Vertical Systems Group: Mid-2012 U.S. Business Ethernet LEADERBOARD

Vertical Systems Group's Mid-2012 results for the U.S. Business Ethernet Leaderboard are as follows (in rank order based on port share): AT&T, Verizon, tw telecom, CenturyLink, Cox, XO, Time Warner Cable, and Level 3.


The ranking is based on billable enterprise port installations.


Other providers selling Ethernet services in the U.S. are segmented into two tiers as measured by share of ports installed. The first or "Challenge" tier for Mid-2012 includes the following seven Ethernet Service Providers (in alphabetical order): Charter Business, Cogent, Comcast Business, Optimum Lightpath, Reliance Globalcom, Windstream (includes Paetec), and Zayo Group (includes AboveNet).


The second or "Market Player" tier covers all other providers offering U.S. Ethernet services. The Market Player tier includes the following companies (in alphabetical order): Alpheus Communications, American Telesis, Bright House Networks, Canby, Cincinnati Bell, Consolidated Communications (includes Surewest), Expedient, FiberLight, Frontier, Integra, IP Networks, Lightower, Litecast, LS Networks, Masergy, Megapath, Met-Net, NTT America, Orange Business, Sidera Networks, Spirit, Sprint, SuddenLink, US Signal, Virtela and others.


Market shares for the Mid-2012 U.S. Ethernet Leaderboard were calculated using Vertical's base of enterprise installations, plus direct input and other data from surveys of Ethernet Service Providers.


"New value-added service enhancements and improved network quality fueled the solid growth many Ethernet providers experienced in the first half of this year," said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group. "Additionally, our research clearly indicates rising demand for Ethernet access focused on connectivity to private Clouds for data center hosting. We expect to see increased deployments of these configurations, which could have an impact on Ethernet share results as early as year-end 2012."
http://www.verticalsystems.com

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Huawei Offers UMTS Small Data Packet Storm Solution

Huawei introduced a UMTS Small Data Packet Storm solution that can double the number of mobile broadband users with smartphones that can access the network simultaneously.


Huawei calculates that 80% of UMTS usage lasts less than 10 seconds and 60% require less than 1kbit.
However, the use of smartphones is creating "small data packet storms", which are different than traditional voice services and high data rate downloads. When a smartphone user frequently refreshes pages on a site being browsed, the total amount of consumed traffic is very low. In scenarios where smartphone penetration is high, with many simultaneously connected users, air interface efficiency decreases greatly leading to decreases in capacity, user experience and total connected number of users. This is a "small data packet storm."

Huawei said its Small Data Packet Storm solution has been deployed commercially in Canada, Europe, Hong Kong and other regions.

http://www.huawei.com

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Mavenir Enables MetroPCS' Pace Setting VoLTE

Mavenir Systems confirmed that its mOne Convergence Platform is powering MetroPCS' new Voice over LTE (VoLTE) service, which was announced last week.


"We are excited to be part of this historic moment by providing a superior solution to MetroPCS that enables a sustainable business model on mobile broadband, both as a vendor partner and systems integrator," said Pardeep Kohli, president & chief executive officer of Mavenir Systems. "The mOne™ Convergence Platform is designed to simplify carriers' network transformations to support LTE and rapidly roll out VoLTE services."
"VoLTE provides MetroPCS and our customers a foundation for the future and we are glad to have Mavenir as a key partner in achieving this significant milestone," said Ed Chao, senior vice president of corporate engineering & network operations. "This initial launch allows us to achieve feature parity with our circuit-switched network thus further enabling the migration of our CDMA base to our more spectrally efficient 4G LTE network."

http://www.mavenir.com

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Dialogic Appoints Kevin Cook as President and CEO

Dialogic has appointed current President and COO Kevin Cook as President and CEO, replacing Nick Jensen who resigned last week but remains as a member of the Dialogic Board and will assume the role of non-executive Vice Chairman.

Cook became President and COO of Dialogic in December 2011. In this capacity, he has directed global operations for more than 700 employees in 30 countries. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations from 2010 until 2011, responsible for sales, marketing, services and our global go-to-market strategy. Cook joined Dialogic as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Support in 2008.

http://www.dialogic.com

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Verizon Wireless' 4G LTE Now Covers 90% of Florida’s Population

Verizon Wireless is activating 4G LTE services this month to new communities in Naples, Orlando and throughout Central Florida. This brings the LTE network to all of Florida’s major markets and 90 percent of state residents.


