GSA report tracks 311 private mobile network deployments

The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) today identified 40 countries/territories with private network deployments based on LTE or 5G or LTE or 5G-suitable private network spectrum licence. Thhis includes 311 private mobile network deployments being deployed all around the world.

“The private mobile networks market is home to a wide range of service providers, including equipment/technology vendors, mobile network operators, systems integrators and the private network end-users, some of whom also take responsibility for installing or operating their own infrastructure,” commented Joe Barrett, President of the Global mobile Suppliers Association. “GSA has counted 38 equipment vendors that have been involved in the supply of equipment for private mobile networks based on LTE or 5G. In addition, we have identified 63 public network operators which between them are known to be involved with 106 projects. This broad ecosystem of vendors, operators and vertical markets is one that the GSA is continuing to track and report on for its Members and the wider industry.”

GSA data suggests that manufacturing is an early adopter of local area private mobile networks with 67 identified companies holding suitable licences or involved in known pilots or deployments of LANs of probable LANs (up from 51 at the start of 2021). Mining follows second, with ports also actively trialling/deploying local area private mobile networks.  Within the manufacturing sector, the automotive subsector is an early leader in terms of private network investment and adoption. Automotive companies account for over a quarter (26.9%) of the 67 identified manufacturing companies holding suitable licences or involved in known pilots or deployments.

The latest GSA report Private mobile networks – market status update (May 2021) includes data on the countries/territories with identified private network deployments (pilot and commercial), 

https://gsacom.com/paper/private-mobile-networks-executive-summary-may-2021/

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NASA to test geosynchronous satellite laser at 1.2 Gbps

NASA is preparing to conduct a Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) that will launch on STPSat-6, the primary spacecraft of the third Space Test Program (STP-3) mission for the Department of Defense. STP-3 is scheduled to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 rocket Wednesday, June 23, from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration will use microwave-oven-size optical modules will send and receive data over infrared lasers at 1.2 Gbps from geosynchronous orbit to Earth. The test will beam data between LCRD and optical ground stations located in Table Mountain, California, and Haleakalā, Hawaii. 

Later in its mission, LCRD will conduct optical communications relay services with a future terminal on the International Space Station, which is expected to launch on a commercial resupply services mission in 2022. These operations could prove the viability of using laser communications in future crewed missions to the Moon and Mars.

The LCRD mission is led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Partners include NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. LCRD is funded through NASA's Technology Demonstration Missions program, part of the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate, and the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program within the agency's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.  

https://www.nasa.gov/lasercomms 

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25 billion Arm-based chips shipped in 2020

Arm confirmed that the shipment of a record 7.3 billion Arm-based chips by its silicon partners in the last calendar quarter of 2020, up 22% y-o-y. Arm partners also shipped a total of 25 billion Arm-based chips in 2020 (up 13% y-o-y), bringing the total deployment of Arm-based chips to-date to more than 190 billion units.

Additionally, with more than eight billion GPUs shipped cumulatively, and more than one billion GPUs reported shipped in 2020, Arm Mali™ graphics processors remain the world’s number one shipping GPU.

The Arm ecosystem continues to expand, with 162 licenses signed in FY20 by 104 different customers. More than half of the licenses were taken by first-time Arm partners. Recent customer wins include SEMIFIVE and Telechips. Additionally, there are now 90 active Arm Flexible Access partners benefitting from easier access to a broad range of world-leading Arm IP, tools and support.

Rene Haas, President, IP Products Group, Arm, said: “We expect demand for Arm-based solutions across all markets to continue, and to accelerate following the introduction of the Armv9 architecture. Armv9 is enabling our partners to offer greater performance and security in the products they are creating for 5G networks, more efficient data centers, and a huge range of endpoint- and automotive-based computing. This growth underlines our expectation that 100 percent of the world’s shared data will soon be processed on Arm; either at the endpoint, in the data networks or the cloud – forming a seamless compute thread throughout.”

https://www.arm.com/

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Australia's Optus activates first mmWave sites

Optus activated its first six 5G mmWave commercial sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.  Optus currently has more than 1200 5G sites, including the six newly activated mmWave sites.

