Cellnex to acquire 24,600 European towers from CK Hutchinson

Cellnex Telecom will acquire c.24,600 telecommunications towers and sites across Europe from CK Hutchison for EUR 10 billion. The transactions include the roll-out of up to 5,250 sites over the next eight years with an investment of c. EUR 1.4 billion including further initiatives.

Cellnex Telecom is already Europe’s leading operator of wireless telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructures with a portfolio of 61,000 sites including forecast roll-outs up to 2027. Cellnex operates in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Portugal.

The acquisitions are structured as six separate transactions – one for each country. Cellnex to pay cash at closing  of the acquisitions of Sweden, Austria, Italy, Ireland and Denmark, and with cash and new Cellnex shares at closing of the UK transaction.

Cellnex Chairman Franco Bernabè highlighted “the transformational nature of the agreements, which strengthens Cellnex’s position as one of the main Europe-wide telecommunications infrastructures operator, with a portfolio of c. 103,000 sites once the transactions and rollouts are complete. We will now be present in three new significant markets –  Sweden, Austria and Denmark – and will further build upon our role as a key operator in three of our core markets, namely Italy, the UK and Ireland.”

https://www.cellnextelecom.com/

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Telstra's 3-way restructuring: InfraCo Fixed, InfraCo Towers, ServeCo

Telstra is proposing a major restructuring that would to create three separate legal entities within the Telstra Group:

• InfraCo Fixed, which would own and operate Telstra’s passive or physical infrastructure assets: the ducts, fibre, data centres, subsea cables and exchanges that underpin Telstra’s fixed telecommunications network.
• InfraCo Towers, which would own and operate Telstra’s passive or physical mobile tower assets, which Telstra will look to monetise over time given the strong demand and compelling valuations for this type of high-quality infrastructure.
• ServeCo, which would continue to focus on creating innovative products and services, supporting customers and delivering the best possible customer experience. ServeCo would own the active parts of the network, including the radio access network and spectrum assets.

Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said the plan is driven by monetisation opportunities for its infrastructure assets where this might create additional value for shareholders.

“The proposed restructure is one of the most significant in Telstra’s history and the largest corporate change since privatisation. It will unlock value in the company, improve the returns from the company’s assets and create further optionality for the future,” Mr Penn said.

“The challenges and disruptions of the last 6-12 months have reinforced the increasing value of infrastructure assets globally; the importance of the digital economy, not only to business but to the whole of Australia and its economic recovery; and the dependence of the digital economy on telecommunications as its platform. Our proposed new corporate structure reflects this new world and will help us support the foundation for it – one that is in the interests of our shareholders, our employees, our customers, and ultimately one that benefits the country overall.”

https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf%20F/2020-Investor-Day.pdf 

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Cisco reports dip in hardware sales as security and services trend up

Cisco reported revenue of $11.9 billion for its first fiscal quarter ended October 24, 2020, down 9% compared to a year earlier. GAAP net income was $2.2 billion or $0.51 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $3.2 billion or $0.76 per share. The results were ahead of market expectations.

"Our Q1 results reflect good execution with strong margins in a challenging environment," said Kelly Kramer, CFO of Cisco.  "We continued to transform our business through more software offerings and subscriptions, driving 10% year over year growth in remaining performance obligations. We delivered strong growth in operating cash flow and returned $2.3 billion to shareholders."

Highlights:

• Product revenue was down 13% and service revenue up 2%. 
• Revenue by geographic segment was: Americas down 10%, EMEA down 10%, and APJC down 7%. 
• Product revenue was led by growth in Security, up 6%.  
• Infrastructure Platforms was down 16% and Applications was down 8%.
• On a GAAP basis, total gross margin, product gross margin, and service gross margin were 63.6%, 62.7%, and 65.8%, respectively, as compared with 64.3% for each in the first quarter of fiscal 2020.

https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=2109819

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UK researchers develop all-silicon optical transmitter at 100Gbps

Researchers from the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have demonstrated the first all-silicon optical transmitter at 100Gbps and beyond without the use of digital signal processing.

The new research was advanced within Southampton’s Silicon Photonics Group as part of the £6 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Programme Grant Silicon Photonics for Future Systems. The research team, led by Professor Graham Reed within the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics, have published their findings in the Optical Society's prestigious journal Optica. 

The silicon modulator was fabricated through Southampton's CORNERSTONE research fabrication foundry service, and integrated with bespoke modulator drivers that are designed in-house and fabricated at the TSMC electronics foundry in Taiwan. Fabrication and integration work is carried out at the University of Southampton's Mountbatten cleanroom complex.

Professor Reed, Deputy Director of the ORC, says: "Our results are based upon a fully integrated electronic-photonic system, not a laboratory probed stand-alone silicon modulator. In all other work to date that does not rely on digital signal processing to recover signal integrity, integration of the electronics and photonics has resulted in an inferior system performance as compared to the performance of the individual components, resulting in a maximum data rate of approximately 56Gbps.

https://zepler.soton.ac.uk/news/6835

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Deutsche Telekom raises guidance, limited impact from pandemic

Deutsche Telekom reported Q3 revenue of 26.4 billion euros, up 2.0 percent in organic terms and up 31% when considering the acquisition of Sprint. 