In just over 18 months, Verizon Wireless has rolled out LTE to nearly three-fourths of the U.S. population in more than 350 markets.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/lte

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Fire Strikes France Telecom-Orange's Cable Ship

The crew of France Telecom-Orange's cable-ship, the Chamarel, was forced to abandon ship off the coast of Namibia following a fire. All 56 crew members were safely recovered by a Namibian fishing vessel without injury or incident.


The ship had recently completed a repair operation on the Sat3-Safe cable in the Atlantic. http://www.orange.com

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China Mobile Shangdong Picks Huawei's GPON for WLAN Backhaul

China Mobile Shangdong has selected Huawei's FTTW (Wi-Fi backhaul) solution for a WLAN mobile backhaul network in 17 cities.

The solution uses GPON access technology to backhaul WLAN data streams. The service provides 54 Mbps Internet access for 50,000 WLAN hotspots in schools, offices, transport hubs, hotels, leisure places, downtown areas, and residential areas.

http://www.huawei.com

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Deutsche Telekom Maintains Free Cash Flows as Revenues, Subscribers and CAPEX Decline

Deutsche Telekom reported a solid growth trend in free cash flow in the second quarter of 2012 and the company confirmed its earnings and dividend guidance for the full year 2012.

For Q2, EBITDA remained unchanged year-on-year at EUR 4.7 billion. Revenue declined 0.7 percent to EUR 14.4 billion. Free cash flow in the second quarter came in at EUR 1.7 billion, a year-on-year decrease of around 5.6 percent.

For Q2, CAPEX was EUR 1.626 billion, down 13.5% from a year earlier. For the first half of the year, the Group invested EUR 3.8 billion in CAPEX, 5.1 percent less in terms of cash capex than in the prior-year period.

"We are keeping our word and providing a good deal of reliability to the market with very solid figures," said René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom. "We do of course continue to face a number of challenges, but we are performing very respectably compared with our competitors."

Some highlights:

• In Germany, the company now has 1.8 million Entertain TV customers, up 40.7 percent over the prior-year period. Over 100,000 new customers signed up for this television service in Q2.
• In Germany, the mobile contract customer base grew by 464,000 customers in the past quarter. Most of these new customers were added in the reseller segment, which generates lower average revenues per user.
• In Germany, the number of line losses fell to a record low once again, dropping to 236,000 between April and June. This represents a year-on-year decrease of 20 percent.
• Growth in mobile data revenues continued unabated, with a 19-percent increase to EUR 484 million in the second quarter.
• Twenty-nine percent of the average revenue per user now comes from mobile data compared with 24 percent one year ago.
• In Greece, DT credited successful cost cutting measures with improving the efficiency of OTE, where adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 2.2 percentage points year-on-year to 36.4 percent in the second quarter of 2012.
• Cutting costs also had a positive impact on profitability in the Netherlands. T-Mobile Netherlands achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 31.7 percent compared with 29.4 percent the previous year.
• The number of mobile contract customers across all European companies increased by around 1.0 million to 27.6 million in the space of a year (including T-Systems' customers in Hungary).
• Smartphones now account for 60 percent of all devices sold, up from 43 percent one year ago. The more widespread use of smartphones also impacted mobile data revenues, which grew by 21.2 percent year-on-year in Europe, or as much as 24.5 percent when adjusted for exchange rate effects.
• T-Mobile USA significantly improved its profitability. The adjusted EBITDA margin rose 2.3 percentage points year-on-year to 27.7 percent, as revenue increased 8.7 percent to EUR 3.8 billion. Measured in dollars, there was a slight decline of 3.1 percent in revenue for the second quarter of 2012 and an increase of 5.7 percent in adjusted EBITDA compared with the prior-year period.
• T-Mobile USA had an overall loss of 205,000 customers in the second quarter. There were 557,000 net losses of branded contract customers. By contrast, the number of branded prepaid customers rose by 227,000, following a loss of 71,000 customers in the second quarter of 2011.
• Average data revenue per customer for branded contract customers rose by 15 percent year-on-year in the past quarter to USD 19.16.
• T-Systems saw new orders increase by 8.2 percent year-on-year to EUR 2.2 billion, but total revenue for the second quarter declined by 1.3 percent year-on-year to EUR 2.2 billion, with external revenues decreasing by 1.5 percent.

http://www.telekom.de 06-Aug-12

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Ciena Provides Optical Upgrade in the Carolinas for Spirit

Spirit Communications, a CLEC serving business customers in North and South Carolina has selected Ciena's 5430 Packet-Optical Reconfigurable Switching System (RSS) and OneConnect Intelligent Control Plane software to upgrade its transport network.

