TIP tackles Open Automated Frequency Coordination for 6 GHz Wi-Fi

Broadcom, Cisco, and Facebook have created a new Open Automated Frequency Coordination (Open AFC) Software Group within the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) in order to accelerate the commercialization of 6 GHz Wi-Fi devices.

The group is developing a common reference open source software for an AFC system that can be used by unlicensed devices in the newly available 6 GHz band while ensuring incumbent services are protected.

Facebook already has proof of concept Open AFC system which protect 6 GHz incumbent operations. The prototype system will be contributed to the TIP community.

"The 6 GHz Wi-Fi momentum is unmistakable. In the year following the historic FCC ruling to open up the band for unlicensed access, we already have an entire ecosystem of Wi-Fi 6E devices delivering gigabit speeds indoors. As we work towards closing the digital divide and further realizing the value of the 6 GHz band, AFC-enabled standard power Wi-Fi operation becomes critical. As Wi-Fi 7 comes along, AFC will turbocharge the user experience by enabling over 60 times more power for reliable, low latency, and multi-gigabit wireless broadband both indoors and outdoors. With this vision in mind, Broadcom is excited to join hands with Cisco and Facebook to create the TIP Open AFC Software Group aimed at enabling a cost effective and scalable AFC system,” said Vijay Nagarajan, Vice President of Marketing, Wireless Communications & Connectivity Division, Broadcom.

“Bringing AFC technology to the TIP Open AFC Software Group is a huge milestone for the unlicensed spectrum community," said Dan Rabinovitsj, vice president for Facebook Connectivity. “We are excited to see the contributions and innovations by Open AFC and we look forward to celebrating the widespread adoption of the 6 GHz band, which will rapidly accelerate the performance and bandwidth of Wi-Fi networks around the world”.

David Hutton, Chief Engineer of TIP, said: “The industry is coming together to support 6 GHz for unlicensed use for Wi-Fi and TIP will be providing the forum to contribute to make this happen, supporting regulatory efforts by ensuring that AFC systems are developed under a common code base that is available to all industry stakeholders.”

https://telecominfraproject.com/open-afc/

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Telxius activates Mistral along Latin America's Pacific coast

Telxius' new Mistral submarine cable, which runs along the Latin American Pacific coast, is now ready for service between Puerto San Jose (Guatemala) with Valparaiso (Chile) with additional landing points in Salinas (Ecuador), Lurin (Peru) and Arica (Chile).

Mistral spans approximately 7,300 km, and features six fibre pairs, 132 Tbps of potential capacity, and the lowest latency from Guatemala to Chile. It is the first subsea cable in the last 20 years to connect Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and Chile.

“With the rapid rise in cloud adoption and an increasing demand for higher capacity, lower latency and higher availability, this next generation submarine cable is ready for service at a pivotal time,” remarked Mario Martín, Telxius CEO. “Mistral means that Telxius effectively contributes with the highest standards of service, reliability and security in the region, creating opportunities for businesses and communities across Latin America and optimizing digital services for society at large”.  

The Mistral cable was named after the Latin American poet Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, otherwise known as Gabriela Mistral, who was the first Latin American woman to receive a Nobel prize. In addition to her celebrated contributions to the writing world, Mistral was an inspirational educator across Latin America, the United States and Europe, representing Latin America in the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, and attending conferences of women and educators globally.

https://telxius.com/

Telxius activates Brazil - Argentina subsea cable

Tuesday, April 20, 2021  Argentina, Brazil, Subsea, Telxius  

Telxius announced that the new Tannat submarine cable, connecting Santos (Brazil) with Las Toninas (Argentina), is now open for service. 

Tannat is a 2,000 kilometer new generation system adds to the Brusa and Junior cables on the Atlantic coast of Latin America to deliver the most modern and diverse end-to-end connectivity between the U.S., Brazil and Argentina. 

The new cable completes a main connectivity route between the U.S. and key hubs in South America as a continuation of Brusa (Virginia Beach – Rio de Janeiro) and Junior (Rio de Janeiro – Santos). Brusa has a capacity of 160 Tbps, with the highest capacity direct connection between the U.S. and South America and one of the highest in the world. Brusa connects Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza in Brazil, San Juan in Puerto Rico and Virginia Beach, U.S. via an 11,000 km, ultra-low-latency submarine cable. SAm-1, the 25,000 km subsea cable ring that surrounds Latin America, provides additional route diversity. With the combination of these four cables, Telxius offers outstanding diverse and robust subsea network routes in Latin America.

