Orange backs Digicel’s Deep Blue One Caribbean cable

Orange announced a financial investment to extend Digicel’s forthcoming Deep Blue One submarine network from Trinidad to French Guiana. 

Deep Blue 1 cable commissioning is planned to begin mid-2023, and is expected to be completed in early 2024. 

The 2,000 km cable installation for Deep Blue One has five branching units, plus the capability to provide connectivity for offshore rigs, with anywhere from two to eight fibre pairs in each segment, offering a minimum of 12 Tbps capacity per fibre pair. The French Guiana leg to Trinidad is 1,600 km long. 

In addition, Orange will act as landing party in Cayenne for the French Guiana branch and will operate the Cable landing station on behalf of Digicel while its subsidiary Orange Marine, will be in charge of laying the cable. 

Orange notes that Deep Blue One will complement its existing, fully-owned 1746 km long “Kanawa” cable, which was commissioned early 2019 as well as Orange’s existing networks based on Americas-2, ECFS, CBUS. 

Digicel says this extension of Deep Blue One will complement its existing Southern Caribbean Fiber network, which has approximately 3,000 km of submarine cable connecting 20 islands in the Eastern Caribbean.

Read More

FS teams with Source Photonics on 800G pluggable transceivers

FS.COM, a high-speed communication solution provider for data centers, enterprises, and telecom networks, has formed a strategic cooperation with Source Photonics for 800G pluggable transceivers — 2x400G-FR4 QSFP-DD, 2x400G-FR4 OSFP, 800G DR8 QSFP-DD and 800G DR8 OSFP — to serve hyperscale data centers. Volume shipment is expected to start in Q1'2022.

John Wang, President at Source Photonics said: "Partnering with FS represents a great opportunity for Source Photonics to further expand our presence to serve a broader range of customers. FS has already demonstrated its capability to apply its excellent expertise to various market segments."

800G DR8 OSFP

• Supports 500m, 2km and 10km
• Supports 8x100GbE and 2x400GbE breakout applications
• Compliant with IEEE P802.3ck D2.2 and IEEE 802.3cu-2021 standards
• Compliant with OSFP MSA
• Supports MPO-16 & Dual MPO-12 for backward compatible to 2x400GbE DR4 breakout

800G DR8 QSFP-DD

• Supports 500m, 2km and 10km
• Supports 8x100GbE and 2x400GbE breakout applications
• Compliant with IEEE P802.3ck D2.2 and IEEE 802.3cu-2021 standards
• Compliant with QSFP-DD800 MSA HW Rev 6.01 Type 2A with MPO-16 connector

2x400G-FR4 OSFP

• Supports 2km, 6km and 10km
• Compliant with IEEE P802.3ck D2.2 and IEEE 802.3cu-2021 standards
• Compliant with OSFP MSA
• Supports Dual CS & Dual LC for legacy fiber plants

2x400G-FR4 QSFP-DD

• Supports 2km, 6km and 10kmCompliant with IEEE 802.3cu-2021
• Compliant with IEEE P802.3ck D2.2
• Compliant with QSFP-DD800 MSA HW Rev 6.01 Type 2A with Dual CS connector

http://www.sourcephotonics.com

http://www.fs.com

Read More

Dell'Oro: Worldwide telecom capex on track for 5~10% rise

Preliminary readings suggest that worldwide telecom capex — the sum of wireless and wireline telecom investments — increased 3 percent year-over-year in nominal USD terms and remain on track to advance 5 percent to 10 percent in 2021, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group.

"Even with some decoupling taking place between capex and equipment revenue growth trends in the first half, we expect the relationship to remain significant going forward," said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President with the Dell'Oro Group. "More importantly, healthy end-user fundamental combined with the competitive dynamics and improving carrier revenue trends is spurring operators to ramp investments in multiple technologies and regions," continued Pongratz.

Additional highlights from the September 2021 3-year Telecom Capex Forecast:

• Total telecom capex projections have been revised upward—carrier capex is expected to advance at a 3 percent CAGR between 2020 and 2023, underpinned by strong growth in 2021.
• The upward capex revision is primarily driven by the improved investment outlook in the US wireless market.
• Even with the elevated 5G BTS baseline in China, total capex remains on track to advance at a double-digit rate in nominal USD terms in 2021, predicated on the assumption that the second half will account for 60 percent to 65 percent of the full-year capex in China.

https://www.delloro.com/news/telecom-capex-outlook-confirms-positive-equipment-momentum/

Read More

Ericsson's $2 billion credit line tied to carbon neutrality

Ericsson signed a US$2 billion sustainability-linked revolving credit facility, renewing an undrawn US$2 billion credit facility signed in 2013. The interest margin will be linked to two of Ericsson’s sustainability KPIs. The first KPI is tied to carbon neutrality in Ericsson’s own operations by 2030 and the second connects with suppliers setting 1.5 C° aligned climate targets.

Ericsson said the successful transaction underlines the confidence in Ericsson’s financial and sustainable performance and the facility is backed by a group of leading global and regional banks.

Carl Mellander, CFO, says: “Sustainability is an integral part of Ericsson’s strategy and has been critical for our success in recent years, not least when it comes to work within energy consumption and the energy performance of our products. Incorporating sustainability KPIs into this new credit facility is an important step in our continuous work to integrate our sustainability ambitions throughout our operations”.

 

Read More

Nokia enhances its Converged Charging (NCC) monetization

Nokia has enhanced its Converged Charging (NCC) monetization solution to help network operators monetize any service that can be measured, such as network slices and enterprise and consumer IoT offerings.

