American Tower completes $10B acquisition of CoreSite

American Tower completed its previously announced acquisition of CoreSite Realty Corporation. 

Tom Bartlett, American Tower’s Chief Executive Officer stated, “We are thrilled to welcome CoreSite’s exceptional team to American Tower and are ready to work together to create long-term shareholder value. As 5G deployments and wireless and wireline convergence accelerate, we expect to leverage CoreSite’s highly interconnected data center facilities and critical cloud on-ramps to drive strong, consistent, recurring growth while enhancing the value of our existing tower real estate through emerging edge compute opportunities.”

American Tower to buy CoreSite for $10B

Monday, November 15, 2021  American Tower, Data Center, Mergers And Acquisitions  

American Tower agreed to acquire CoreSite for $170.00 per share in cash, an enterprise value of $10.1 billion when including the assumption and/or repayment of CoreSite’s existing debt.

CoreSite, which as of Q3 2021 consisted of 25 data centers, 21 cloud on-ramps and over 32,000 interconnections in eight major U.S. markets, generated annualized revenue and Adjusted EBITDA of $655 million and $343 million, respectively, in Q3 2021. CoreSite has averaged double-digit annual revenue growth over the past five years.

American Tower said it expects to leverage its strong financial position to further accelerate CoreSite’s attractive development pipeline in the U.S., while also evaluating the potential for international expansion in the data center space. The acquisition is also expected to be transformative for American Tower’s mobile edge compute business in advance of the proliferation of 5G low-latency applications throughout the cloud, enterprise and network ecosystems, establishing a converged communications and computing infrastructure offering with distributed points of presence across multiple edge layers. 

American Tower intends to finance the transaction in a manner consistent with maintaining its investment grade credit rating and has obtained committed financing from J.P. Morgan. 

https://investors.coresite.com

https://americantower.com/investor-relations/investor-presentations/

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Intel completes sale of its NAND and SSD business to SK hynix

Intel completed the first closing of the sale of its NAND and SSD business, selling its SSD business (including the transfer of certain NAND SSD-associated intellectual properties (IP) and employees) and the Dalian NAND memory manufacturing facility in China to Seoul-based SK hynix. In exchange, SK hynix will pay Intel US$7 billion in consideration. 

The deal was first announced October 19, 2020.

Intel said it plans to continue to manufacture NAND wafers at SK hynix’s Dalian memory manufacturing facility and retain certain IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers until the final closing of the transaction, which is expected in March 2025, when SK hynix will acquire from Intel the remaining NAND business assets, including certain IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers, R&D employees and the Dalian fab workforce, for US$2 billion.

The SSD business will transition to a newly formed company called Solidigm, a subsidiary of SK hynix. The company will be based in San Jose, California. It will be headed by Rob Crooke as CEO. Crooke was previously senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. Lee Seok-hee, president and co-CEO of SK hynix, will be appointed executive chairman of Solidigm and will lead the post-merger integration processes after the first closing. 

Solidigm said its name reflects a new paradigm in solid-state storage. 

https://www.solidigmtechnology.com

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MACOM sells its equity in Ampere for $127.7M

MACOM has sold its equity interest in Ampere Computingto Denver Acquisition Corp., an affiliate of one of Ampere’s other limited liability company members, for $127.7 million in cash.

Ampere was established in 2017 when MACOM divested its ARM-based compute processor business of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation. In consideration for the divestiture, MACOM received a minority equity interest in Ampere with limited rights. The purchaser exercised its right to purchase all of MACOM’s equity in Ampere for a value that was determined in 2017 at the time Ampere was established.

MACOM to Acquire AppliedMicro for $770 Million

Tuesday, November 22, 2016  AppliedMicro, MACOM  

MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings agreed to acquire Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AppliedMicro") for approximately $8.36 per share, consisting of $3.25 in cash and 0.1089 MACOM shares per share of AppliedMicro. The deal, which represents a 15.4% premium over AppliedMicro's closing price of $7.25 on November 18th, is valued at approximately $770 million. MACOM plans to divest AppliedMicro's non-strategic Compute business within the first 100 days of closing. The company said it is already talking to interested parties.

MACOM said the deal will accelerate its growth in optical technologies for Cloud Service Providers and Enterprise Network customers.