“With the addition of Tannat to our subsea network in Latin America we have effectively established the most modern and diverse end-to-end connectivity route between Brazil, Argentina and the U.S.,” noted Pablo Fraguas, Sales VP, Southern Region of Telxius Cable. “This new route not only improves the quality of the available network connectivity within Latin America, it also provides a robust, low latency connection of these markets to the U.S. and beyond.”

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Australia's NBN now connects 8.2 million premises

Australia's NBN Co generated total revenue of $4.6 billion in FY21, an increase of 21 per cent year-on-year. 

Driving the solid revenue performance was the addition of 933,000 residential and business premises that connected to the nbn network in the last 12 months and a total of 8.2 million premises connected to the network at 30 June 2021.

NBN Co Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Rue, said:

"The last 12 months have been very challenging for most Australians, but our purpose has never been clearer. NBN Co exists to lift the digital capability of Australia and we reiterate our commitment to provide a secure, reliable, high-speed broadband network to our residential and business customers across the country."

"As the nation faces into new challenges with the lockdowns that were recently imposed in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, we will continue to support customers and internet retailers through these uncertain times. The nbn™ network is the digital backbone of the nation that will continue to keep Australians connected and productive, educated, informed and entertained today and in the future."

Some highlights:

• Customer demand for the higher speed tiers remained strong throughout FY21 with 75 per cent of customers on retail plans based on wholesale download speed tiers of 50 Mbps and above at 30 June. 
• By 30 June 2021, 17 per cent of residential customers were using plans based on wholesale speed tiers offering download speeds of up to 100 Mbps and above, compared to 9 per cent of premises on download speeds of up to 100 Mbps and above at 30 June 2020.
• Following the completion of the initial build by 30 June 2020, capital expenditure for FY21 was $2.8 billion, down 45 per cent on FY20.
• Throughout the fiscal year, capital was allocated to 933,000 new connections, design and construction activity to make an additional 233,000 premises ready to connect, capacity upgrades across the network, and its national network upgrade program, which aims to deliver access to nbn Home Ultrafast services to up to 75 per cent of premises connected to the nbn fixed line network by the end of 2023.

https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-statements/fy21-performance-summary

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NBN expands its business fibre footprint

 NBN Co has created 44 new nbn™ Business Fibre Zones to deliver premium business-grade fibre to an additional 60,000 eligible businesses premises across Australia.

The new nbn Business Fibre Zones will be available for the benefit of eligible businesses in these new locations from 1 September 2021. If the business customer signs up to a three-year plan from their internet retailer, NBN Co will not charge the retailer an up-front connection cost.

It follows NBN Co’s announcement in September 2020 to create the first 240 nbn™ Business Fibre Zones, offering direct fibre connections and enabling access to business-grade broadband to a growing customer base of around 790,000 eligible business premises across Australia.

Brad Whitcomb, Chief Customer Officer at NBN Co, said: “NBN Co has a very clear and simple purpose: to lift the digital capability of Australia. We are therefore expanding the coverage of our nbn™ Business Fibre Zones across Australia to help support and grow Australia’s digital economy."

https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-statements/nbn-co-creates-44-new-nbn-business-fibre-zones-and-offers-wholesale-discounts-on-business-nbn-enterprise-ethernet-services

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Mandiant acquires Intrigue for attack surface discovery/assessment

Mandiant, a part of FireEye, has acquired Intrigue, a start-up focused on attack surface management. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Intrigue offers an Open Platform For Comprehensive Asset Discovery and Risk-based Vulnerability Assessment. The company was founded in 2019 by Jonathan Cran, ex-Rapid7, Bugcrowd, and Kenna Security, developer of multiple leading security technologies, standards and frameworks.

Mandiant plans to integrated Intrigue’s attack surface management technology into the Mandiant Advantage platform, enabling organizations to discover, monitor, and manage risk across their entire attack surface.

“We are excited to welcome the Intrigue team to Mandiant. Intrigue is a strategic and immediately impactful addition to the Mandiant Advantage platform. Discovering and continuously monitoring the dynamic attack surface of a modern cloud-enabled organization is critical to assess risk and prioritize response,” said Colby DeRodeff, Chief Technology Officer, Mandiant Advantage. “Mandiant knows what adversaries are doing right now and what vulnerabilities they are currently exploiting. By combining this intelligence with the capabilities of Intrigue, we are rapidly evolving our customers' ability to efficiently manage risk and prioritize their resources.”