Ciena’s 5430 RSS will link Spirit’s major point-of-presence (POP) locations across the Carolinas. The upgraded network will support an increase in switching capacity at each location to serve existing TDM traffic migrated from legacy systems, as well as advanced Optical Transport Network (OTN) and Carrier Ethernet protocols, for increasing demands today and in the future. Additionally, by combining Ciena’s 5430 switching system with OneConnect, both key elements of the Ciena’s OPn architecture for programmable networks, Spirit is able to differentiate its service offering with mesh restoration, improved network resiliency and service availability, beyond what would be possible with a competitive platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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Huawei Targets LTE Broadcasts -- eMBMS Innovation Center Opens

Huawei has just opened an enhanced Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) innovation center in Shenzhen in order to develop end-to-end eMBMS solutions and LTE applications.

eMBMS is a 3GPP R9 standard for mobile video that enables a higher transfer capacity over typical MBMS technologies.

Huawei said its new facility aims to foster and eMBMS industry ecosystem of chipsets, devices, and network equipment. The innovation center will also serve as an experience center for operators. Video, mobile TV, and advertisements will be showcased via mobile smart devices employing Huawei's eMBMS solution. Global operators from Europe, Asia, the South Pacific and other regions have already visited the center to experience its LTE demonstrations. http://www.huawei.com 06-Aug-12

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Sprint Selects Samsung from its Small Cell Deployments

Samsung Telecommunications America confirmed that it has been selected to help develop Small Cell Network Infrastructure for Sprint’s Network Vision Program.

"Our ongoing work with Sprint’s Network Vision demonstrates Samsung’s commitment to developing custom solutions with our leading carrier customers. This new award will allow Sprint to meet increasing demand for coverage and capacity while consolidating multiple legacy networks and spectrum bands in a single platform,” said Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Mobile. “The deployment of our small cell technology will enhance Sprint’s network and demonstrates the strength of Samsung's infrastructure offering."

"Network Vision is all about improving the network experience for our customers,” said Bob Azzi, senior vice president of network operations for Sprint. “We are excited to expand our relationship with Samsung with their inclusion in the small cell program and provide customers with the cutting edge network they need to keep up with the cutting edge phones Sprint offers." http://www.sprint.com http://www.samsung.com 
06-Aug-12

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Telstra's CAPEX to Sales Ratio at 14.2%

Telstra's revenue for full fiscal year 2012 increased by 1.1%, or AUS $275 million, to $25,368 million. EBITDA increased by 0.8% or $83 million to $10,234 million.

"We have seen two years of significant customer growth as our strategy continues to bear fruit. This has translated into strong financial results despite tough domestic and international economic conditions," Chief Executive Officer David Thodey said today.

Some highlights for the full year:

• The CAPEX to sales ratio was 14.2%, with capital expenditure of $3,591 million
• added 1.6 million domestic mobile customers, to a total of 13.8 million;
• added 203,000 retail fixed broadband customers, to a total of 2.6 million;
• added 336,000 customers on bundled plans, to a total of 1.4 million;
• added 475,000 Hong Kong mobile customers, to a total of 3.5 million.
• Telstra’s 4G network build accelerated during the year and now covers approximately 40% of Australia’s population. Customers have activated more than 375,000 4G devices since launch.
• Telstra’s domestic mobile business generated more than one third of revenue. Telstra has added more than three million new mobile customers over the past two years. Mobile revenue growth of 8.5% was achieved while margins increased by three percentage points to 36%.
• Growth in retail broadband partly offset declines in wholesale revenues, which included the impact of regulatory access determinations. Fixed line revenue decline was steady at 6.1%.

http://www.telstra.com 06-Aug-12

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Samsung Releases Verizon FiOS App

Samsung Electronics America released a FiOS TV app on compatible Samsung Smart TVs and Smart Blu-ray players.

