Overture's Ensemble Open Service Architecture Looks to SDN

Overture unveiled its Ensemble Open Service Architecture aimed at transforming the metro edge with software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization technology.

Overture, which supplies Carrier Ethernet solutions for the metro edge, said its goal is to transform static infrastructure into dynamic, virtualized, and automated environments for service creation and delivery.  This would let Service Providers offers virtualized network capabilities and application-aware cloud offerings to their enterprise customers.  In addition, by simplifying and automating essential tasks in service creation, activation, and assurance, Overture aims to significantly reduce the ongoing operational expenses of the network.

“Service providers do not have a demand problem – they have a revenue and cost problem. They are working to transform their bandwidth business into one focused on the customer application experience while dramatically driving down the cost of managing their infrastructure. With Ensemble OSA, we are helping service providers achieve both objectives by bringing the proven benefits of the cloud to the metro edge,” said Mike Aquino, president and CEO, Overture.

Overture's Ensemble OSA will leverage open API standards, including OpenFlow.  It is comprised of three layers, each of which may include Overture developed components and those developed by service providers or third party vendors:

• Resources – Elements that provide connect, compute, and storage functionality. They may consist of physical devices such as switches, servers and storage arrays, and/or software functions running on virtual machines.
  
• Orchestration and Control – Software building block functions for data plane control, resource abstraction, and network management that provide the glue connecting the resources to the applications.
  
• Network Applications – Software packages that leverage one or more of the Orchestration and Control building blocks and tie into a service provider’s back office systems and that of their business partners to create a service or network function.

Overture is currently building out ecosystem partnerships, and integrating the APIs into the initial set of Ensemble-powered Overture equipment. The company expects Ensemble OSA products, integrated with third-party applications and devices, to be available to the general market in 2014.

http://www.overturenetworks.com

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RootMetrics: AT&T LTE Averages 18.6 Mbps, VZ Wireless Averages 14.3 Mbps

AT&T has the fastest LTE performance among U.S. networks, according new data published by RootMetrics, an independent mobile analytics firm. The report is based on more than 725,000 4G and 4G LTE data samples gathered from the top 77 U.S. markets during the second half of 2012.

Some key findings:

• AT&T's LTE-only achieved 18.6 Mbps average downloads (57.7 Mbps max) and 9.0 Mbps average upload (19.6 Mbps max).
• Verizon's LTE-only achieved 14.3 Mbps average downloads (49.3 Mbps max) and 8.5 Mbps average upload (19.7 Mbps max).
• Sprint's LTE-only achieved 10.3 Mbps average downloads (32.7 Mbps max) and 4.4 Mbps average upload (9.9 Mbps max).
• T-Mobile USA's HSPA+42 service achieved 7.3 Mbps average downloads  and 1.5 Mbps average upload (9.9 Mbps max).

RootMetrics notes that Verizon commands the most extensive footprint and the best chance of connecting to LTE in markets that LTE-ready.

http://rootmetrics.com/special-reports/lte-performance-review/

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Netflix Publishes ISP Rankings

Netflix is hosting a new web portal that ranks the streaming performance of major ISPs in the U.S.,  the UK, Ireland and other countries where its service is offered.  The index is based on data from the 33 million members of Netflix who are watching over 1 billion hours of streaming Netflix content per month.

Google Fiber has the highest ranking in the U.S. market at 3.35 Mbps.

http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/

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Czech Telecom Authority Halts Spectrum Auction Because Bids too High

The telecom regulatory office for the Czech Republic halted an ongoing auction for 4G spectrum in the 800 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2600 MHz bands because bidding exceeded the threshold limits for the auction.