The new charging configurator microservice for Nokia's existing Converged Charging (NCC) monetization solution supports natural language statements to create new pricing and market offers, without the need for any coding. Leveraging cloud native containerized microservices, NCC supports ultra low-latency, high frequency charging. NCC fully supports 3GPP and leverages industry standards including TM Forum Open APIs to minimize the time required to on-board new customers.

Nokia’s charging solutions support CSPs serving over 1 billion subscribers across the globe. 

Hamdy Farid, SVP Business Applications, Cloud and Network Services, Nokia, said: “With this enhancement to our Converged Charging solution, we are putting the power in the hands of the business to create and monetize new innovative services rapidly. Without the need for coding, CSPs have the needed flexibility to evolve their network and meet the needs of subscribers.”

Read More

NTT DOCOMO invests in TileDB for universal data mgt platform

NTT DOCOMO Ventures announced its investment in TileDB, a start-up based in Cambridge, MA, offering a universal database that models any data in a novel multi-dimensional array format, allowing organizations to easily store, access, share, analyze and visualize data with any computational tool at global scale. Financial terms are not disclosed.

TileDB offers TileDB Embedded, an open-source storage engine with numerous language APIs and data science integrations, and TileDB Cloud, a universal database that offers secure data governance and scalable compute.

TileDB and NTT DOCOMO group are working on the technical verification of a database for “Mobile Spatial Statistics,” population data generated from mobile network operation data. The population data used here includes data modeled as “sparse arrays,” and TileDB is expected to considerably improve the processing and management of data.

https://www.nttdocomo-v.com/en/release/ld4z0bt0uo/

Read More

Zoom and Five9 cancel merger

Five9 and Zoom Video Communications mutually agreed to cancel their pending merger. 

The agreement did not receive the requisite number of votes from Five9 shareholders to approve the merger with Zoom. Five9 will continue to operate as a standalone publicly traded company.

Zoom and Five9 will continue the partnership that was in place prior to the announcement, which includes support for integrations between their respective Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions and joint go-to-market efforts.

http://investors.five9.com

Zoom to acquire Five9 for cloud contact center as a service

Monday, July 19, 2021  Cloud, Mergers And Acquisitions, Zoom  

 Zoom Video Communications agreed to acquire Five9, an intelligent cloud contact center provider, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $14.7 billion based on the closing price of Zoom common stock on July 16, 2021. Five9 stockholders will receive 0.5533 shares of Class A common stock of Zoom Video Communications, Inc. for each share of Five9.

The deal combines Five9’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution with Zoom’s broad communications platform. Five9, which is based in San Ramon, California, reports $478 million in LTM revenue and 796 upmarket/enterprise customers.

Zooms says the acquisition will broaden its total addressable opportunities to include the $24 billion contact center market. Revenue for the first quarter of 2021 increased 45% to a record $137.9 million, compared to $95.1 million for the first quarter of 2020. GAAP gross margin was 56.6% for the first quarter of 2021, compared to 57.9% for the first quarter of 2020. 

Five9's cloud contact center offers a suite of applications that allows management and optimization of customer interactions across many different channels.

“We are continuously looking for ways to enhance our platform, and the addition of Five9 is a natural fit that will deliver even more happiness and value to our customers,” said Eric S. Yuan, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Zoom. “Zoom is built on a core belief that robust and reliable communications technology enables interactions that build greater empathy and trust, and we believe that holds particularly true for customer engagement. Enterprises communicate with their customers primarily through the contact center, and we believe this acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers. We are thrilled to join forces with the Five9 team, and I look forward to welcoming them to the Zoom family.”

“Businesses spend significant resources annually on their contact centers, but still struggle to deliver a seamless experience for their customers,” said Rowan Trollope, Chief Executive Officer of Five9. “It has always been Five9’s mission to make it easy for businesses to fix that problem and engage with their customers in a more meaningful and efficient way. Joining forces with Zoom will provide Five9’s business customers access to best-of-breed solutions, particularly Zoom Phone, that will enable them to realize more value and deliver real results for their business. ”

Following the close of the transaction, Five9 will be an operating unit of Zoom and Rowan Trollope will become a President of Zoom and continue as CEO of Five9, reporting to Eric Yuan.

• Rowan Trollope joined Five9 as CEO in May 2018. Previously, he was SVP and General Manager of Cisco’s Applications Group and a member of the executive leadership team. Prior to Cisco, at Symantec Rowan was Group President Sales, Marketing, and Product Development, responsible for cloud security and the SMB market. 

Read More

Juniper's new 25.6 Tbps data center switch matched with Apstra automation

Juniper Networks unveiled its QFX5700 Series Switch, a midsize, 25.6 Tbps chassis-based system on Broadcom Trident 4 programmable merchant silicon.

The 5RU platform supports a mix of 10G/25G/40G/50G, 100G, 200G and 400G line cards supporting a variety of interfaces, all available with inline MACsec/IPsec. The QFX5700 is aimed at a variety of data center use cases, including those migrating to 100G/400G.

Michael Bushong, VP of Data Center Product Management at Juniper Networks, says the company is evolving its solution portfolio around the Apstra intelligence with the goal of connecting the elements of the data center into an intent-based, self-driving system. The idea is to leverage Apstra blueprints and telemetry to identify when a task needs to be invoked, how it should best be executed and whether it accomplished the desired intent. The company reports a strong uptake in Apstra deployments since acquiring the company earlier this year.

https://blogs.juniper.net/en-us/enterprise-cloud-and-transformation/juniper-networks-advances-data-center-operations-with-next-generation-modular-switch

Juniper completes Apstra acquisition

Wednesday, January 27, 2021  Juniper, Mergers And Acquisitions  

Juniper Networks completed its previously-announced acquisition of Apstra, a leader in intent-based networking and automated closed-loop assurance. 

