The New Open Source Networking Universe, managed by The Linux Foundation

This month's Open Networking Summit (ONS 2017) in Silicon Valley, which marked the sixth instalment of the annual event since its origin at Stanford University, once again brought many key thought leaders together for keynotes, tutorials, conference sessions, panel discussions and a small exhibition. ONS was the event that set off alarm bells across the industry in 2012 when Google announced that SDN had moved well beyond the research phase and into its commercial network, using a home-grown solution and no routing equipment from conventional vendors.

As far as the current state of open source networking is concerned, perhaps Margaret Chiosi, formerly at AT&T and now with Huawei, put it best, commenting (paraphrased from her keynote), 'open networking has reached the peak of exuberance and not yet crossed the chasm of despair'. In other words, great ideas are flourishing but no one is yet really making money or saving money with open networking. In addition, Guru Parulkar, executive director of ON.Lab, observed that while there are many proof-of-concepts and early deployments, a 'resource gap' of qualified professionals may delay large scale deployments. New technology is difficult and committed resources must be in place if network transformations are to really happen.

ONS 2017 was presented by The Linux Foundation, the San Francisco-based organisation with the lofty ambition of creating the 'largest shared technology investment' in history. A mural at the entrance to the exhibition depicts the New Open Source Networking Universe, and certainly a tremendous amount of intellectual capital is being collected, curated and assembled into specifications and frameworks impacting every layer of the network.

The following is the line-up of networking related projects underway at the Linux Foundation (although there are more non-networking LF projects and other open source networking projects, such as Open Stack, that are not managed by LF).

ONAP

The Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) unites two major open networking and orchestration projects, AT&T's open source ECOMP and the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O). This newly launched LF project is one of the largest open source networking initiatives, with members including Amdocs, AT&T, Bell Canada, China Mobile, China Telecom, Cisco, Ericsson, GigaSpaces, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Metaswitch, Nokia, Orange, Tech Mahindra, Reliance Jio, VMware, ZTE and other leading network operators, OEMs and platform providers.

OPNFV

A carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform to accelerate the introduction of new NFV products and services. OPNFV is mainly focused on building NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtualized Infrastructure Management (VIM) by integrating components from upstream projects such as OpenDaylight, OpenStack, Ceph Storage, KVM, Open vSwitch and Linux. At ONS 2017, OPNFV made its 4th major release, codenamed Danube, adding foundational support for MANO. The next release, codenamed Euphrates and targeted for completion by October, is expected to include more containerisation support.

Open Daylight

One of the largest projects, this promotes and advances the global development, distribution, and adoption of the OpenDaylight (ODL), the largest open source SDN controller. Many industry vendors participate in ODL.

ONOS

A SDN operating system for service providers that has scalability, high availability, high performance and abstractions to make it easy to create applications and services. At ONS 2017 the ONOS community made its next platform release, adding support for IPv6 routing, vLAN tagged external interfaces and AAA endpoint authentication, a better GUI interface, VPLS support and various southbound enhancements. Notable members of the ONOS community include AT&T, Comcast, China Unicom, Google, NTT Communications, SK Telecom and Verizon.

CORD

Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center (CORD) combines NFV, SDN and the elasticity of commodity clouds to bring data centre economics and cloud agility to the telco central office (CO). CORD lets the operator manage central offices using declarative modelling languages for agile, real-time configuration of new customer services. Three versions are underway - Mobile CORD, Residential CORD, Enterprise CORD – and each has multiple proof-of-concept demos.

DPDK

The Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) consists of libraries to accelerate packet processing workloads running on a wide variety of CPU architectures. DPDK was created in 2010 by Intel and made available under a permissive open source license. Today, more than 20 key open source projects build on DPDK libraries, including MoonGen, mTCP, Ostinato, Lagopus, Fast Data (FD.io), Open vSwitch, OPNFV, and OpenStack. This community has just moved to the Linux Foundation. Gold members of the project are ARM, AT&T, Cavium, Intel, Mellanox, NXP, Red Hat, and ZTE; Silver members include 6WIND, Atomic Rules, Huawei, Spirent, and Wind River. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), University of Limerick, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Tsinghua University are Associate members.

FRRouting (FRR)

Free range routing (FRR) is a project endeavouring to make the best open source routing stack. FRR, which originated in the Quagga project, includes protocol daemons for BGP, IS-IS, LDP, OSPF, PIM and RIP. At ONS, it was announced that this project will now be managed by the Linux Foundation.

Open Switch (OVS)

An open-source implementation of a distributed virtual multi-layer switch, the main purpose of Open vSwitch is to provide a switching stack for hardware virtualisation in a network.

PNDA

Platform for Network Data Analytics (PNDA) aims to eliminate complexity by integrating, scaling and managing a set of open data processing technologies and by providing an end-to- end platform for deploying analytics applications and services. The big idea is that open source big data analytics can play in accelerating the transition to more agile, assured and orchestrated services. At ONS 2017, the MEF demonstrated a reference implementation of LSO (Lifecycle Services Orchestration) analytics using PNDA.

AllJoyn

AllJoyn is developing an open source framework for IoT.

Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry aims to make it faster and easier to build, test, deploy and scale applications.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation

This group focuses on the development of open source technologies, reference architectures and common formats for cloud-native applications or services.

The Open Container Initiative

Building a vendor-neutral, portable and open specification and runtime for container-based solutions, founding members of this initiative include nine new companies committed to the OCI, with members including: Amazon Web Services, Apcera, Apprenda, AT&T, ClusterHQ, Cisco, CoreOS, Datera, Dell, Docker, EMC, Fujitsu Limited, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, IBM, Infoblox, Intel, Joyent, Kismatic, Kyup, Mesosphere, Microsoft, Midokura, Nutanix, Odin, Oracle, Pivotal, Polyverse, Portworx, Rancher Labs, Red Hat, Resin.io, Scalock, Sysdig, SUSE, Twistlock, Twitter, Univa, Verizon Labs, VMware and Weaveworks.

The Xen Project

This is the leading open source virtualisation platform that powers some of the largest clouds in production today. Amazon Web Services, Aliyun, Rackspace Public Cloud, Verizon Cloud, and many hosting services use Xen Project software.

