycle driven by confluence of favorable government, regulatory, technology and competitive factors.”

ADTRAN also announced that its Board of Directors declared a cash dividend for the third quarter of 2020. The quarterly cash dividend of $0.09 per common share is to be paid to the company’s stockholders of record as of the close of business on November 17, 2020. 

https://investors.adtran.com/

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AT&T sells Puerto Rico operations to Liberty Latin America

AT&T completed the sale of its wireless and wireline operations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to Liberty Latin America for $1.95 billion in cash. The transaction includes employees; network assets and spectrum; real estate and leases; customers, including more than 1 million wireless subscribers; and contracts.

AT&T will retain DIRECTV and certain global business customer relationships and FirstNet responsibilities and relationships.

AT&T said it continues to pursue additional non-core asset monetization opportunities.

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