On the back of the strong performance in the first nine months and a positive outlook for the rest of the year, the Group raised its guidance for the current financial year. Deutsche Telekom now expects to report adjusted EBITDA AL of at least 35 billion euros and free cash flow AL of at least 6.0 billion euros. 

“Deutsche Telekom is showing its strengths,” said CEO Tim Höttges. “We are raising our guidance thanks to strong business on both sides of the Atlantic. And we are able to do this despite feeling the effects of the pandemic in some areas.”

Highlights

• In Germany, Telekom grew much faster between July and September than in the previous quarters, with 97,000 net broadband additions. Around 15.5 million lines in Telekom’s network are now fiber-optic-based (FTTH and FTTC/vectoring), 1.6 million more than a year ago. Almost 3.8 million customers use the television service MagentaTV, with 63,000 new users in the quarter and growth of 6.9 percent year-on-year. In the third quarter, Telekom won 192,000 new branded mobile contract customers. The company recorded a slight year-on-year decline of 0.5 percent in mobile service revenues, mainly due to lower roaming and visitor revenues on account of the reduction in travel as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. Without this factor, mobile service revenues would have risen by around 2 percent.
• In the United States, DT is well on course following the merger with Sprint. In the third quarter of 2020, T-Mobile US passed the 100-million customer mark. 2.0 million net additions between July and September brought the total number of customers of the number two on the U.S. mobile market to 100.4 million. The key financials increased substantially on the back of the Sprint takeover. Revenue grew by 74.2 percent to 19.4 billion U.S. dollars. Adjusted EBITDA AL increased 119.3 percent to 7.0 billion U.S. dollars. Adjusted for the Sprint transaction, in organic terms, revenue grew by 4.0 percent and adjusted EBITDA AL by 14.6 percent. The integration of Sprint is ahead of plan. Just a few short months after the transaction was closed, 15 percent of the voice and data traffic of Sprint contract customers is already being processed on the network of the new T Mobile. The company expects to realize synergies of 1.2 billion dollars in the current year, primarily from the integration of networks and sales.
• In Europe, DT's European national companies remain on course for growth. In organic terms, adjusted EBITDA AL increased by 2.1 percent year-on-year in the third quarter to 1.1 billion euros. This means that the segment posted organic earnings growth for the eleventh quarter in a row, despite the headwind from coronavirus-induced declines in roaming revenues. Revenue remained stable at the prior-year level, rising 0.2 percent to 2.9 billion euros. The number of mobile contract customers grew by 171,000 in the quarter. Broadband net additions totaled 60,000, with the companies in Greece and Hungary being primarily responsible for this growth. Fixed-mobile convergence product bundles won 258,000 new users. The percentage of broadband households using such products passed the 50-percent mark.
• T-Systems is feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Order entry in the third quarter declined by 24.9 percent to 0.7 billion euros. Adjusted for the restructuring within the Group, revenue decreased by 11.6 percent to 1.0 billion euros. Adjusted EBITDA AL fell by 16.3 percent year-on-year to 67 million euros.

https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/third-quarter-report-2020-611952

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Deutsche Telekom will deploy Nokia 7750 Service Router for 5G

Deutsche Telekom has selected Nokia's 7750 Service Router (SR-7s) platform to significantly expand capacity across its edge/core routing network as it prepares for next-generation broadband and 5G services. 

The Nokia 7750 SR-7s routers are powered by the programmable FP4 network processing silicon. The 7750 SR-s is managed by the Nokia Network Services Platform (NSP). NSP supports 5G IP transport with automated slicing across IP and optical transport layers with end-to-end orchestration of network resource provisioning and assurance operations. 

Deployment has already started in Greece, where Nokia is replacing and modernizing the operator’s existing IP network. Rollout in Hungary is expected in Q4 2020.

Bernhard Scholl, Technology Europe VP Access Core & Transport at Deutsche Telekom, said: “Deutsche Telekom Group affiliates need to expand and modernize their IP networks to address stringent 5G IP transport requirements. We continue to see tremendous growth in network traffic and the need to deliver more throughput and higher capacity with strict QoS to our customers is critical. This is particlarly the case as bandwidth intensive applications are shifting to on demand video along with the growing usage of cloud-based services. Building out this backbone with Nokia's IP edge routers will allow us to stay ahead of our customers’ network needs.”

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Nokia touts AVA Quality of Experience at the Edge

Nokia announced the AVA QoE at the Edge service, which enables automated actions to fix customer issues instantly.

Nokia says deployment of its AVA algorithms on traditional network architectures has achieved a 59 percent reduction in Netflix buffering and 15 percent fewer YouTube sessions that suffer from long playback. 