AppliedMicro, which supplies semiconductors for compute and computing in data centers, has approximately $165 million in TTM revenue (including the Compute business) and $82 million of cash and short-term investments. AppliedMicro's leadership PAM4 solutions based on FinFET technology and custom engagements with top-tier Data Center and service provider customers is expected to strengthen MACOM's competitive position with those customers

MACOM and AppliedMicro's pro forma combined TTM revenue was approximately $709 million including AppliedMicro's Compute business, or approximately $644 million excluding the Compute business
AppliedMicro's Connectivity business is highly complementary to MACOM's product portfolio, through the addition of market-leading OTN framers, MACsec Ethernet networking components and the industry's leading single-lambda PAM4 platform

Commenting on the transaction, John Croteau, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "This transaction will accelerate and expand MACOM's breakout opportunity in Enterprise and Cloud Data Centers. MACOM will now be able to provide all the requisite semiconductor content for optical networks - analog, photonic and PHY - from the switch to fiber for long haul, metro, access, backhaul and Data Center. AppliedMicro's 100G to 400G single-lambda PAM4 platform should perfectly complement MACOM's leadership in analog and photonic components for Data Centers.

"Notably, the IEEE recently recommended the adoption of AppliedMicro's single lambda PAM4 solution to be an industry standard for enterprise and Data Center connectivity, positioning this technology as the solution of choice going forward. Additionally, AppliedMicro's Connectivity business aligns well with MACOM's differentiated, high-growth business model, offering non-GAAP gross margins well in excess of MACOM's long term target operating model, long product life cycles, and sticky customer relationships."

"This is an exciting day for AppliedMicro, and we are pleased to be joining forces with MACOM. The transaction affirms the value that our employees have created and provides a strong path forward for our Connectivity business while delivering AppliedMicro stockholders a robust premium," said Paramesh Gopi, President and CEO, AppliedMicro. "This transaction will create an industry powerhouse with the scale, deep customer relationships, innovative technology, and enabling products that will help deliver explosive growth in Enterprise and Cloud Data Centers. In addition, this agreement provides a promising path forward for the Compute business, which is in the process of bringing AppliedMicro's highly-competitive third-generation X-Gene processor to market. X-Gene is well-positioned to address the large opportunity for mainstream server processors with its proven high performance cores, scalable interconnect and high per socket memory capabilities."

http://ir.macom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1000507

• M/A-COM Technology Solutions acquired Mindspeed in 2013 for $270 million.
• M/A-COM acquired Bin Optics in 2014 for $230 million for its Indium Phosphide laser technology.

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FCC prevails in court case involving 6 GHz Wi-Fi

The D.C. Circuit Court unanimously upheld the FCC’s decision to free up the 6 GHz band for next-generation Wi-Fi.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel:  “Today’s decision is an important step in clearing the way for next generation Wi-Fi access at a time when it is needed most.  In this pandemic so much of modern life has migrated online.  6 GHz Wi-Fi will help us address this challenge by offering more access in more places, faster speeds, and better performance from our Wi-Fi networks.  It will also help us in our mission to connect everyone, everywhere.  That’s good for consumers, for broadband deployment, and for the nation’s wireless economy.  

“I want to thank the outstanding professionals in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel for their strong defense of the FCC’s work in this proceeding, as well as the Office of Engineering and Technology and the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau for their careful and expert work in addressing the complex technical issues presented in the record.  It is encouraging to read the Court’s strong approval of this work and we look forward to addressing on remand the narrow issue that the court identified.”

http://www.fcc.gov

FCC opens 6 GHz Band to Wi-Fi

Thursday, April 23, 2020  Wi-Fi 6  

The FCC voted to open 1,200 megahertz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band (5.925–7.125 GHz) available for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed uses.  The 6 GHz band is currently populated by, among others, microwave services that are used to support utilities, public safety, and wireless backhaul.  Unlicensed devices will share this spectrum with incumbent licensed services under rules crafted to protect those licensed services and enable both unlicensed and licensed operations to thrive throughout the band.

The new rules authorize indoor low-power operations over the full 1,200 megahertz and standard-power devices in 850 megahertz in the 6 GHz band.  An automated frequency coordination system will prevent standard power access points from operating where they could cause interference to incumbent services. 

The FCC expects its new rules to accelerate the adoption of Wi-Fi 6 and play a major role in the growth of the Internet of Things.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai states: "Ultimately, I expect that 6 GHz unlicensed devices will become a part of consumers’ everyday lives.  And I predict the rules we adopt today will play a major role in the growth of the Internet of Things, connecting appliances, machines, meters, wearables, smart televisions, and other consumer electronics, as well as industrial sensors for manufacturing.  At the same time, our approach will ensure that incumbents in the 6 GHz band are protected from harmful interference.  The microwave services that already use this band are critical to the operations of utilities, public safety, and wireless backhaul operations.  And we are ensuring that those incumbents are protected by requiring the use of automated frequency coordination systems, which will only allow new standard-power operations in areas that will not cause interference to incumbent services, and by placing conservative power limits on low-power indoor operations."