The Czech Telecommunication Office said the upper pricing limits for the spectrum was set after observing the experience of other EU member states where high license prices were achieved, thereby benefiting the government, but resulting in a distorted telecom market where carriers are reluctant to deploy quickly.  As a consumer issue, the Czech Telecommunication Office said high spectrum prices would most likely translate into high prices for mobile services.

http://www.ctu.cz/aktuality/tiskove-zpravy.html?action=detail&ArticleId=10139

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Seacom Upgrades African Cables with Ciena

Seacom, which operates submarine cables systems along the coasts of Africa, has selected Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform and OneControl Unified Management System for the upgrade of its infrastructure.

The upgrade, which includes key countries in SEACOM’s 17,000km undersea network, including India, Egypt, Dijbouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa, will initially use Ciena’s 40G coherent transport technology, with ultra-long distance 100G wavelengths planned for future upgrades.

http://www.seacom.mu/

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DragonWave Debuts Compact, Sub-6 GHz Microwave Radio

DragonWave unveiled an all-outdoor, sub-6 GHz microwave radio for rural deployments, government and private networks, vertical industries, mobile and extended network backhaul.

The DragonWave Harmony Radio Lite offers a form factor of only 7.5 in square including integrated antenna.  Its point-to-point microwave radio supports both licensed and unlicensed spectrum and is ideally suited for non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios. It includes standard Ethernet interfaces. Streamlined functionality is further complimented by low power consumption (under 15W), PoE compatibility, reduced cabling requirements and low delay. Synchronization through 1588v2 and SynchE eliminates the need for an external synchronization source.

Harmony Radio Lite links can be deployed using a tree topology, with macrocell traffic aggregation points on rooftops, or with tail, chain or small hub microsites at street level, which reduces interference and offers more flexible network connectivity, as well as simplifying network expansion and helping to ensure protected network architectures.

"Addressing vertical markets and a growing demand for rural and suburban backhaul has driven our product strategy with the introduction of the Harmony Radio Lite,” said Peter Allen, CEO. “The value proposition customers seek is Quality of Service assurance, affordability and ease of deployment and management of the network ­– we’re confident the Harmony Radio Lite raises the bar by bringing the lowest cost per bit with uncompromised performance."

http://www.dragonwaveinc.com

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ASSIA Raises $25 Million for Dynamic Spectrum Management

ASSIA, which supplies software for Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM) for DSL networks, closed a Preferred Stock offering with a total participation of $25 million.  The company has raised over $54 million to date.

Previous investors in ASSIA have included Telefonica, AT&T, and Sandalwood Partners, Mingly China Growth Fund, SFR Development, Sofinnova Partners, Stanford University, Swisscom Ventures, and T-Ventures.

Development projects funded by this latest round of investment include software features for vectored VDSL networks, Wi-Fi management solutions, and additional functionality available through ASSIA’s websites.

“ASSIA greatly appreciates the confidence our investors continue to demonstrate in our business plan,” said Dr. John M. Cioffi, ASSIA chairman and CEO.  “This latest investment round solidifies the foundation for our future product and growth plans.”

http://www.assia-inc.com

• ASSIA stands for Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment Incorporated.
  
• ASSIA is headed by Dr. John Cioffi, a veteran of the DSL industry, having served as founder, CTO and Vice President of Engineering at Amati prior to its acquisition by TI in 1997. Dr. Cioffi also held a tenured endowed professorship at Stanford University in the Department of Electrical Engineering from 1985-2009, where he is now an active Professor Emeritus with small research efforts there in broadband access.

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Crehan: Data Center Ethernet Switch Market Hits $8 Billion Run-Rate

Data center Ethernet switch revenues exceeded $2 billion in calendar 4Q12, putting this market on an $8 billion annual run-rate, according to a new report from Crehan Research.

The report shows that calendar 2012 revenue growth far exceeded that of 2011, helped by a leveling out in the decline of Chassis/Modular Ethernet switch shipments, coupled with increasing adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) switches.

“Given that data center Ethernet chassis or modular switches command a considerable price premium over the market average, mix shifts in this segment can have a significant market impact,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “Aided by stabilization in the mix of this data center Ethernet switch category, total market average selling prices fell only a little in 2012,” he added.