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IBM Joins AIM Photonics Consortium

IBM and The American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics), announced a patent and intellectual property licensing agreement and confirmed IBM has joined the AIM Photonics consortium, which seeks to advance integrated photonic circuit manufacturing and technology development.

Under the intellectual property licensing agreement , IBM will help AIM Photonics establish standard processes in the development of silicon photonics assemblies, such as couplings for communication signals and light sources. Industry and academic AIM Photonics members will access these technologies through a process design kit (PDK) and prototype development at the Rochester Test Assembly and Packaging (TAP) facility and the 300mm chip facility at SUNY Poly's Albany campus.

"Adding IBM as a member of AIM Photonics not only significantly strengthens this outstanding institute, but highlights the momentum the Finger Lakes region is experiencing in the high tech sector," said John Maggiore, New York State photonics board of officers chairman. "This announcement further validates the importance of this institute and the goals it has set out to achieve."

http://www.ibm.com

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AT&T Fiber Adds 8 new Metros

AT&T has announced that as part of its program to deploy fibre across its service footprint in 21 states it plans to extend its fibre network to parts of eight new metro areas, bringing the total markets where the service is available to 75 major metro areas.

The metro areas where AT&T is planning to roll-out its 100% fibre network are as follows: Dayton (Ohio); Macon (Georgia); Madison (Wisconsin); Monterey-Salinas (California); Savannah (Georgia); South Bend (Indiana); Springfield (Missouri); and western Michigan.

AT&T also announced the launch of fibre-based service delivering up to 1 Gbit/s bandwidth in the East Bay area of California, including in parts of the cities of Fremont, Newark, Oakland and the surrounding areas. The company also expects to offer fibre-based Internet access in parts of Hayward, San Leandro and Union City in California shortly.

AT&T noted that the Oakland metro is one of 52 metro markets nationwide where its fibre Internet service is currently available.

The company stated that it is now offering a 1 gigabit connection over its all-fibre network to more than 4.6 million locations nationwide, and during 2017 plans to add 2 million locations as it progresses towards the target of reaching a total of at least 12.5 million locations with fibre by mid-2019.

http://about.att.com/story/att_fiber_coming_to_8_new_metros.html

• In mid-February, AT&T Fiber announced it would shortly be launching its gigabit Internet service in the metro areas of Columbia (South Carolina), Jackson (Mississippi). Knoxville (Tennessee), Milwaukee (Wisconsin) and Shreveport, (Louisiana). It stated the expansion would bring the total markets where gigabit Internet service was available to 51.
  
  At that time, AT&T Fiber also announced the launch of fibre-based gigabit connectivity for customer locations in parts of the Milwaukee area and its expansion in the Louisville area. In Milwaukee AT&T announced the launch of service in parts of Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, Waukesha and surrounding communities; in the Louisville area, it introduced service in parts of Jeffersonville and New Albany in Indiana.

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Huawei and GE Partner on Industrial Cloud-based Predictive Maintenance

Huawei and GE Digital announced an Industrial Cloud-based Predictive Maintenance Solution that integrates Huawei's Edge Computing IoT (EC-IoT) with GE's Industrial Internet cloud platform Predix to enable end-to-end connectivity between industrial assets and cloud applications.

The joint solution could be used for real-time machine health monitoring, data analysis and perception, and smart maintenance decision-making. In the digital industrial era, the solution helps manufacturers reduce maintenance costs and prevent unplanned asset downtime, as well as drive innovation in products and services.

"The digital industry era not only brings development opportunities for traditional industries, but also creates challenges with interconnectivity between numerous devices, Big Data computing, and intelligent applications. Huawei collaborates with partners to explore the industrial Internet field and address these challenges based on our experience in digital transformation and leading ICT technology, stated Diana Yuan, President of Marketing and Solution Sales Department of Huawei Enterprise Business Group.

Harel Kodesh, CTO of GE Digital, said: "The growth of the Industrial Internet depends on the cultivation of an ecosystem and a commitment to jointly build solutions to accelerate digital transformation for industry. This new solution brings together the strengths of two great companies – Huawei and GE – and is already driving positive outcomes for innovation-driven customers like Schindler. These partnerships will help industrial companies take advantage of the Industrial Internet and drive unprecedented gains in productivity."

http://e.huawei.com/topic/hannovemesse2017-en/index.html.

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OpenStack User Survey Finds Increasing Deployments

The OpenStack Foundation announced that its user survey for 2016 showed that it achieved 44% more deployments and gained input from 22% more organisations than a year ago, while also revealing increased scale of deployments and a more diverse user base as users seek to avoid vendor lock-in.

OpenStack notes that the ninth user survey indicates that the open infrastructure platform for private and public clouds and telecom networks has growing appeal for organisations of all sizes. Specifically, the survey shows that 32% of users have 10,000 employees or more and 25% of organisations have fewer than 100 employees, with around 61% of users and 74% of deployments physically located outside of the U.S.

In addition, OpenStack notes that the typical (median) OpenStack user is running 61% to 80% of infrastructure on OpenStack, while for larger clouds with 1,000 cores or more, the median user is running 81% to 100% of the overall infrastructure on OpenStack.

Further key findings revealed by the OpenStack user survey include:

1.         The typical size of an OpenStack cloud increased, with 37% of clouds having 1,000 or more cores, compared to 29% in 2015, and 3% of clouds with more than 100,000 cores; the number of users operating Nova cells increased by 218%.

2.         Swift object provisioning also showed increased scale, with 16% of deployments provisioning more than 1 petabyte of object storage (4% last year), while 33% reported storing 100,000 or more objects (13% last year).

3.         The business drivers for OpenStack adoption highlight its competitive advantages, including accelerated innovation and avoiding vendor-lock in; respondents stated that these factors are more important than reducing costs and increasing operational efficiency, which ranked No. 1 and 2 in past surveys.

4.         Containers remain the leading technology of interest to users, with 65% of those running OpenStack services inside containers using Docker runtime, while 47% of those using containers to orchestrate apps on OpenStack employing Kubernetes.

5.         The proportion of OpenStack deployments in production remains stable, with around two-thirds of clouds in production, while number of clouds in proof-of-concept and test stages indicating healthy growth for the future.

