Telefónica Cuts Debt Through Asset Sales

Telefónica Group’s  revenue for the first half of 2013 totalled 28,563 million euros, marking a return to growth in organic terms for the first time since the first quarter of 2012, as revenues increased 0.5% year-on-year during the second quarter of 2013.  The results were driven by a strong acceleration in Latin America, which grew by double-digits in the same period (+10.4% yoy in organic terms), and improving trends in Europe. At the end of June, OIBDA reached 9,421 million euros (-0.4%) and the company maintained high levels of profitability with an OIBDA margin of 33%.

The company said these results are in line with its internal estimates, allowing it to reaffirm annual operating and financial targets.

Telefónica has reduced net debt by 10 billion euros from June 2012, including the recently announced disposals of 40% in Central America, 100% in Ireland and Inversis. The company's net debt now totals 48,614 million euros. This represents a leverage ratio of 2.36 times net debt over OIBDA and places the Group’s net debt very near its objective of <47 2013.="" euros="" in="" million="" nbsp="" p="">
Some other highlights:

• At the end of June, the Telefónica Group’s customer base reached 317.3 million accesses (+2%) out of which more than 78% are mobile accesses (249.5 million).
  
• 2.1 million net mobile contract customer additions in Q2, resulting in mobile contract customers already amounting to 85 million (+8.1%).
  
• The company added 8.2 million smartphones in Q2
  
• Smartphones already reached a penetration rate of 24% of mobile accesses.
  
• During Q2, Telefónica launched its first Firefox handsets.
  
• Between January and June 2013, the company invested 3,903 million euros, including 834 million euros for purchasing spectrum in the United Kingdom, Uruguay, Spain and Brazil. 84% of the total investment effort was allocated to growth and transformation activities.
  
• Mobile accesses stood at 249.5 million, up 2% compared with June 2012, driven by the contract segment, which accelerated its growth to 8% year-on-year and now accounts for 34% of total mobile accesses The Company strengthened its position in this high value segment and during the second quarter ramped up its pace of customer capture and commercial activity, particularly in smartphones, with net contract additions of 2.1 million, the highest since the third quarter of 2011.
  
• Mobile broadband accesses stood at 63.3 million at the end of June, posting the largest year-on-year growth since the second quarter of 2012 (+41%), almost 7 percentage points higher than the first quarter and increasing its penetration rate up to 25% of mobile accesses (+7 percentage points year-on-year). This strong commercial activity continued to be underpinned by the significant increase in smartphones, with a record of 8.2 million net additions in the quarter, three-fold the figure in the first quarter and more than double the figure in the same period of previous year. The smartphone penetration rate stood at 24% of mobile accesses in June 2013.
  
• Retail broadband accesses totalled 18.3 million at the end of June and improved its growth up to 2% excluding the impact of the sale of the assets of the fixed business in the UK. Net additions in the quarter stood at 165 thousand customers, 4.4 times more than in the first quarter and 1.9 times more than in the same period of 2012.
  
• The acceleration in commercial activity in the quarter was mainly driven by Telefónica Latinoamérica, with mobile contract net adds rising by 44% compared with the first quarter of 2013 and by 64% compared with the second quarter of 2012, reflecting the focus on high-value customers, especially on smartphones. There was also a marked improvement in the operating performance of the fixed business, mainly driven by broadband, with net adds in the quarter 1.6 times higher than in the January-March period, to reach 214 thousand accesses.
  
• By region, Telefónica Latinoamérica is the Group's growth engine, accounting for 51.4% of consolidated revenues in the first half of the year while Telefónica Europe and Telefónica España's contributions fell to 46.9% and 23.0%,respectively.
  
• Mobile data revenues rose 9.8% year-on-year in organic terms (+9.6% in the first half) and accounted for 36.4% of mobile service revenues in the year (up 3 percentage points compared with the first half of 2012).
  
• Non-SMS data revenues growth ramped up sequentially to 22.1% year-on-year in organic terms (+22.0% in the half year) and now account for 63% of total data revenues.
  
• The average headcount was 131,882 employees, down slightly compared with the first half of 2012 (-3.5%).
  
