Assurance is a critical and and ongoing component in the deployment and performance of 5G networks.
In this video, Greg Spear, Director, Solutions Enablement at Accedian, talks about the key components for a successful 5G private network deployment and the importance of assurance and automation to drive monetization.
Guide: 5G Performance Starts and Ends with the Access Network
Video: Mind the Gaps! Why Performance Visibility is Critical for Private 5G and Campus Networks
Openreach announced long-term price certainty on its FTTP (Fibre-to-the-Premises) lines for its wholesale Communications Provider customers in the UK.
Openreach said its offer is based on the following set of principles:
The offer will be open for participation between 1st October 2021 and 30th March 2022. The long-term pricing certainty will last until 30th September 2031 and be available across the entire FTTP footprint. Discounts are available to CPs where they choose to place new orders with Openreach and commit to making a percentage of those on the FTTP network, where available.
Katie Milligan, Managing Director of Customer, Commercials and Propositions at Openreach said: “Nobody’s building Full Fibre broadband faster, further, or at a higher quality than Openreach, and we’re well on track to reach 25 million premises by December 2026. At the same time we’re determined to make Full Fibre the default option for customers throughout the UK, so we’ve been working closely with Communications Providers to offer simple and competitive pricing which gives them the long-term certainty and flexibility they need."
More than one million homes and businesses have now ordered ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband over the Openreach network. BT is investing £15 billion to build the gigabit-capable technology to 25 million UK premises by December 2026 and it’s making the technology available to 43k premises every week, with more than five million homes and businesses already able to place an order.
Spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud infrastructure, including dedicated and shared environments, increased 12.5% year over year in the first quarter of 2021 (1Q21) to $15.1 billion, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment.
Some highlights:
At the vendor level, all major vendors grew their cloud infrastructure revenue in 1Q21, with the highest growth rates belonging to Lenovo (38.2%) and Huawei (37.9%). Huawei, Lenovo, and HPE/H3C(a) each grew their market share compared to results from the prior year's first quarter.
Deutsche Telekom has activated its "O-RAN Town" in Neubrandenburg, Germany.
O-RAN Town is a multi-vendor open RAN network that will deliver open RAN based 4G and 5G services across up to 25 sites. The deployment includes Europe’s first integration of massive MIMO (mMIMO) radio units using O-RAN open fronthaul interfaces to connect to the virtualized RAN software.
The first live sites at O-RAN Town are built on a truly multi-vendor open RAN architecture with equipment from vendor partners Dell, Fujitsu, Intel, Mavenir, NEC and Supermicro. The remote radio units (O-RU) are provided by Fujitsu and NEC, including Fujitsu’s LTE and 5G NR O-RUs and NEC’s 32T32R 5G massive MIMO (mMIMO) radio units (RU) conforming to O-RAN Alliance fronthaul specifications, embedded with advanced beamforming technologies. Mavenir provides the Cloud-Native baseband software for the 4G and 5G distributed units (O-DU) and central units (O-CU), including for the mMIMO radio units. The virtualized baseband software is running on standard server hardware provided by Dell and Supermicro. The entire O-RAN Cloud architecture is built on top of the Intel FlexRAN software architecture.
Deutsche Telekom plans to expand O-RAN Town in phases across 2021 and 2022, working with different sets of vendors.
Claudia Nemat, Board Member, Technology & Innovation, Deutsche Telekom: “Open RAN is about increasing flexibility, choice and reinvigorating our industry to bring in innovation for the benefit our customers. Switching on our O-RAN Town including massive MIMO is a pivotal moment on our journey to drive the development of open RAN as a competitive solution for macro deployment at scale. This is just the start. We will expand O-RAN Town over time with a diverse set of supplier partners to further develop our operational experience of high-performance multi-vendor open RAN.”
“Another key goal with open RAN is to benefit from automation. In the near future, we can more flexibly add new network features, resolve traffic issues or intelligently reduce power consumption,” says Claudia Nemat. “Through our independent management framework, we are getting operational experience of utilizing automation to address the integration challenge, complexity and improving outcomes in a truly multi-vendor open RAN system,” says Claudia Nemat.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise agreed to acquire Zerto, an industry leader in cloud data management and protection, for $374 million in cash.
Zerto’s journal-based continuous data protection (CDP) technology includes disaster recovery, backup, and data mobility in a single cloud data management and protection software solution that spans on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
Zerto helps customers recover in minutes from ransomware, cyberattacks, and other unplanned downtime bringing data back to its original state just seconds before the attack or disruption. Zerto also easily replicates and migrates data between VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments and natively to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
HPE expects the data protection as a service (aaS) market to grow from $7.7B in 2020 to $15.3B in 2024, representing a 19% CAGR. Zerto will be available aaS through HPE GreenLake and Data Services Cloud Console.
HPE said the deal expands its GreenLake portfolio and HPE Storage’s shift to a cloud-native, software-defined data services business.
“Data is now the most critical asset,” said Antonio Neri, President and CEO, HPE. “With the explosive growth of data at the edge and across hybrid environments, organizations today face significant complexity in managing and protecting their data. Zerto’s market-leading cloud data management and protection software expands HPE GreenLake cloud data services, allowing customers to protect their data and rapidly act on insights, from edge to cloud.“
“With data underpinning digital transformation, customers must manage, protect, and mobilize their data,” said Tom Black, Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Storage. “Customers continue to face significant issues managing data complexity across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Zerto further positions HPE to help solve these customer challenges and become the leader in data management and protection through HPE GreenLake cloud services.”
Bharti Airtel is rolling out 600G and 800G optical infrastructure in India’s largest metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata – using Ciena's platforms. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Airtel has implemented a self-optimizing network design using an advanced C&L-band infrastructure with Layer 0 control plane with Ciena’s 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS).
Airtel is also using Ciena’s Liquid Spectrum PinPoint OTDR software analytics to proactively localize, troubleshoot, and rapidly repair fiber fault conditions. Additionally, to maximize efficiency of the network and allow for quick turn up of new high-bandwidth services, Airtel has deployed WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics along with Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller.
Randeep Sekhon, CTO of Bharti Airtel said, “Airtel was the country’s first telco to demonstrate live 5G service over a commercial network. As we work to deploy 5G more widely, Ciena plays an integral role in providing an agile network foundation to satisfy our customers’ dynamic requirements.”
dRyan Perera, Vice President and General Manager, Ciena India said, “The future of data consumption across India is at the edge – in homes, trains, hospitals, automobiles, factories and many other mission-critical environments. By investing in its metro network with Ciena’s industry-leading technology, Airtel is ideally positioned to support the booming digital economy.”
The African Telecommunications Union, an organization based in Nairobi that advocates for countries and mobile telecommunications providers across the continent, signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei. Under the agreement, Huawei will provide training on skills development, including reskilling and upskilling for ATU members.
Speaking during the signing ceremony held in Nairobi-Kenya at the ATU headquarters, Mr. John OMO, Secretary-General of the ATU, praised Huawei for their contribution to Africa: “Huawei has transformed connectivity and made a major contribution to the continent through its investments in digital infrastructure, ICT skills, environmentally-friendly connectivity solutions, and cutting-edge technologies for rural areas. Huawei is a trusted development partner of Africa. The document we are signing aims at strengthening this partnership.” He added: “Africa has a tremendous opportunity to fully grasp the potential from new technologies”.