6.         A typical deployment runs nine projects, with 16% running 12 or more projects; all of OpenStack's core services are in use by 89–98% of clouds, significantly higher than last year for core projects in production.

https://www.openstack.org/news/view/311https://www.openstack.org/assets/survey/April2017SurveyReport.pdf

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Vodafone Turkey Tests GL Spectrum Sharing with Huawei

Vodafone Turkey and Huawei announced they have completed what they claim is the first verification of the GL spectrum sharing solution on Vodafone's commercial 900 MHz networks in the city of Diyarbakir in Turkey.

This solution, developed through a collaboration on spectrum sharing capabilities between Huawei Mobile Innovation Centre and Vodafone Networks CoE (Center of Excellence), enables spectrum sharing between GSM and LTE with a high degree of overlap between the two technologies. The technology improves both LTE data rate and cell capacity available in the 900 MHz spectrum allocation from Vodafone Turkey.

Huawei claims that compared to LTE 5 MHz performance, the GL technology enables average user data throughput to be increased by nearly 58% on the downlink and 44% on the uplink.

Vodafone Turkey launched its 4.5G network for commercial use in April 2016 and claims to offer the largest 4.5G coverage in Turkey, currently serving over 8 million LTE customers. Subsequently, as more users migrate to LTE the effective allocation of spectrum resources to support increasing LTE data traffic has become a priority for Vodafone Turkey. The GL spectrum sharing solution features Huawei's proprietary algorithms, which are designed to free operators from the restrictions of standard LTE bandwidth.

The Huawei solution ensures that scattered spectrum resources are utilised more effectively to enable higher data rates and an enhanced user experience. By providing more flexibility in terms of the resource block allocation and spectrum allocation effectively used by LTE the GL technology also maintains sufficient GSM channels to carry 2G CS traffic.

In February, Huawei, Vodafone and Qualcomm Technologies announced they had jointly created in Turkey what they claimed was the first network ready to use Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) technology, based on the 3GPP R13 standard. LAA is designed to help improve the user experience by enabling faster download speeds.

The LAA-ready network was tested using a Huawei Lampsite base station in a Vodafone Turkey store in Istanbul and used 40 MHz of unlicensed spectrum in 5 GHz and 15 MHz licensed spectrum in 2.6 GHz for three carrier aggregation. The on-site peak download speed of 370 Mbit/s was achieved using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with X16 LTE mobile test device

http://www.huawei.com/en/news/2017/4/First-Live-GL-Spectrum-Commercial-900MHz-Networks

• In 2016, Huawei announced that its Active Antenna Unit (AAU) solution was supporting Turkey's deployment of 4.5G networks to enable enhanced mobile broadband (MBB) services. Turkey launched its large-scale plan for the evolution from 3G to 4.5G networks in 2015 and released the first 4.5G spectrum license in August of that year.

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Rambus teams with Samsung to offer 56G SerDes PHY

Rambus, a supplier of hardware and software technologies for the communications market, announced that it is partnering with Samsung Electronics to develop its recently launched 56 Gbit/s SerDes PHY on Samsung's 10 nm LPP (low-power plus) process technology.

Rambus' 56 Gbit/s SerDes PHY is designed to deliver enterprise-class performance in challenging signalling environments typical for high-speed communication systems and provides PAM4 and NRZ signalling with a scalable ADC-based architecture. The flexible device architecture targets long-reach backplane requirements to support the transition to 400 Gigabit Ethernet applications.

Rambus unveiled the 56 Gbit/s multi-protocol SerDes PHY, developed on advanced, second generation FinFET process technology, in February this year. The solution is designed to address demanding communications and data centre applications.

The Rambus 56 Gbit/s SerDes PHY features a 28 GS/s ADC integrated directly into the architecture to enable scalability and extended reach. The PHY can support data rates from 9.95 up to 58 Gbit/s across copper and backplane channels with more than 35 dB channel insertion loss for a range of standard interconnect protocols.

The 56G MPS are designed with a system-oriented approach, taking the interface, interconnect and channel into account when optimising performance and features to maximize flexibility in today’s most challenging system environments and applications. This makes the PHYs ideal for many long-reach, copper and backplane enterprise environments.

Also in February, Rambus announced the availability of its High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) Gen2 PHY, developed for GLOBALFOUNDRIES FX-14 ASIC platform. Leveraging the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 14 nm FinFET (14LPP) process technology, the Rambus HBM PHY is designed for networking and data centre applications, in particular systems demanding low latency and high bandwidth memory performance.

Rambus HBM Gen2 PHY is compliant with the JEDEC HBM2 standard and can support data rates up to 2,000 Mbit/s per data pin to deliver an aggregate bandwidth of 256 Gbit/s for data-intensive tasks.

Regarding the collaboration with Samsung, Ryan Lee, VP, foundry marketing team at Samsung Electronics, said, “Network application is one of Samsung's key segments of focus and the composition of its 10LPP network solution and the Rambus 56 Gbit/s solution will… (offer) high performance and low power consumption… for data processing requirements to come".

https://www.rambus.com/rambus-partners-with-samsung-to-develop-56g-serdes-phy-on-10nm-lpp-process/

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ZTE and VEON Team on NFVI and vEPC

ZTE and VEON the Amsterdam-based international telecoms company formerly known as VimpleCom, announced they have signed a global framework agreement covering network function virtualisation infrastructure (NFVI) and virtual evolved packet core (vEPC), as a part of which they plan to cooperate of the development of virtualisation technology.

Under the agreement, ZTE becomes a supplier to the VEON group for NFVI solutions, and will deploy large-scale NFVI and vEPC networks in a number of countries where VEON operates, including Russia. The cooperation between the companies is intended to promote VEON's wider NFV strategic planning and digitalisation initiative.

In addition, as part of the partnership ZTE and VEON will continue to collaborate in the field of virtualisation, and ZTE will support VEON as it implements its long-term digital transformation program designed to enhance the services provided to customers.

In early 2016, VEON/VimpelCom announced plans to build a complete virtual network infrastructure to support the delivery of 4G, 3G and 2G mobile data services to customers in five markets, and that it had selected ZTE to build the new network environment.

