Compromised Security Would Cause Mobile Customers to Jump Ship

Compromised security – more than high monthly fees – would be the biggest catalyst for triggering users to change mobile network providers, according to an independent survey conducted by market research firm Opinion Matters on behalf of Crossbeam Systems. More than 1,000 adult smartphone users were polled in each country to examine usage habits, the importance of mobile security and data services, purchasing considerations, and what would motivate them to switch providers.

According to the survey, 63 percent of global respondents cite high monthly fees as the primary issue that would drive them away from their current mobile network provider, with only five percent citing a lack of security. However, if survey respondents’ smartphones were to be compromised by hackers, malware or other security failures, 55 percent would consider changing providers and 19 percent would definitely change providers – leading to a potential exodus of 74 percent of customers.

Crossbeam Systems said this finding should challenge network providers’ conventional thinking about their investment priorities.  Most operators today are focused on building out mobile broadband infrastructure as the top priority, with less emphasis on shoring up their security infrastructure and offering value-added security services and protection to end users and their devices. The vulnerability is that users could blame the network operator for a smart phone attack even though they are not at fault.

"Smartphone users, like most people, don’t think about the security of their devices until they’ve been hacked. This may be misleading mobile network operators to focus less of their attention on customer security and underestimate the risk it creates,” said Peter Doggart, senior director of global marketing at Crossbeam. “There is an inadequate level of investment in security compared to other areas of the mobile network. This is a wake-up call for service providers, especially as we’re reaching a critical mass of smartphone users worldwide, not to mention the growth of data-enabled endpoints connecting to mobile phone networks, including smartphones, tablets, e-book readers and more. The quantity of threats directed at mobile devices and their level of sophistication are on the rise.”

The full survey report is available online.

http://www.crossbeam.com/opinion-matters-reg

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Marvell Develops 802.11ac 4x4

Marvell introduced the first 802.11ac 4x4 wireless local area network (WLAN) system-on-chip (SoC), offering up to 1.3 Gbps of Wi-Fi throughput.

The Marvell Avastar 88W8864 is designed to improve the throughput of enterprise and retail access points (APs) and the robustness of wireless video distribution.

Highlights:

• 4x4 MIMO dual-band 802.11ac solution
• 1.3Gbps WLAN PHY rate
• Channel bandwidth up to 80MHz
• 256 QAM modulation scheme
• Implicit and explicit Transmit Beamforming technology
• Low Density Parity Check (LDPC)
• Wi-Fi offload engine
• Marvell Spectrum Management
• Multi-stream, low PER and latency HD video
• Integrated Wi-Fi position engine

http://www.marvell.com

• Earlier this year, Marvell announced the first 802.11ac 2x2 combination radio chip, the Avastar 88W8897, which pairs near field communications (NFC) and Bluetooth 4.0 – with mobile multiple input multiple output (MIMO), transmit beamforming and support for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Miracast. 
• Marvell introduced an 802.11n 4x4 SoC in 2010.

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Equinix Opens Miami Data Center

Equinix opened a new International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Boca Raton, Florida.

The new MI3 facility, which is located outside of the Category 5 hurricane evacuation zone, will provide 31,300 square feet of floor space, with additional options for future expansion.  It offers direct connectivity to the leading Latin American network operators for reduced latency, include close proximity to several cable landing stations such as the lowest latency route to Brazil via GlobeNet.

Customers that are deploying at MI3 include:  Allied Fiber, Cogent Communications, FiberLight, Inteliquent, Neutrona Networks International, Sidera Networks, and tw telecom.

http://www.equinix.com

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Arista Releases 2nd Gen 10GBASE-T Switches, $300/port

Arista Networks introduced its second generation of 10GBASE-T switches, providing customers with the cost savings of twinax copper cabling in the data center instead of SFP+ fiber.

The Arista 7050 Series 1/10GBASE-T data center switches offer wire speed performance with a choice of 36, 52 or 64 ports of 10GbE.  The Arista 7050T-36 switch includes 32 ports with auto-negotiating 100Mb/1GbE/10GbE ports based on standard RJ45 interfaces and 4 10GbE SFP+ ports. This enables customers to deploy scalable, leaf-spine cloud networks while preserving their initial investment and minimizing intrusive upgrades. Prices start at $300 per port.

