Celona's new Private Mobile platform leverages CBRS, microslicing, AI

Celona, a start-up based in Cupertino, California, unveiled its cellular wireless platform for enterprises. 

Celona’s all-in-one platform, which can leverage  Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum in the United States,  integrates network and cellular wireless functions with AI orchestration enabling unprecedented range and predictability of operation to mobile devices and IoT infrastructure deployed within the enterprise.

The idea is to use CBRS-based LTE/5G wireless to open an additional lane of wireless connectivity that operates in clean spectrum, away from interference. Celona says this allows the definition of specific service levels for network metrics such as latency, throughput, jitter and packet error rate. Within a network of wireless access points, mobility events of client devices and their traffic transmissions are always pre-scheduled by the infrastructure – further improving overall predictability.

Product components of Celona’s integrated solution architecture include:

• The Celona RAN: Enterprise-optimized indoor and outdoor CBRS LTE access points that provide up to 25K sqft and 1M sqft of coverage, respectively. Their radio functions are fully automated via Celona software with their power level and frequency channel assignments in the CBRS spectrum and do not require any manual intervention.
• The Celona Edge: Enterprise-ready private LTE/5G core that’s designed to integrate with any existing enterprise network configuration and access control policies. It can be simultaneously deployed on-premises for strict SLA enforcement for local applications and within the private / public / edge clouds for service scalability.
• The Celona Orchestrator: An AIOps platform that enables remote installation of Celona’s access points and Edge software across multiple enterprise sites and allows for provisioning of Celona SIM cards against required device level access control policies within the enterprise network. It goes beyond basic monitoring of infrastructure components and keeps track of application- and device-specific key performance indicators for Celona MicroSlicing – enabling IT teams to maintain laser focus on digital service delivery and business outcomes.

Celona also announced strategic resale partnership with Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, covering its entire line of products.

“CBRS is a game changer, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. Enterprises need a packaged solution to take full advantage of cellular wireless within the context of their existing IT framework,” said Mehmet Yavuz, CTO of Celona. “Our unique approach provides organizations a clear path to easily adopt LTE wireless today, and 5G in the future, while maintaining complete control over the network and the data running over it.”

“Our customers are demanding additional connectivity options and spectrum to support specific digital initiatives being deployed within their organizations,” said Jeff Lipton, VP of Strategy and Corporate Development at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “Our partnership with Celona is designed to directly address these demands and reflects a shared vision that enterprises need a viable 5G strategy that complements existing investments in enterprise wireless.”

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Keysight to host virtual SONIC plugfest

Keysight Technologies is hosting a virtual SONiC Open Source Network Operating System Community Plugfest taking place May – June 2021. The goal is to enable members of the Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) community to validate SONiC across multiple vendors.

SONiC is an open-source network operating system based on Linux that runs on switches from multiple vendors and ASICs. 

The Open Community Test Event will include three types of participants:

Customers: Customer Advisory Board (CAB)

Vendors: original design manufacturers (ODMs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and network equipment manufacturers (NEMs)

Test partners: Keysight Technologies and AVIZ Networks

The Plugfest CAB will determine the maturity of SONiC on different hardware platforms from a user perspective. It consists of companies including CTC, LINE, Yahoo! JAPAN, World Wide Technology, Apresia Systems, DMM.com, Zhejiang Lab, Ucloud, Internet Initiative Japan, Macnica, Nissho Electronics, and LinkedIn.

The virtual plugfest will feature three categories of tests to validate each level of system integration: an essential test suite will validate key features listed by the SONiC community; a scale test suite will characterize control and data plane scaling and capacity; and an operation test suite will test performance, failover/failback and deployment in leaf/spine topology. Results of the plugfest will be announced after the conclusion of the event.

“As an early adopter of SONiC, we have been excited to see the community contribute to SONiC’s success,” said Shawn Zandi, Head of Network Engineering at LinkedIn. “This plugfest is an opportunity to validate SONiC readiness and to see how others plan to use SONiC in their environments.”

“The plugfest provides vendors and end users a platform to showcase the maturity of SONiC through a common test framework,” said Dean Lee, senior director, cloud solutions at Keysight Technologies. “While community tests have taken place, this is the first time that each of these groups have the opportunity to understand the maturity of each level of SONiC system integration from an end user’s point of view.”