• CapEx in the first half totalled 3,903 million euros (+6.7% year-on-year) and included 834 million euros relating to the acquisition of spectrum; in the UK (671 million euros) and Uruguay (24 million euros) in the first quarter and in Spain (65 million euros), the UK (47 million euros) and Brazil (28 million euros) in the second quarter.

http://www.telefonica.com

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OpenDaylight Project Notes Rapid Progress in Open Source SDN Framework

The OpenDaylight Project , a community-led and industry-supported open source framework to advance Software-Defined Networking (SDN), announce a set of accepted technical contribution networking protocols to virtualization to security. 

OpenDaylight reviewed and accepted contributions from Cisco, ConteXtream, Ericsson, IBM, NEC, Pantheon, Plexxi, Radware and developers Brent Salisbury and Evan Zeller from the University of Kentucky. 

The base architecture for the OpenDaylight controller is a combination of two code bases that were brought together through a collaborative proposal by Colin Dixon of IBM and David Erickson of Stanford. Shortly thereafter, NEC contributed a key feature with its Virtual Tenant Networking technology. 

OpenDaylight highlighted the following recent contributions:

Affinity Metadata Service: Contributed by Plexxi, this service provides an API allowing the OpenDaylight controller and higher-level applications to create and share an abstract, topology and implementation independent description of the infrastructure needs, preferences and behaviors of workloads that use the network to "talk" to one another. 

BGP/PCEP protocol library: The Cisco-contributed library provides Java-based implementation of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and the Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP).

Defense4All: Radware contributed this toolset to be used for the detection and mitigation of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Defense4All subsystems include statistics collection, anomaly detection, traffic redirection and mitigation management that together allow applications to leverage the OpenDaylight controller and an SDN architecture to effectively manage DDoS attacks.

LISP Mapping Service: ConteXtream contributed its Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) Mapping Service and protocol plugin. The LISP protocol enables separation of endpoint identity (EID) from routing location (RLOC) by defining an overlay in the EID space that is mapped to the underlying network in the RLOC space. LISP is also a mapping service that provides the EID-to-RLOC mapping information including forwarding policy to LISP routers for tunneling and forwarding purposes. In the context of network virtualization, a mapping service can be queried by LISP-enabled network devices to provide mapping of the virtual network endpoints to the underlying physical network, including the associated forwarding policies.

Open DOVE: IBM contributed a version of its established network virtualization technology, called Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE), that provides isolated multi-tenant networks on any IP network in a virtualized data center allowing administrators to define virtual switches and networks, Quality of Service, security, bandwidth, priorities and more. DOVE provides each tenant with a virtual network abstraction providing Layer 2 or Layer 3 connectivity and the ability to control communication using access control policies. Address dissemination and policy enforcement in Open DOVE is provided by a clustered directory service. It also includes a gateway function to enable virtual machines on a virtual network to communicate with hosts outside the virtual network domain.

OpenFlow 1.3.0 Protocol Library: Pantheon’s contribution is an implementation of the OpenFlow protocol as defined in OpenFlow Switch Specification Version 1.3.0. The library is designed to be extensible from third-party bundles in order to support vendor extensions and should serve as a basis for the OpenFlow 1.3.0 southbound plugin for the OpenDaylight controller.

OpenFlow Plugin: Cisco, Ericsson and IBM combined efforts to create a common, uniform OpenDaylight plugin to support all implementations of the OpenFlow specification as it develops and evolves. It provides support for the existing OpenFlow 1.0 implementation, while aiming to support OpenFlow 1.3.x and further versions of the specification. It will be implemented in a way that existing and future OpenFlow protocol specifications can be integrated and published for the OpenDaylight controller.

Open vSwitch Database Management Protocol (OVSDB) is a project led by Brent Salisbury and Evan Zeller from the University of Kentucky. Open vSwitch is an open source software project implementing virtual switching that is interoperable with many major hypervisors and used extensively in cloud computing environments. The OVSDB integration project will allow OpenDaylight to view, modify and delete Open vSwitch objects such as bridges and ports by way of the Open vSwitch database.

YANG Tools: This is an infrastructure project initiated by Cisco aimed at developing necessary tooling and libraries providing ubiquitous support for YANG as a data modeling language within OpenDaylight.

