Vocus plans Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore cable

Vocus unveiled plans for the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable (DJSC), the first international submarine cable connection into Darwin, establishing the Northern Territory capital as Australia’s newest entry point for international data connectivity.

Vocus has now signed construction contracts for a new $100 million, 1,000km cable linking the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) to the North West Cable System (NWCS) in Port Hedland – providing the final piece of the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable (DJSC), a $500 million system of high-capacity cables connecting Perth, Darwin, Port Hedland, Christmas Island, Indonesia, and Singapore.

The DJSC will deliver 40Tbps of internet capacity between Australia and Asia – unlocking Darwin as a major new data hub for the Asia-Pacific and opening up the Pilbara mining region for low-latency connectivity into Singapore.

The DJSC has been years in planning and marks the final stage in a sequence of major infrastructure builds by Vocus in Australia’s North and West. The DJSC will interconnect with the 4,600km ASC between Perth and Singapore and the 2,100km NWCS between Port Hedland and Darwin, with the completed system expected to be online by mid-2023.

Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher MP said: “Submarine cables are vital infrastructure, connecting Australia to the rest of the world. This new international cable landing in Darwin will provide more capacity and additional redundancy for Australia, and I welcome this investment from Vocus.”

The announcement coincides with the completion of the ‘Terabit Territory’ project with the Northern Territory Government, which has seen Vocus deploy 200 Gbps (Gigabits per second, per wavelength) technology on its domestic fibre network into Darwin. Vocus’ Darwin fibre routes now have 20Tbps of capacity, scalable to deliver up to 480Tbps of total capacity – with a future upgrade path in place to deliver 400Gbps technology as it becomes commercially available. 

https://www.vocus.com.au/news/vocus-announces-the-darwin-cable

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AT&T to provide 5G for millions on new GM vehicles

General Motors has selected AT&T to provide 5G to millions of new vehicles over the next decade in the United States. 

GM said 5G connectivity will first be available in select model year 2024 vehicles. Additionally, through GM’s fifth-generation network, current 4G LTE-equipped model year 2019 and newer vehicles will experience faster connectivity speeds and many of the same performance benefits of future 5G-equipped vehicles. Current Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac owners in the U.S. with 4G LTE-capable model year 2019 and newer vehicles will migrate to the new network infrastructure once available. 

To support GM’s next generation connected vehicles , AT&T is working with Microsoft to integrate secure cloud services.

“Together with AT&T, we’ve brought unprecedented experiences to the daily commute, family road trips and everything in between,” said Santiago Chamorro, GM vice president of Global Connected Services. “As an in-vehicle connectivity leader, this rollout demonstrates our commitment to growth through software-enabled services and reimagining every customer touchpoint by enabling faster connectivity speeds to power in-vehicle voice-enabled services, navigation, and apps that our customers have grown to love.”

“By connecting millions of GM vehicles to our nationwide 5G network, we will improve the customer experience for existing services while laying the groundwork for the next wave of innovation including autonomous driving,” said Gregory Wieboldt, senior vice president, Global Business, Industry Solutions, AT&T. “We now connect more vehicles than any other carrier and GM has played a critical role in our success. We’re honored to work alongside GM to usher the next chapter of connected driving.”

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Lumen launches Edge Private Cloud

Lumen Technologies introduced a fully-managed Lumen Edge Private Cloud service that provides pre-built infrastructure for high-performance private computing connected to a global fiber network. 

Lumen Edge Private Cloud is a completely managed Infrastructure-as-a-Service that brings together a private cloud platform with the Lumen global fiber network, edge facilities, security, and managed services to help bridge clouds, IT infrastructure, and storage that allow applications to run at peak performance.  