“By making 6 GHz available for unlicensed use, the FCC has secured the future of Wi-Fi. 6 GHz access is a seminal development for connectivity and provides Wi-Fi more capacity to deliver groundbreaking use cases and to unlock novel new Wi-Fi applications,” said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO, Wi-Fi Alliance. “Today’s global climate highlights how important Wi-Fi is in connectivity and productivity, and new Wi-Fi 6E solutions will further increase Wi-Fi’s standing.”

FCC authorizes first Wi-Fi device for 6 GHz spectrum band

Monday, December 07, 2020  FCC, Wi-Fi 6  

The FCC authorized the first Wi-Fi device for use in the 6 GHz spectrum band (5.925–7.125 GHz).  Specifically, the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology authorized Broadcom’s application for the first 6 GHz transmitter.  In April, the Commission adopted new rules to expand unlicensed operations in the 6 GHz band, ushering in Wi-Fi 6—the next generation of Wi-Fi—and boosting the growth of the Internet of Things.  FCC...

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China Mobile exits Canada

 China Mobile will cease operations in Canada effective January 5, 2022.

The decision follows an order from the Canadian federal government to CMLink, China Mobile's local subsidiary, to cease operations due to national security concerns. The order reportedly was issued in August.

https://www.cmlink.com/ca/zh/

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Cinia and Far North Digital plan subsea cable across Arctic

Finland-based Cinia announced a joint effor with Far North Digital, a start-up based in Anchorage, to build a fiber optic cable system linking Europe and Asia through the Arctic. 

Alcatel Submarine Networks will take the lead on project design and installation.

The planned, 14,000km cable system will run from Japan, via the Northwest Passage, to Europe with landings in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic. European landings are planned in Norway, Finland and Ireland. The cost estimate for project is approximately 1 billion euros (US$1.15 billion). Alcatel Submarine Networks has been chosen as the lead EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) partner for the project. The targeted Ready for Service date is by the end of 2025.

“There is an increasing demand for secure and fast international connectivity with new diverse routes. Spanning three of the world’s largest internet adopting continents the Far North Fiber will be a true global venture”, says Ari-Jussi Knaapila CEO of Cinia.

"This cable system is more than a way to speed and improve the security of telecommunications between nations, it is a bridge over the digital divide, providing Northern communities with better opportunities for sustainable self-determination through economic development, enhanced educational options, and improved access to healthcare. Furthermore, it will serve as a platform that offers science an unparalleled ability to conduct research into climate change”, says Guy Houser, Chief Technical Officer of Far North Digital.

"The Arctic connection between Japan and northern Europe has long been a shared passion of Japan and Cinia, as the diversity of international connections is vital to Japan. Prime Minister Kishida has announced a new digital vision including a plan to build new landing points around the island country. My long-term plan about Hokkaido being a natural gateway to North and East is becoming reality. I’m very excited to be part of the Far North Fiber initiative”, says Jun Murai, Professor at Keio University and Special Adviser to the Japanese Cabinet.

https://www.cinia.fi/en/news/cinia-and-far-north-digital-sign-mou-for-pan-arctic-fiber-cable?hsLang=en

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Singtel hits 5.4Gbps downstream on 5G with Ericsson

 Singtel achieved a top downstream rate of 5.5 Gbps using 5G standalone (SA) New Radio-Dual Connectivity (NR-DC), aggregating mid-band spectrum 3.5GHz and 28GHz mmWave spectrum. This milestone was achieved in a demo with Ericsson’s 5G radio access network products and solutions and cloud-native dual-mode 5G Core network solutions, as well as a test device from Qualcomm Technologies powered by its Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System. Ericsson has been a network supplier for Singtel for 30 years.

Mark Chong, Singtel’s Group Chief Technology Officer, said, “This 5G breakthrough demonstrates our commitment to continually innovate and maximise the potential of what this developing technology can deliver. The increased speeds will help pave the way for many new applications as we look to drive transformative benefits for consumers and businesses.”

Martin Wiktorin, Head of Ericsson Singapore, Brunei and Philippines, said: “At Ericsson, we have already deployed over 100 live 5G networks worldwide, building a strategy around multi-layer networks from low, mid-band to high-band 5G. In Singapore, we are constantly driving technology innovations together with Singtel. As 5G front runners, we strive to expand the potential of limitless connectivity, and further enhance digital transformation to benefit industries, consumers and societies.”

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Samsung's new enterprise PCIe 5.0 SSD reads at up to 13,000 MB/sec

Samsung Electronics introduced its next-gen, enterprise SSDs integrating the PCIe 5.0 interface with its own sixth-generation V-NAND.

