China Telecom's 1H2021 revenues rise 13%yoy

China Telecom reported operating revenues of RMB219.2 billion for the first half of 2021, representing an increase of 13.1% year-on-year. Service revenues amounted to RMB203.5 billion, representing an increase of 8.8% year-on-year and surpassing the industry’s average growth rate. EBITDA amounted to RMB66.3 billion, representing an increase of 5.1% over the same period of last year. Net profit amounted to RMB17.7 billion, representing an increase of 27.2% over the same period of last year. 

Some highlights:

• China Telecom's 1H2021 capital expenditure was RMB27.0 billion.
• In the first half of the year, China Telecom's mobile communications service revenues amounted to RMB93.3 billion, representing an increase of
• 6.9% over the same period of last year. 
• The total number of mobile subscribers reached 362 million, representing a net addition of 11.47 million. 
• The number of 5G package subscribers reached 131 million with a penetration rate of 36.2%, which continued to surpass the industry
• average level. 
• The number of 5G feature-app subscribers increased rapidly, while users upgrading to 5G maintained sound value growth. 
• Mobile ARPU has reversed its downward trend and continued to increase, which amounted to RMB45.7, representing an increase of 2.9% over the same period of last year.
• 5G ARPU is RMB57.4

• Wireline and Smart Family service revenues of the Company amounted to RMB57.4 billion, representing an increase of 5.2% year-on-year. 
• The total number of wireline broadband subscribers reached 164 million, while revenue from broadband access reached RMB38.1 billion, representing a year-on-year growth of 7.9%. 
• Broadband access ARPU maintained the rebounce momentum, reaching RMB39.4 and representing an increase of 2.9% over the same period of last year.

https://www.chinatelecom-h.com/en/global/home.php

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DELTA Fiber picks Nokia for optical transport network

DELTA Fiber, which serves about 900,000 addresses throughout the Netherlands, has selected Nokia to provide an optical transport network supporting 400G wavelengths to handle DELTA Fiber’s increased traffic and further expansion of its FTTH rollout. 

DELTA Fiber will use the Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch platforms, powered by Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine technology. This will support DELTA Fiber’s deployment of a new DWDM network, incorporating Nokia’s broad family of Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers, enabling optimized core and metro applications to cover the entire country. The core network build is currently underway to support 19 sites and will be followed by the deployment of metro sites, covering approximately 75 locations.

This deal is part of a broader cooperation with DELTA Fiber to support its expansion plans, which also includes Nokia supplying XGS.PON access network and customer premise equipment.

John Wittekamp, CTO at DELTA Fiber, said: “Nokia’s highly scalable optical transport network will play a critical role in enabling DELTA Fiber to grow with the needs of its customers both today and in the future. With almost a doubling of traffic each year, we have put in place an aggressive goal to roll out FTTH over the next decade. The new network will address the requirements of exponential traffic growth without compromising reliability and resiliency of the network."

Rafael de Fermin, Senior Vice President Europe, IP/Optics, at Nokia, said: “We’re excited to expand our optical relationship with DELTA Fiber and increase Nokia’s footprint overall as its multi-domain supplier. The new optical transport network is key to ensuring a high-performance experience for DELTA Fiber’s customers through its new access networks.”

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IDC: public cloud infrastructure worldwide revenue at $400B in 2025

The combined Public Cloud IaaS and PaaS market is forecast to have revenues of $400 billion in 2025 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.8% during the 2021-2025 period, according to a recently published forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC). 

"Enterprise spending on public cloud infrastructure continues to grow faster than traditional IT infrastructure segments," said Andrew Smith, research manager Cloud Infrastructure Services. "We expect all workload segments to grow in the double digits — some slightly faster than others — as enterprises emerge from 2020 and continue to prioritize workload migration and modernization using public cloud infrastructure."

Some highlights from IDC:

• Application development and testing, structured data management, and structured data analytics will be the largest workload segments by revenue share. Unstructured data analytics/data management and media streaming are forecast to be the fastest growing segments with CAGRs of 41.9% and 41.2%, respectively. Other business applications, file and print, and content applications will grow slower than the overall market average while still delivering double-digit growth throughout the forecast period.
• Public cloud services remain an essential part of enterprise recovery strategy as IT organizations reevaluate budgets, build infrastructure focused on business resilience, and work toward operating efficiently and managing risk in a post-COVID-19 world.
• Enterprises are shifting from workload migration to workload modernization on public cloud. In 2020, we saw IaaS buyers increasingly prioritize application modernization efforts, viewing modernization as an integral component of the move toward agile application delivery and cloud operations.
• Relentless enterprise data growth continues to push many workloads to the public cloud, as enterprises look to effectively manage data growth, as well as their IT budget. In many cases, cloud infrastructure and application platforms help meet this need by enabling agile and consistent scaling of capacity that can be utilized on demand.