“The SONiC community welcomes more focus and effort on test,” said Lihua Yuan, Partner Dev Manager Microsoft. “While SONiC has gained wide industry support, this effort offers the end-user community the opportunity to test the key elements of SONiC under diverse conditions including multiple vendors.”

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/solutions/cloud/test-solutions-for-sonic-and-dent-implementations.html

Keysight and Aviz Networks will provide the common test platform used in the plugfest. This platform offers a data center fabric test environment to stress SONiC performance and scale. The test environment can scale in multiple dimensions including the number of hosts/servers, top of rack (TOR) switches, leaf switches and spine switches to simulate a hyperscale data center environment.

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Vodafone signals growth with 5G and gigabit broadband

Vodafone Group's revenue declined by 2.6% to €43.8 billion for FY 21, as good underlying momentum and the benefit from the acquisition of Liberty Global’s assets in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe wwas offset by the effects of COVID-19 on roaming and visitor revenue, as well as foreign exchange movements. The Group made a profit for the financial year of €0.5 billion (FY20: loss of €0.5 billion). The profit increase was partly driven by higher operating profit and the recognition of mark-to-market gains (FY21: €1.1 billion, FY20: losses of €1.1billion).

Nick Read, Group Chief Executive, commented: “I am pleased that we achieved full year results in line with our guidance and we exited the year with accelerating service revenue growth acrossthe business, with a particularly good performance in our largest market, Germany. We have delivered on the first phase of ourstrategy to reshape Vodafone as a stronger connectivity provider – including the simplification of the group to Europe and Africa, the successful IPO of Vantage Towers (€13.2 billion market capitalisation),the fast roll out of our next generationmobile and fixed networks,share gain in broadband subscription and continued reduction in customer churn.Our digitaltransformation initiatives have generated savings of €0.5 billion over the year and the integration of the assets acquired from Liberty Global is well ahead of plan."

Some highlights:

• mobile contract customer loyalty improved by 0.9 percentage points year-on-year;
• added 1.4 million NGN broadband customers and 44 million homes are now passed with 1 gigabit capable fixed-line network in Europe;
• launched 5G in 240 cities across 10 of our European markets;
• accelerated a series of costsaving activities, resulting in a €0.5 billion net reduction in operating expenditure in Europe and Common Functions;
• secured mobile wholesale agreements with PostePay in Italy and Asda Mobile in the UK; and
• completed the IPO of Vantage Towers March 2021,with a market capitalisation of €13.2 billion as at 17 May 2021.

https://investors.vodafone.com/reports-information/results-reports-presentations

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IONIAN subsea cable to link Italy and Greece

IslaLink and Elettra, a fully owned subsidiary of Orange announced  the construction of the IONIAN submarine cable system connecting Crotone, Italy, with Preveza, Greece. The submarine infrastructure will be complemented by two terrestrial fibre rings connecting the system to the cities of Milan and Rome in Italy and Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece.

“IONIAN is a natural step in the expansion of IslaLink”, said Esther Garcés, CEO of IslaLink. “IONIAN leverages on our experience in the development of new subsea projects and in providing best-in-class services to our customers. We believe the Greek broadband market is bound for growth in the coming years, and firmly believe Athens will become a regional hub for cloud services. IslaLink wants to contribute to this growth by bringing a modern, state-of-the-art, high-capacity international system to the market that will service the needs of operators and content providers on an independent and neutral basis”.

Didier Dillard, President of Elettra added: “Bringing enhanced connectivity through the installation of new submarine cables is one of our main missions, sometimes we do it on the other side of the Earth, but sometimes we do it close to our home country. This will be the case for the IONIAN cable, and we are very pleased and proud to contribute to this project working with Islalink, with our marine survey and marine installation capabilities. ”

http://www.islalink.com/islalink-announces-the-construction-of-ionian-a-new-submarine-system-connecting-greece-with-italy/

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PLDT to deploy Nokia's service orchestration and assurance

PLDT, the Philippines’ largest, fully integrated telecommunications company, and its wireless unit Smart Communications (Smart), is deploying Nokia's Digital Operations software, cloud infrastructure software and AirFrame servers. The suite of solutions will also standardize PLDT and Smart’s virtualization environment for multi-vendor applications. 