"Community growth for OpenDaylight has been astonishing with hundreds of developers now contributing their time and talents for the advancement of SDN. Everything is starting to congeal between the contributions and the people working fast and furious to build what we expect will be industry leading SDN technology," said David Meyer, Technical Steering Committee chair, OpenDaylight Project. “The steady growth of the corporate member base is ensuring that we have a solid financial foundation from which to operate. It's an exciting time to be involved with SDN."

OpenDaylight also noted that its membership roster has grown to 27 companies since launch.

http://www.opendaylight.org

http://www.linuxfoundation.org

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Ikanos Demos VDSL at 300 Mbps over 200m

Ikanos Communications has achieved an aggregate throughput of 300Mbps over a standard single-pair copper cable up to a distance of 200 meters (short-loop) using its existing VDSL chipsets.

Ikanos described the short-loop demonstration as a significant step towards G.Fast.

The demonstration follows recent, multiple top-tier OEM and carrier lab trials in which the company’s Velocity-3 central-office (CO) chipset was been given high marks for achieving 150Mbps aggregate throughput (110Mbps downstream and 40Mbps upstream) at a distance of 500 meters in a 192-port reference DSLAM system.

“Ikanos has a history of challenging the industry by pushing the performance envelope and continuing to raise the bar on our competition,” said Kourosh Amiri, vice president of marketing at Ikanos. “With Velocity-3, in a matter of a few months, we have received widespread recognition of our industry leadership in performance and scalability for high-port-count deployments of 192 lines (scalable up to 384), at distances reaching 500 meters and beyond.  While the G.Fast promise of gigabit performance is still on the horizon, our ability to demonstrate hundreds of megabits for lower-port-count short-loop configurations using our currently shipping CPE and CO silicon establishes Ikanos as the leader in the ‘pre-G.Fast’ era, as we enable telcos to remain competitive against mounting pressure from MSOs and continue to enhance the consumer DSL broadband experience.”

http://www.ikanos.com

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CloudSigma Cuts its Cloud Compute Prices

CloudSigma, the Switzerland-based provider of pure-cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Services (IaaS), is dropping its compute pricing for customers to reflect the efficiency gains from its recent public cloud 2.0 upgrade.  Specifically, CloudSigma’s RAM pricing is being reduced by 20 percent and its CPU pricing is decreasing by 15 percent across all locations for both subscription and pay-as-you-go burst pricing.

“Recently, there’s been criticism over cloud providers’ seeming ‘race to the bottom’ as more and more industry players slash prices to compete with Amazon,” said Robert Jenkins, CloudSigma CEO. “But, if you look at where AWS started, their price drops have not been in line with Moore’s Law, in terms of increasing compute performance and falling hardware costs, so their margin has actually gone up since 2006. Rather than compete via underlying hardware costs, our custom stack allows us to use innovation to compete in the market. We deliver higher levels of performance on the same hardware, as compared to other providers; so we don’t worry about slashing prices based on the competition, just based on the efficiency gains of our technology.”

http://www.CloudSigma.com

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EarthLink Opens New Miami Data Center

EarthLink inaugurated its newest data center -- 50 NE 9th Street in Miami.  The new facility features EarthLink's next-generation cloud hosting platform, which will enable the company to deliver highly-secure, comprehensive IT solutions including cloud hosting, Cloud Workspace, managed security, colocation, Cloud Server Backup  and application solutions in South Florida.

In addition to Miami, EarthLink recently opened data centers in San Jose, Chicago and Dallas. Combined with EarthLink's current data centers in Pittsford, NY; Marlborough, MA; Columbia, SC and Atlanta, EarthLink now operates eight data centers linked to its nationwide IP network.

"Miami is one of the country's technology hotspots and a vibrant, growing market," noted Michael D. Toplisek, EarthLink Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "A vital communications hub for IP traffic, Miami also serves as a gateway to Latin America and beyond. Adding a robust, new state of the art data center in the city enables EarthLink to easily scale to support our customers' current and future IT service demands as they seek to virtualize their businesses."

http://www.earthlink.com

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CoreSite Revenues Rise, Additional Data Center Construction Underway

CoreSite Realty Corporation reported Q2 operating revenue of $57.7 million, representing a 13.9% increase year-over-year.