Optus’ mmWave sites are equipped with 800Mhz spectrum. The new mmWave sites include; four Sydney based locations, Kings Cross, Surry Hills, North Ryde and Optus Sydney Campus, as well as Huntingdale in Melbourne and Strathpine in Brisbane, with more to come over the coming weeks.

Optus also reported the milestone of reaching 1 million 5G capable devices on its network.

"What a fantastic day for Optus 5G as we mark not one, but two milestones on our world class network. The demand from our customers for 5G capable devices has surged in recent months, with eight out of 10 handsets that we sell today now 5G enabled. One million 5G devices is just the beginning for us and as we grow our 5G network and launch new capabilities we expect our 5G customer base to grow in parallel," said Matt Williams, Managing Director Marketing and Revenue Optus.

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Thailand's Ban Chang Smart City deploys Private 5G Network

Mavenir is working with National Telecom Public Company Limited (NT), a state-owned telecommunications company, 5GCT, a local partner specialized in delivering end-to-end 5G Smart Cities and Cisco Systems to launch the first 5G Open RAN Smart City in Ban Chang, Thailand.

The city of Ban Chang, is connected to a motorway linking Thailand’s two largest cities: Pattaya and Bangkok. The location is within close proximity to U-Tapao International Airport, Map Ta Phut Industrial Zone and the new master planned Ban Chang Smart City that are strategically important infrastructure for the Digital Economy in Thailand and the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). These characteristics make Ban Chang the perfect city to take advantage of 5G use cases across industrial robots, factory automation, remote telemedicine, aviation, logistics and agriculture. Industry leaders are terming the development the ‘Silicon Beach’ of Asia.

The Ban Chang Smart City 5G Private Network operates on Millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum, spectrum which is ideally suited for a network operating Internet of Thing (IoT) sensors, drones and smart poles, all applications which require fast data uplink to the core for realtime analysis and city management.

Mavenir provided a cloud-native, open architecture-based Private Network solution that enabled TOT1 to reach the promise of 5G. The software-based platform enabled the transformation of the mobile communication private network into a completely virtualized environment, where devices, applications, and services run on an automated network using open architecture, containers, and artificial intelligence (AI). Mavenir’s end-to-end 5G Open RAN, Millimeter wave (mmWave) radios and 5G Core with Open API technology standards, in-sync with the cloud-native solutions supporting private On-Premise applications delivers Smart City concepts such as real-time diagnostics of traffic, public safety, digital signage and sensitive environmental conditions.

TOT’s IP transport infrastructure vendor and a key Mavenir technology partner, Cisco, provided switching hardware and application services to enable the ‘smart’ components of the 5G solution.

Mavenir’s Aniruddho Basu, GM of its Emerging Business Unit, said “We are proud to be part of this ambitious 5G project which sees a whole city connected on a series of 5G applications running in parallel. Connectivity is at the heart of this deployment - connecting people, communities, government services, and private sector services through local government data combined with new data acquired through Internet of Things (IOT), sensors, drones, and external collected data, to fully analyze it for proper city management and citizen knowledge.”

https://mavenir.com/press-releases/mavenir-powering-the-first-smart-city-in-thailand-with-5g-open-ran-integration-across-mmwave-private-network/

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Snap to acquire Wave Optics for its AR waveguides

Snap Inc. will acquire WaveOptics, a start-up specializing in Augmented Reality lenses, for approximately $500 million.

WaveOptics, which is based in Oxfordshire, UK and has offices in Taipei and Beijing, develops AR lenses (also known as waveguides) and projectors which can be integrated into smart glasses, enabling users to see digital images overlaid on top of the real world. The waveguide technology transfers the light waves from the light source and projects them into the user’s eye. The technology produces a large eye-box, binocular viewing and a high field of view. WaveOptics previously announced $39 million in Series C funding, including investments from Octopus Ventures, IP Group plc, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, China’s Gobi Ventures, Goertek and new investor HostPlus.

https://snap.com/

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Deutsche Telekom targets annual growth in the 3-5% range

Deutsche Telekom plans to accelerate its overall growth rate, saying it now believes it can attain annual growth in the 3-5% range.

