IDC: Worldwide server market revenue dips 6% in Q1

Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market declined 6.0% year over year to $18.6 billion during the first quarter of 2020 (1Q20), according to a new report from IDC. Worldwide server shipments declined 0.2% year over year to just under 2.6 million units in 1Q20.

In terms of server class, volume server revenue was down 2.1% to $15.1 billion, while midrange server revenue declined 23.0% to just under $2.6 billion, and high-end systems declined by 9.1% to just under $1.0 billion.

"Server market performance was relatively similar to the fourth quarter, albeit a bit more muted, with bright spots including the ODM Direct vendor group realizing solid demand from its core hyperscaler and cloud provider customer set, and continued strength in the non-x86 server space," said Sebastian Lagana, research manager, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "That said, the OEM market faced stiff headwinds due to a combination of slowing enterprise demand for x86 servers and supply chain constraints, both driven largely by macroeconomic impacts."

Some highlights:

• The number one position in the worldwide server market in 1Q20 belonged to Dell Technologies with a revenue share of 18.7%. 
• HPE/New H3C Group took the second position at 15.5%, followed by Inspur/Inspur Power Systems at 7.1%. 
• Lenovo and IBM were tied for the fourth position with market shares of 5.6% and 4.8%, respectively. 
• The ODM Direct group of vendors accounted for 25.9% of total server revenue and was up 6.1% year over year to nearly $4.83 billion. 
• Dell Technologies led the worldwide server market in terms of unit shipments, accounting for 18.4% of all units shipped during the quarter.

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS46534520

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A10 Networks teams with Dell Technologies OEM

A10 Networks is working with Dell Technologies OEM | Embedded & Edge Solutions on solutions that combine A10’s hybrid-cloud-ready software with purpose-built Dell Technologies hardware for encrypted application delivery, advanced load balancing, and SSL visibility.

The new A10 Thunder ADC, designed on Dell EMC PowerEdge R640XL and R740XL servers, as well as Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform 4600, is a single-service platform that enables:​

• Application availability to maintain uptime for web applications and data center and cloud infrastructure​
• Application acceleration to deliver a better user experience, maintain SLAs and optimize server utilization ​
• Application security to enhance the existing security infrastructure and protect against the latest threats, while providing SSL/TLS offload for encrypted server traffic

​The A10 Thunder MVP, designed on Dell EMC PowerEdge R640XL and R740XL servers, enables multiple services, including Thunder ADC and Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi).​ The Thunder MVP:

• Improves operational agility and flexibility by running multiple independent instances on a single optimized and accelerated hardware platform. Each can run a different version and can be restarted separately
• Delivers Thunder ADC instances, providing increased uptime, faster user experience and attack prevention for highly available, accelerated and secure applications
• Integrates Thunder SSLi instances, providing security devices with decrypted SSL/TLS traffic visibility to stop data leaks and end-user attacks, for a foundation for Zero-Trust.​ A10 URL filtering and threat intelligence options can be added for enhanced user security

All the solutions can be augmented by the A10 Harmony Controller to ease SecOps and DevOps deployments, simplify application lifecycle management, integrate into CI/CD workflows and enable fast troubleshooting with advanced drill-down analytics and central management, providing IT operations a consistent on-premises and multi-cloud operational experience.

“As a leader in the enterprise market, it was a natural decision for A10 to work with Dell Technologies OEM | Embedded & Edge Solutions to bring our application delivery and security solutions to our customers. Our turnkey solutions will help customers tackle the current and emerging business challenges of providing secure and available applications and ensuring networks are protected against attacks in this multi-cloud world,” said Dhrupad Trivedi, president and CEO of A10 Networks.

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Dell’Oro: Broadband access equipment sales drop 15% in Q1

Total global revenue for Broadband Access equipment dropped to $2.5 billion, down 15 percent year-over-year (Y/Y) from 1Q 2019, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. The first quarter activity, which is seasonally slow to begin with, was hurt by supply chain disruptions throughout Asia-Pacific as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The first half of 2020 will give way to a sustained rebound in broadband equipment spending in the second half of the year,” said Jeff Heynen, Senior Research Director, Broadband Access and Home Networking. “The need to expand residential broadband speeds and availability will ultimately win out over the current macroeconomic slowdown,” explained Heynen.

