FCC adds $791 million in RDOF funding for broadband

The FCC is ready to authorize $791,604,299 through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to six providers to fund new broadband deployments to over 350,000 estimated locations in 19 states.  

The top three states receiving funding include Illinois, $212 million, Arizona, $140 million, and Iowa, $113 million. 

“This funding will connect more households throughout the country with high-speed broadband as part of our ongoing work to close the digital divide,” said Chairwoman Rosenworcel.  “We are confident these projects can bring quality service to currently unserved areas.” 

This round of funding supports projects using a range of network technologies, including gigabit service hybrid fiber/fixed wireless deployments that will provide end-user locations with either fiber or fixed wireless network service using licensed spectrum.  

To date, the program has provided more than $6 billion in broadband deployment to 47 states. 

https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904/round-results  

FCC rejects Starlink for RDOF funding

Wednesday, August 10, 2022  Satellite, Starlink  

The FCC rejected the long-form applications of Starlink and of LTD Broadband to receive support through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program. Starlink is delivering broadband access via thousands of LEO satellites. LTD Broadband offers a fixed wireless access service and has built over 2500 tower sites covering over 50,000 square miles of Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. The...

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FCC's RDOF program has committed over $5.2 billion to date

Sunday, May 08, 2022  FCC, RDOF  

In its 9th round of program funding, the FCC is authorizing $199,336,695 through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) for new broadband deployments in 26 states and the Northern Mariana Islands bringing service to over 230,000 locations.  To date, the RDOF program has committed over $5.2 billion for broadband deployment to 3 million locations in 47 states and the Northern Mariana Islands.“We need to connect everyone, everywhere, and today’s...

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U.S. blocks shipments of NVIDIA's A100 and H100 to China, Russia

The U.S. government has imposed an export restriction on NVIDIA's A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuits to China (including Hong Kong) and Russia. The license restriction also covers NVIDIA's DGX or any other systems which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits, as well as any future NVIDIA integrated circuit achieving both peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance equal to or greater than thresholds that are roughly equivalent to the A100, as well as any system that includes those circuits. 

The new license requirement may require NVIDIA to transition certain operations out of China. 

NVIDIA said its financial outlook for its third fiscal quarter, provided on August 24, 2022, included approximately $400 million in potential sales to China which may be subject to the new license requirement if customers do not want to purchase the Ccmpany’s alternative product offerings or if the U.S. government does not grant licenses in a timely manner or denies licenses to significant customers.

https://investor.nvidia.com/financial-info/sec-filings/default.aspx

• NVIDIA's A100, powered by itsAmpere Architecture, is the engine of the NVIDIA data center platform. A100 provides up to 20X higher performance over the prior generation and can be partitioned into seven GPU instances to dynamically adjust to shifting demands. It is available in 40GB and 80GB memory versions,the latter of which boasts the world’s fastest memory bandwidth at over 2 terabytes per second (TB/s).
• NVIDIA's H100 features fourth-generation Tensor Cores and the Transformer Engine with FP8 precision. The company claims up to 9X faster training over the prior generation for mixture-of-experts (MoE) models. The design also leverages fourth-generation NVlink, which offers 900 GB/s of GPU-to-GPU interconnect and the NVLINK Switch System, which accelerates communication by every GPU across nodes.

NVIDIA posts revenue or $6.7B, decline in gaming revenue

Wednesday, August 24, 2022  Financials, Nvidia  

In what it described as a "challenging quarter" driven primarily by weaker gaming revenue, NVIDIA reported revenue of $6.70 billion for the second quarter ended July 31, 2022, up 3% from a year ago and down 19% from the previous quarter.GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.26, down 72% from a year ago and down 59% from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $0.51, down 51% from a year ago and down 63% from...

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NVIDIA trims outlook on lower gaming sales and supply disruptions

Monday, August 08, 2022  Nvidia  

Citing macroeconomic headwins and lower gaming sales, NVIDIA trimmed its financial outlook for the second quarter ended July 31, 2022.Second quarter revenue is expected to be approximately $6.70 billion, down 19% sequentially and up 3% from the prior year, primarily reflecting weaker than forecasted Gaming revenue. Gaming revenue was $2.04 billion, down 44% sequentially and down 33% from the prior year. Data Center revenue was $3.81 billion, up 1%...

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NVIDIA unveils Quantum Optimized Device Architecture

Tuesday, July 12, 2022  Nvidia, Quantum  

NVIDIA outlined a new Quantum Optimized Device Architecture (QODA) for creating a coherent hybrid quantum-classical programming model. QODA is an open, unified environment for quantum processors that aims to make it easier to add quantum computing to existing applications, leveraging both today’s quantum processors, as well as simulated future quantum machines using NVIDIA DGX systems and a large installed base of NVIDIA GPUs available in scientific...