Samsung said its new PM1743 will feature a sequential read speed of up to 13,000 megabytes per second (MB/s) and a random read speed of 2,500K input/output operations per second (IOPS), offering 1.9x and 1.7x faster speeds over the previous PCIe 4.0-based products. Moreover, write speeds have been elevated significantly, with a sequential write speed of 6,600 MB/s and a random write speed of 250K IOPS, also delivering 1.7x and 1.9x faster speeds, respectively.  In addition, the new SSD can provide improved power efficiency of up to 608 MB/s per watt, which represents about a 30% boost over the previous generation. 

Samsung will offer a variety of capacities from 1.92 terabytes (TB) to 15.36TB in the conventional 2.5-inch form factor, as well as in a 3-inch EDSFF (E3.S) — an increasingly popular SSD form factor designed specifically for next-generation enterprise servers and data centers. 

Samsung also projects that customers deploying 7.5mm EDSFF SSDs will be able to double the storage density in their systems, compared to when the 15mm 2.5-inch form factor is used.

The new SSDs are also expected to be the industry's first PCIe 5.0 SSD with dual-port support.

"For over a decade, Samsung has been delivering SATA, SAS and PCIe-based SSDs that have been recognized for outstanding performance and reliability by leading enterprise server customers including corporations, governments and financial institutions," said Yong Ho Song, Executive Vice President and Head of the Memory Controller Development Team at Samsung Electronics. "The introduction of our PCIe 5.0 SSD, along with PCIe 6.0-based product developments that are underway, will further solidify our technological leadership in the enterprise server market."

"Intel has been working with Samsung to test Samsung's newest PCIe NVMe SSD, the PM1743. Together, we have jointly resolved complicated technical issues encountered with PCIe 5.0 during this initial evaluation period. The performance potential of Gen5 is truly impressive. In the near future, we strongly believe that PCIe Gen5 systems with high-speed NVMe SSDs will have the ability to transform applications such as AI/ML and high-performance databases," said Jim Pappas, Director, Technology Initiatives, Intel Corporation. "Looking ahead, we are confident that Intel and Samsung's continued commitment in industry leadership will provide these and other benefits to our mutual customers."

Mass production is expected in Q1 2022.

https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-develops-high-performance-pcie-5-ssd-enterprise-servers/

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Juniper picks Synopsys for developing photonics-enabled chips

Synopsys is supplying its OptoCompiler platform, including the OptSim and PrimeSim HSPICE simulation solutions, to Juniper Networks to accelerate the development of photonic-enabled chips for the next generation of optical communications.

Juniper plans to use Synopsys solutions to design and optimize its hybrid silicon and InP optical platform.

"Synopsys offers a unique, unified photonic and electronic design suite, which accelerates customer design cycles and time-to-market," said Tom Mader, head of Silicon Photonics at Juniper Networks. "This will enable Juniper silicon photonics to bring our revolutionary hybrid integrated laser platform to a broad array of customers in several photonic market segments, with the potential to lower cost and eliminate product barriers to entry."

Synopsys says its OptSim solution brings together photonic system and circuit simulation capabilities and provides electro-optical (E/O) co-simulation with the Synopsys PrimeSim HSPICE Simulator, the industry's 'gold standard' for accurate circuit simulation and the cornerstone of the Synopsys PrimeSim Continuum Solution. It also integrates seamlessly with the Synopsys PrimeWave design environment, the simulation and analysis environment of the OptoCompiler platform. The OptSim solution comes with an extensive photonic model library and is enabled for a wide variety of photonic IC foundries.

"Demand for higher bandwidth in intra-data center communications is driving companies like Juniper to deploy silicon photonic solutions to achieve the next level in performance," said Aveek Sarkar, VP of Customer Success for Analog Mixed-Signal/Custom & Photonics at Synopsys. "Synopsys is a pioneering solution provider in delivering robust solutions for electrical/optical co-design and co-simulation to enable next-generation photonic chips."

http://www.synopsys.com

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AWS hit by loss of power within a data center in US-EAST-1 Region

 At 4:35 AM PST on December 22, Amazon Web Services reported increased EC2 launch failures and networking connectivity issues for some instances in its US-EAST-1 Region. Shortly after, AWS confirmed a loss of power within a single data center within a single Availability Zone (USE1-AZ4) in its US-EAST-1 Region. 

The outage impacted availability and connectivity to EC2 instances that are part of the affected data center within the affected Availability Zone. AWS also reported elevated RunInstance API error rates for launches within the affected Availability Zone. 