For the project, ZTE's vEPC solution was to be implemented initially in Kyrgyzstan and Laos, followed by deployments in Uzbekistan, Armenia and Tajikistan, with the roll-out due to be completed during 2016.

http://www.zte.com.cn/global/about/press-center/news/2017ma4/0420ma1

• VimpelCom, serving over 235 million customers worldwide, announced in February 2017 that it was re-branding as VEON. At the same time it announced partnerships with major global brands including Deezer, STUDIO+ (Vivendi) and Mastercard as part of its strategy to transform personal Internet services for its customers.

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Calix Launches Marketing Cloud

Calix, the provider of Subscriber Driven Intelligent Access, announced the release of Calix Marketing Cloud (CMC), a new cloud solution that builds on the company's five years of cloud-based customer support.

Calix noted that marketing teams at service providers may have access to limited, static subscriber data from billing and data consumption, which does not provide insight into subscriber usage and preference trends. The new CMC solution enables better understanding of subscribers by aggregating behavioural data, allowing the marketer to create, target and execute more effective campaigns.

Calix's CMC features behavioural filters that allow the creation of actionable lists of target subscribers extracted directly from back-office systems, which can then loaded into focused marketing campaigns.

The new cloud-based CMC solution delivers key behavioural information to service providers' marketing teams, including:

1.         Subscriber insights: via a nightly data refresh, CMC reveals trends in a single dashboard view, with an emphasis on identifying subscribers that may be interested in a service upgrade and those prone to churn.

2.         Customer segmentation: designed to simplify the segmentation process, providing detailed breakdowns of user types such as gamers, social media enthusiasts and over-the-top (OTT) service users, enabling the creation of contextually relevant product bundles and marketing content and targeted campaigns.

3.         Targeted campaigns: based on subscriber segmentation, CMC allows the export of target groups into automated marketing engines such as Salesforce Pardot or Marketo, for bill inserts, online campaigns via the best social media channel, or campaigns loaded into a CRM system.

https://www.calix.com/press-release/2017/04--april-/calix-launches-marketing-cloud--transforming-network-data-into-a.html

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The Open Network Automation Platform looks like a turning point for telecom architecture

The biggest news out of the recentOpen Networking Summit in Silicon Valley is that the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project, which unites AT&T's open source ECOMP and the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O), has made substantive progress toward becoming a dominant lifecycle service management platform for the telecom industry.

Senior executives from AT&T, China Mobile and The Linux Foundation took the ONS stage to declare that ONAP is not only a path towards more open, agile and cost effect carrier networks, but it is perhaps The Path forward for the networks that support the majority of the world’s mobile users. Besides AT&T (with 135 million mobile users) and China Mobile (853 million), the ONAP project has attracted the endorsement, support or commitment to early trials from other key operators including Orange (265 million accesses), Bell, China Telecom, China Unicom and the hot, new Reliance Jio in India. Together, these operators serve 38% of the global wireless subscriber base. The Linux Foundation said they are already in discussions with mobile operators representing a further 34% of the global subscriber base, so clearly we are talking about enormous market clout.

The project description for ONAP states that ONAP is an open source software platform that delivers capabilities for the design, creation, orchestration, monitoring and life cycle management of: low-level virtual network functions (VNFs); the carrier-scale software defined networks (SDNs) that contain them; and higher-level services that combine the above.

From a functionality point of view, ONAP is expected to handle:

•   Automated onboarding.

•   Automated deployment.

•   Automated management.

•   Intelligent operation of network resources using big data and AI for policy optimisation.

The first vendors to announce ONAP support include companies that worked with AT&T on its ECOMP and Domain 2.0 initiatives, including Amdocs, Cisco, Ericsson and Metaswitch, along with key suppliers for the OPEN-O project, which include Huawei, H3C and ZTE). However, with this level of market momentum, expect all vendors to jump on board as quickly as possible. As the ONAP technical steering committees get establish, now would seem a good time to demonstrate enthusiasm and expertise in this new project.

A developer Wiki has already been set-up (and can be accessed here: https://wiki.onap.org/), and the ONAP governing board members have elected the individuals to serve in key roles, while the governance structure was established via The Linux Foundation, with key appointments including:

•   Chair: Chris Rice, SVP of AT&T Labs.

•   President: Yachen Wang, deputy director of the Network Technology Department at China Mobile Research Institute.

•   Treasurer: Vincent Danno, director wireline standards, Innovation Technical and Marketing at Orange corporate.

How we got here

AT&T’s Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) platform has been running in its production network for the past two and half years. The company states that ECOMP contains over 8 million lines of code and that over one hundred virtual network functions are currently supported, including all of its VoLTE traffic. The ECOMP capabilities are also multi-layer, with optical wavelengths orchestrated by the system.

ECOMP was first publicly discussed in depth by AT&T at ONS 2016 (March 2016), when John Donovan, the company’s chief strategy office, described it as the 'next big thing'. Donovan said ECOMP was the most sophisticated software project that AT&T has ever undertaken. ECOMP's aim was to be the engine that powers its software-centric network, with the goal of enabling high utilisation of network resources by combining dynamic, policy-enforced functions for component and workload shaping, placement, execution and administration. At the time, AT&T published its ECOMP white paper, which has since attracted over 7,000 downloads.

In September 2016, Orange became the first telecom company to join AT&T's ECOMP effort. Orange agreed to test the platform for creating and managing its own software-defined network. The carriers also agreed to collaborate on open source and standardisation initiatives to accelerate the standardisation of SDN and NFV. As the first ECOMP partner, Orange perhaps played a critical role in persuading AT&T to move ahead with the idea of contributing its 8 million lines of code to open source. After all, there must have been many reasonable voices from within the company advising against a new and risky strategy of giving away its intellectual property, its crown jewels, for free. In December 2016, Bell Canada became the second carrier to join the ECOMP team.

The OPEN-Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O) was first announced at Mobile World Congress 2016. Its mission was to develop the first open source software framework and orchestrator to enable agile software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) operations. The initiative was driven by China Mobile and Huawei, with early support from Brocade, China Telecom, DynaTrace, Ericsson, F5 Networks, GigaSpaces, Infoblox, Intel, KT, Red Hat, Raisecom, Riverbed and ZTE. In November 2016, OPEN-O launched its first major software release, codenamed SUN.