Two other highlights from the report:

• Data center Ethernet Fixed/Top-of-Rack switches continue to reach record levels, as this form-factor not only sees increasing server access deployment, but also data center aggregation deployments.
  
• In line with the overall market, Fibre Channel Switches also enjoyed revenue growth in 4Q12 and 2012, as higher pricing offset port-shipment declines. 

http://www.crehanresearch.com

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Dell'Oro: Microwave Transmission Market Declined 12% in 2012

The point-to-point Microwave Transmission equipment market declined 12 percent worldwide in 2012 to $4.2 billion as radio transceiver shipments declined 6 percent to 1.5 million, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group.

"The market for microwave backhaul was truly impacted by surprisingly low demand in the European region," said Jimmy Yu, Vice President of Microwave Transmission research at Dell'Oro Group.  "Although the market really took a step back this year, there were a couple of bright spots.  The first was the growth in sales in the North American region as operators expanded their Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.  The second was the greater usage of ultra-high-capacity links using E-band frequencies to deliver a full gigabit of backhaul capacity to cell towers," Yu added.

Some highlights:

• The North American region was the only region to achieve significant positive growth in 2012, growing 13 percent.  Alcatel-Lucent captured the majority of the North American market, garnering 44 percent market share.
• Microwave sales in the European region pulled back sharply in 2012, declining 28 percent.  Ericsson held the highest share of the European market at 32 percent.
• Ultra-high-capacity radio transceiver shipments grew nearly 60 percent in 2012.

http://www.delloro.com

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WashPost: FCC Chairman Likely to Step Down

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is likely to step down even before his term ends this summer, according to The Washington Post, which also names three possible candidates for his replacement: Tom Wheeler, Karen Kornbluh and Lawrence Strickling.  The FCC seat held by Robert McDowell is also expected to be vacated.

http://www.washingtonpost.com

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Yenista Optics launches Tunable Lasers from 1240 to 1700 nm

Yenista Optics is unveiling a range of high power tunable lasers for telecom applications covering the following bands:

• 1240 – 1380 nm,
• 1260 – 1360 nm,
• 1340 – 1520 nm,
• 1440 – 1640 nm,
• 1500 – 1630 nm,
• 1500 – 1700 nm.

“We managed to implement important innovations that enabled us to extend the wavelength range and to increase the output power without any compromise on other specifications of the T100S” said Michiel van der Keur, Yenista’s CEO.

Yenista is based in Lannion, France.

http://www.yenista.com

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Ericsson Claims 35% Share of Mobile Infrastructure Market

Ericsson's market share for mobile network equipment declined from 38% in 2011 to 35% in 2012, according to figures released by the company.  The company's share of the overall network equipment market also declined from 27% in 2011 to 24% in 2012.

However, Ericsson's presence in Global Services increased in 2012, as the company now puts is share in this category at 13%, a strong lead over the nearest competitor.  After the acquisition of Telcordia, consolidated as of January 2012, Ericsson also has a leading position in the OSS and BSS market.

Ericsson said its market share decline in mobile network equipment is due in part to the ongoing technology shift in China, where investments are moving from GSM to other technology areas where Ericsson has limited presence.  Ericsson maintained its share of the global installed base of radio base stations at 40%.

Ericsson also noted that its market share for LTE is twice as big as the largest competitor, measured in shipments for the full year 2012.

Some other notes from Ericsson's newly released 2012 Annual Report.

• 40% of the world’s mobile traffic runs through Ericsson-supplied networks.
  
• Ericsson now has over 110,000 employees, including 60,000 services professionals globally.
  
• Ericsson currently manages networks with approximately 950 million subscribers.
  
• Ericsson expects mobile broadband subscriptions to reach 6.5 billion in 2018 (2012: 1.5 billion)
  
• Total mobile data traffic is expected to grow by 12 times between 2012 and 2018.
  