Arista said its 7050T Series offers the lowest power consumption in the industry at five watts per port.

“The key elements for widespread customer adoption of 10GBASE-T are low price, power efficiency and high density. The price points of 10GBASE-T are now nearing data center class 1GbE switches which make future proofing all the more compelling for customers,” said Anshul Sadana senior vice president, Customer Engineering for Arista Networks.

http://www.aristanetworks.com

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Cable & Wireless Comm Sells Assets to Bahrain's Batelco

Cable & Wireless Communications will sell its Monaco & Islands division to Bahrain's Batelcom Group for US$680 million.

The sale include CWC's businesses in the Maldives, Channel Islands and Isle of Man, the Seychelles, South Atlantic and Diego Garcia as well as a 25% shareholding in Compagnie Monegasque de Communication SAM, the company which holds CWC’s 55% interest in Monaco Telecom.

Cable & Wireless Communications said the disposal helps to focus the company on the Central American and Caribbean region, as well as increasing the company’s financial flexibility. The Group’s net debt position will be reduced from US$1,588 million as at 30 September 2012 to approximately US$937 million on a pro forma basis, implying proportionate net debt / EBITDA of 1.8x (for the 12 months to 30 September 2012).

"Batelco Group will have the opportunity to operate, in collaboration with its new business partners, communications businesses across 17 markets. This acquisition supports our strategy by adding new cash generative business clusters to our existing operations across the Middle Eastern region. We look forward to working closely with all the shareholders and management teams in the companies to ensure we continue to deliver value and innovation to customers and be recognized as market leaders," stated Sheikh Mohamed bin Isa Al Khalifa, Batelco Group Chief Executive.

http://www.batelco.com/portal/

http://www.cwc.com/

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Vitesse Powers Carrier Ethernet 2.0 Access with 1588v2

Vitesse Semiconductor introduced a new Network Interface Device/Ethernet Access Device (NID/EAD) reference design based on its CEServices software and Serval (VSC7418) Carrier Ethernet switch engine.

Significantly, the NID/EAD platform supports MEF Carrier Ethernet 2.0, which is becoming a requirement in many RFPs from network operators.  Vitesse said its design exceeds many of these requirements today, including line rate support for essential service creation and assurance features such as RFC2544, Y.1564, multi-operator OAM and Hierarchical Quality of Service (HQoS).  The reference design also integrates Vitesse’s VeriTime timing synchronization for mobile access deployments.

"This reference design delivers a proven path to future-proof IP Edge and cloud networks for real-time service delivery,” said Uday Mudoi, product marketing director at Vitesse. “Service-awareness and manageability are key to guarantee the security, performance and access required for business cloud services. Vitesse remains committed to advancing carrier-class networking for IP Edge and cloud computing.”

Pulsecom is introducing its new SuperG Ethernet NID platforms using Vitesse’s Carrier Ethernet Switch Engine. The CE 2.0-compliant SuperG access/aggregation platforms are designed for mobile backhaul, business services, as well as access and aggregation network and demarcation applications.

Pulsecom, whose customers include many of the large U.S. operators, said it is seeing a definite requirement for Carrier Ethernet 2.0 and IEEE 1588v2 capabilities.

Pulscom’s SuperG Family Highlights:

• SuperG Multiservice Access Switch: Ethernet and DS1 access solution supporting multiple generations of cell site backhaul and evolving business service requirements; 
• SuperG NID: CE 2.0-ready Ethernet access solution optimized for cell site and customer premise applications requiring MEF-compliant Ethernet services; and
• SuperG OSP: CE 2.0-ready access solution optimized for outdoor use.
• Pulsecom's scalable solutions for Carrier Ethernet access and wireless backhaul deliver MEF compliant Ethernet services to custom fit any mixture of 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G/LTE applications. 

http://www.vitesse.com
http://www.pulse.com

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Video: IEEE 1588v2 Network Synchronization

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Alcatel-Lucent Selected for 100G Pacific Caribbean Cable System

Alcatel-Lucent has been selected to deploy a new 100G submarine cable system linking Jacksonville, Florida to Manta, Ecuador.