By 5:39 AM PST, AWS restored power to all instances and network devices within the affected data center. Network connectivity within the affected Availability Zone returned to normal levels.

As of 9:28 AM PST, AWS was still working to restore connectivity issues between some remaining EC2 instances and EBS volumes in the affected data center. AWS also noted increased error rates for some customers using Directory Services AD Connector or Managed AD with Amazon SSO in US-EAST-1 Region.

https://status.aws.amazon.com/

AWS attributes outage to surge from automated scaling of internal network

Sunday, December 12, 2021  AWS, Outage  

At 7:30 AM PST on December 7th, 2021, an automated activity at AWS Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region that is used to scale capacity of services hosted in the main AWS network triggered an unexpected behavior from a large number of clients inside the internal network. The unexpected behavior resulted in a large surge of connection activity that overwhelmed the networking devices between the internal network and the main AWS network, resulting in...

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AWS hit by outage in US-EAST-1 region

Tuesday, December 07, 2021  AWS, Outage  

Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced an outage started on Dec 7, 2021 at approximately 15:40 UTC impacting various regions worldwide.The AWS status page reported API and console issues in the US-EAST-1 Region, which is used to host the AWS global console landing page. The trouble included elevated error rates for EC2 APIs in the US-EAST-1 region. At 12:34 EST, the company said the root cause was "impairment of several network devices," confirmed...

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Tower Semi and Juniper develop silicon photonics process

Tower Semiconductor and Juniper Networks announced a silicon photonics (SiPho) foundry-ready process with integrated III-V lasers, amplifiers modulators and detectors. 

Potential applications include optical connectivity in datacenters and telecom networks, as well as AI, LiDAR and other sensors. 

The new platform co-integrates III-V lasers, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA), electro-absorption modulators (EAM) and photodetectors with silicon photonics devices, all monolithically on a single chip. This enables smaller, higher-channel count and more power-efficient optical architectures and solutions. Foundry availability will enable a broad array of product developers to create highly integrated photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for diverse markets.   

Process design kits (PDK) are expected to be available by year end and the first open multi-project wafer (MPW) run are expected to be offered early next year. First samples of full 400Gb/s and 800Gb/s PICs reference designs with integrated laser are expected to be available in the second quarter of 2022. 

“Our mutual development work with Tower has been extraordinarily successful in qualifying this innovative silicon photonics technology in a high-volume manufacturing facility,” said Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks. “By offering this capability to the entire industry, Juniper offers the potential to radically reduce the cost of optics while lowering the barrier to entry for customers”. 

“Our partnership with Juniper on silicon photonics is bringing a paradigm shift for product development across our industry,” said Russell Ellwanger, CEO of Tower Semiconductor. “It is now possible to mix the advantages of III-V semiconductors with high-volume silicon photonics manufacturing. Being the singular open market, integrated laser silicon photonics platform, and having a multi-year advantage over any potential foundry competitor, we are jointly creating breakthrough products with truly unique value for our industry and for society as a whole”. 

https://towersemi.com/2021/12/21/12212021/

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Pacific Light subsea cable gets U.S. green light

Google and Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook) reached an agreement with Team Telecom (U.S. Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security) on how to protect data on the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) system, an undersea fiber optic cable system that will connect the United States, Taiwan and the Philippines. 

“These agreements enable Google and Meta to take advantage of critical, additional cable capacity while protecting U.S. persons’ privacy and security through terms that reflect the current threat environment,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, who leads Team Telecom’s work for the Justice Department. “This resolution also demonstrates Team Telecom’s ability to resolve complex cases involving critical infrastructure in a timely matter, thanks to recent reforms of our structure and process.”

Under the National Security Agreements, Google and Meta (and their subsidiaries) have agreed to (among other terms):

• Conduct annual assessments of risk to sensitive data that transits the PLCN cable system, including when the data exits the cable;
• Pursue diversification of interconnection points in Asia, including but not limited to Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam; and
• Restrict access to information and infrastructure by Pacific Light Data Communications Co. Ltd (PLDC), the Hong Kong-based owner of PLCN that withdrew its application for an FCC license.

In June 2020, the committee publicly recommended that the FCC partially deny a previous application for PLCN with respect to PLCN’s proposed connections to Hong Kong and to the portions of the PLCN owned by PLDC. Shortly after that recommendation, the applicants withdrew the original PLCN application. Google’s and Meta’s subsidiaries then filed a new FCC application removing Hong Kong and seeking to operate only the United States, Taiwan and Philippines portions of PLCN. 