Nokia AVA QoE at the Edge brings “code to where the data is”, deploying Machine Learning (ML) algorithms at the network edge to enable real-time automated actions. The solution also eases the data burden on CSPs, with an exponential reduction in the volume of user plane data required to feed ML models. 

Dennis Lorenzin, Head of Network Cognitive Services, Global Services, Nokia, said: “Today, many CSPs are keen to launch new low latency services to their customers. With Nokia’s AVA QoE at the Edge, we bring AI to the edge, so CSPs can deliver personalized 5G experiences and guaranteed performance.”

Nokia introduces “AI-as-a-service” for telcos

Tuesday, March 31, 2020  Nokia  

Nokia introduced a set of AI capabilities for helping service providers to automate their network with cloud scalability. This framework provides an end-to-end service view with near real-time impact correlation for better visibility and control, supported by Nokia’s extensive library of AI use cases.

The new Nokia AVA 5G Cognitive Operations offering anticipates network and service failures with a high level of precision and accuracy up to seven days in advance. If failures arise, Nokia 5G Cognitive Operations can solve them up to 50 percent faster and accurately assess the impact on customers and services. The insights provided will help support CSPs with their slice creation, with an intelligent provisioning system identifying network resources, what SLAs can be committed and where new revenue opportunities can be found. Future capability will also enable CSPs to customize slice creation, providing different SLA levels based on unique user requirements.

Nokia is currently hosting the new capabilities in Microsoft Azure but says other public and private cloud options are possible.

“Operators face a perfect storm of rising traffic and consumer expectations, so it is crucial to be able to predict and prevent service degradations at an earlier stage, while solving issues that arise significantly faster. Nokia AVA 5G Cognitive Operations enables CSPs to operate and assure latency for 5G use cases through AI, ultimately delivering an enhanced customer experience for consumers and enterprises,” states Dennis Lorenzin, Head of Network Cognitive Service unit at Nokia.

Nokia claims that CSPs trialing the service have seen a 20 percent reduction in customer complaints and a 10 percent reduction in costly site visits.

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ATIS builds its 6G alliance

ATIS added 11 Founding Members to its Next G Alliance, an initiative that will advance North American mobile technology leadership in 6G:  Apple, Charter, Cisco, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Keysight Technologies, LG Electronics, Mavenir, MITRE and VMware.

“Our Founding Members represent leading industry stakeholders driving innovation in the mobile ecosystem,” said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller. “As part of the Next G Alliance, they demonstrate their commitment to setting the course to advance North American mobile technology leadership into the future.”

The Next G Alliance holds its first meeting for Founding Members on November 16 to set the initiative’s overarching direction and strategy, to be followed shortly by formation of the Steering Group and Working Groups.

http://www.atis.org

Next G Alliance looks to 6G

Tuesday, October 13, 2020  6G  

 A new Next G Alliance, organized by ATIS, has been formed to advance North American mobile technology leadership in 6G and beyond over the next decade. 

Founding members include AT&T, Bell Canada, Ciena, Ericsson, Facebook, InterDigital, JMA Wireless, Microsoft, Nokia, Qualcomm Technologies, Samsung, TELUS, Telnyx, T-Mobile, UScellular and Verizon.  

The Next G Alliance seeks "to encompass the full lifecycle of research and development, manufacturing, standardization and market readiness." 

The group says it will initially focus on three strategic actions:

• Develop a 6G national roadmap that addresses the changing competitive landscape and positions North America as the global leader in R&D, standardization, manufacturing and adoption of Next G technologies.
• Align the North American technology industry on a core set of priorities that will steer leadership for 6G and beyond to influence government policies and funding.
• Identify and define the early steps and strategies that will facilitate and lead to rapid commercialization of Next G technologies across new markets and business sectors and promote widescale adoption, both domestically and globally.

“As countries around the globe progress ambitious 6G research and development initiatives, it is critical that North American industry steps forward to develop a collaborative roadmap to advance its position as a global leader over the next decade,” said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller. “The work of the Next G Alliance delivers just that – from research to commercialization – and it is setting the foundation for a vibrant marketplace for North American innovation in future generations of mobile technology.”

https://nextgalliance.org

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ADTRAN partners with National Cable Television Cooperative

ADTRAN announced a new agreement with the National Cable Television Cooperative, which represents more than 700 cable and broadband operators in all 50 states.

The arrangement provides NCTC members with access to ADTRAN’sbroadband access portfolio, including its Total Access 5000 (TA5000) fiber access platform, 10G PON and 10G EPON solutions, Mosaic Subscriber Suite and smart home solutions, as well as full professional and support services. 

Over 200 NCTC members, including Comporium, Consolidated Communications, Lumos, Vast Broadband and Vexus Fiber, already have deployments underway leveraging ADTRAN’s access solutions and Mosaic Subscriber Suite of innovative software applications and services.

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