The Pacific Caribbean Cable System (PCCS) will be a 6,000 km submarine cable system owned by Cable & Wireless Communications, Setar, Telconet, Telefónica a Global Solutions and United Telecommunication Services (UTS).

In addition to Florida and Ecuador, the system will connect the islands of Tortola, Puerto Rico, Aruba and Curacao, as well as Cartagena in Colombia and Maria Chiquita and Balboa in Panama.

The system will have an ultimate design capacity of 80 Terabit-per-second. Alcatel-Lucent will supply an integrated 100G wet plant of cable optimized with coherent submarine fiber and high bandwidth repeaters, power feed equipment, and its 1620 Light Manager (LM) submarine line terminal equipped with advanced coherent technology.

Commercial activation is expected by the third quarter of 2014.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Crown Castle Gains 7,200 Cell Toweres from T-Mobile USA

T-Mobile USA and Crown Castle completed their deal concerning the sale of approximately 7,200 towers for $2.4 billion in cash.

The deal gives Crown Castle the exclusive right to lease and operate the T-Mobile towers for a weighted average term of approximately 28 years. In addition, Crown Castle will have the option to purchase such towers at the end of the respective lease terms for aggregate option payments of approximately $2.4 billion, which payments, if exercised would be primarily between 2025 and 2048.

Deutsche Telekom said the proceeds have an immediate deleveraging effect by reducing its net debt by the equivalent of around EUR 1.9 billion and thus strengthening its rating-relevant financial ratios.

http://www.telekom.com/media/company/162778
http://www.crowncastle.com

• Earlier this year, Crown Castle International acquired NextG Networks for approximately $1.0 billion in cash.  NextG, which specializes in outdoor distributed antenna systems ("DAS"), currently has over 7,000 nodes-on-air and a further 1,500 nodes under construction. In addition, NextG has rights to over 4,600 miles of fiber. Over 90% of NextG nodes are in urban and suburban locations, with 80% in the top ten US metropolitan areas, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas Fort Worth. The NextG assets are expected to provide significant growth, as they currently average only 1.25 tenants per network. Crown Castle said this deal made it the largest independent DAS operator in the US, with approximately 10,000 nodes and 26 venues in operation or under construction. Previously, Crown Castle owned, operated and managed over 22,000 and approximately 1,600 wireless communication sites in the US and Australia.

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Deutsche Telekom Expands Cloud Marketplace with Box, Microsoft Office 365

Deutsche Telekom announced cloud service partnerships with Box and Microsoft Office 365.  Specifically, Deutsche Telekom is now offering Box Business in its cloud marketplace for small and medium-sized businesses. It will also soon offer Microsoft Office 365 as a cloud collaboration service.

"Secure cloud solutions are a significant part of our Group strategy for more growth,” says Dirk Backofen, who is the person responsible for Deutsche Telekom’s cloud business. “When it comes to the cloud, there’s a clear trend: After the initial tendency to use the cloud purely for storing data, things are now moving towards collaboration. The cloud brings people together,” he says. The advantage for customers is that Deutsche Telekom offers them a complete end-to-end cloud service and provides everything from a single source: Bandwidth, storage space and processing capacity, applications, expertise, independence from operating systems and high security. Cloud services are an important building block, from which Deutsche Telekom will generate revenues in new areas over the coming years.


Since launching its cloud marketplace inthe middle of the year, DT has registered 7,500 customers.  The marketplace now offers more than 20 cloud services in areas such as accounting, storage space or video conferencing, with plans for 40 offers by the next CeBIT trade fair.

In addition, Deutsche Telekom has included integrated music services from Spotify into its cloud.

http://www.telekom.com/media/company/162654

• In August, T-Systems is became one of the first partners for VMware vCloud Data Center Services, which is being integrated into the T-Systems' Dynamic cloud portfolio. The carrier is the first to offer this capability in Europe.
  vCloud is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution that allows companies to expand their internal IT resources with the cloud capacities of T-Systems. AutoScouts24, an online car marketplace for Europe, is the first customer. Actum/G2, one of the leading digital marketing agencies in the Czech Republic, is another customer.