CoreSite had 236,673 NRSF of data center space under construction at four key locations as of June 30, 2013. The projects under construction include new data centers at SV5 (San Francisco Bay area), VA2 (Northern Virginia area), NY2 (New York) and additional inventory at LA2 (Los Angeles). As of June 30, 2013, CoreSite had incurred $59.4 million of the estimated $188.0 million required to complete these projects.

Tom Ray, CoreSite’s Chief Executive Officer, commented, “We executed 115 new and expansion leases in the quarter including agreements with 33 new customers. Additionally, we are pleased with the continued evolution we saw in our sales mix, recording an increasing number of leases bringing high-value applications to our platform.” Mr. Ray continued, “Regarding growth, we continue to invest to meet customer demand, with four data center projects under way. We believe that we have considerable upside embedded in our portfolio as we increase the utilization of existing and new inventory, positively mark to market expiring capacity, and most importantly, continue to drive increased network density and valuable customer communities across our data centers.”

http://www.CoreSite.com

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SolidFire Raises $31 Million for SSD Systems

SolidFire, a start-up based in Boulder, Colorado, announced $31 million in Series C funding for its all-SSD storage systems designed for large scale cloud infrastructure.

SolidFire's newly launched SF9010 is an all-flash, scale-out storage system designed for large scale public and private cloud infrastructures. At full scale (100 nodes) the SF9010 provides 3.4PB of effective capacity and 7.5 million IOPS.

SolidFire said customers building storage infrastructure from 60TB to 3.4PB can now do so below $3/GB and below $1/IOPS. Along with the SF9010, SolidFire also released SolidFire Element OS Version 5, which adds VMware VAAI and VASA support, full encryption-at-rest without performance impact, and more detailed per-volume and per-tenant performance reporting.

The new financing came from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (Samsung Ventures) and insiders. Samsung Ventures joined existing investors NEA, Valhalla Partners, and Novak Biddle Venture Partners.

"The SF9010 really highlights SolidFire's storage architecture in action," said SolidFire Founder and CEO Dave Wright. "The system is incredibly flexible and is designed to consume the latest flash technology available.  This enables us, and our customers, to keep pace with the rapid advances in the flash market and take advantage of falling cost and rising density. The SF9010 takes us across the threshold of flash becoming lower than the cost of performance disk."

http://www.solidfire.com

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AppliedMicro Reports Stronger Financial Results

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AppliedMicro) reported Q1 FY2014 net revenues of $54.1 million, down 4.0% sequentially and up 31% year over year.

Q1 FY2014 non-GAAP EPS was $0.02 per diluted share on net income of $1.4 million, compared to $0.00 per diluted share on net income of $0.1 million, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013.

The company confirmed that its X-Gene Server on a Chip product continues to be on track for commercial production as indicated by key customers' systems-development commitments.

"We had an excellent quarter, where we had strength in our base business and also continued to make significant progress towards getting our revolutionary and category defining X-Gene server platforms to market," said Dr. Paramesh Gopi, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Shiva Natarajan, interim Chief Financial Officer, commented, "We had a great quarter where we achieved better than expected non-GAAP results. We expect to continue to execute solidly as we position ourselves for the growth we anticipate in the future".

http://www.apm.com

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NFV Video Series - Lowering Costs per Bit

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) embodies the ongoing transformation of packet infrastructure towards open, standardized, virtualized and lower cost platforms, says Manish Singh, CTO of Radisys. The video is broken into six segments.

http://youtu.be/cYIzIqRVf4M


0:13 - What is the fundamental promise of NFV?

1:34 - Virtualization in servers is at leat 10 years old. Hasn't this been done already?

2:50 - Which network functions are like to move into the NFV cloud first?

4:39 - What are the implications of NFV for network equipment design?

7:22 - NFV implies Service Providers will build out massive compute infrastructure. Will this be base-matel commodity servers? Or will high-availability telco hardware be retained?

09:13 - What role will Radisys play in building the NFV ecosystem? Where can you add value?

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Infonetics Forecasts 4.9% CAGR for Telecom/Datacom Equipment to 2017

The global telecom/datacom equipment and software market grew 19% in 2010, 7% in 2011, and held steady in 2012 at $172 billion, according to Infonetics.  The market research firm is now projecting the telecom and datacom equipment and software market to grow at a 4.9% CAGR from 2013 to 2017, when it is forecast to hit $218 billion worldwide.