• Mobile broadband now accounts for approximately 25% of all mobile subscriptions.

http://www.ericsson.com/news/1683948

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Amazon Web Services Trims Price for NoSQL Cloud Database

Amazon Web Services is cutting the price of its DynamoDB, a fully managed NoSQL database service.  The price of indexed data storage has decreased by up to 75% in all AWS regions. The price of provisioned throughput capacity has decreased by up to 35%.

AWS is also enhancing the service with a new Reserved Capacity option that offers significant savings over the normal price of DynamoDB provisioned throughput capacity. Purchasing Reserved Capacity incurs a one-time upfront fee and a commitment to paying for a minimum usage level, but offers up to 53% savings.

http://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/

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Google Gains MPEG LA License for Techniques in VP8

Google and MPEG LA reached a deal granting Google a license to techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders.

The agreements also grant Google the right to sublicense those techniques to any user of VP8, whether the VP8 implementation is by Google or another entity. It further provides for sublicensing those VP8 techniques in one next-generation VPx video codec.

MPEG LA said it now will discontinue its effort to form a VP8 patent pool.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/Pages/Media.aspx

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JDSU Acquires Arieso for Mobile Location Awareness

JDSU announced the acquisition of Arieso, a developer of location-aware software for mobile network operators, for $85 million in cash.

Arieso, which is based in Newbury, United Kingdom, offers a multi-vendor, location-aware network monitoring and optimization solution that delivers intelligence for more effective network performance engineering.  It also supplies an automated network planning technology that searches all possible configurations to deliver optimum network designs. Arieso said its proprietary algorithms provide highly rich and targeted data from mobile connection events to give mobile operators visibility into service level activity and usage patterns. Arieso’s bookings for calendar 2012 were approximately $27 million.

JDSU said the acquisition advances its mobility strategy by extending visibility all the way to the subscriber location, providing critical intelligence that allows radio access network (RAN) optimization teams to maximize return on investment by identifying ideal locations for small cells and other self-optimizing network enhancements with surgical precision, across the widest range of technologies and vendors.  JDSU will integrate Arieso’s products with complementary solutions such as PacketPortal, JDSU’s open software platform, providing end-to-end visibility across mobile networks.

“We’re excited about the complementary fit between Arieso and JDSU and the opportunity to extend the customer-centric location aware approach into the service and application domains, allowing mobile network operators to take a truly holistic approach to driving customer experience improvements,” said Shirin Dehghan, Arieso’s CEO.

http://www.jdsu.com
http://www.arieso.com

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Infonetics: Femtocell Market Starts to Take Off

Globally, the femtocell market, including 2G, 3G, and 4G femtocells, rose 66% in 4Q12 from 3Q12, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.  The firm estimates the femtocell market totaled $425 million for all of 2012, up 21% from the previous year.

“Femtocell sales are up for the third straight quarter and on a year-over-year basis, though growth to this point is modest for a market that’s still in evolution,” reports Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave and carrier WiFi at Infonetics Research. “Price-per-unit is eroding and shipment volumes are rising, but both are intrinsically linked and neither has happened fast enough to drive a more rapid acceleration in adoption to date.”

Some other notes:

• Public space femtocells accounted for slightly more revenue than consumer femtocells in 2012
• 4G femtocell revenue is growing at a 165% 5-year compound annual growth rate (2012 to 2017)
• While only 3% of units shipped in 2012 were integrated femtocells—meaning femtocell technology built into broadband CPE like DSL routers/gateways—Infonetics anticipates they will be widely adopted over the long term, eventually making up about half of all units by 2017
• The top 3 femtocell market share leaders in 4Q12 and for the full year 2012 are Airvana, Samsung, and Cisco/ip.access.

http://www.infonetics.com

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Epson Launches VCXOs for Mobile Base Stations

Epson Electronics America introduced series of voltage controlled crystal oscillators (VCXO) designed for optical networking and LTE base stations.

The Epson  VG-4513CB uses a high-frequency fundamental crystal to achieve output frequencies up to 500 MHz with no spurs and very low phase noise and low jitter.