Many questions about what comes next

With the agreement only just coming into place and technical integration work yet to begin, it is too early to forecast how other models will be impacted. Is it game over for other service orchestration systems? Will other open networking projects, such as ONOS, Open Daylight and OPNFV be redirected to become perfect fits into ONAP? How will ETSI NFV evolve? And what of privately-developed orchestration systems, such as BluePlanet?

Presumably these will also need to adapt to the coming reality of a widely supported ONAP. On the other hand, will one open orchestration system be able to fit all use cases and service providers? And what about the public cloud providers?

The telcos are racing to make their infrastructure hardware more like cloud data centres, while companies such as AWS already have sophisticated software systems in place to bring up new equipment, services and customers quickly and efficiently. From the cloud operators perspective, will the 8 million lines of ONAP prove to be impressive? If so, and if the majority of telcos really agree to this common service orchestration model, will this give them an advantage over cloud operators?

Microsoft has already joined the ONAP project, the only cloud provider to announce its membership in the group so far. However, it is possible that a cloud provider like Google or Microsoft could have a better orchestration system, and perhaps they could find a business case to offer it on a wholesale basis.

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NTT Com extends Multi-Cloud Connect to Oracle Cloud

NTT Communications (NTT Com) announced the extension of the Multi-Cloud Connect solution to Oracle Cloud to help multinational customers leverage the performance and cost benefits offered by the cloud while leveraging its secure, high performance MPLS network.

Under the agreement, Multi-Cloud Connect will connect directly to Oracle Cloud's platform via Oracle Network Cloud Services – FastConnect, enabling private connectivity to its portfolio and features based on platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings. The agreement encompasses middleware such as Oracle Database Cloud Service and Java Cloud Service, as well as integration and business analytics features.

Additionally, NTT Com and Oracle will enable hybrid deployment of Oracle Cloud and Oracle software hosted on-premises or Oracle Cloud at Customer based on a single, global network.

Multi-Cloud Connect currently connects to Oracle Cloud and other third party cloud services including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online, as well as NTT Com's private cloud service, via a security-enhanced, private Layer 3 connection, avoiding the public Internet.

Multi-Cloud Connect is designed to enable enterprises to support the demands of different applications by delivering a hybrid cloud environment incorporating a mix of public cloud and private cloud or on-premises, private cloud (enterprise cloud) and/or public cloud elements.

NTT Com's Multi-Cloud Connect is directly connected to public clouds hosted in key markets across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

http://www.ntt.com/en/about-us/press-releases/news/article/2017/0418.html?_ga=1.166327358.1897876473.1492805105

• Earlier this year, NTT announced that as part of a commitment to expand its position in the cloud it would explore how to leverage the potential of its cloud investments worldwide. Specifically, Dimension Data and NTT Com planned to explore how to deliver a unified cloud experience to clients through greater collaboration within NTT, initially via closer integration of the Dimension Data and NTT Com cloud IaaS platforms.
  
• In addition, NTT Com recently announced the launch of software-defined (SD) services and a suite of technologies with managed services named SDx+M (Software Defined Everything and Management). The new solution is part of NTT Com's strategy of providing software programmable networking, cloud and infrastructure environments.
• 
  

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Telecom, M2M and IoT are Showcased at Brooklyn 5G Summit

At the annual Brooklyn 5G Summit in New York University's Tandon School of Engineering, jointly organised by NYU Wireless and Nokia, attendees assessed how close the industry is to deploying commercial 5G products and services and showcased the latest developments and research in the areas of telecommunications, M2M communication and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The event featured executives from companies and organisations including Nokia, Verizon, National Instruments, Intel, Qualcomm and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

It was noted that recently carriers including Verizon and AT&T have announced trials around a dozen cities of both mid-band and the millimetrewave (mmWave) technology, for which Rappaport and NYU Wireless conducted seminal research. Meanwhile, government and bodies such as the FCC, 3GPP and ITU have recently defined new benchmarks intended to enable higher mobile data speeds.

NYU Wireless, which conducted early radio channel measurements showing that the mmWave spectrum can be used to improve wireless communications, noted that it is one of two academic institutions recently selected by the FCC to help test, debug and provide feedback on a new web-based portal that allows researchers to apply for a program experimental license that is intended to reduce the barriers to experimentation.

During the Brooklyn 5G Summit, NYU Wireless is demonstrating developments including:

1.         Research on 5G transmission in mmWave spectrum that indicates the potential for up to 40 times higher data transmission rates than at present.

2.         Advanced tools for designing 5G systems, including the widely used NYUSIM open-source channel software simulator.

3.         A new real-time network emulation tool for evaluating virtual reality and other applications over real-world mmWave channels.

4.         A phased-array antenna system for measuring mmWave directional channel dynamics.

5.         A dual architecture channel sounder providing 2 GHz RF bandwidth throughout the mmWave spectrum and a channel sounder on a chip.

During the event, NYU Wireless also announced that global smartphone supplier OPPO had joined the university research centre at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering as an industrial affiliate sponsor of research into 5G technology.

http://brooklyn5gsummit.com/

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Construction Update on SACS Angola-Brazil Cable System

Angola Cables, an Angolan telecoms wholesale operator, has announced the completion of the marine survey for the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) and the commencement of cable loading on the Angolan side of SACS cable, which will interconnect with the MONET cable system linking the U.S. and Brazil and the West Africa Cable System (WACS).

The SACS subsea system is a 40 Tbit/s, 6,165 km cable with four fibre pairs, with each fibre pair capable of transmitting 100 wavelengths with a bandwidth of 100 Gbit/s, which will connect from Angola to Brazil. SACS is scheduled to be ready for service in mid-2018.

Angola Cables stated that completion of the marine survey ensures that the cable will be deployed along the best route, avoiding hazards. Conclusion of the marine survey means that final manufacturing can be completed and route and cable type selections fine-tuned based on the survey findings.

As a result, loading of the pre-laid shore end (PLSE) is complete and the construction of SACS cable is underway. Angola Cables has commissioned NEC to build the cable system and contracted Ocean Specialists (OSI) to oversee the construction process. NEC announced in April last year that it had been selected to deploy the SACS system.