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/team-telecom-recommends-fcc-grant-google-and-meta-licenses-undersea-cable

Google gains partial clearance for Pacific Light subsea cable

Thursday, April 09, 2020  Google, Submarine, Subsea  

Google was granted clearance by the FCC to operate the segment of the Pacific Light Cable Network System connecting the United States to Taiwan for the next six months, pending a final disposition of the license application. The temporary authorization does not authorize any commercial traffic on the subsea cable segments to/from the Philippines or Hong Kong.

The U.S. Department of Justice, along with the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, advised the FCC that those agencies do not oppose Google's request carry traffic over the cable between the U.S. and Taiwan.

In its application for Special Temporary Authority, Google emphasized “an immediate need to meet internal demand for capacity between the U.S. and Taiwan” and that without the sought temporary authority Google would likely have to seek alternative capacity at “significantly higher prices.”

Under the terms of the Provisional National Security Agreement, Google has agreed to a range of operational requirements, notice obligations, access and security guarantees, as well as auditing and reporting duties, among others. The Provisional National Security Agreement also includes a commitment by Google to “pursue diversification of interconnection points in Asia,” as well as to establish network facilities that deliver traffic “as close as practicable” to its ultimate destination.  This term reflects the views of the Executive Branch that a direct cable connection between the United States and Hong Kong would pose an unacceptable risk to the national security and law enforcement interests of the United States.

https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/reports/related_filing.hts?f_key=2252704&f_number=SCLSTA2020040200015

Google and Facebook Team Up for Pacific Light Cable Network

Wednesday, October 12, 2016  Facebook, Google, Submarine Cable, Undersea  

Facebook and Google are teaming up to build the highest capacity, trans-Pacific cable system to date.

The Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), which will stretch 12,800 km between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, will have an estimated cable capacity of 120 Tbps.  The cable is expected to enter service in the summer of 2018. The project is organized by Pacific Light Data Communication Co. Ltd., a new company based in Hong Kong.

TE SubCom has been appointed lead contractor. The cable will use TE SubCom’s C+L technology, a major step forward in available cable transmission capacity that effectively doubles the available bandwidth and capacity per fiber pair over a traditional C-band-only designed system.

Google noted that it has now taken an ownership stake in six submarine cables: PLCN, Unity, SJC, FASTER, MONET and Tannat.

Facebook backs Bifrost cable from U.S. to Southeast Asia

Monday, March 29, 2021  ASN, Facebook, Indonesia, Subsea  

In addition to its participation in the Echo subsea cable from the U.S. to Singapore, Facebook confirmed its investment in the Bifrost Cable System from the U.S. to South East Asia.The Bifrost Cable System will span over 15,000 km, connecting Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Guam and the west coast of North America. The cable is expected to be completed in 2024.The project is also backed by Keppel Telecommunications & Transportation Limited...

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Facebook and Google collaborate on U.S.-Guam-Singapore cable

Monday, March 29, 2021  Facebook, Google, Singapore, Subsea  

Facebook and Google are lead investors in a new subsea cable from Eureka, California to Singapore, with a stop-over in Guam.

The Echo subsea cable will be the first to directly connect the U.S. to Singapore with direct fiber pairs over an express route. The cable is expected to have landings in Indonesia and possibly other locations. 

In a blog posting, Google said Echo's unique route to Southeast Asia will avoid the crowded, traditional paths to the north. The cable is expected to be ready for service in 2023.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/introducing-the-echo-subsea-cable

https://engineering.fb.com/2021/03/28/connectivity/echo-bifrost/

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Fastweb carries 600 Gbps wavelength across 1,372km with Infinera

Fastweb, one of the main telecom providers in Italy, completed a single-wavelength service connectivity speed trial of 600 Gb/s across its network, including the Milan-Bari optical route spanning 1,372 kilometers. The trial used Infinera’s fifth-generation ICE6 800G technology on the GX Series Compact Modular Platform. 

Infinera said its ICE6 solution enabled Fastweb to increase network capacity by up to two times. The ICE6 solution features probabilistic constellation shaping and digital Nyquist subcarrier technology with dual-carrier super-channels, enabling successful transmission of 1.2 Tb/s signals on the Milan-Bari route. The combination of these technologies improves Fastweb’s spectral efficiency and boosts existing capacity on its current Infinera flexible-grid backbone network.

Fastweb has now selected Infinera’s ICE6 solution to enhance its backbone network and is poised to launch new 400 Gigabit Ethernet services across its existing infrastructure. 