“We step up our efforts,” said CEO Tim Höttges. “We want to outperform the strong development of the last few years and lead the Group into the future with sustainable growth.”

Some highlights from the company's Capital Markets Day event:

• Deutsche Telekom wants to be a leader in terms of customer experience – in mobile communications, in the fixed network, and in convergent product packages. The Group wants to increase the number of households using product packages that combine fixed network and mobile communications in Germany, the Europe segment, and the Netherlands to over 10 million. In the United States, T-Mobile US is set to continue industry-leading customer growth.
• Deutsche Telekom wants to be the leading digital enabler in the B2B market with integrated software-based solutions. On this basis, revenues with business customers in the Germany and Europe operating segments are to rise by an average annual growth rate of around 2 percent to 2024. In the United States, T-Mobile US wants to double its share of the business customer market.
• Deutsche Telekom will become climate neutral in terms of its own emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by as early as 2025. From 2040, 10 years earlier than the original target, this will apply to the entire value chain (Scope 1, 2 and 3). The compensation for Board of Management members already contains components based on targets such as reducing energy consumption and emissions. 
• The percentage of customers in Germany who can book a pure fiber line (FTTH) from Deutsche Telekom is to increase from the current level of around 5 percent to more than 60 percent by 2030. To this end, the build-out will be continuously driven forward. From 2024, more than 2.5 million FTTH lines are to be added per year. The 5G mobile communications standard is to cover 97 percent of the population in Germany by 2024.
• Deutsche Telekom will continue to digitize its business at all levels. This will fundamentally transform areas such as network technology, IT, and operations, increase agility and productivity, and cut costs. 

https://www.telekom.com/en/investor-relations/publications/capital-markets-days/capital-markets-day-2021

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NTT envisions a Space Integrated Computing Network

NTT is collaborating with SKY Perfect JSAT Holdings on the prospect of space-based computing infrastructure.

The space integrated computing network is a novel infrastructure to be built by combining NTT's network/computing infrastructure and SKY Perfect JSAT's space assets/business. It integrates multiple orbits from the ground to HAPS floating at high altitude, Low Earth Orbits and Geostationary Orbits. In addition, they are connected to the ground by an optical wireless communication networks to form a constellation, and distributed computing enhances various data processing. It also provides access to terrestrial mobile devices for ultra-wide service coverage.

https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2021/05/20/210520a.html

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Windstream connects to Telxius cable landing station in Boca Raton

Windstream Wholesale has connected its core network to the Telxius cable landing station in Boca Raton, Florida. The facility is the terminal station for the South America-1 (SAm-1) cable system owned by Telxius. Windstream Wholesale has existing connections to Telxius’ landing stations in Jacksonville, Florida, and in Virginia Beach, the landing point of the next-generation Dunant and Marea subsea cable systems.

With a reach of nearly 25,000 kilometers, SAm-1 is a subsea fiber-optic cable ring on the seabed surrounding Latin America, and it is the fifth longest submarine cable system in the world. It has fiber route extensions to Ecuador, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, in addition to the trans-Andean and trans-Guatemalan terrestrial backbones. It also interconnects the American coasts of the Caribbean, the Atlantic and the Pacific. Boca Raton is its northernmost landing point.

“We are excited to expand our highly successful partnership with Telxius,” said Joe Scattareggia, executive vice president of Windstream Wholesale. “Our collaboration with Telxius is providing customers with ultra-high capacity connectivity and diversity options coast to coast to major peering locations throughout the U.S., Latin America and beyond.”

“We are proud to be extending our collaboration with Windstream Wholesale with the addition of Boca Raton to their network, which is already connecting our landing stations of Jacksonville and Virginia Beach to all international hubs in the U.S. like Miami, Richmond and Ashburn,” said Enrique Valdés, sales vice president, Northern Region, Telxius Cable.

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ADVA introduces low-power edge demarc for 10GbE

ADVA launched a new compact, low-power edge demarcation solution for 10 Gbps Carrier Ethernet services. 