Angola Cables is an international wholesale provider focused on delivering capacity on international routes. Angola Cables is one of 12 members of the consortium managing the WACS cable system serving Angola and sub-Saharan Africa. The 14,530 km WACS cable extends from South Africa to the UK, with 14 landing points, including 12 along the west coast of Africa. The company also operates the Angonix IXP exchange at its data centre in Luanda, Angonap.

https://www.angolacables.co.ao/

• In early March, Ciena announced that Angola Cables had selected its GeoMesh and Blue Planet solutions to support the launch of a new service over a 10,556 km route on the MONET subsea cable, which is currently under construction and expected to be completed in the second half of this year.

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Ericsson unveils virtualised video processing platform with MediaFirst controller

Ericsson has announced the launch of a platform that provides the foundation for all-IP and cloud native delivery models with the new MediaFirst Management Controller and MediaFirst Encoding Live 8.1.

Ericsson's fully virtualised processing solution, unveiled at NAB 2017, is designed to enable operators to address consumer demand for new services in areas such as UHD TV, virtual and augmented reality, as well as providing support for new revenue opportunities through dynamic ad insertion.

Able to operate on any platform, including pure software, common off the shelf (COTS) server hardware, private and public cloud, the flexible solution is designed to enable complex configurations by providing control for all processing elements utilising a service-based approach that secures operations and optimises service quality.

Leveraging its video compression expertise, and working in collaboration with customers and users, Ericsson MediaFirst Management Controller is designed to simplify the transition to a software-based architecture and provide a unified access point for Ericsson MediaFirst Video Processing products including Encoding Live, On Demand, Packaging and Stream Processing.

The new Ericsson solution allows operators to move from a monolithic approach towards a more agile, service-based allocation that helps streamline application management and deployment across multiple services and clusters. The new management platform offers centralised visibility, configuration and control, as well as providing flexible failover and licensing management for MediaFirst Video Processing applications. It can also adapt to changing conditions.

Ericsson's new MediaFirst Video Processing Encoding Live 8.1 enables faster content deployment with enhanced efficiency. The new version specifically offers a unified microservice architecture across any platform type and features centralised management, integral failover and dynamic licensing, together with faster video transcoding and high density when implemented on a platform based on Intel's Quick Sync Video (QSV) dedicated video hardware core.

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2096449?categoryFilter=press-releases_1270673222_c

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KPN unit NL-ix establishes PoP at EdgeConneX Amsterdam

EdgeConneX, a specialist provider of data centre solutions at the edge of the network, has announced a new partnership with Netherlands-based NL-ix, a KPN company that interconnects over 100 carrier neutral data centres in 15 European countries, under which NL-ix has established a new point of presence (PoP) at its Edge Data Center (EDC) facility in Amsterdam.

With the deployment, NL-ix customers have access to local, regional and pan-European transport, routing and cloud connect services, and peering with local EdgeConneX customers, including wireless carriers, service providers, content delivery networks (CDNs), cloud providers and enterprises.

The EdgeConneX Amsterdam EDC is designed and located to provide the shortest and fastest routes for the delivery of Internet and cloud-based content in the Netherlands. The facility is strategically positioned close to major network provider aggregation points.

With 620 members connected and peak traffic of 1.7 Tbit/s, NL-ix is estimated to be the fifth largest Internet exchange globally. NL-ix interconnects in carrier neutral data centres in 25 metro areas and 105 data centres across Europe, offering metro, national and pan-European peering, routing, transport and cloud connect services.

http://www.edgeconnex.com/company/news-events/in-the-media/

• Earlier in April EdgeConneX announced a partnership with the Salt Lake Internet eXchange (SLIX), offering connectivity solutions via the EDC in Salt Lake City. Owned and operated by XMission, SLIX is the only Internet exchange in Salt Lake City serving 10-plus networks connected with available peering for local EdgeConneX customers.
  
• Earlier in the year, EdgeConneX launched its second EDC in Miami, Florida, located in Miami Gardens, 10 miles north of the NAP of Americas and offering direct access to LATAM, South America and the Caribbean via dark and lit fibre. In January 2017, Megaport (USA), the U.S. subsidiary of Australia-based Megaport, a provider of Elastic Interconnection services, deployed its SDN-based interconnection services in EDCs across North America and Europe.

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Mellanox Cites Momentum for its 25G Ethernet Adapters

Mellanox Technologies announced that the ConnectX-4 Lx 25 Gigabit OCP and PCIe Ethernet adapters targeting data centre applications, which deliver 2.5x the throughput of 10 Gbit/s solutions using the same infrastructure, along with low latency performance, have been adopted by a number of major ODMs (original design manufacturers).

Mellanox stated that it is currently shipping hundreds of thousands of Ethernet adapters each quarter in line with increasing demand for its Ethernet connectivity solutions.

Mellanox cited ODM customers for its ConnectX-4 Lx 25 Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:

1.         Wiwynn, a cloud infrastructure provider offering computing and storage products, which is shipping its OCP server SV7221G2 products with the Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx OCP Mezzanine NICs and PCIe cards to major ISPs.

2.         Inventec of Taiwan, which has qualified ConnectX-4 Lx 25 Gigabit Ethernet cards for TB800G4, Balder and K800G3 platforms for supply to major cloud and Web 2.0 providers in China,

3.         Acer, a Taiwanese hardware and electronics company, which has qualified the ConnectX-4 Lx PCIe adapters and plans to shortly launch its Altos R380 F3, R360 F3 and AW2000h F3 servers.

4.         Mitac-TYAN, a supplier of servers and desktop motherboards based in Taiwan, which is shipping ConnectX-3 Pro 40 Gigabit Ethernet OCP mezzanine cards and recently added the ConnectX-4 Lx 25 Gigabit Ethernet OCP mezzanine cards to its GT86A-B7083 server offering.

Mellanox's ConnectX-4 Lx is a 10/25/40/50 Gigabit Ethernet adapter that allows data centres to transition from 10 Gbit/s to 25 Gbit/s and from 40 Gbit/s to 50 Gbit/s while delivering similar power consumption and cost and utilising the same infrastructure.

http://www.mellanox.com/page/press_release_item?id=1910

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Monthly update on the Indian telecommunications market - Part 2

Full article: Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4

Update on consolidation of the 12-operator telecom market to four groups

Group 1 - Bharti Airtel plus Telenor

Bharti Airtel to acquire Augere Wireless, Telenor India and possibly some spectrum from Tikona

On February 17th Bharti Airtel, the current Indian telecom market leader, which as of December 2016 served 23.57% of Indian mobile subscriptions, closed the acquisition of Augere Wireless, a company which holds 20 MHz of spectrum in the 2,300 MHz band spectrum in the Madhya Pradesh circle.