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS48129821

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GSA: 5G device designs flood the market

The number 5G devices on the market has surpassed 900 for the first time and now stands at 938 announced 5G devices – an increase of 24.1% over the last quarter, according the GSA. The number of 5G devices understood to be commercially available has similarly grown, by 29.9% over the same period, now exceeds 600 for the first time, reaching 608 devices, which represents 64.8% of the total number of announced 5G devices. Of these commercial 5G devices, over 400 are phones.

The new “5G Device Ecosystem – August 2021” report reveals that 143 vendors have now announced available or forthcoming 5G devices. Across 22 different form factors, devices recorded by GSA include 450 5G phones, at least 401 of which are now commercially available (up 20 in a month). GSA also recorded 171 FWA CPE devices (indoor and outdoor), of which 67 are now commercially available.

By end-July 2021, GSA had identified:

• 22 announced form factors
• 143 vendors who had announced available or forthcoming 5G devices
• 938 announced devices (including regional variants, but excluding operator-branded devices that are essentially rebadged versions of other phones), including 608 that are understood to be commercially available:
• 450 phones (up 19 from June), at least 401 of which are now commercially available (up 20 in a month)
• 171 FWA CPE devices (indoor and outdoor), of which 67 are now commercially available
• 134 modules
• 60 industrial/enterprise routers/gateways/modems
• 43 battery operated hotspots
• 17 tablets
• 15 laptops (notebooks)
• 10 in-vehicle routers/modems/hotspots
• 38 other devices (including drones, head-mounted displays, robots, TVs, USB terminals/‌dongles/‌modems, cameras, femtocells/‌small cells, repeaters, vehicle OBUs, a snap-on dongle/‌‌adapter, a switch, a vending machine and an encoder)
• 528 announced devices with declared support for 5G standalone in sub-6 GHz bands, 365 of which are commercially available

https://gsacom.com/

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EXFO: going-private bid increased to US$6.25

EXFO announced 11172239 Canada Inc. has agreed to increase the purchase price for the acquisition of all the issued and outstanding subordinate voting shares of EXFO, from US $6.00 to US $6.25 per subordinate voting share not held directly or indirectly by Germain Lamonde and Philippe Morin. The parties have also amended the arrangement agreement dated June 7, 2021, as amended on July 6, 2021 and July 12, 2021 accordingly. 

“We have been long term supportive shareholders of EXFO and we support Mr. Lamonde’s revised offer to take EXFO private. We believe that the transaction represents a fair outcome for EXFO’s minority shareholders as it provides actionable, attractive and immediate liquidity,” said Chris Galvin, Managing Partner at Westerly Capital.

https://www.exfo.com/en/corporate/news-events/press-releases/increase-purchase-price-going-private-transaction/ 

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Texas Rangers' new ballpark deploys Aruba ESP-based network

The Texas Rangers Baseball Club has deployed an end-to-end Aruba ESP-based network at its new 40,518-seat Globe Life Field stadium to power everything from a 5.5-acre retractable roof to an immersive baseball app that enables delivering modern, digitally enhanced game day and special event experiences. The wireless network is comprised of Aruba Wi-Fi 6 indoor access points (APs), outdoor APs, and mobility controllers. For wired networking, the Rangers implemented Aruba’s access switches at the edge and CX Series switches for aggregation and in the data center.

Visitor-facing connectivity includes features like mobile ticketing for speedier contactless entry as well as two massive Daktronics videoboards, which display live and replay images plus granular real-time game-play statistics such as spin rate and exit velocity.

“Our network serves as the nervous system for a large public venue that is chock full of electronic sensors and controls,” explained Michael Bullock, vice president of Information Technology for the Rangers. “Aruba’s solutions have enabled us to engineer the equivalent of a living, breathing facility, while minimizing IT and back office overhead by giving us intelligent, automated networking infrastructure.”

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