Following are additional highlights from the 1Q 2020 Broadband Access Quarterly Report:

• Total cable access concentrator revenue decreased 22 percent Y/Y to $211 M, driven by a slowdown in CCAP license purchases in North America.
• Total DOCSIS 3.1 CPE shipments remained strong and increased to 5.8 M, representing 67 percent of total Cable CPE shipments.
• Total PON ONT unit shipments decreased 15 percent Y/Y, as new installations were limited by the pandemic.

http://www.delloro.com

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TIP's Open Optical and Packet Transport advances GNPy toolkit

A new open source software is gaining traction as a design tool for planning and assessing optical transport networks.

GNPy (Gaussian Noise model in Python), which was developed in the framework of the Telecom Infra Project's Open Optical and Packet Transport Group, can be used to help to compare vendors’ solutions. Orange was a primary contributor to GNPy and has used the software during recent RFPs, including for its West African backbone project to benchmark and challenge bidders' designs.

https://telecominfraproject.com/orange-steps-towards-open-optical-networks-with-gnpy/

Orange to assemble West African backbone

Thursday, November 14, 2019  Orange, Subsea  

Orange will assemble a new international backbone serving West Africa by building a terrestrial fiber optic network coupled with submarine cables.

Orange said its new network will provide large-scale international capacity to the rest of the world via connections with other submarine cables. The new network will link up all the main capital cities in the region: Dakar, Bamako, Abidjan, Accra, and Lagos. Commercial launch of the West African backbone is planned for the second quarter of 2020.

Alioune Ndiaye, CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa, said: “For Orange, this West African backbone network represents a major investment that will secure availability of international connectivity and will enable us to meet the demand for increased bandwidth necessary for the continued digital development of regions within the zone.”

Jérôme Barré, CEO of Orange Wholesale and International Networks, said: “Through this project, Orange is clearly demonstrating its leadership and expertise in the design, deployment and operation of international network infrastructure. We are delighted to be able to offer our West African customers’ reliable, secure and high-quality international connectivity that connects them to the rest of the world.”

Orange is an investor in the MainOne submarine cable connecting Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire to Europe.

https://www.orange.com/en/Press-Room/press-releases/press-releases-2019/Orange-accelerates-the-development-of-connectivity-in-Africa-with-a-new-secure-international-network-connecting-eight-countries-in-West-Africa

New branches to extend MainOne cable to Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal

Tuesday, December 04, 2018  Portugal, Subcom, Subsea  

Two additional branches are planned to extend MainOne’s subsea cable system to Dakar (Senegal) and Abidjan (Cote D’Ivoire). With this development, MainOne will have landing points in five markets – Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire and Portugal, in addition to Cameroon.

MainOne, which is a 7,000km cable system that spans from Portugal to Nigeria, entered service in 2010. Technology updates will boost potential capacity to 10 TBps of capacity. The upgrades are expected to become operational in November 2019.

TE SubCom is lead contractor on the project. MainOne has also selected SubCom’s WSS ROADM for the new branches. SubCom will light the new branches with Ciena’s transmission equipment.

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Google Cloud simplifies cross-region replica for Cloud SQL

Google introduced a simplified cross-region replication capability for Cloud SQL customers.

The capability allows applications and databases to quickly restart service in another available region if a Google Cloud region fails.

Cloud SQL cross-region replication, which is available for MySQL and PostgreSQL database engines, simplifies the creation of a fully managed read replica in a different region than that of the primary instance.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/introducing-cross-region-replica-for-cloud-sql

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Broadband Forum offers certification for XGS-PON ONUs

Broadband Forum has expanded its BBF.247 Optical Network Unit (ONU) Certification Program to include XGS-PON.

The Broadband Forum said XGS-PON extensions add to its BBF.247 G-PON initiative – which has now certified nearly 100 products since its launch in 2011. The new test plan will see ONUs undergo rigorous testing at Broadband Forum’s official certification program test laboratory Laboratoire des Applications Numeriques (LAN Laboratory), using MT2’s ONU testing solution. The work will confirm conformance to the latest PON ITU-T standards, providing network operators with assurance that they can deliver efficient networks and a high-quality customer experience. New additions to the technology are also now tested, including extended OMCI messages format, Enhanced Unicast & Multicast Operations, and Capacity Tests & Performance Monitoring. This increases the number of certification test cases by more than 50% compared to the previous version.