Also, as previously reported by OND, on February 23rd Bharti Airtel and Norwegian multinational operator Telenor, whose Indian subsidiary at the end of 2016 served 4.83% of mobile subscriptions,
announced an agreement whereby Bharti Airtel would acquire most of the assets of Telenor India, including access to 44 million customers (nominally increasing its user base to over 320 million, though the final figure is likely to be less), 43.4 MHz of spectrum in the 1,800 MHz band and 20,000 base stations. The cashless deal, which is expected to close in April 2018, will include Airtel acquiring Telenor India's running operations in seven circles: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, UP (East), UP (West) and Assam.

On March 24th persons familiar with the matter told the LiveMint news-source that Bharti Airtel was in the final stages of talks with Tikona Digital Networks of Mumbai to buy the latter's 4G spectrum in a transaction which could be worth in the range of INR 800-1,000 crore (excluding debt, which Airtel would assume, raising the total value to INR 1,500-1,700 crore). Tikona's 4G spectrum consists of 20 MHz in the 2,300 MHz band in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West) and Rajasthan, which would be particularly useful for Airtel in UP (East), UP (West) and Rajasthan, where it has no airwaves in the 2,300 MHz band, and in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, where it has only 10 MHz each. The arrangement would not include Tikona' wireless broadband business, Tikona WiBro, which it would continue to run independently.

On March 28th Bharti Airtel said it had sold a 10.3% stake in its tower company, Bharti Infratel, to a
consortium of funds (including private equity firm KKR and Canada Pension Plan Investments Board (CPPIB)) to raise INR 6,193.9 crore. The company said it would us the proceeds of the sale to further pay down its corporate debt, which as of the end of September 2016 stood at INR 98,813.50 crore.
As a result of all these moves, Bharti Airtel will end up with an important increase in its share of subscriptions which, based on the December 2016 numbers, would be 28.40%, with a significant improvement in its 4G spectrum holdings and slightly stronger financial position.

Group2 - Vodafone plus Idea Cellular

$23bn merger of India's No. 2 and 3 operators to create world's second largest company by mobile subscriptions

As previously reported, Vodafone India, the country's second largest operator which as of the end of 2016 served 18.16% of Indian mobile subscriptions, and third-ranked Idea Cellular, with a 16.90% share, announced they were in merger talks. For some time Vodafone, which has had continuous problems locally for many years including poor profitability and major taxation disputes with the Indian government, had made it clear it was interested in modifying its position in India. Idea Cellular is currently owned 49.05% by the $41 billion sales level Indian conglomerate group Aditya Birla (chaired by Kumar Mangalam Birla) and 19.96% by the Axiata Group of Malaysia, and for its 2016 financial year reported revenue of INR 394 billion.

On March 21st it was announced that the boards of Idea Cellular and Vodafone India had approved a $23 billion merger (excluding the latter's 42% stake in Indus Towers), which if completed in FY 2018 would, based on the latest TRAI numbers, become India's largest telecom company with a pro forma mobile wireless subscriptions market share of around 35.06%, revenue share of the Indian communications market of around 41%, and about 395 million actual mobile subscriptions, making it the second largest company in the world after China Mobile.

The new company's pro forma revenue would be around INR 81,600 crore and it with operating profit of INR 24,400 crore and combined debt of INR 1.08 trillion. The mechanics of the merger, which is expected to take about 24 months to complete, will be evolutionary as outlined in the following from LiveMint:

- 'The deal will see Aditya Birla Group, the promoters of Idea, gradually raising its stake in the combined entity while Vodafone Group will reduce its own, with the aim of both holding equal stakes over a period of time'.

- 'As a first step, the Aditya Birla Group will acquire 4.9% from Vodafone for INR 3,874 crore, or INR 108 a share, to take its stake to 26% with Vodafone holding 45.1%, while AB Group will have the right to buy another 9.5% from Vodafone at INR 130 a share or the prevailing market price, in the combined entity over four years'.

- 'Kumar Mangalam Birla will be the chairman of the new entity, Vodafone will name the CFO, while the two companies will jointly name the CEO and operations head before the closure of merger, expected within 24 months. The new entity will remain listed and be renamed at a later stage, with the promoters of Idea and Vodafone having the right to nominate three members each on the board, which will have 12 directors, six of whom will be independent'.

Interim comment on the risky nature of the above merger

Although LiveMint reported very thoroughly and professionally with minimum comment on the terms and mechanics of the proposed Vodafone/Idea merger on March 21st, it swiftly followed up on March 22nd with an extremely acerbic article by consulting editor Sundeep Khanna (entitled A crown of thorns awaits the Vodafone-Idea merged entity), who left few doubts about how negative he felt about the deal, pointing out that:

• Mergers of equal-sized companies were typically disastrous (because of constant turf squabbles), and the way the top jobs were due to be filled looked messy.
• Both brands would continue to be promoted in parallel making this an inorganic, i.e. incomplete,
merger.
• Mergers generated in a panic as a reaction to threatening outside events (in this case the massive
disruptive incursion of RJIO) were often put together very badly.
• Despite the aggressive public language about the new JV setting out to dominate the Indian
communications market, he felt that Idea had settled for 'bronze position' and that Vodafone's real focus was now on consolidating its position in Europe as the leader in fully converged communications and that it was no longer committed to the Indian market, noting that 10 years after it first entered the Indian market with its acquisition of Hutchison Telecommunications International stake in Hutchison Essar Vodafone seemed ready to get off the roller-coaster ride that has witnessed two write-downs, an aborted IPO and a pending $2.5 billion retrospective tax charge with little to show in terms of profits.

Nonetheless, as a coda to the above its worth noting that on March 24th India's Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) announced that as of February 21, 2017 in its 243rd meeting it had retrospectively approved the acquisition by Vodafone India of 100% of the stock of YOU Broadband, an Indian cable operator with 600,000 customers. So perhaps Vodafone still sees a long term opportunity for its Indian operations.