The Apstra team is now part of Juniper’s Data Center business and Apstra CEO and co-founder, David Cheriton, joins Juniper as Chief Data Center Scientist.

Apstra offers an intent-based network operating system for simplifying the management of data center networks. Intent-Based Networking (IBN) is a closed-loop, continuous validation approach to designing, deploying and managing infrastructure. Apstra automatically generates and deploys full configuration of all devices based on a service description, and continuously provides assurance checks between the intended and operational state. Apstra’s multivendor integrations extend its closed loop automation and analytics to customers independently of their underlying infrastructure, including those running SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud). 

Juniper said the acquisition expands its commitment to open programmability, adding to its portfolio of solutions that includes powerful switching platforms with native SONiC integration and a deployment-hardened, cloud-native routing stack for the SONiC ecosystem.

Read More

Fungible enhances its Storage Cluster for NVMe over TCP

Fungible, a start-up pursuing DPU accelerated data center computing, announced new capabilities enabling its Fungible Storage Initiator (SI) cards installed in standard servers to access NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP).

Fungible claims its accelerators deliver the world’s fastest and most efficient implementation of NVMe/TCP. The enhancements bring security and usability capabilities for the entire data platform.

The Fungible Storage Initiator solution is delivered on Fungible’s FC200, FC100 and FC50 cards. Each of these cards is powered by the S1 Fungible DPU, and a single FC200 card is capable of delivering a record breaking 2.5 million IOPS to its host. These cards, and the Fungible Storage Cluster, are managed by Fungible Composer, which orchestrates the composition of disaggregated data center resources on demand.  

“With our high-performance and low-latency implementation, Fungible’s disaggregated NVMe/TCP solution becomes a game changer. Over the last five years, we have designed our products to support NVMe/TCP natively to revolutionize the economics of deploying flash storage in scale-out implementations,” said Eric Hayes, CEO of Fungible. “In addition to industry leading performance, our solutions offer more value and the highest levels of security, compression, efficiency, durability and ease of use. At Fungible, we continue to disrupt the traditional rigid models by disaggregating compute and storage using available industry standards like NVMe/TCP.”

https://www.fungible.com/

Fungible ships its disaggregated NVMe storage platform powered by DPUs

Tuesday, October 27, 2020  DPU, Fungible  

Fungible, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, unveiled a disaggregated data storage platform powered by its own Fungible Data Processing Unit (DPU).

The new Fungible Storage Cluster delivers 15M IOPS in a 2RU form factor, scaling linearly to 300M IOPS in a single 40RU rack, and extending further to many racks. The company says its high-performance design improves $/IOPS by at least 3x compared to existing software-defined storage solutions by consolidating workloads and increasing utilization of storage media.

The Fungible Storage Cluster comprises a cluster of Fungible FS1600 storage target nodes connected over a standards-based IP network and the Fungible Composer software. The FS1600s implement the data path for storage while the Fungible Composer performs control and management functions. This clean separation of functions results in higher performance, better scalability and better reliability. Each FS1600 storage target node is powered by two Fungible F1 DPUs and packs 24 standard NVMe SSDs delivering an aggregate of 15M IOPS in a 2RU form factor.

Notably, the Fungible Storage Cluster has been validated with IBM Spectrum Scale, delivering more than 80M read IOPS/PB.

“Today, we demonstrate how the breakthrough value of the Fungible DPU is realized in a storage product,” said Pradeep Sindhu, CEO and Co-Founder of Fungible. “The Fungible Storage Cluster is not only the fastest storage platform in the market today, it is also the most cost-effective, reliable, secure and easy to use. This is truly a significant milestone on our journey to realize the vision of Fungible Data Centers — where compute and storage resources are hyperdisaggregated and then composed on-demand to dynamically serve application requirements.”

“Innovations in data center infrastructure have occurred largely within the silos of compute, storage and networking,” said Raj Yavatkar, CTO at Juniper Networks. “Fungible has broken down these silos delivering end-to-end value with Fungible DPU enabled servers interconnected by TrueFabric, a truly ground-breaking networking technology, and software composable for on-demand provisioning. This approach will serve as a blueprint for future data centers from core to edge.”

Read More

Lightbits delivers software-defined NVMe/TCP storage for VMware

Lightbits Labs, a start-up that offers NVMe-based, scalable and software-defined elastic block storage, completed a rigorous certification of LightOS with VMware vSphere 7 Update 3 and will be listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide. 

Lightbits' LightOS is a scalable, efficient NVMe/TCP storage solution with intelligent flash management. The company claims its solution improves flash endurance by up to 20X and delivers performance that is equivalent to local flash. A single LightOS cluster can deliver over 40M IOPS (random Read) and 10PB user capacity, with less than 200μs latency. Organizations previously utilizing iSCSI can instead use NVMe/TCP on the same network infrastructure and realize much higher performance. 

“With the explosion of data underway, companies are committing to digital transformation on a massive scale. To extract the value of this data, applications need to rapidly store, access, and analyze data. Over the past few years private clouds and cloud service providers have been running cloud native applications on Lightbits, benefiting from our Kubernetes integration. Now we are super-excited to have a high performance, highly available storage solution also for VMware users, with in-box support for NVMe/TCP,” said Kam Eshghi, Chief Strategy Officer at Lightbits. “Organizations with private clouds and hybrid clouds, as well as cloud service providers and financial service providers can now realize the performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency benefits of a combined solution from VMware, Lightbits, and Intel.”

https://www.lightbitslabs.com/

Read More

Akamai to acquire Guardicore to address ransomware

Akamai Technologies agreed to acquire Guardicore, a start-up that offers software-based network segmentation tools, for approximately $600 million. 