 The app on the Samsung Smart Hub platform lets Verizon’s FiOS TV and FiOS Internet subscribers watch 26 live FiOS TV channels and more than 20,000 FlexView on-demand movies and TV shows on these TVs and blu-ray players without requiring a set-top box.
Channels carried at launch include CNN, MTV, HBO, TBS, TNT, Food Network and HGTV, based on the subscribers’ current FiOS TV package.
The app also offers access to more than 20,000 movie and TV show titles available monthly through FiOS TV’s Flex View, which offers FiOS customers the ability to buy or rent these titles and watch them on the TV, PC or mobile device and now compatible Samsung devices.


http://fios.verizon.com 
http://www.samsung.com 
06-Aug-12

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Motorola Solutions Invests in Fixmo for Security Compliance

Motorola Solutions has made a strategic investment in Fixmo, a start-up offering mobile security, compliance and risk management solutions for the public and private sectors. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Fixmo’s flagship products, Fixmo Sentinel and Fixmo SafeZone, help organizations manage their secure mobile devices, maintain system integrity, protect their corporate data and prove policy compliance.

Fixmo is based in Sterling, Virginia and Toronto, Canada. http://www.motorolasolutions.


com http://www.fixmo.com 06-Aug-12

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Sprint Prices $1.5 Billion in Senior Notes

Sprint Nextel has priced an underwritten public offering of $1.5 billion aggregate principal amount of 7.000% notes due 2020. The sale of the notes is expected to close on August 14, 2012. The company said the proceeds would be used for general corporate purposes, which may include, among other things, redemptions or service requirements of outstanding debt, network expansion and modernization and potential funding of Clearwire. http://www.sprint.com 06-Aug-12

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NTT Com Offers Low Latency Route to Europe Across Russia

NTT Communications has begun offering a dedicated connection between London and Hong Kong using the new TEA-2 cable system, which offers the low-latency route alternative to subsea cables.

NTT Communications is providing European customers with access to the TEA-2 wavelength service.

As part of a broader strategy, this European connection into Hong Kong complements NTT Communications' "Gateway to Asia" offering between Europe, Singapore, Japan and China. And with the launch of the NTT Communications Hong Kong Financial Data Center (FDC) in 2013, the TEA-2 landing site will provide Tier IV ready data center infrastructure with an ultra-low latency network.

John Hammond, VP Business Network Services at NTT Europe, says, "We are always looking at how we can expand our network to give customers greater capacity with newer, faster and more reliable routes but also better value for money. The TEA-2 cable system really does strengthen our capability in Europe." http://www.ntt.co.jp 08-Aug-12

• In May 2011, Russian national carrier Rostelecom and KDDI signed an agreement for upgrade and modification of the Russia-Japan Cable Network (RJCN) and Transit Europe-Asia (TEA) service in order to support 10Gbps wavelength resources between Japan and Europe using shortest route via Russia. The contract for the original project was signed in 2006, with NEC as the primary contractor for portions of the network.

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NTT Com Readies 40G Asia Submarine-cable Express

NTT Communications is ready to start operation on the Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), a 40 Gbps, ultra-low latency undersea cable connecting major cities in Asia. At launch, the cable has a carrying capacity of 15 Tbps 7,800 km and has landing points in Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia, and will add Hong Kong in the first quarter of 2013. It incorporates special designs to withstand earthquake and typhoon damage. The system is also upgradeable to 100G channels.
The cable follows the lowest latency route between Japan and Singapore. It will provide direct connections to the Serangoon Data Center in Singapore and later will also connect to the Hong Kong Financial Data Centre. The direct connection enables customers there to use NTT Com’s network, data centers and cloud services on an end-to-end, one-stop basis.

NTT Com is the major investor in the cable system, which has been constructed in cooperation with Malaysia-based Telekom Malaysia, Philippines-based PLDT and Singapore-based StarHub.