"Even though there's tremendous uncertainty about the health of the global economy and prospects for economic growth in the short term, the telecom and datacom equipment and software market is on track to grow annually through 2017, driven by major network transformations," reports Jeff Wilson, principal analyst at Infonetics Research.

Michael Howard, co-founder of Infonetics and co-author of the report, adds, "Asia Pacific took the lead in telecom and datacom equipment spending in 2012, and we expect the region to continue leading at least for the next 5 years, contributing more than a third of global spending through 2017."

Some highlights:

• During those 5 years, Infonetics expects service providers and enterprises to spend a cumulative $1 trillion on telecom and datacom equipment and software.
  
• The top 4 telecom/datacom equipment vendors in order by overall worldwide revenue market share are Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent.
  
• Cisco maintains its commanding lead in the enterprise segment, while Ericsson is #1 in the larger service provider segment

http://www.infonetics.com

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Vello Builds SDN-Powered Optical Node for Equinix Data Center

Vello Systems is powering a three-node optical network featuring white-box Ethernet switches in Equinix’s NY5 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in New York to act as a test bed for software-defined networking (SDN).

The Vello Systems OpenFlow-based SDN solution is an enterprise network operating system that unifies the control of the optical, Ethernet and virtual networking planes under common, open software.

The VellOS 7.0 OpenFlow-enabled application platform is already used by leading financial institutions.

"Customers are looking at SDN as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. Vello understands that customers care about results, including business and operational agility, service velocity, and reduced operational and capital expenditures,” said Brad Casemore, Research Director, Datacenter Networks International Data Corporation. “With VellOS, the company's aim is to ensure that the underlying network infrastructure is aligned with and responds dynamically to customer requirements relating to key application workloads and services."

http://www.vellosystems.com/products

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Qualcomm Posts Another Strong Quarter

Qualcomm posted quarterly revenue of $6.24 billion, up 35 percent year-over-year and 2 percent sequentially.  Operating income: 1 $1.68 billion, up 21 percent y-o-y and down 11 percent sequentially.

During the quarter, Qualcomm's MSM chip shipments reached 172 million units, up 22 percent y-o-y and down 1 percent sequentially.  March quarter total reported device sales were approximately $56.5 billion, up 18 percent y-o-y and down 8 percent sequentially.  March quarter estimated 3G/4G device shipments reached approximately 244 to 248 million units, at an estimated average selling price of approximately $227 to $233 per unit.

"We delivered another strong quarter as our Qualcomm Snapdragon solutions were prominent in a broad set of flagship smartphones, and 3G/4G device average selling prices were stronger than expected. We also focused on return of capital to stockholders and increased our stock repurchases and dividends paid during the quarter," said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm. "This quarter, we continued our technology leadership, with our Snapdragon 800 processor powering the world's first LTE-Advanced smartphone. We see expanding opportunities for growth of 3G/4G devices around the globe, driven by the strong pace of innovation in the industry."

http://www.qualcomm.com

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Crehan: Server-Class I/O Networking Revenues to Reach $2.5 Billion

Crehan Research is forecasting that revenues for server-class adapter & LAN-on-motherboard solutions hitting $2.5 billion by 2017.

The report forecasts that shipment growth in combination with an easing of average selling price declines will drive the revenue expansion. The report also predicts growth in Ethernet (including Fibre Channel over Ethernet) and Infiniband, offsetting a gradual decline in Fibre Channel.

"The onslaught of traffic demands on data center networking is not only driving a continual increase in server-class adapter and LOM shipments, but it is also driving the need for higher-speed connections across all major protocols, including Ethernet, Fibre Channel and Infiniband," said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research.

 "This upgrade to higher-speed connections like 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 16Gbps Fibre Channel and FDR Infiniband  –  all of which command a price premium while offering a bandwidth discount  –  helps offset steeper price declines," he added.

The report also forecasts a return to stronger growth in the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter and LOM market segment, after some softness.  The recent arrival of many new 40GbE- and 100GbE-capable data center switches for core and aggregation deployments will now give customers more comfort in upgrading the server access layer to 10GbE.

http://www.crehanresearch.com

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Huawei Hits First Half 2013 Revenue of US$18.55 Billion, up 11%

Huawei reported unaudited revenues of CNY 113.8 billion for the first half of 2013, an increase of 10.8% over the same period in 2012. Huawei expects to generate a net profit margin of 7-8% in 2013.