Guardicore’s micro-segmentation solution is designed to limit user access to only those applications that are authorized to communicate with each other. By denying communication as the default, the threat surface and risk exposure are drastically reduced, thereby limiting the spread of malware and protecting the flow of enterprise data across the network. This protection extends beyond the data center to the cloud, including bare metal, virtual machines and containers. Guardicore is based in Tel Aviv.

Akamai currently offers a broad suite of innovative and leading Zero Trust security solutions, including Web Application Firewall (WAF), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Domain Name System (DNS) Firewall, and Secure Web Gateway (SWG), that help prevent attackers and malware on employee devices from gaining access to enterprise infrastructure and applications. 

“Given the recent surge in ransomware attacks and increasingly stringent compliance regulations, investing in technologies to reduce the spread of malware has become mission critical,” said Tom Leighton, chief executive officer and co-founder, Akamai Technologies. “By adding Guardicore’s leading micro-segmentation products to Akamai’s comprehensive portfolio of Zero Trust solutions, we believe Akamai will be able to provide the most effective way to combat ransomware on the market today.”

“Guardicore’s mission is to protect enterprises from damage caused by breaches, like ransomware, while safeguarding the critical assets at the heart of the network,” said Pavel Gurvich, co-founder and chief executive officer, Guardicore. “The customer is able to reduce risk in a holistic way across all products, managing from a single console, versus many products and machines. My team and I greatly look forward to joining Akamai to protect the user and the enterprise -  no matter what the user is doing or where end users and workloads are located.”

 

Read More

GSMA: Mobile broadband gap for 43% of world's population

Mobile internet usage translates to just over 4 billion connected people,  225 million more compared to 2019, and up from a third of people globally just six years ago, according to GSMA's State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report 2021.

However, in 2020, 3.4 billion people (43% of the world’s population) lived within the footprint of a mobile broadband network but were not accessing mobile internet services. The GSMA report also notes that low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) now account for almost 93% of the world’s unconnected population and more than 98% of the uncovered population.

“The COVID-19 pandemic made clear the importance of mobile internet access to people’s lives and livelihoods and has accelerated the digital transformation around the world. Mobile  is the primary and often the only way to access the internet in low- and middle-income countries. While more people than ever are now using the mobile internet, some fundamental barriers stop far too many people from using mobile internet. To close this usage gap, all of us – government and industry – need to do more,” says the GSMA’s Chief Regulatory Officer, John Giusti. “In particular, we must address the key barriers to usage of mobile internet services, most notably literacy and digital skills, as well as affordability. Only through targeted and collaborative action can we bridge the digital divide.”

https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/over-half-worlds-population-now-using-mobile-internet/

Read More

NEC, Netcracker, ADVA, Juniper team on 5G xHaul transport

NEC and its subsidiary Netcracker announced an integrated multi-vendor solution that includes ADVA and Juniper Networks for packet optical automation for streamlined 5G transport. ADVA delivers secure optical connectivity and Juniper provides automated IP WAN transport solutions, while Netcracker brings unified end-to-end multi-domain service orchestration and automation expertise. 

NEC leads the integration and implementation of the solution with 5G xHaul Transformation Services for multi-vendor, multi-layer and multi-domain architectures backed by its abundant global experiences with both packet and optical networking. Netcracker's Network Domain Orchestration solution enables multi-domain service, network lifecycle management, assurance and closed loop operations automation across complex multi-layer transport networks with a single pane of glass. 

 

"In the 5G era, NEC believes co-creation is the key driver to generating and delivering new value to society. Working together with our strategic partners Juniper and ADVA in our 5G xHaul Ecosystem, NEC and Netcracker are keen to orchestrate best-in-class multi-vendor based solutions across multi-layers with automation that promises simplification of the end-to-end transport network and better TCO," states Mayuko Tatewaki, General Manager, Service Provider Solutions Division, NEC Corporation.

"Dynamic services enabled by 5G need a powerful transport network to optimize the user experience. Netcracker's Network Domain Orchestration brings agility and automation to multi-layer transport networks, and we are excited to announce our joint solution with NEC, Juniper and ADVA to revolutionize the transport network for 5G digital services,"said Bob Titus, Chief Technology Officer, Netcracker.

Read More

Italy's TIM proposes National Strategic Hub for secure services

TIM, along with partners Leonardo and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, are proposing a National Strategic Hub (NSH) for Italy that would provide an infrastructure for cloud-based management of Public Administration (PA) data and applications.

The initiative would involve setting up a NewCo with a 20% stake to be held by CDP, 25% by Leonardo, 10% by Sogei and 45% by TIM. The aim is to provide innovative services to citizens and businesses, in line with the provisions of the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan and recent regulatory interventions on digital infrastructure. 

TIM, the Italian leader of the ICT sector, will provide infrastructure services and cloud platforms; Leonardo, one of the world’s leading players in the AD&S sector and the only Italian company dedicated to monitoring strategic technologies for the country’s security, will provide security services; Sogei, a leader and partner in the public ICT sector, will provide business culture enablement and training services to boost the growth and expertise of the PA; CDP Equity will act as the financial partner and institutional investor supporting initiatives with significant development prospects in key sectors for the country.

Together, the industrial partners will provide end-to-end migration services and support PAs with professional evolution services to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness when operating in cloud environments (re-platform and re-architect).

Through the partners, the NSH will have new generation (Tier IV) data centres, with high levels of security and energy efficiency and in line with global best practices (four data centres in two regions), and will furthermore provide comprehensive and advanced services with a particular focus on cloud solutions. The PA will be supported throughout the pre- and post-contract phases, including in terms of staff training.