“Sustaining the digital transformation efforts of enterprises and meeting our customers’ need is our primary objective,” said Marco Arioli, Technology Officer, Fastweb. “We are constantly looking to improve our infrastructure to ensure we can always provide our customers with the highest bandwidth and best-quality services they need to be successful. ICE6 is a significant step forward for us, substantially increasing the capacity of our network with a smooth upgrade path and enabling us to keep up with the relentless demand for increased capacity of unpredictable bandwidth-hungry events.”

“Infinera’s ICE6 solution enables network operators to meet the demands of rapid bandwidth growth by providing the greatest capacity at the greatest reach, resulting in the most cost-effective and spectrally efficient solution,” said Nick Walden, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Infinera. “We are pleased to continue to support Fastweb’s upgrade of its network infrastructure to meet today’s growing bandwidth demands.”

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NVIDIA's BlueFiled DPU claims performance record: 41.5 million IOPS

NVIDIA is reporting a new performance benchmark for DPUs:  two BlueField-2 data processing units reached 41.5 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) — more than 4x more IOPS than any other DPU.

The BlueField-2 DPU delivered record-breaking performance using standard networking protocols and open-source software. It reached more than 5 million 4KB IOPS and from 7 million to over 20 million 512B IOPS for NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), a common method of accessing storage media, with TCP networking, one of the primary internet protocols.

To accelerate AI, big data and high performance computing applications, BlueField provides even higher storage performance using the popular RoCE network transport option.

In testing, BlueField supercharged performance as both an initiator and target, using different types of storage software libraries and different workloads to simulate real-world storage configurations. BlueField also supports fast storage connectivity over InfiniBand, the preferred networking architecture for many HPC and AI applications.

Testing Methodology

The 41.5 million IOPS reached by BlueField is more than 4x the previous world record of 10 million IOPS, set using proprietary storage offerings. This performance was achieved by connecting two fast Hewlett Packard Enterprise Proliant DL380 Gen 10 Plus servers, one as the application server (storage initiator) and one as the storage system (storage target).

Each server had two Intel “Ice Lake” Xeon Platinum 8380 CPUs clocked at 2.3GHz, giving 160 hyperthreaded cores per server, along with 512GB of DRAM, 120MB of L3 cache (60MB per socket) and a PCIe Gen4 bus.

To accelerate networking and NVMe-oF, each server was configured with two NVIDIA BlueField-2 P-series DPU cards, each with two 100Gb Ethernet network ports, resulting in four network ports and 400Gb/s wire bandwidth between initiator and target, connected back-to-back using NVIDIA LinkX 100GbE Direct-Attach Copper (DAC) passive cables. Both servers had Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 8.3.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/12/21/bluefield-dpu-world-record-performance/

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Rockley Photonics cancels sale of datacom assets to Chinese JV

Rockley Photonics announced its intention not to proceed, under current circumstances, with its data-communications-related technical sale to Hengtong Rockley Technology Co. Ltd., its joint venture with Jiangsu Hengtong Optic-Electric Co..

The announcement follows last week's decision by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to add Jiangsu Hengtong Optic-Electric to its Entity List because of national security and human rights concerns.

“Rockley’s primary focus has been and continues to be on the development and commercialization of our sensing platform in the health monitoring space. We continue to make outstanding progress in this arena, as outlined in our recent customer and technology announcements, and our outlook for this business continues to show momentum,” said Andrew Rickman, founder and chief executive officer of Rockley. “The technical sale to the JV was intended as an efficient way to monetize Rockley’s innovative data communications technology without distracting from our primary focus on our health and wellness solutions.”

Dr. Rickman went on to say, “We continue to fully comply with the regulations and have decided not to proceed with our technical sale to the JV under the current circumstances. The BIS action will require us to adjust our strategy for monetizing our communications technology. While we are disappointed in the near-term impact on our company, we believe that this decision will be a net positive for Rockley and will not affect the long-term outlook for our business because these solutions were not core to our future growth prospects. We will continue to focus our resources on bringing solutions to the health and wellness market to satisfy the significant consumer and medtech demand we have reported. We are evaluating options to monetize our ultra-high-speed fiber optic communication solutions, which we believe could have a net positive impact on our cash.”

http://www.rockleyphotonics.com

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Smart Way Comm. to deploy Tarana's gigabit fixed wireless in Ohio

Smart Way Communications and Tarana announced today their joint plan for the first deployment of Tarana’s unique Gigabit 1 (G1) next-generation fixed wireless platform in Ohio. 

The first phase of installation, which is set to occur over the next 9 weeks, will serve the Dover and New Philadelphia area of Ohio’s Tuscarawas County, covering 12,000 households in 12 square miles.

Smart Way will leverage a combination of currently-owned and newly-acquired vertical asset rights, providing a solid foundation for establishing broad G1 coverage in neighborhoods that to date have been served by a single cable operator. 