Nokia's Digital Operations software automates the round-trip lifecycle management of network functions, as well as network-facing and customer-facing services. Specifically, as PLDT and Smart evolve their integrated network from physical to virtual form, the solution will manage two interrelated flows. First, it will oversee the network function lifecycle from onboarding through runtime to decommissioning. Then, it will facilitate the lifecycle from design to deployment and assurance that orchestrates services and network slices across the network. This will enable PLDT and Smart to drive efficiencies into their operations processes while also becoming more agile to deliver innovative market-facing services.  

Nokia will also standardize PLDT and Smart’s Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) across the South Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao regions of the Philippines, as the unified NFVI for the deployment of multiple vendors’ Virtualized Network Functions. Nokia will deploy applications, operations and network management solutions across its NFVI cloud platform and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core.

Mario G. Tamayo, Head of Technology at PLDT and Smart, said: “Our deployment of Nokia’s software and infrastructure solutions have allowed us to tap into new levels of agility, flexibility and efficiency as we add innovative new offerings to complement our current market-leading consumer and enterprise services. This is an essential part of our broad and all-encompassing effort to keep the integrated PLDT and Smart network optimized and able to deliver the best experience to all our customers.”

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Intel's Mobileye wins ADAS design contract with Toyota

Toyota Motor Corp. selected Intel and ZF to develop advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) for use in multiple vehicle platforms starting in the next few years. 

As part of the agreement, ZF, one of the world’s largest producers of automotive cameras driven by Mobileye technology, will also supply its Gen 21 mid-range radar and be responsible for the integration of camera and radar in Toyota vehicles.

ZF and Mobileye will collaborate closely to produce advanced camera technology integrated with ZF radar technology to power key advanced driver-assistance platforms in Toyota vehicles. 

ZF’s Gen21 mid-range radar is a high-performance 77 GHz front radar designed to meet 2022+ Euro NCAP 5-Star Safety Ratings and enable L2/L2+ Automated Driving functions.

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NTT DATA to acquire Nexient, a software developer

NTT DATA Services agreed to acquire Nexient, a developer of cloud-native applications based in Silicon Valley with offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Columbus, Ohio. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The companies said Nexient will serve as a scalable anchor for NTT DATA’s Application Development & Modernization practice, adding user-centric full stack product development capabilities and speeding the ability to offer sophisticated digital transformation services to clients, including digital product strategy, product design and development, and platform transformation.

“Application Development and Modernization is a critical and fast-growing piece of the digital transformation value chain. With Nexient’s agile, product-minded development disciplines, we’re better equipped to help our clients quickly take advantage of digital innovations,” said Eric Clark, Chief Digital & Strategy Officer, NTT DATA Services. “NTT DATA is investing to grow our business and our digital expertise through hiring, training and R&D, as well as targeted acquisitions of best-in-class, digital companies. Nexient is the next step in this strategy and a great addition to our team.”

“Nexient’s product-minded agile development approach has earned our clients’ trust to solve their complex business problems,” said Mark Orttung, Nexient CEO. “Building on our commitment to operate within our core values, leadership competencies, and team-based approach, we are excited to join NTT DATA and expand the scope and value of the services we deliver to our clients.”

http://www.nttdataservices.com

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Optical Cable Corp. selected for DoD project

Optical Cable Corporation, which supplies a broad range of fiber optic and copper data communication cabling and connectivity solutions, has been awarded a contract to supply certain of OCC's proprietary products to a major defense contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense. OCC has received a purchase order totaling more than $1.0 million.

OCC expects to begin manufacturing the products in the fiscal third quarter of 2021 and continuing throughout fiscal year 2021. Further details regarding the contract were not disclosed.

Neil Wilkin, President and Chief Executive Officer of OCC, said, "OCC is proud of its long history designing and manufacturing products for the U.S. military. Once again, we are humbled to do our part by leveraging our innovative technologies and substantial capabilities to supply and support the brave men and women protecting our freedom. We are fortunate to count a number of veterans among our dedicated team, and all of us look forward to delivering the products and solutions on which our military relies and for which OCC is known."

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