Read More

2Africa will be longest subsea cable system in the world

The 2Africa cable system will add an extension to the Arabian Gulf, India, and Pakistan, bringing its total length to over 45,000 kilometers, making it the longest subsea cable system ever deployed.  

The 2Africa consortium includes China Mobile International, Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.

Now connecting three continents, Africa, Europe and Asia terrestrially through Egypt, 2Africa creates unique connectivity by adding vital landing locations in Oman (Barka), UAE (Abu Dhabi and Kalba), Qatar (Doha), Bahrain (Manama), Kuwait (Kuwait), Iraq (Al-Faw), Pakistan (Karachi), India (Mumbai), and a fourth landing in Saudi Arabia (Al Khobar). The new 2Africa branch joins recently announced extensions to the Canary Islands, the Seychelles, Comoros Islands, Angola, and a new landing to south-east Nigeria.

As with other 2Africa cable landings, capacity will be available in PEARLS landings at carrier-neutral facilities or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis, encouraging and supporting the development of a healthy internet ecosystem. 

Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) will deploy the new system utilizing new technologies such as SDM that allow the deployment of up to 16 fiber pairs.

2Africa subsea cable boasts design capacity up to 180 Tbps

Thursday, May 14, 2020  Africa, ASN, Egypt, Facebook, Submarine Cable, Subsea, Telecom Egypt  

2Africa, a new subsea cable to serve the African continent and Middle East region, promises to deliver more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today, with a design capacity of up to 180Tbps on key parts of the system.

Consortium partners include China Mobile International, Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.

Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) has been selected to build the fully-funded cable. The project will leverage SDM1 (space division multiplexing) technology from ASN, allowing deployment of up to 16 fiber pairs instead of the eight fiber pairs supported by older technologies. The cable will incorporate optical switching technology to enable flexible management of bandwidth. Cable burial depth has also been increased by 50% compared to older systems, and cable routing will avoid locations of known subsea disturbance, all helping to ensure the highest levels of availability.

The 2Africa subsea cable will span 37,000km long, interconnect Europe (eastward via Egypt), the Middle East (via Saudi Arabia), and 21 landings in 16 countries in Africa. The system is expected to go live in 2023/4. Each of the cable landing sites will offer carrier-neutral data centers or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.

In addition, the 2Africa parties and Airtel have signed an agreement with Telecom Egypt to provide a completely new crossing linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the first in over a decade. This includes new cable landing stations and deployment of next-generation fiber on two new, diverse terrestrial routes parallel to the Suez Canal from Ras Ghareb to Port Said, and a new subsea link that will provide a third path between Ras Ghareb and Suez. 

Read More

AMITIE transatlantic cable lands in France

Orange announced the landing of the AMITIE submarine telecommunications cable on a beach in the commune of Le Porge, near Bordeaux (Gironde).

Orange is a partner in this 6,800 km state-of-the-art cable project, which will connect the state of Massachusetts (USA), Le Porge (France) and Bude (UK). Orange will benefit from two pairs of fiber optic cables as part of this new system, offering capacity up to 23 Tbp/s each. Commissioning is scheduled for early 2022.

The beach landing in Le Porge used an innovative horizontal directional drilling technique to protect the environment.

“With this new agreement, we are yet again demonstrating our skills and expertise in transatlantic submarine cables. Against the backdrop of a boom in international traffic, the arrival of these increasingly efficient cutting-edge submarine cables, and in view of the strategic and national sovereignty issues linked to submarine cables, Orange must continue to play a leading role in the global market and develop infrastructure to connect France to other continents,” explains Jean-Luc Vuillemin, head of International Networks and Services at Orange.

https://www.orange.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021/orange-announces-landing-new-transatlantic-submarine-cable-gironde

Orange expands transatlantic capacity with 2 new cables

Tuesday, January 19, 2021  France, Orange, Subsea  

Orange announced ready-for-service status on the new Dunant cable system linking France and the United States and also unveiled for another new transatlantic cable system that could be ready as early as next year.

The Dunant cable, which is a joint project with Google, is now ready for service for its wholesale and business customers. Dunant boasts 12 fibre pairs with over 30 Tbps of capacity each.

The next submarine cable, called AMITIÉ, will take a more northerly route, linking Massachusetts to le Porge near Bordeaux. AMITIÉ will offer 16 fiber pairs of up to 23 Tbps of capacity each. Orange believes this new cable will make Bordeaux a regional connectivity hub. The French operator will supply land links for both systems from the landing station to Bordeaux and then to Paris and Lyon for one, and will offer capacity between Ashburn, the Datacentre alley and Paris, will the latest Point-to-Point optical transmission technology.

Orange will benefit from two fibre pairs on both transatlantic systems, with a total capacity of up to 100 Tbps. Orange is responsible for the French part of these two cables, as the “landing provider”, and is in charge of the operation and maintenance of the landing stations.

Read More

Corning's $150m expansion of fiber manufacturing follows AT&T commitment

Corning will invest $150 million in optical cable manufacturing in North Carolina, initially adding 200 jobs, based on AT&T's long-term commitment to its network buildout.

Corning said the manufacturing expansion reflects its ambition to capture new growth opportunities through strategic investments in innovation and technology – de-risking these investments with strong customer commitments.

AT&T has previously announced plans to significantly expand its fiber footprint.

“We see expansion of our fiber infrastructure as central to the growth of our broadband reach, for consumers as well as business customers,” said Mo Katibeh, senior vice president, AT&T Network Infrastructure & Build. “By extending our collaboration with Corning, we’ll create American jobs through manufacturing investments, and also through the economic benefits that broadband brings to our communities.”