Smart Way’s general manager, Ryan Grewell, said: “G1 is completely changing how we pursue markets. As a fixed wireless access provider we’ve always had limited success deploying in busier towns due to existing cable offerings and interference. Folks expect 100 Mbps plans, but with the busy 5 GHz spectrum in town, our prior Wi-Fi-based gear just wasn’t letting us offer them. We are excited about the ability to offer up to 200 Mbps service on very attractive terms. I know we couldn’t do this without Tarana, and I’m really looking forward to going to town with this technology.”

Tarana’s CEO, Basil Alwan, added: “We are delighted by how quickly the experienced team at Smart Way embraced G1’s unique capabilities, and we’re equally excited about supporting their move from the sidelines of the broadband game out onto the main field of competition. Ohio’s subscribers will certainly reap substantial benefits from Smart Way’s deployment without having to wait years for intrusive network upgrades.”

https://www.taranawireless.com

Tarana supplies fixed wireless for Rural Telecommunications of America

Monday, October 04, 2021  Fixed Wireless, Tarana  

Tarana Wireless, a start-up based in Milpitas, California, confirmed that it will supply its fixed wireless access solutions to Rural Telecommunications of America (RTA).RTA successfully completed testing and will begin deploying Tarana equipment to its gigFAST NETWORK service areas across 21 states of operation in October 2021. RTA validated claims by Tarana’s engineering teams responsible for its G1 platform. RTA found that in many cases G1 delivers...

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Tarana raises $88M for fixed wireless in unlicensed spectrum

Thursday, May 13, 2021  Silicon Valley, Start-Ups, Tarana  

Tarana Wireless, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, raised $88 million in new funding for its fixed wireless solution for suburban broadband.Tarana claims its fixed wireless access technology, which uses unlicensed spectrum, will drive a tenfold improvement in the network economics of gigabit broadband access. The company developed its own silicon for advanced interference cancellation.  The funding round includes a $60 million...

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NEC highlights its Massive MIMO in O-RAN plugfest

NEC demonstrated its Open RAN massive MIMO capabilities for the O-RAN ALLIANCE Global PlugFest 2021  at five of its venues, hosted by leading operators and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP). 

NEC said its massive MIMO open Radio Units have been successfully integrated with more O-CU, O-DU from Open RAN software vendors than any other supplier.

NEC and its subsidiary Netcracker participated in multiple PlugFest venues across the globe this year, demonstrating their commercially proven, Open RAN 5G massive MIMO radio units (O-RU), Open RAN Domain Orchestration solution (O-RAN SMO) and RAN software. 

The companies participated in the following PlugFest venues: 

Menlo Park, USA

This venue was hosted at the TIP Community Lab in Menlo Park (sponsored by Meta). NEC deployed its O-RU with Mavenir's O-CU/DU for multi-vendor interoperability. 

Torino, Italy 

Netcracker deployed its Open RAN Domain Orchestration solution, aligned with the O-RAN Service Management and Orchestration environment, at the Joint European O-RAN & TIP PlugFest venue hosted by European OTIC in TIM Innovation Lab - Torino. 5G RAN slice provisioning was validated using CU/DUs from Radisys based on the O1 interface. 

Tokyo, Japan

Hosted by NTT DOCOMO, the operator and NEC succeeded in interoperability testing for 5G standalone (SA) built on 5G CU/DU and multi-vendor radio units (RUs). DOCOMO and NEC demonstrated the capability to migrate from a commercial 5G NSA into 5G SA through a software upgrade, using the same 5G CU/DU hardware. 

NEC also deployed its O-RUs in a lab hosted by Rakuten Mobile and successfully completed verification of open fronthaul interfaces and 

3GPP RF conformance using Keysight Technologies' test solution.

Seoul, South Korea

NEC contributed to the PlugFest venue hosted by LG UPlus in its 5G Innovation Lab in the LG Science Park, Seoul. NEC deployed O-RU in LG UPlus's lab with O-CU/DU from Altiostar, a Rakuten Symphony company, fronthaul gateway from DZS and Intel processors and FlexRAN reference software. 'E2E Open RAN on 5G standalone mode' was demonstrated using Keysight Technologies' test solution.

"Multi-vendor, high performance Open RAN is crucial to demonstrate market maturity. In 2021, the industry demonstrated great progress, and we are proud to have the first and only massive MIMO O-RAN product, making NEC the world's leader. We will continue working closely with customers and market-leading partners to deliver a vibrant ecosystem of open, high quality and high performance networks," states Patrick Lopez, Global VP of Product Management for 5G Products, NEC.

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