The ADVA FSP 150-XG108 Series offers simple operation and network integration with zero-touch provisioning. Its compact design caters for space-restricted applications and its redundant power supply ensures high availability. The ADVA FSP 150-XG108 Series is also well prepared for emerging timing requirements with hardware-assisted BITS, PTP and SyncE synchronization.

“Today’s MNOs need to be able to seize new revenue opportunities and grow capacity without worrying about increased energy consumption or rack space eating into profitability. That’s where our FSP 150-XG108 Series hits the sweet spot. It provides a quick and seamless way to deploy high-bandwidth Carrier Ethernet services without major cost,” said Christoph Glingener, CTO, ADVA. “Our FSP 150-XG108 Series is engineered for the practical challenges of meeting cloud and 5G demand. It consumes very little power and supports both 1Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s interface speeds in a 1RU footprint. What’s more, with its temperature-hardened design, our FSP 150-XG108 Series removes the need for expensive air-conditioning.”

http://www.adva.com

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Kaloom lands new funding for its Unified Edge

Kaloom, a start-up based in Montreal, has secured additional capital for its fully programmable and automated cloud-native edge center networking software solution. 

Kaloom's Cloud Edge Fabric is an automated and programmable network fabric with built-in support for network slicing featuring an embedded multi-Terabit per second (Tbps) 5G UPF that is a highly performant, scalable, low latency cloud native solution. Coupled with the Unified Edge solution, which integrates Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform into the Cloud Edge Fabric, the solution can streamline and optimize resources at the edge.

Kaloom said it is in active Proof of Concept (PoCs) trials with over 10 tier-one global communication service providers. In April, Kaloom announced an expanded partnership with Telenor and the integration of its 5G packet core UPF within Telenor’s larger ecosystem of integrated partner solutions.

The new funding brings the total amount raised by Kaloom to US$32.5 million, Series A. As a part of new financing, Alternative Capital Group (ACG) has become the majority shareholder of Kaloom. 

Kaloom also announced the appointment of Stéphane Boisvert as Kaloom’s President. Boisvert has held executive positions with Pivotal (Acquired by VMware), Bell, Sun Microsystems and IBM. 

Kaloom’s founder, Laurent Marchand, will retain his role of Chief Executive Officer and focus more on accelerating innovation and feature velocity to serve the market demands. 

“The investment from ACG is a vote of confidence for Kaloom’s disruptive solutions and business model,” said Boisvert. “If you look at what Kaloom is doing with its software defined architecture, Kaloom is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. It would require a company to turn its business model upside down to replicate Kaloom’s technology and business model. I am looking forward to working with the phenomenal leadership team to bring to market a truly programmable, networking fabric, which is disrupting how differentiated services will be delivered from the 5G enabled cloud edge.”

http://www.kaloom.com

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Immuta raises $90 million for cloud data access control

Immuta, a start-up based in Boston, announced $90 million in Series D funding for its cloud data access control.

Immuta provides a single place for data teams to automate data across control across their entire cloud infrastructure. In its last fiscal year, Immuta grew worldwide bookings by more than 115%, doubled its full-time headcount, and expanded its global base of customers including Aon, Credit Suisse, Daimler, Flatiron, IAG, S&P Global, and US Army. The company was founded in 2015.

The Series D funding round includes new investors Greenspring Associates, March Capital, NGP Capital, and Wipro Ventures, as well as participation from existing investors Ten Eleven Ventures, Intel Capital, DFJ Growth, Dell Technologies Capital, Citi Ventures, and Okta Ventures. This brings total capital raised to $169 million.

“We’ve entered a new era in data and analytics fueled by ubiquitous cloud storage, new cloud data management tools, and the rise of DataOps,” said Immuta’s CEO Matthew Carroll. “In this new environment, data teams are challenged to provide secure, scaled access to thousands of cloud data products while maintaining strong security, privacy protection, and auditability. Traditional methods of data access control don’t work, don’t scale across cloud compute platforms, and can limit data utility. Immuta’s platform solves this problem elegantly without requiring data to be moved, copied, or manually provisioned. This new funding will accelerate innovation and GTM expansion so we can deliver our platform to more customers as we lead the charge to define the future of cloud data access control.”

http://www.immuta.com

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Keysight appoints an Intel exec to its Board

Keysight Technologies appointed Michelle J. Holthaus to its Board of Directors. 