The company said its new  device is 87% smaller than existing VCXOs.  It can deliver output frequencies up to 500 MHz without using a PLL or frequency multiplier.

http://www5.epsondevice.com/en/quartz/index.html

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Infonetics: Microwave Radio Market Declines

The global microwave equipment market totaled $1.2 billion in 4Q12, down 3% from 3Q12, and down 12% from the year-ago 4th quarter (4Q11), according to a new report from Infonetics Research.  Microwave equipment spending declined 10% worldwide for the full year 2012.

"The microwave equipment market ended 2012 tamely,” reports Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave and carrier WiFi at Infonetics Research. “The expected year-end boost to quarterly revenues did not materialize, as price erosion and capex conservation combined to deliver a seasonally countertrend 4th quarter dip. We expect the market trough to hang around a little while longer before renewed growth begins in late 2013,” Webb continues. “And by 2017, Infonetics forecasts the microwave equipment market to reach $5.2 billion, powered by the continuing demand for backhaul capacity at macrocell sites."

Some other notes:

• Ericsson, Huawei, and NEC held steady at the top of the microwave equipment revenue leaderboard in 4Q12, though #4 Alcatel-Lucent closed the gap on NEC significantly, pulling to within a hair’s breadth
  
• Aviat Networks leapfrogged Ceragon to move into the #5 spot in 4Q12, cracking the top 5 for the 1st time
  
• Alcatel-Lucent continues to lead the all-packet segment, accounting for half of all revenue.

http://www.infonetics.com

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AT&T's Latest Labor Contract Provides 2-3% Annual Wage Increase

The latest labor agreement reached between AT&T Mobility and the Communications Workers of America on Feb 22 includes general wage increases in each year of the four year contract -- 2 percent the first year, 2.5 percent the second year, 2.25 percent the third year, and 3 percent the fourth year.  It maintains pensions for all employees, plus retirement savings plans, with no changes.

The four-year agreement covers approximately 20,000 Mobility employees in CWA Districts 1, 2/13, 4, 7, and 9 – generally in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Mountain States and West Coast. It will be submitted to the CWA's membership for a ratification vote in coming days.

http://www.att.com

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Deutsche Telekom Fills Out its Cloud Portfolio

Deutsche Telekom is pushing ahead into cloud services and highlighting the value of partnerships with other cloud solution providers.

The Deutsche Telekom Business Marketplace, which was launched in the summer of 2012, has now registered over 10,000 users have registered. As this year's CeBIT starts, over 40 applications from more than 20 partners are available, including applications to facilitate collaboration, manage projects and customers, and save data securely online. This is in addition to Telekom offers that are custom-tailored to the needs of SMEs - including videoconferencing applications from the cloud such as iMeet and TelePresence, dynamic IT resources from the private cloud such as managed IT services, a mobile device management solution to help manage mobile devices and their applications, and DeutschlandLAN, the cloud-based, TÜV-certified, end-to-end package for fixed-network, mobile and PC communications.

"Products and services from the cloud for large companies, SMEs and consumers are a major part of Telekom's future strategy," says Dirk Backofen, who is responsible for cloud business at Deutsche Telekom. "We use the cloud to connect people, both in their personal lives and at work. We don't only supply the applications, but also give customers all cloud-related services from a single source: bandwidth, storage and computing capacity, applications, partner expertise, independence of a specific operating system, and high security. No other market player can make such an offer."

Telekom's subsidiary T-Systems plans to achieve revenues of roughly one billion euros, or one seventh of its total revenue, with cloud business in 2015. Multi-year cloud orders worth two billion euros were received alone in 2012.

On the cybersecurity front, Deutsche Telekom is now offering a dashboard for tracking the rising number of attacks.  The website has a digital map of the world which shows the origin of cyber attacks recorded around the clock by more than 90 honeypot sensors around the world.

The portal was developed in association with BITKOM and Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

http://www.telekom.com

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