“The need for ubiquitous connectivity has pushed demand on networks to record levels, and Corning is strategically investing to support network buildouts,” said Michael A. Bell, senior vice president and general manager, Corning Optical Communications. “This capacity expansion in particular supports the growth plans of AT&T, who we’ve valued for more than three decades. We’re turning once again to the highly skilled local workforce in North Carolina to help us meet the demand. We deeply appreciate the support of local and state officials, particularly Governor Roy Cooper, Commerce Secretary Machelle Baker Sanders, and state lawmakers.”

 https://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/about-us/news-events/news-releases/2021/09/corning-and-att-expand-collaboration-as-corning-works-to-meet-record-broadband-demand-and-support-growth-of-us-manufacturing.html

AT&T to refocus investment on fiber and 5G post WarnerMedia deal

Monday, May 17, 2021  AT&T  

AT&T will combine WarnerMedia’s entertainment, sports and news assets with Discovery's entertainment and sports businesses to create a premier, standalone global entertainment company.

The deal provides AT&T with $43 billion (subject to adjustment) in a combination of cash, debt securities, and WarnerMedia’s retention of certain debt. AT&T’s shareholders will receive stock representing 71% of the new company. Discovery shareholders would own 29% of the new company.

AT&T said the transaction provides an opportunity to unlock value in its media assets, allowing the company to better capitalize on the longer-term demand for connectivity:.

AT&T's John Stankey states: “This agreement unites two entertainment leaders with complementary content strengths and positions the new company to be one of the leading global direct-to-consumer streaming platforms. It will support the fantastic growth and international launch of HBO Max with Discovery’s global footprint and create efficiencies which can be re-invested in producing more great content to give consumers what they want. For AT&T shareholders, this is an opportunity to unlock value and be one of the best capitalized broadband companies, focused on investing in 5G and fiber to meet substantial, long-term demand for connectivity. AT&T shareholders will retain their stake in our leading communications company that comes with an attractive dividend. Plus, they will get a stake in the new company, a global media leader that can build one of the top streaming platforms in the world.” 

https://investors.att.com/

Read More

CityFibre looks to Bechtel to accelerate FTTH rollout across UK

CityFibre has expanded its partnership with Bechtel, one of the world's leading engineering, construction, and project management companies, to accelerate its Full Fibre broadband rollout to approximately one third of the UK market by 2025.

Bechtel's teams have been fully integrated into CityFibre's organizational structure since September 2020, enabling CityFibre to accelerate the mobilization of its 25 network construction partners and manage more than 60 parallel full town and city builds. Bechtel has also helped to strengthen project controls to enhance operational management, establish controls around risk and change, and increase productivity.

The new agreement formalizes a five-year extension to the partnership and will fully leverage Bechtel's mega-project expertise in project controls, construction management, contracts management, and environment, safety and health. Bechtel will focus its leadership and construction management efforts in CityFibre's north and southeast regions, areas with the greatest density of parallel builds. It will also continue to provide functional support across all regions as well as developing resource models to ensure thousands more operatives are trained and available to build partners to help construct the network.

"It's a pleasure to be extending our alliance with Bechtel after a hugely successful year as partners," Greg Mesch, CEO at CityFibre said. "Over the last twelve months, they have worked in lockstep with our teams to deliver an extraordinary acceleration of our rollout. This pace will only increase as we commence new projects and maximise the productivity of each build. We're delighted that Bechtel, with their unparalleled experience of complex, scaled construction projects, will be working alongside us in the years ahead as we continue to build the UK's finest Full Fibre infrastructure platform."

"We're really proud of what we have achieved with CityFibre in only a year," John Williams, Bechtel's UK & Ireland Infrastructure Managing Director said. "This new alliance will deepen our partnership, help sustain CityFibre's incredible growth trajectory, and help future-proof the nation's digital infrastructure for communities across the UK."

• CityFibre notes that it recently concluded the UK's largest ever capital raise for Full Fibre deployment of £1.125bn. The investment round has been secured new investors Mubadala and Interogo Holding.
• CityFibre has appointed 25 network construction partners across the UK. Network build is underway in 60 UK cities and towns.
• CityFibre's services are now live in 46 cities and towns.

https://www.cityfibre.com/

Read More

Terran Orbital to build satellite manufacturing site in Florida

Terran Orbital announced plans to build "the world’s largest and most advanced Industry 4.0 space vehicle manufacturing facility. 

The 660,000 square foot factory will be constructed at the Launch and Landing Facility (LLF) on Merritt Island, Florida and will consist of ten automated and augmented hangers capable of producing thousands of different types of space vehicles per year.

Terran Orbital said its facility will also boast 3D printing and additive manufacturing technologies to permit rapid space vehicle delivery to market, as well as capabilities to produce and fabricate the highest quality, technologically advanced, printed circuit board assembly with extensive electronic storage vaults.  

“We are pleased to partner with Space Florida to build a facility that we view as a national asset: a commercially funded contribution to our nation’s space industrial base.” said Marc Bell, co-founder and chief executive officer of Terran Orbital.  “Not only will we be able to expand our production capabilities to meet the growing demand for our products, but we will also bring valuable space vehicle manufacturing opportunities and capabilities to the State of Florida, investing over $300 million in new construction and equipment. By the end of 2025, we’re going to create approximately 2,100 new jobs with an average wage of $84,000.” 

https://www.terranorbital.com/

Read More

HPE adds analytics and data protection to GreenLake Edge-to-Cloud

Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced new analytics and data protection capabilities for its GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform.