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Arianespace Launches Pléiades 1B Satellite for France

Arianespace successfully launched the Pléiades 1B observation satellite for the French space agency aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Guiana Space Center (CSG) in French Guiana.

Pléiades 1B is a very-high-resolution dual-use military and civilian satellite designed to provide optical imaging .  The 1-ton class satellite was built by Astrium at its plant in Toulouse. Thales Alenia Space supplied the very-high-resolution imaging instruments and the image telemetry system. 

This launch marks the ninth mission for Arianespace from the Guiana Space Center to date in 2012, including six Ariane 5, two Soyuz and one Vega launch. The company's European-Russian subsidiary, Starsem, has also carried out a Soyuz launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Arianespace has scheduled another Ariane 5 launch by the end of the year.

http://www.arianespace.com

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Espial to Acquire ANT plc

Espial, a leading supplier of digital TV and IPTV middleware, agreed to acquire ANT plc, which also develops embedded software for the TV industry. The all cash offer of £0.205 per outstanding share values ANT at approximately £5 million.

ANT's Galio Suite is an HTML5 browser, client and applications stack supporting a wide range of consumer TV platforms. ANT's software has been extensively deployed by ADB, Amino, Bouygues Telecom, Cisco, Chunghwa Telecom, Coship, HwaCom, France Telecom, Humax, Pirelli, Sagemcom, Samsung, Technicolour, Telecom Italia and YouSee. ANT plc's shares are listed on AIM, a London Stock Exchange regulated market, under the ticker ANTP.

Espial's middleware, video-on-demand, and browser products power a diverse range of pay-TV and Internet TV business models. Over 10 million licenses of its patented software are in use across the world.

Espial is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada.  ANT is based in Cambridge, UK.

"Multiscreen video services on set-top boxes, smart TVs, tablets, PCs and smart phones are quickly becoming the new expectation for today's consumers. Delivering a superior user experience across these devices is a critical element to the success of TV service providers" said Jaison Dolvane, CEO of Espial. "The acquisition of ANT provides Espial with the increased scale, resources and depth of experience to extend our HTML5 market leadership. ANT provides rich expertise in delivering HTML5 user interfaces and applications as well as delivering complex vertically integrated client software solutions. We believe the acquisition of ANT will extend our capabilities to establish Espial as a clear market leader as TV service providers aggressively move to IP video delivery. We're excited about this combination and are committed to continue working with ANT's existing customers and partners to ensure their ongoing success"

http://www.espial.com
http://www.antplc.com

• In 2008, Espial, a specialist in IPTV middleware and applications, acquired  Kasenna, which developed a "PortalTV" suite that allows TV providers to deliver advanced features such as recording and pausing live TV, PVR - both Network-based and Local, StartOver TV, Customized EPG, On-Screen Caller ID, Pay-per-View, Video-on-Demand, Favorites, Reminders, Weather Services, Network Games, etc. 

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RagingWire Offers Wholesale Colocation in California

RagingWire Data Centers announced availability of wholesale capacity in its second Sacramento, California data center for enterprise-class infrastructure.

RagingWire' wholesale offering features a patented power architecture that enables companies to scale from 200 kilowatts to 5+ and 10+ megawatts.  The company said it has ample available power to support three 13,000 square foot PODs in Ashburn, 43,000 square feet in Sacramento, and build-to-suit greenfield construction on 75 acres in Ashburn, Virginia.

http://www.ragingwire.com

• In October, RagingWire Data Centers, which operates 650,000 square feet (60,000m2) of wholesale and retail data center space in Northern California and Northern Virginia, paid $20 million to acquire 75 acres of land in Ashburn, Virginia.  The company plans to build  a 750,000 square foot (69,000m2) data center in phases on the site.  RagingWire currently operates a 150,000 square foot facility in Ashburn, along with its flagship 500,000 data center in Sacramento, California.

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Vodafone Continues CWW Integration

In follow-up to its acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide earlier this year, Vodafone has formed a new Group Enterprise unit. Nick Jeffery, currently CEO of Cable & Wireless Worldwide, will be appointed Group Enterprise Director responsible for the new unit, and will report to Vittorio Colao, Group CEO.