On August 20, 2012, NTT Com will begin offering an enhanced global leased line service, by incorporating ASE’s low-latency routes into its existing Arcstar Global Leased Line Service. The newly enhanced service leverages ASE’s Japan-Singapore connection with an industry-leading latency of less than 65 milliseconds latency, more than 3 milliseconds faster than routes via other subsea cables. Existing US-Japan routes also will be used, including the NTT Com’s own PC-1 cable which offers the lowest latency connection between Tokyo and Chicago, home of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Superior service between Asia and the U.S. is especially attractive for financial enterprises, such as high-frequency trading firms that issue huge numbers of buy/sell orders for financial products and must transmit such information instantaneously.

Also this month, NTT Com will incorporate ASE into the backbone of its Tier-1 global IP network, which directly connects the world’s major internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers, and, in the near future, will do the same for Arcstar Universal One, its scalable, cloud-based network service.  http://www.ntt.co.jp 09-Aug-12

In 2011, NEC and Fujitsu were selected as primary contractors for the Asia Submarine-cable Express system. The manufacture and installation of all submersible plants such as Repeaters, OADM Branching Units and Cables, the Power Feeding Equipment and submersible plant monitoring system was to be implemented by NEC. The manufacture and installation of Submarine Line Terminal Equipment and the Management Controller was designated to Fujitsu.

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AT&T Southeast Reaches Tentative Labor Deal

AT&T Southeast (BellSouth Telecommunications) announced a tentative labor agreement with the Communications Workers of America covering more than 22,000 wireline employees in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The contract will be submitted to the CWA's membership for a ratification vote in coming days.

Key provisions include:

• General wage increases in each year of the contract for most employees – 2.25 percent the first year, 2.75 percent the second year, and 3 percent the third year.
• A 1 percent pension band increase in each year of the contract to the banded pension plan enjoyed by most current employees. New hires will continue to receive the Bargained Cash Balance 2 Pension Plan, with a one-time, 1 percent pay credit increase and an 80 percent match in the AT&T Retirement Savings 401(k) Plan.
• Expands to additional employees a guaranteed job offer provision that promises qualified surplused employees a guaranteed job opportunity with AT&T.
• Maintains one of the most robust health care plans in the nation, continuing to cover 100 percent of network preventive care, including such items as annual physicals and well-child care, with modest increases in employee contributions. For example, employees with individual coverage will pay monthly contributions of $38 in the first year of the contract, $58 the second year and $79 the third year of the contract. Employees with family coverage will pay monthly contributions of $81, $121, and $163 over the three years of the agreement. New hires will pay higher contributions. Deductibles for network care will be $500 for individual coverage and $1,000 for family coverage in each year of the contract.

http://www.att.com 08-Aug-12

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Dell'Oro Forecasts LTE Equipment Revenues to 2016

The Mobile Radio Access Network (RAN) LTE equipment market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50 percent over the next five years, according to Dell'Oro Group.

This report also shows that the growth in mobile broadband will eventually offset declining investments in CDMA/GSM/WiMAX. The total Mobile RAN market, macro and public access small cells, is expected to grow at a CAGR of two percent between 2011 and 2016. The public access small cell market is expected to generate significant revenues in the outer years of the forecast period and account for nine percent of all RAN revenues in 2016.

"The success with early adopters in North America, Japan, and South Korea is driving operators around the world to commit to LTE and reap the benefits of improved efficiencies, latencies, throughputs, and to ensure a future-proof roadmap," said Stefan Pongratz, analyst at Dell'Oro Group. "It has been only 18 months since the first large scale commercial deployment of LTE and it is already generating more than 15 percent of total RAN revenues," continued Pongratz http://www.delloro.com 08-Aug-12

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Xilinx Boosts its Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC to 1 GHz

Xilinx boosted the peak processing performance of its Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC family to 1 GHz -- a 25% increase over initial specifications for the two largest Zynq-7000 devices.

The Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoCs are the first tightly integrated hardware, software and I/O 'all programmable' devices in the industry. Applications include high-end image and graphic processing applications within the medical, Aerospace and Defense (A&D) markets, as well as computationally intensive systems targeting wired and wireless equipment.

"Using Zynq for our measurement devices gives us an extremely compact physical solution as well as an extremely compact system because software and hardware are closer together than ever before," said Matthias Goetz, hardware project leader at Rohde & Schwarz. "We especially appreciate the great bandwidth performance between the FPGA and industry standard processing sub-system because it accelerates our processing and system development and it allows us to easily move functions from processor to programmable logic when and where needed." http://www.xilinx.com 08-Aug-12

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