“The vision of Intrigue is to provide continuous, in-depth visibility of organizations' attack surface and risk,” said Jonathan Cran, Intrigue Founder and CEO prior to the acquisition. “We’re beyond excited to bring our capabilities to the Mandiant Advantage platform, accelerating and greatly expanding our mission-driven team's impact. I believe our combined capabilities will enable security teams to gain a significant edge against today's threats.”

https://www.fireeye.com/blog/products-and-services/2021/08/an-intriguing-update-to-mandiant-advantage.html

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PacketFabric adds IPsec VPN tunnels for its Cloud Router

 PacketFabric released native support of IPsec VPN tunnels as a connection type for its industry-leading Cloud Router product. In addition, Cloud Router now supports Network Address Translation (NAT), allowing enterprises to build premium private connections to cloud-hosted storage and applications that are delivered via public IP addresses.

"The cloud is all about scale and flexibility. But traditional cloud connectivity hasn't delivered scalability or flexibility. You've had to backhaul traffic through data centers, wait an entire ice age for circuits to provision, rely on unpredictable Internet, or deal with inflexible long-term telco-style contracts," said PacketFabric Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer Anna Claiborne. 

PacketFabric Cloud Router now offers enterprise IT and network teams an expansive set of on-demand hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity services:

• Carrier-class cloud connectivity to AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle at speeds up to 100Gbps
• Secure, private connections to AWS S3 Cloud Storage at speeds up to 100Gbps, and Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics SaaS applications at speeds up to 10Gbps
• Private optical data center connections via nearly 200 PacketFabric PoPs at speeds up to 100Gbps
• IPsec VPN connections at speeds up to 2Gbps for branch office and other locations

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Colorado's FastTrack Comm selects Fujitsu for optical transport

FastTrack Communications selected Fujitsu Network Communications' modular 1FINITY optical networking platform to upgrade their fiber optic network.

FastTrack Communications, which was formed in 2002 by two rural electrical cooperatives and is based in Durango, Colorado, is deploying a disaggregated architecture based on the 1FINITY platform to boost network capacity, agility and scalability.

The network upgrade includes the 1FINITY Lambda and Transport series blades deployed in a Colorless, Directionless ROADM (CD ROADM) network with in-line amplification and up to 200G data rates - matching functionality to site requirements and a scalable pay-as-you-grow approach. With improved flexibility, span reach and capacity, the modernized network allows FastTrack to offer mission-critical data transport, high-speed internet connectivity and voice over IP services to business customers and enterprises at peak operational efficiency.

“As the only local provider of fiber-based, business internet in the region, our services are unrivaled. This network update is a strategic investment in the long-term success of our business customers,” said Kelly Hebbard, general manager, FastTrack Communications. “The Fujitsu 1FINITY platform is a great fit for our first-rate fiber network, helping us power local businesses, community institutions and communications carriers at next-generation speeds.”

“Today’s business services require a heightened level of agility that legacy network architectures simply cannot achieve,” said Annie Bogue, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc. “Fujitsu is committed to supporting our long-standing customer FastTrack Communications in their evolution to a more scalable, disaggregated infrastructure enabled by the 1FINITY platform.”

http://www.fujitsu.com

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Edgecore debuts two Wi-Fi 6 access points

Edgecore Networks introduced a set of Wi-Fi 6 access points offering enterprise-grade security for SME, enterprise, carrier, or any high-density scenarios.  

 The series includes two concurrent dual-band indoor access points:

• The EAP101 supports 2x2:2 uplink and downlink MU-MIMO, with up to 1.7Gbps aggregated data rate. 
• The EAP102 supports 4x4:4 uplink and down link MU-MIMO, with up to 2.9 Gbps aggregated data rate.

Both access points include built-in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and ZigBee. In addition, the Edgecore Wi-Fi 6 access points support OpenRoaming and OpenMesh. OpenRoaming assures that Wi-Fi networks automatically interoperate with each other to deliver a smooth connected Wi-Fi experience, allowing users to securely roam from location to location. OpenMesh allows users to connect their access points wirelessly to one another, providing an intuitive way to extend the Wi-Fi signal to a larger area and minimize dead zones. OpenMesh provides users with scalability, flexibility, and efficiency to achieve better network coverage for Wi-Fi deployment.

https://www.edge-core.com/news-inquiry.php?cls=1&id=593

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