"Our success in H1 2013 was mainly driven by the steady growth of the Carrier Network business, the expansion of the Enterprise business, and the fast growth of the Consumer business, as well as the continuous enhancement of our overall operational efficiency. Revenues and profit are in line with our expectations," said Cathy Meng, Chief Financial Officer, Huawei. "From these positive indicators, we believe Huawei will generate strong performance and profit margins in the second half of this year and are confident that we will achieve our goal to increase revenue by 10%."

http://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/newsroom/press-release/hw-275714-operationresults.htm

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Infinera Posts Q2 Revenue of $138 Million, Notes 34 Commitments for DTN-X

Infinera reported Q2 revenue of $138.4 million compared to $124.6 million in the first quarter of 2013 and $93.5 million in the second quarter of 2012.  GAAP gross margin for the second quarter of 2013 was 37% compared to 34% in the first quarter of 2013 and 35% in the second quarter of 2012.  GAAP net loss for the quarter was $(10.0) million, or $(0.09) per share, compared to net loss of $(15.3) million, or $(0.13) per share, in the first quarter of 2013 and net loss of $(29.5) million, or $(0.27) per share, in the second quarter of 2012.

"We continued to increase momentum in the second quarter, delivering strong revenue growth, improved gross margin, and positive cash flow from operations,” said Tom Fallon, chief executive officer.  “Customer acceptance of the DTN-X platform also continues to grow.  During the quarter, we received seven new purchase commitments, including three from customers new to Infinera, bringing the total number of commitments to 34 since the platform was introduced a year ago."

http://www.infinera.com

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CALIENT Raises $27 Million for MEMS-based Optical Switch

CALIENT Technologies announced a $27 million round of venture financing for its optical switching technology, which is based on its patented deep-silicon plasma etch process that is used to make 3D MEMS mirrors.

Calient's 320-port (full duplex) S320 is a MEMS-based optical switch that connects top-of-rack switches in a data center. The OpenFlow API runs on the S320’s MEMS Switching Module (MSM), a high-availability switching and control subsystem with redundant control processors and a Linux-based operating system.

The funding came from a combination of new and existing investors, and will be used to enhance tCALIENT’s portfolio of 3D MEMS Optical Circuit Switching systems, extend its IP portfolio and provide working capital for its rapid production growth driven by new applications in software defined datacenter networking.

The company also named Jag Setlur, a 20-year finance professional, as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

"This round of financing will support the exciting opportunities ahead at CALIENT as we work to meet rapidly growing demands for Optical Circuit Switching in software-defined datacenters and metro networks,” said Atiq Raza, CALIENT's CEO."With this funding and our recent growth, I believe now is the time for an experienced CFO like Jag to join the senior management team. I am pleased to have him on board and look forward to leveraging his expertise as we continue to develop and optimize the CALIENT product portfolio and expand our market footprint."

http://www.calient.net/

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Huawei Announces 100th 100G

Huawei announced its 100th customer deployment for its 100G technology.  The first deployment occurred in June 2011 when Huawei built a pan-European 100G WDM backbone network for KPN International.

In 2012, Huawei rolled out the world's longest 100G network (25,000 kilometers across Asia and Europe) for Rostelecom Russia, as well as the world's first G.653 fiber based 100G network for TIM Brazil, a prelude to a wave of 100G deployments in Latin America. Huawei also deployed Africa's first 100G WDM network for Unitel Angola in the same year.

The 100G market in China kicked off with Huawei's deployment of a 100G WDM network for the China Education and Research Network (CERNET), and is taking off with Huawei and China Mobile's combined initiative to deploy the world's largest 100G OTN backbone network.

http://www.huawei.com

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Swisscom mourns the death of CEO

Swisscom is mourning the death of Carsten Schloter, its CEO.  Police are assuming suicide. Carsten Schloter joined Swisscom in 2000 as Head of Swisscom Mobile and was appointed CEO of Swisscom in 2006.