Holthaus has served as executive vice president and chief revenue officer at Intel Corporation since September 2019 where she leads Intel’s global sales, marketing and communications functions. She previously served as senior vice president and general manager of sales and marketing from July 2018 to September 2019, as corporate vice president and general manager of sales and marketing from September 2017 to July 2018, and as division vice president and division general manager of sales and marketing from February 2016 to September 2017. She has been with Intel since 1996 and has held a variety of roles within the products and marketing areas.

“I am excited to welcome Michelle to Keysight’s Board. Michelle brings a wealth of relevant experience and expertise across key areas of the communications and technology industries, including deep customer and supplier insight,” stated Ron Nersesian, chairman and CEO of Keysight. “The Keysight Board and I are looking forward to working with Michelle and having her perspective as we execute our strategy and create further value for stakeholders.”

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NTT Ltd. integrates cloud infrastructure for Indonesia's XL Axiata

NTT Ltd. is integrating solutions from VMware, Cisco, F5, Check Point, Dell, Veeam, and McAfee into a unified IT cloud infrastructure for Indonesia's XL Axiata. This enables Axiata to consolidate its end-to-end components, such as servers, storage, networks and security, which automating its provisioning processes and repetitive IT service requests. Upon project completion, NTT provided post-implementation support and ensured a smooth transition phase by shadowing an appointed Managed Services team members.

https://hello.global.ntt/en-us/newsroom/ntt-partners-with-xl-axiata

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Infinera introduces XR Optics-powered coherent pluggables

Infinera introduced a suite of coherent optical pluggables based on its XR optics technology and designed to seamlessly address point-to-point and point-to-multipoint transport applications from the network edge to the core. 

Infinera’s new suite of vertically integrated ICE-XR pluggables will support a range of transport rates, including 100G, 400G, and 800G, and utilize industry-standard form factors such as QSFP-28, QSFP-DD, and CFP2 to enable ease of deployment in a wide variety of router and transport devices.

ICE-XR can be seamlessly software configured between point-to-point and point-to-multipoint operations. In multipoint applications, Infinera says its ICE-XR can reduce the total number of transceivers in a service provider network by 50% or more and simplify their network architectures by eliminating electrical aggregation points and driving down capital expense and operational complexity. Initial ICE-XR pluggables are scheduled for release in 2022.

“We have been engaged with 100+ network operators globally and the feedback that we have received has surpassed anything I have seen in my 35+ years of experience in successfully bringing game-changing technologies to market,” said Dave Welch, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Infinera. “Leveraging the innovative capabilities of XR optics, ICE-XR will enable Infinera to create a completely new market with functionality that is uniquely positioned to address the point-to-multipoint traffic demands at the rapidly growing network edge and provide TCO savings of as much as 70%. Additionally, with Infinera’s deep vertical integration, ICE-XR will enable us to address the rapidly growing market for point-to-point pluggable coherent applications with a differentiated and cost-reduced solution.”

https://www.infinera.com/innovation/xr-optics

Australia's NBN Co tests Infinera's XR optics

Wednesday, May 12, 2021  Australia, Infinera, NBN Co  

NBN Co, Australia’s wholesale open-access broadband provider, completed a successful proof of concept of Infinera's XR optics-based point-to-multipoint coherent optical technology. The trial demonstrated XR optics’ compatibility within the nbn Transit Network, a DWDM network spanning over 65,000 km across Australia.Infinera said the trial highlighted the ability of XR optics to dramatically simplify transport network architecture while reducing CapEx...

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American Tower tests Infinera's XR optics for point-to-multipoint

Monday, March 15, 2021  Coherent, Infinera, XR Optics  

Infinera and American Tower completed the first point-to-multipoint coherent optical transmission in a carrier network environment in Latin America. This field trial was conducted with Infinera’s XR optics technology over American Tower’s Passive Optical Network (PON) network in Colombia. The trial demonstrated XR optics’ compatibility with existing GPON traffic over a single-fiber PON deployment in a metro regional area.The proof of concept...