Full article: Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4

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Vodafone Egypt selects Procera

Procera Networks has announced a multi-year, multi-million dollar partnership with Vodafone Egypt, the largest mobile operator in the country with over 39 million subscribers, under which its virtualised solutions will be deployed to enhance the subscriber experience for fixed and mobile subscribers.

Procera noted that it was selected following a competitive evaluation, and for the project its virtualised technology will be implemented to provide Vodafone Egypt with subscriber experience analytics, including for encrypted traffic carried on the Internet.

Procera's analytics solutions leverage the visibility provided by the PacketLogic DRDL engine, which is designed to deliver fine-grained application identification despite the increasing use of encryption on the Internet.

As part of the solution, ScoreCard provides a view of quality, with high frequency measurements of service quality for criteria relevant to subscribers, such as web surfing, streaming video, social media, real-time gaming, upload/download performance and voice applications. In addition, analysis of ScoreCard results can be used to target investment in network capacity upgrades and identify potential demand for new services by the network planning team at Vodafone Egypt.

https://www.proceranetworks.com/press-releases

• Earlier in 2017, Procera Networks reported a record number of contract wins and deployments in 2016 and had added 36 new Tier 1 service provider contracts. It also noted growing adoption of its virtualised DPI technology, which increased 177% versus 2015, with total deployments at over 50 Tier 1 and 2 operators as part of their NFV strategies.
• In February, Procera announced it had reached a new industry benchmark for NFV performance, achieving 1.8 Tbit/s data throughput for its virtualised PacketLogic network intelligence technology running on Intel-based 1 RU Dell servers equipped with Mellanox 100 Gigabit Ethernet NICs. The test provided scale-up performance to 180 Gbit/s in a single system and scale-out throughput of 1.8 Tbit/s across a 10 RU cluster.

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Verizon: Revenue Down 4.5%, LTE Traffic up 57%

Verizon reported consolidated Q1 revenue of $29.8 billion, a 7.3 percent decrease compared with first-quarter 2016, but down 4.5 percent on a comparable basis excluding divestitures and acquisitions in the period. Net income was $3.6 billion in first-quarter 2017, and EBITDA (non-GAAP, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) totaled $11.2 billion. Consolidated operating income margin was 24.1 percent.

Earnings per share (EPS) were 84 cents in earnings per share (EPS) and adjusted EPS (non-GAAP) ws 95 cents, excluding non-operational items, compared with EPS of $1.06 in 1Q 2016.and adjusted EPS (non-GAAP) of 95 cents, excluding non-operational items, compared with EPS of $1.06 in 1Q 2016. Capital expenditures totaled $3.1 billion in first-quarter 2017.

Some Wireless highlights                                                              

• There was a net decline of 307,000 retail postpaid connections in first-quarter 2017 included 289,000 phone losses. Prior to the launch of Unlimited service in mid-February, Verizon had a retail postpaid phone net loss of 398,000; after the launch, Verizon added 109,000 retail postpaid phone connections. For the entire quarter, Verizon added a net of 49,000 smartphones to its retail postpaid phone base.
• Verizon’s retail postpaid connections base grew 1.2 percent year over year to 108.5 million, and retail prepaid connections grew 0.5 percent to 5.4 million.
• Retail postpaid churn was 1.15 percent in first-quarter 2017, a year-over-year increase of 19 basis points primarily due to increased churn in tablets. Phone customer loyalty remained high, with retail postpaid phone churn of less than 0.90 percent for the eighth consecutive quarter.
• Total revenues were $20.9 billion in first-quarter 2017, a decline of 5.1 percent compared with first-quarter 2016, due to decreased overage revenue, lower postpaid customers in the quarter and continued promotional activity.
• In first-quarter 2017, overall traffic on LTE increased about 57 percent compared with first-quarter 2016, while Verizon extended its lead in the industry’s third-party network performance studies across the country.

Some Wireline highlights

• Total wireline revenues declined 0.6 percent, to $7.9 billion, comparing first-quarter 2017 with first-quarter 2016. Consistent with recent trends and on a comparable basis (non-GAAP), this decline was 3.2 percent, excluding revenues from XO Communications in first-quarter 2017.
• Total Fios revenues grew 4.7 percent, to $2.9 billion, comparing first-quarter 2017 with first-quarter 2016. This supported revenue growth of 0.7 percent in consumer markets and 2.3 percent in business markets.
• In first-quarter 2017, Verizon added a net of 35,000 Fios Internet connections and lost a net of 13,000 Fios Video connections. At the end of first-quarter 2017, Verizon had 5.7 million Fios Internet connections and 4.7 million Fios Video connections, year-over-year increases of 3.3 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively.

http://www.verizon.com

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HK-G Submarine Cable to Offer 48Tbps Capacity

Construction has commenced on a new Hong Kong - Guam Cable system (HK-G) that will offer 48 Tbps of design capacity when it comes into service in late 2019.

The 3,900 kilometer undersea cable, which features 100G optical transmission capabilities, is being built by RTI Connectivity Pte. Ltd. (RTI-C) and NEC Corporation with capital from the Fund Corporation for the Overseas Development of Japan's ICT and Postal Services Inc. (Japan ICT Fund), along with syndicated loans from Japanese institutions including NEC Capital Solutions Limited, among others.

In Hong Kong, the cable is slated to land in Tseung Kwan O (TKO) and will land in Piti, Guam at the recently completed Teleguam Holdings LLC (GTA) cable landing station. HK-G will land in the same facility as the Southeast Asia - United States Cable System (SEA-US).

Russ Matulich, RTI-C's President and CEO, acknowledged this important milestone stating, "Hong Kong is already an important interconnection point for undersea cables, and Guam is emerging as a key telecommunications hub. By extending HK-G to our SEA-US cable investment in Guam, RTI-C is facilitating a new diverse 100G transpacific cable to better serve our customers' traffic requirements between Asia, the United States and Australia." Matulich added, "RTI-C's existing investments, and those under current consideration, will enable other cable owners to better utilize their assets by interconnecting with RTI-C in Hong Kong or Guam."

http://www.RTI-Cable.com
http://www.nec.co.jp

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