"The Board of Directors, Group Executive Board and the entire workforce are deeply saddened and pass on their condolences to the family and relatives," says Hansueli Loosli, Chairman of the Board of Directors. Deputy CEO Urs Schäppi, Head of Swisscom Switzerland, will take over management of the company ad interim.

http://www.swisscom.ch/en/ghq/media/mediareleases/2013/07/20130723_MM_Carsten_Schloter.html

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Cisco to Acquire Sourcefire, Creator of Snort Intrusion Detection

Cisco agreed to acquire Sourcefire (NASDAQ: FIRE) today announced a definitive agreement for Cisco to acquire Sourcefire, a leader in intelligent cybersecurity, for $76 per share in cash, representing an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.7 billion.

Sourcefire, which is based in Columbia, Maryland, was founded in 2001 by Martin Roesch, author of open source Snort, the world’s most widely deployed intrusion detection and prevention technology.  The company claims nearly 4 million downloads to date. Sourcefire's intrusion prevention solutions are based on Snort.

Sourcefire completed its initial public offering in 2007. The company has more than 650 employees worldwide. For the full year ended December 31, 2012, Sourcefire reported revenue of $223.1 million, an increase of 35 percent year-over-year.

Cisco said the deal helps it to provide continuous and pervasive advanced threat protection across the entire attack continuum  – before, during and after an attack – and from any device to any cloud.

"The notion of the ‘perimeter' no longer exists and today's sophisticated threats are able to circumvent traditional, disparate security products. Organizations require continuous and pervasive advanced threat protection that addresses each phase of the attack continuum," said Christopher Young, senior vice president, Cisco Security Group. "With the acquisition of Sourcefire, we believe our customers will benefit from one of the industry's most comprehensive, integrated security solutions – one that is simpler to deploy, and offers better security intelligence."

http://www.sourcefire.com
http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1225204

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AT&T Posts Solid Q2, LTE Builds Momentum

AT&T reported Q2 revenue of $32.1 billion, up 1.6 percent versus reported results for the year-earlier period, and up 2.6 percent adjusting for the sale of Advertising Solutions.  Second-quarter 2013 net income attributable to AT&T totaled $3.8 billion, or $0.71 per diluted share, compared to $3.9  billion, or $0.66 per diluted share, in the year-earlier quarter, up 7.6 percent. Adjusted for a gain of 4 cents on sales of América Móvil shares, earnings per diluted share was $0.67.

“This was a solid quarter for revenue and customer additions across our key growth platforms,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “Our 4G LTE network is the fastest and the most reliable in the nation, and deployment is ahead of schedule. That contributed to a step-up in postpaid subscriber gains, and strong mobile data revenue growth of nearly 20 percent. Growth in U-verse and strategic business services also continued to be strong — adding to our momentum.”

So highlights from the quarterly report:

Wireless

• 551,000 wireless postpaid net adds, best second-quarter postpaid net adds in four years
• 35 percent of postpaid smartphone base LTE capable
• Smartphone data usage per device up 50 percent year over year
• LTE network expected to cover nearly 270 million POPs in 400 markets by year-end
• LTE network build expected to be substantially complete by summer 2014
• Wireless revenues up 5.7 percent, service revenues up 4.1 percent versus the year-ago quarter
• Wireless data revenues up 19.8 percent versus the year-earlier period
• Wireless operating income margin of 27.1 percent; wireless EBITDA service margin of 42.4 percent reflecting record second-quarter smartphone sales of 6.8 million, including record Android sales
• Added 1.2 million new smartphone subscribers; smartphones 88 percent of postpaid phone sales
• Total postpaid ARPU up 1.8 percent; phone-only ARPU up 3.0 percent

Wireline

• Wireline consumer revenue growth of 2.4 percent versus the year-earlier period
• Total U-verse revenues, including business, up 30.1 percent year over year; U-verse more than half of wireline consumer revenues
• 9.4 million total U-verse subscribers (TV and high speed Internet) in service; 641,000 high speed Internet subscribers added; 233,000 U-verse TV subscribers added, topping 5 million
• Total wireline broadband data ARPU up 9 percent year over year
• Continued strength in strategic business services revenues, up more than 15 percent year over year

http://www.att.com/gen/landing-pages?pid=5718

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