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Virgin Media tests Infinera XR optics 

Wednesday, March 03, 2021  Infinera, UK, Virgin  

Virgin Media has trialed prototype Infinera XR optics technology in its network in Reading, UK to send and receive data at up to 400Gbps in a single fiber.In 2019, Virgin Media trialed 10Gbps symmetric full fiber home broadband technology in Papworth, Cambridgeshire. Infinera said this new trial goes a step beyond that, demonstrating that the operator’s passive fiber optic access network (PON) – which provides multiple premises with full fiber...

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Infinera announces XR optics partnerships with II-IV and Lumentum

Tuesday, February 18, 2020  Infinera  

Infinera announced a collaboration with II-VI, a global leader in optical communications modules, to bring to market XR optics-based networking solutions. The companies said partnership will result in the introduction of a family of easily deployable, pluggable XR optics offerings applicable across a wide variety of market applications. Infinera said XR optics enables radically more efficient and cost-effective solutions for the transport networking...

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Infinera's XR Optics delivers coherent optical subcarrier aggregation

Monday, September 23, 2019  100G, ECOC, Infinera  

Infinera introduced a point-to-multipoint coherent optical subcarrier aggregation technology with the potential to significantly reduce the number of transceivers required in an access network while eliminating intermediate aggregation. Infinera's XR optics technology, which is optimized for hub-and-spoke traffic patterns, is powered by independently routable Nyquist subcarriers and coherent optical aggregation capabilities. With coherent subcarrier...

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Cisco posts revenue of $12.8 billion, up 7% yoy

Cisco reported revenue of $12.8 billion for its third fiscal quarter, ended 01-May-2021, with net income on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis of $2.9 billion or $0.68 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $3.5 billion or $0.83 per share.

"Cisco had a great quarter with strong demand across the business," said Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of Cisco. "We are confident in our strategy and our ability to lead the next phase of the recovery as our customers accelerate their adoption of hybrid work, digital transformation, cloud, and continued strong uptake of our subscription-based offerings."

"We executed well with strong product orders, and solid growth in revenue, net income, and EPS," said Scott Herren, CFO of Cisco.  "Our investments in innovation and accelerated shift to more software offerings and subscriptions led to double-digit growth in deferred revenue, remaining performance obligations and higher levels of recurring revenue."

Some highlights:

• Total revenue was up 7% at $12.8 billion, with product revenue up 6% and service revenue up 8%.
• Revenue by geographic segment was: Americas up 2%, EMEA up 11%, and APJC up 19%. 
• Product revenue performance was broad-based with growth in Security, up 13%, Infrastructure Platforms up 6%, and Applications up 5%.
• Software revenue was $3.8B, +13% y/y, of which 81% is recurring

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Ampere makes inroads with Microsoft, Tencent, Oracle

Ampere Computing hosted a technology update event in which it said it on track to deliver by next year new CPU designs with cores designed in-house and optimized for cloud-native workloads.

The company's current generation 80-core Altra and 128-core Altra Max processors, which are based on ARM Neoverse N1 architecture, are now shipping to customers including Microsoft, Oracle, Tencent, Bytedance and others. 

Ampere also announced a collaboration with Microsoft to bring new cloud-scale processing solutions to the market.

https://amperecomputing.com/

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Megaport's Virtual Edge integrates Fortinet SD-WAN

Megaport is now offering Fortinet Secure SD-WAN on Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) network-as-a-service platform.

With Fortinet Secure SD-WAN available on MVE, customers can now host localised virtual SD-WAN controllers on Megaport’s global platform and reduce the distance data traverses over internet paths from branch locations to critical services in public or private clouds and even other branch locations. 

Fortinet customers can now access Megaport’s leading ecosystem of more than 700 enabled data centres worldwide, over 360 service providers, and 220+ cloud on-ramps.