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Ericsson: about 6.1 billion unique mobile subscribers worldwide

There were about 6.1 billion unique mobile subscribers at the close of Q2 2022, of which 690 million were 5G subscriptions, according to a recent update to the Ericsson Mobility Report. Allowing for multiple subscriptions per user, there are now 8.3 billion mobile subscriptions globally.

Among other statistics, the Q2 2022 update also reports:

• Mobile broadband accounts for about 86 percent of all mobile subscriptions
• 218 communications service providers had launched commercial 5G services
• 24 communications service providers had launched 5G standalone (SA) networks
• Mobile network data traffic grew 39 percent between Q2 2021 and Q2 2022
• Total monthly global mobile network data traffic reached 100 EB (exabytes).
• The Q2 2022 update includes charts and diagrams outlining the regional mobile subscription penetration, the total and net mobile subscription additions, and global mobile network data traffic and year-on-year growth.

https://www.ericsson.com/4a4be7/assets/local/reports-papers/mobility-report/documents/2022/ericsson-mobility-report-q2-2022.pdf

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American Tower and Verizon sign new lease agreement

American Tower and Verizon Communications signed a new overarching lease agreement, facilitating Verizon’s on-going 5G network deployment across American Tower’s extensive U.S. portfolio of communications sites. 

The companies said the deal provides a simplified and efficient leasing process through a contractual framework that will drive mutual growth and value over a multi-year period.

“This agreement represents another key milestone and an extension of our decades-long strategic partnership with Verizon,” said Steve Vondran, President – U.S. Tower Division, American Tower Corporation. “We look forward to supporting Verizon as they continue their accelerated and efficient 5G network build-out by utilizing our distributed nationwide portfolio of high-quality communications sites.”

“Verizon continues to build and run the networks that drive innovation, digitization and technological advancements that are changing our world. Efficient, long-term strategic partnerships with our vendors are critical to continue advancing the industry forward, and providing the network our customers have come to rely on,” said Heidi Hemmer, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Verizon.

http://www.americantower.com

American Tower completes $10B acquisition of CoreSite

Wednesday, December 29, 2021  American Tower, Mergers And Acquisitions  

American Tower completed its previously announced acquisition of CoreSite Realty Corporation. Tom Bartlett, American Tower’s Chief Executive Officer stated, “We are thrilled to welcome CoreSite’s exceptional team to American Tower and are ready to work together to create long-term shareholder value. As 5G deployments and wireless and wireline convergence accelerate, we expect to leverage CoreSite’s highly interconnected data center facilities...

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American Tower to Acquire 11,489 Towers from Verizon

Thursday, February 05, 2015  American Tower, Mergers And Acquisitions, Verizon  

American Tower Corporation agreed to acquire rights to approximately 11,324 wireless communications towers and purchase approximately 165 additional towers from Verizon Communications for $5.056 billion in cash. The portfolio of approximately 11,489 towers spans all 50 states with approximately 50% of the sites in the top 100 BTAs. The average height of the tower portfolio is approximately 190 feet, with capacity for incremental colocation. Under...

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Qwilt to provide content delivery for Airtel India

Qwilt announced a non-exclusive partnership with Bharti Airtel to improve the quality of live streaming, video-on-demand (VoD) and all other media delivery to its over 400 million subscribers throughout India. 

The partnership sees Airtel launch its own content delivery service, Airtel Cloud’s Edge CDN, across India based on Qwilt’s technology and become the largest service provider to date to deploy Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud solution. Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud enables Airtel to establish a massively distributed layer of content caching resources that deliver streaming media and applications from the closest possible location to subscribers. Each low-cost edge server can be utilized by other virtual network function (VNF)-based services making it cost-effective enough to distribute throughout the service provider’s access network. The partnership allows Airtel to scale up very rapidly as viewer demand increases.

Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, Airtel Business, said: “Airtel is India’s leading provider of telecommunications services. As we get ready to launch 5G services we anticipate a significant increase in data consumption across major cities. Airtel Cloud’s Edge CDN, based on Qwilt’s technology, will substantially increase our ability to reliably deliver high-quality live and VoD streaming throughout India. We already have relationships with 16+ content providers across Indian states and we look forward to working with others looking to serve in this region so they can also enjoy the benefits of Airtel’s unique service offering across India.”

Alon Maor, CEO, Qwilt, said, “Airtel is a tremendously exciting addition to our global ecosystem of service providers, and we are delighted to power a unique content delivery service offering in India. Our edge architecture provides a new economic model for streaming delivery, in which Airtel Cloud’s Edge CDN plays a central role in the end-to-end value chain. This announcement underscores the momentum we are gathering as we realize our ambition to build the world’s highest performing edge delivery network.”

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Renesas to acquire Bengaluru-based Steradian for 4D radar chips

Renesas Electronics agreed to acquire Steradian Semiconductors Private Limited, a fabless semiconductor company based in Bengaluru, India, that provides 4D imaging radar solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed of the an all-cash transaction. 