Vodafone also announced the following integration activities:

• CWW’s UK-based enterprise businesses with Vodafone’s UK-based enterprise businesses
• CWW’s international businesses, Carrier Services, Hosting and Cloud Services, and product activity with our newly created Group Enterprise unit
• CWW’s Customer Service with Vodafone UK’s Customer Operations
• CWW’s Finance, Human Resources, and Legal and Regulatory activity with those of Vodafone UK
• CWW Technology with Group Technology

http://www.vodafone.com

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ESnet and Infinera Test SDN Open Transport

Infinera and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) demonstrated a prototype Software Defined Network (SDN) Open Transport Switch (OTS) capable of dynamically controlling bandwidth services at the optical layer via an extensions to the OpenFlow protocol. The idea is to provide a lightweight virtual transport switch on optical transport systems with an interface to an SDN Controller.

The proof-of-concept demonstration, which used ESnet's Long Island Metropolitan Area Network (LIMAN) control plane test bed, tested a prototype of the OTS running on the Infinera DTN platform, allowing ESnet’s optical transport network to be configured by an SDN controller via the OpenFlow protocol. ESnet enhanced its SDN controller and demonstrated on-demand bandwidth Ethernet services including bandwidth elasticity for data-intensive science experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory on their LIMAN network, spanning from Manhattan, NY, to Upton, NY.

The services were provisioned by a high-capacity bandwidth-on-demand application utilizing the SDN controller in three different transport network abstractions, including one based on Infinera’s standards-based GMPLS control plane, showcasing the potential to deploy Transport SDN in networks with existing control planes in production. Brookhaven National Lab’s networking team and researchers used this SDN platform to experiment with ultra-high speed data transfer applications being developed for next-generation networks using RDMA over Ethernet protocols.

ESnet Chief Technologist Inder Monga said big data is a reality for science conducted at the national labs and at research universities across the country.  While some of the traffic flows are persistent and can use nailed up optical circuits efficiently, the sharing of big data sets generates bursty traffic. By enabling multi-layer coordination and control, including converged wavelength, OTN and packet transport technologies, ESnet is looking to improve the utilization and efficiency, while simplifying and automating operations.

“The emerging era of data-intensive science demands the highest level of performance from the network. The ability for the network to scale and handle large data flows efficiently across a multi-layer network is an essential capability,” said ESnet Chief Technologist Inder Monga. “The type of bandwidth flexibility, automation and resource efficiency demonstrated in this test are critical to supporting the large-scale data transfer requirements of data-driven science research.”

Infinera described the proof-of-concept demonstration as a first step in realizing the potential of Transport SDN at the optical transport layer.  The company's Bandwidth Virtualization technology already provides an abstraction layer via a standards-based GMPLS software control plane, integrated OTN switching and photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology.  Key learnings from this demonstration are that Transport SDN can provide useful, programmable interfaces to Tier 1 service providers, and that optical hardware and software are SDN ready.

“This pioneering demonstration is an important first step on the path toward enabling Transport SDN,” said Chris Liou, VP Network Strategy, Infinera. “For service providers interested in deploying Transport SDN, we believe the OTS can play a key role in realizing many benefits, including simplified provisioning of bandwidth services in multi-tiered, multi-vendor, multi-domain environments, increased efficiency and utilization of network resources, and an open, programmable transport network for enhancing integration and automation with applications.”

http://www.infinera.com/go/SDN

See Blueprint column from Infinera on 

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Cisco to Acquire Cariden for Network Planning Expertise

Cisco agreed to acquire privately held Cariden Technologies, a provider of network planning, design and traffic management solutions for telecommunications service providers, for approximately $141 million in cash and retention-based incentives.

Cariden's network planning and design tools help service providers to enhance the visibility, programmability and efficiency of their converged networks, while improving service velocity. Cariden's MATE software is widely used by global tier-1 ISPs, PTTs, MSOs and mobile operators for IP/MPLS network engineering.