The new offerings include the following:

• HPE GreenLake for analytics – open and unified analytics cloud services to modernize all data and applications everywhere – on-premises, at the edge, and in the cloud
• HPE GreenLake for data protection – disaster recovery and backup cloud services to help customers take ransomware head-on and secure data from edge-to-cloud
• HPE Edge-to-Cloud Adoption Framework and automation tools to accelerate and de-risk the path to a cloud experience everywhere

“The big data and analytics software market, which IDC predicts will reach $110 billion by 20231, is ripe for disruption, as customers seek a hybrid solution for enterprise datasets on-premises and at the edge,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO, at HPE. “Data is at the heart of every modernization initiative in every industry, and yet organizations have been forced to settle for legacy analytics platforms that lack cloud-native capabilities, or force complex migrations to the public cloud that require customers to adapt new processes and risk vendor lock-in. ”

The HPE GreenLake platform now has more than 1,200 customers and $5.2 billion in total contract value. In HPE’s most recent quarter, Q3 2021, HPE announced that the company’s Annualized Revenue Run Rate was up 33 percent year-over-year, and as-a-service orders up 46 percent year-over-year3. Most recently, HPE announced HPE GreenLake platform wins with Woolworths Group, Australia and New Zealand’s largest retailer, and the United States National Security Agency.

 https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2021/09/hpe-greenlake-edge-to-cloud-platform-powers-data-modernization-with-breakthrough-analytics-and-data-protection-cloud-services.html

Read More

NTT DOCOMO commits to carbon neutrality by 2030

NTT DOCOMO announced a commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions arising from its business activities effectively to zero by 2030.

DOCOMO said it will achieve carbon neutrality by applying cutting-edge technology to improve energy efficiency and by procuring clean energy from renewable sources. It will also make efforts to directly procure renewable energy from solar power plants dedicated to supplying DOCOMO, and from other sources. Across its value chain, the company will promote the use of renewable energy through initiatives such as the installation of solar panels with the aim of becoming an environmentally-friendly telecom carrier.

DOCOMO also stated that its 5G networks are powered effectively with 100% renewable energy from this October. DOCOMO also plans to commence the sale of electricity generated from renewable sources as "docomo Denki Green" in the retail market directly to customers from March 2022 in its "docomo Denki" electricity service lineup. In collaboration with partner companies, the company will also consider delivering environmentally-friendly products and services, and in conjunction with our customers who will use these products and services, will promote carbon neutrality for the benefit of the whole of society.

Read More

Telefónica to migrate its Oracle databases to Oracle Exadata

Telefonica España will migrate the bulk of its Oracle Database systems to Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, building a dedicated cloud platform on-premises to support provisioning and delivery of new services, as well as Telefonica’s mission-critical operational and commercial systems including its BSS and OSS platforms and applications, business intelligence systems, CRM, billing and revenue management.

The collaboration is part of a multi-year initiative by Telefonica to consolidate the technology infrastructure that underpins its communications network into a shared, open-standard platform designed to support its growing digital services portfolio, including new services around Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G, and services co-hosted with ISVs and network partners.

Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer is an on-premises deployment option of Oracle Exadata Cloud Service that is delivered as a managed cloud service in Telefonica’s own data centers, enabling Telefonica to consolidate mission-critical systems in a single platform while complying with data residency regulations, meeting latency requirements, and helping to significantly reduce operational costs.

“Digitalization and connectivity are reshaping how we work and live, and Telefonica is transforming its business to support our customers in this new world. As we tap into these new opportunities, we need to consolidate and simplify our technology infrastructure to make us nimbler, more agile and more adaptable, and this is where our collaboration with Oracle comes in,” said Fidel Jesús Fernández, Director, Technologies and IT Transformation, Telefonica España. “Oracle Cloud@Customer provides us with the flexibility we need to build a robust, extensible cloud platform in our own data centers that is scalable and elastic to meet the changing needs of our business.”

https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/telefonica-and-oracle-announce-collaboration-to-accelerate-cloud-adoption-2021-09-27/

Telefónica chooses IBM, Red Hat, Juniper for UNICA Next 5G core

Thursday, September 23, 2021  IBM, Juniper, Telefonica  

Telefónica will use IBM intelligent automation software and services to implement UNICA Next – Telefónica's first-ever, cloud-native, 5G core network platform.Specifically, Telefónica has engaged IBM Global Business Services, a leading systems integrator and the digital transformation services and consultancy arm of IBM, Red Hat and Juniper networking to deploy the cloud-native platform. The platform is planned to be a new open-standard open-networking...

READ MORE

Read More

Colt implements Ciena's Blue Planet for Service Assurance

Colt Technology Services' IQ Network is using Ciena's Blue Planet fault management software to proactively anticipate – and even act upon – potential network issues before they occur. Blue Planet Route Optimization and Analysis (ROA) provides visibility and control of Colt's multi-layer network to correct service delivery issues, accelerating time to market for new services. 

Colt's 100Gbps-optimised, high-bandwidth and low-latency IQ Network connects over 900 data centres and more than 29,000 on-net buildings globally. 

“Deploying UAA for fault management enables us to leverage automation and AI to rapidly analyse and resolve network issues, as well as to proactively identify opportunities to enhance the reliability of our network,” said Shane Sura, Colt’s Vice President of Network Operations. “This is a key enabler in providing the fastest detection and resolution of network issues for exceptional customer service.”