Founded in 2016 as a start-up company, Steradian has extensive expertise in radar technology. Operating in the 76-81 GHz band, Steradian’s powerful 4D radar transceivers offer a high level of integration in a small form factor and high power efficiency. Renesas will leverage Steradian's design assets and expertise to develop automotive radar products, with plans to start sample shipments by the end of 2022. The company aims to develop complete automotive radar solutions that combine ADAS SoCs (System-on-Chips) for processing radar signals, power management ICs (PMICs), and timing products together with software for object recognition. 

“Radar is an indispensable technology for ADAS, which uses a complex combination of various sensors,” said Hidetoshi Shibata, President and CEO of Renesas. “The addition of Steradian's superb radar technology and engineering talent will allow us to extend our leadership in the automotive segments. We will also leverage their technology for industrial applications to drive our mid- to long-term business growth in both segments.”

"Renesas' industry-leading portfolio of embedded solutions and broad customer base serve as an ideal foundation to maximize Steradian’s radar technology worldwide,” said Gireesh Rajendran, CEO of Steradian. “By working together with the Renesas team, we will continue to develop innovative radar solutions that deliver the high performance, small footprint and low power consumption that our customers desire.”

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IQM and QphoX to develop optical interface for quantum computers

IQM Quantum Computers is collaborating with QphoX, a start-up based in The Netherlands, to  develop an optical interface for scaling quantum computers.

IQM provides on-premises quantum computers for supercomputing data centres and research labs and offers full access to its hardware. IQM delivers these machines as a full-stack system integrator with its own quantum processors using superconducting qubits.

QphoX specializes in photon wavelength conversion for quantum technologies and is working to create a quantum modem which will allow quantum processors to be networked together. This will unlock new applications like distributed quantum computing between remotely entangled quantum processors, solving one of the biggest scaling challenges facing the industry.

“By leveraging our unique microwave to optical conversion technology, signals can instead be routed through the cryostat via optical fibers. As a result, both the spatial and heat load constraints placed on the cryostat will be reduced, allowing larger processors to be built in a single cryostat. We are very excited about embarking on this new partnership. Over the past several months we have already been working with IQM’s processors and have been very impressed with the quality and performance” said Frederick Hijazi, COO and Co-Founder, QphoX.

“The future large scale quantum computers require technologies for optical communication or cryogenic signal generation, or both. We found QphoX’s expertise and technology plans as a promising alternative to communicate the control and readout signal of quantum computer to the qubit chip using optical fiber. This collaboration will become an enabler for systems beyond 1000 qubits through simplifying the cabling and new product innovation” said Dr. Juha Vartiainen, COO and Co-founder, IQM Quantum Computers.

https://qphox.eu

www.meetiqm.com

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Mitsubishi samples tunable laser-diode chip

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation will begin sampling its new tunable laser-diode chip for use in optical transceivers of optical-fiber communication systems on October 1. 

The company says its device was designed to respond to the shift from 100 Gbps to 400 Gbps. Its new tunable laser can be integrated into optical transceivers.

https://www.MitsubishiElectric.com/semiconductors/

Mitsubishi samples 50Gbps DFB laser diode for 5G base stations

Wednesday, March 02, 2022  #OFC22, Mitsubishi  

Mitsubishi Electric will begin sampling its 50Gbps distributed-feedback (DFB) laser diode for 5G base stations.Key featuresFrequency-response characteristics are compatible with 4-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) for multilevel signal modulation, supporting transmission rates up to 50Gbps. Also, its industry-leading operating temperature range of -40°C to 90°C eliminates the need for any temperature-control unit, helping to reduce power consumption...

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Nutanix Q4 revenue dips to $385.5m, subscription model growing

Nutanix reported revenue of $385.5 million for its fourth quarter ended July 31, 2022, down 1% from a year earlier.  Full year revenue amounted to $1.58 billion, up 13% from the preceding year.  

Annual Contract Value (ACV) billings for Q4 was $193.2 million, up 10% compared to a year earlier.

“Our fourth quarter capped off a fiscal year that showed strong year-over-year top and bottom line improvement,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, President and CEO of Nutanix. “Fiscal 2022 was an important data point in demonstrating the long-term benefits of our subscription business model transition. We expect these benefits to compound further in the coming years as renewals become a bigger share of our business.”

“Our Fiscal 2022 results reflect strong progress on our subscription model with 27% year-over-year ACV billings growth and achievement of positive free cash flow, which we expect to be sustainable on an annual basis,” said Rukmini Sivaraman, CFO of Nutanix. “We continue to see good execution on our building base of subscription renewals and remain focused on driving towards profitable growth.”

http://www.nutanix.com

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SpaceX completes 58th Starlink mission

On Tuesday, August 30, SpaceX launched 46 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

This was the 7th flight for this Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, DART, and now five Starlink missions.

The mission was SpaceX’s 58th Starlink mission to date. 

It was SpaceX's fifth Starlink mission in August and 25th Starlink mission this year.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/sl3-4/

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