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN on MVE Highlights:

• Reduced cloud egress costs to cloud on-ramps when compared to internet rates.
• Better performance with reduced jitter and latency.
• Globally distributed for localised connections.
• Point-and-click network provisioning to support interconnection between branch locations, data centres, cloud providers, and IT services.
• Real-time provisioning of virtual network infrastructure and interconnections.
• No hardware to ship, install, or manage.
• Unified end-to-end network provisioning and management to transform legacy networks.
• Secure, multicloud connections to the world’s leading clouds such as Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Salesforce.

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Juniper selected by Australian transit authority for infrastructure upgrade

VicTrack, the state-owned enterprise that owns all railway and tram lines, networks and infrastructure in the state of Victoria, Australia, has selected Juniper Networks for the upgrade of its statewide network that supports mission-critical transport and government applications. The company operates and manages an extensive telecommunication network along the rail corridor that includes nearly 3,000km of fibre.

VicTrack has deployed MX Series Universal Routing Platforms. The MX10003 has been deployed at the core, while the MX204 has been deployed as aggregation and internet gateway routers.

For the access layer, VicTrack has also simplified its network architecture and dramatically reduced CapEX and OpEx by eliminating network overlays, with Juniper’s ACX5000, ACX2200, ACX2100 and ACX500 Universal Metro Routers deployed across its network. In addition, VicTrack has also engaged Juniper® Professional Services to help reduce implementation complexity and minimize disruption, all while migrating services onto its upgraded infrastructure.

“We are delighted to expand on our continued partnership with Juniper Networks. The ongoing upgrades will lead to improved network reliability and scalability, as well as simplified network management and operations. Through this network refresh, we are confident in growing VicTrack’s position as a leader in the transport and telecommunications sector, crucial to helping us drive future growth. Alongside Juniper, we remain committed toward providing our customers with leading transportation and communication offerings, experiences and solutions for time to come.”

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Celona's new Private Mobile platform leverages CBRS, microslicing, AI

Celona, a start-up based in Cupertino, California, unveiled its cellular wireless platform for enterprises. 

Celona’s all-in-one platform, which can leverage  Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum in the United States,  integrates network and cellular wireless functions with AI orchestration enabling unprecedented range and predictability of operation to mobile devices and IoT infrastructure deployed within the enterprise.

The idea is to use CBRS-based LTE/5G wireless to open an additional lane of wireless connectivity that operates in clean spectrum, away from interference. Celona says this allows the definition of specific service levels for network metrics such as latency, throughput, jitter and packet error rate. Within a network of wireless access points, mobility events of client devices and their traffic transmissions are always pre-scheduled by the infrastructure – further improving overall predictability.

Product components of Celona’s integrated solution architecture include:

• The Celona RAN: Enterprise-optimized indoor and outdoor CBRS LTE access points that provide up to 25K sqft and 1M sqft of coverage, respectively. Their radio functions are fully automated via Celona software with their power level and frequency channel assignments in the CBRS spectrum and do not require any manual intervention.
• The Celona Edge: Enterprise-ready private LTE/5G core that’s designed to integrate with any existing enterprise network configuration and access control policies. It can be simultaneously deployed on-premises for strict SLA enforcement for local applications and within the private / public / edge clouds for service scalability.
• The Celona Orchestrator: An AIOps platform that enables remote installation of Celona’s access points and Edge software across multiple enterprise sites and allows for provisioning of Celona SIM cards against required device level access control policies within the enterprise network. It goes beyond basic monitoring of infrastructure components and keeps track of application- and device-specific key performance indicators for Celona MicroSlicing – enabling IT teams to maintain laser focus on digital service delivery and business outcomes.

Celona also announced strategic resale partnership with Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, covering its entire line of products.

“CBRS is a game changer, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. Enterprises need a packaged solution to take full advantage of cellular wireless within the context of their existing IT framework,” said Mehmet Yavuz, CTO of Celona. “Our unique approach provides organizations a clear path to easily adopt LTE wireless today, and 5G in the future, while maintaining complete control over the network and the data running over it.”

“Our customers are demanding additional connectivity options and spectrum to support specific digital initiatives being deployed within their organizations,” said Jeff Lipton, VP of Strategy and Corporate Development at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “Our partnership with Celona is designed to directly address these demands and reflects a shared vision that enterprises need a viable 5G strategy that complements existing investments in enterprise wireless.”

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