“Networks today are incredibly complex and require automation so network providers can deliver the best digital experiences possible,” said Rick Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Blue Planet. “With Blue Planet, Colt is creating a network that can adapt to support the next wave of connectivity demands while further reinforcing its goal of putting customers first.” 

https://www.ciena.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/colt-technology-services-enriches-customer-digital-experiences-with-blue-planet.html

Read More

ONF spins out Ananki, a start-up focused on private 5G

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) launched Ananki, an independent venture-backed company to deliver open source-based Software-Defined Private 5G as a commercial service to address enterprises’ unique requirements of Industry 4.0. The ambition is to enable enterprise private 5G that is hardened and optimized for industrial applications, yet as easy to consume as Wi-Fi.

Ananki’s technological foundation is ONF’s open source Aether, SD-RAN, SD-Fabric and SD-Core projects. The company will offer a private 5G solution delivered as a SaaS. 

Key attributes:

• Optimized 5G+ Experience - Software-defined, automated, AI powered, application optimized connectivity, with enhanced security enabled by a programmable data plane 
• Cloud First - pre-integrated with hyperscaler cloud and edge, delivering private 5G as a SaaS service, creating a continuously improving experience running on any multi-cloud platform
• Industry 4.0 Ready - Empowering developers to build transformative IoT, IIoT and OT solutions with rich APIs

“ONF continues to innovate in ways that magnify the power of open systems and open source across our industry. The ONF board recognizes that the lack of support for open source initiatives from commercial companies remains an inhibiting factor for scaled adoption. To meet this challenge, we have agreed to spin out Ananki as an independent company to pursue commercialization of Aether with a view that this will help accelerate the adoption and impact of open source,” states Andre Fuetsch, ONF Board Chair and AT&T CTO.

Guru Parulkar, Executive Director ONF and CEO of Ananki, comments: “Ananki is broadening the impact of the ONF’s work, and will help ONF’s Aether become much more broadly adopted.  By providing a commercially supported option for consuming Aether, many more organizations will be able to easily and economically leverage the benefits of Private 5G for building Industry 4.0 solutions.  And in turn, Ananki is committed to contributing back to the ONF open source, helping to advance the Aether platform and broaden the ONF community.”

https://ananki.io/

http://www.opennetworking.org

 ONF's Aether Edge Cloud selected for DARPA's Pronto Project

Thursday, December 03, 2020  ONF  

The Open Networking Foundation's Aether 5G Connected Edge Cloud platform is being used as the software platform for Pronto, a project backed by $30 million in DARPA funding to develop secure 5G network infrastructure. Specifically, DARPA is funding ONF to build, deploy and operate the network to support research by Cornell, Princeton and Stanford universities in the areas of network verification and closed-loop control. 

Aether (pronounced ‘ee-ther’) provides mobile connectivity and edge cloud services for distributed enterprise networks, all provisioned and managed from a centralized cloud. ONF will enhance and deploy its open source Aether software platform as the foundation for the Pronto research work, and in turn the research results will be open sourced back into Aether to help advance Aether as a platform for future secure 5G network infrastructure.

One of Pronto's goals is "to leverage network programmability to enable deep and wide network visibility, verification, and closed-loop control, giving programmers tools to build and dynamically deploy customized network functionality in a secure and reliable manner."

ONF also confirmed that it is now running a beta production deployment of Aether.  This deployment is a single unified cloud managed network interconnecting the project’s commercial partners AT&T, Ciena, Intel, Google, NTT, ONF and Telefonica. This initial deployment supports CBRS and/or 4G/LTE radio access at all sites, and is cloud managed from a shared core running in the Google public cloud.

The University campuses are being added to this Aether deployment in support of Pronto. Campus sites will be used by Pronto researchers to advance the Pronto research, serving as both a development platform and a testbed for use case experimentation. The Aether footprint is expected to grow on the university campuses as Aether’s 5G Connected Edge Cloud capabilities are leveraged both for research on additional use cases as well as for select campus operations.

“At Google Cloud, we are working closely with the telecom ecosystem to help enable 5G transformation, accelerated by the power of cloud computing. We are pleased to support the Open Networking Foundation's work to extend the availability of 5G and edge capabilities via an open source platform,” stated Shailesh Shukla, VP and GM, Networking, Google Cloud.

“Cornell is deploying Aether on campus to bring private 5G/LTE connectivity services with edge cloud capabilities into our research facilities.  We expect private 5G/LTE with connected edge cloud to become an important and integral part of our research infrastructure for many research and operational groups on the campus.  We also see the value of interconnecting a nation-wide leading infrastructure with Stanford, Princeton and ONF for collaborative research among university researchers across the country,” said David Lifka, Vice President for Information Technologies and CIO, Cornell University.

https://prontoproject.org/

https://opennetworking.org/

ONF's Aether targets Enterprise 5G/LTE-Edge-Cloud-as-a-Service

Thursday, March 05, 2020  ONF  

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced Aether – the first open-source platform for delivering Enterprise 5G/LTE-Edge-Cloud-as-a-Service.

Aether (pronounced ‘ee-ther’) provides mobile connectivity and edge cloud services for distributed enterprise networks, all provisioned and managed from a centralized cloud.

Aether leverages existing work from ONF including the CORD and ONOS platforms. It can be run in a Kubernetes environment, and it simultaneously supports deployment on licensed (4G/5G) and unlicensed (CBRS) spectrum.

“Aether opens the door for enterprises to rapidly deploy 5G and edge cloud services to help power their digital transformations. This can be done with a variety of flexible business models including in collaboration with telco operators, cloud operators, and third party providers. It offers the flexibility to utilize a wide range of bands including 5G, licensed bands, and CBRS. This cloud-enabled platform turns mobile connectivity and enterprise mobile edge cloud capabilities into a cloud-managed service, simplifying deployment and operations while delivering scalable and cost-effective services,” states Guru Parulkar, Executive Director, ONF & Executive Director, Stanford Platform Lab.

Read More