Cariden has recently extended its network visibility and traffic control platform to perform business intelligence function by leveraging its  traffic flow collection from key nodes in a carrier network.  Specifically, Cariden has now added a Flow Interface to its MATE portfolio, enabling the ability to collect and analyze NetFlow, S-Flow and J-Flow data to determine the cost of traffic flows and monitor their use of network resources.  This includes being able to analyze peering traffic compliance to agreements and calculate bit-mile costs for that and other services, thus providing operations staff the ability to meet their obligations for transparency to the commercial side of their business

Cariden has also developed a blueprint for infrastructure software defined networking (SDN) that provides visibility and programmability of network resources, simplifying network control through an open API.

Cariden is based in Sunnyvale, California and led by Arman Maghbouleh since its founding in 2001.  Following the acquisition, it will be integrated into Cisco’s Service Provider Networking Group.

Cisco said the acquisition supports its Open Network Environment (ONE) strategy by providing sophisticated wide area networking (WAN) orchestration capabilities. These capabilities will allow service providers to improve both the programmability of their networks and the utilization of existing network assets across the IP and optical transport layers.

“The Cariden acquisition reinforces Cisco’s commitment to offering service providers the technologies they need to optimize and monetize their networks, and ultimately grow their businesses,” said Surya Panditi, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco’s Service Provider Networking Group. “Given the widespread convergence of IP and optical networks, Cariden’s technology will help carriers more efficiently manage bandwidth, network traffic and intelligence.  This acquisition signals the next phase in Cisco’s packet and optical convergence strategy and further strengthens our ability to lead this market transition in networking.”

http://www.cisco.com
http://www.cariden.com

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Syria Cuts Off Internet

Internet traffic to/from Syria was completely cut off on Thursday, November 29, as confirmed by Google and Akamai.

In a blog posting, Google said "this is why a free and open Internet is so important."

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/

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Tellabs Appoints Daniel P. Kelly as CEO

Tellabs named Daniel P. Kelly as its new chief executive officer and president.

Kelly, 51, has served as Tellabs acting CEO and president since June 27, 2012, following the passing of Rob Pullen.  Previously, Kelly was executive vice president of global products at Tellabs. He had global responsibility for Tellabs products, including research and development, product line management and product marketing.

Kelly holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Chicago.

http://www.tellabs.com

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Zayo Reaches10,000 On-Net Buildings

Zayo has reached the milestone of more than 10,000 buildings on-net.

The company has completed 22 acquisitions over the past 6 years, with its most recently announced acquisition of First Telecom Services expected to close by the end of 2012. In the second half of 2012, Zayo doubled its network with the July acquisition of AboveNet. Zayo further expanded its reach with the August acquisition of FiberGateand October acquisition of USCarrier.   Zayo’s network now covers 67,000 route miles with 4.7M miles of fiber in total.

In addition, Zayo has just completed fiber deployment to DuPont Fabros Technology’s (DFT) ACC6 Data Center located in Ashburn, Virginia. DFT’s ACC6 Data Center is not connected via diverse dark fiber in point-to-point or ring topology to Zayo’s regional and national network.

http://www.zayo.com

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NTT Comm Deploys Juniper T1600 Core Router

NTT Communications has deployed the Juniper Networks T1600 Core Router to power its next-generation video transmission system.   NTT Comm is using the T1600's MPLS multicasting capability for high-capacity delivery of high-definition video for customer applications.

NTT Communications, a subsidiary of NTT Corporation -- one of the world's largest telecommunications companies -- provides network management, security and network services to consumers, corporations and governments.

The T1600 boasts 1.6 terabits per second (Tbps) throughput and the ability to forward up to 1.92 billion packets per second.  Juniper noted that the half-rack design of the T1600 combines a small footprint with the industry's best power efficiency.

"To achieve the high-quality of services that our customers demand, we have worked hard to develop new technologies that enable the forwarding of multicast streams to change dynamically and across a wide bandwidth without packet loss. This has been achieved through our discussions with Juniper Networks' developers and engineers in the U.S. and Japan. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Juniper team to support our organization's evolving needs," stated Osamu Nakazawa, director, Innovative IP Architecture Center, NTT Communications.

http://www.juniper.net

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