"Lumen has decades of experience helping our customers implement private cloud solutions for critical workloads, and now we are extending our private cloud capabilities onto our low latency edge platform," said Chris McReynolds, vice president of cloud edge product management for Lumen. "We can help our customers enhance experiences, enhance application performance, and improve security and control — with speed and at scale by empowering them to deploy workloads closer to digital interactions on pre-built hardware and managed infrastructure. With Lumen Edge Private Cloud our customers can have a customized private cloud environment running within days, with Lumen assisting with design, implementation, managed services, and security consulting."

https://www.lumen.com/edge

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Polaris Wireless and Qualcomm team on z-axis location for E911

Polaris Wireless' vertical (z-axis) location will be delivered through the Qualcomm Location Suite. 

The companies said their collaboration will facilitate the adoption of a fully integrated solution for feature phones and other cellular devices not served by iOS and Android operating systems. The effort takes advantage of Polaris Wireless proven z-axis location technology which is designed to exceed the FCC’s 3-meter z-axis accuracy requirement. Qualcomm Technologies has enhanced the capabilities of the Qualcomm Location Suite to provide z-axis location information via a standards-based interface, known as LPPe, which is the delivery method favored by mobile service providers.

“We are very enthusiastic about our collaboration with a world-class company like Qualcomm Technologies,” said Manlio Allegra, CEO and Founder of Polaris Wireless.  “By combining Polaris Wireless’ deep experience in 3D location with Qualcomm Technologies’ unparalleled position in the mobile ecosystem, we will support currently unserved wireless subscribers who deserve to be located with the best possible accuracy in emergency situations.” 

“The addition of vertical location is poised to help first responders to better determine the floor of an emergency caller within a multi-story building,” said Francesco Grilli, Vice President, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We continue to work with mobile operators, component manufacturers, and location innovators to support FCC regulations in a seamless manner for OEMs and users. We are proud of this work with Polaris Wireless to make it possible.”

https://www.polariswireless.com/

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Lanner's uCPE verified for ADVA Ensemble Connector

The Lanner NCA-4025 is now verified with Intel Select Solution for uCPE with ADVA Ensemble Connector. In addition, ADVA’s Ensemble Connector is available preinstalled on a variety of Lanner’s leading network appliances.

The companies said their solution gives businesses and CSPs an open and flexible solution guaranteed to meet the performance needs of the most demanding uCPE applications. It delivers improved networking through the Ensemble Connector operating system and virtual network function hosting environment. This features advanced applications at Layer 2 and 3, including LTE access and Carrier Ethernet 2.0 functionality, as well as zero-touch provisioning for ultimate simplicity and scale. The uCPE offering also enables access to the Ensemble Harmony Ecosystem, the industry’s largest set of onboarded virtualized applications and supported servers.

“We’re excited that Lanner’s NCA-4025 is now a certified Intel Select Solution for uCPE preinstalled with Ensemble Connector. The new plug-and-play offering delivers the highest levels of performance while running multiple virtual network functions. It reduces the effort and complexity of testing and validation and accelerates time-to-market for new services,” said Mike Heffner, GM, Edge Cloud, ADVA. “The carrier-class capabilities of our Ensemble Connector combined with Lanner’s high-performance network appliances provide customers with a choice of highly scalable and secure hardware-software solutions that are pre-integrated and ready to deploy.”

http://www.adva.com

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Telekom Romania picks Mavenir for cloud-native IMS

Telekom Romania Mobile Communications selected Mavenir to deploy a cloud-native IMS (vIMS) platform together with VoLTE and VoWi-Fi microservices. In combination with Mavenir’s cloud-native IMS platform, VoLTE and VoWi-Fi microservices will provide continuity of voice services for Telekom Romania while helping the company to strengthen its 4G/LTE network and facilitate the transition to 5G.

Mavenir notes that its network software solutions are running on Deutsche Telekom’s pan-European cross-border PAN-NET telco cloud network.

Brandon Larson, SVP, GM, Multimedia Business Unit at Mavenir, said, “By deploying on Deutsche Telekom’s PAN-NET, this project is another great example of how Mavenir’s market-leading network software solutions can run on any cloud. We’re very proud to provide Telekom Romania with tools to help it compete successfully in the future.”

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