Eight products, including single or multi-user port ONUs/L2 and Residential Gateways from Altice Labs, CommScope, Huawei, Humax, KAONMEDIA, Sagemcom, Sercomm and ZTE have already been certified under the new BBF.247 certification program.

A future XGS-PON interoperability test event will take place at LAN Laboratory, in Tauxigny, France, from October 5 to 9, 2020, allowing vendors worldwide to exercise their OLT or Optical Network Terminal (ONT) solutions against each other. The event will give all equipment vendors the opportunity to improve the interoperability of their products by testing them against the other solutions presented at the event.

“Our existing G-PON certification has made a significant impact on ensuring products meet standards, and this latest expansion of the program will give operators the confidence to roll out mass XGS-PON deployments,” said Robin Mersh, CEO at Broadband Forum. “We now want to instill this same assurance in the industry for upcoming ITU PON technology, including XGS-PON and NG-PON2. XGS-PON is a major step in network evolution, supporting the expansion of 5G and through BBF.247 certification, we can ensure network interoperability.”

Thierry Doligez, Director of LAN Laboratory, said: “Both operators and vendors increasingly recognize the importance of certification in order to speed up deployment and we are proud to partner with Broadband Forum on this extension of its G-PON certification program. As operators move to upgrade their networks to meet increasing consumer demand, the new testing will make sure they are investing in trusted products which will guarantee a certain level of service. ONU manufacturers will also benefit from this substantial program update as it will give them the chance to prove their conformance against enhanced features.”

https://www.broadband-forum.org/

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Ericsson takes a US$109 million write-down for 5G in China

Ericsson announced write-downs of approximately SEK 1 billion (~US$109 million) related to pre-commercial product inventory for the Chinese market. The cost will be reported in segment Networks, impacting gross margin.

While the company reiterated its recent 5G contract wins with all 3 major Chinese operators, it said the deployment of 5G in China will continue to be dilutive to gross margins of its Segment Networks business in the short-term. Ericsson expects the 5G market in China will contribute positively to gross and operating income from the second half of 2020.

Ericsson is maintaining its financial targets for 2020 and 2022.

Ericsson confirms its 5G contracts with China Telecom and China Unicom

Monday, May 18, 2020  5G, China, China Telecom, China Unicom, Ericsson  

Ericsson confirmed that it will supply 5G solutions to China Telecom and China Unicom. This includes the Ericsson Radio System products, as well as Ericsson Spectrum Sharing solutions.

Ericsson said it will provide outdoor and indoor site solutions to build capacity and coverage in the 3.5GHz and 2.1GHz bands. Network services including provisioning, installation and testing will be provided to meet the CSPs’ technical needs and enable them to build and share 5G networks. The Ericsson Radio System product portfolio will facilitate the CSPs’ Standalone (SA) 5G RAN build. 3.5GHz and 200MHz wideband 5G radio solutions will serve shared network building needs for high-call-volume while 2.1GHz 5G radio solutions will support the mixed deployment of 3G, 4G and 5G networks. This will help China Telecom and China Unicom to quickly achieve coverage breadth and depth.

China Telecom has also selected Ericsson 5G Core portfolio solutions. These include Cloud Packet Core, Cloud Unified Data Management and Policy products, built on cloud-native technology for operational efficiency and agility to launch new 5G services. The Ericsson 5G Core network will be deployed on Ericsson Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) along with Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration.

China Unicom + China Telecom pick Huawei and ZTE 

Monday, April 27, 2020  China Telecom, China Unicom  

China Unicom and China Telecom announced the winners of its 5G Stand Alone (SA) tenders, which were valued at a combined CNY183.5 billion. Vendor shares are as follows:

Huawei - 35.9%
ZTE - 35.9%
Ericsson - 17.9%
Datand Mobile Communications - 10.3%

Nokia did not win any share of the contracts.

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Telefónica Deutschland sells 10,000 towers to Telxius for EUR 1.5 billion

Telxius will acquire approximately 10,100 tower sites from Telefónica Deutschland. The agreement includes the commitment to build 2,400 additional sites (BTS), ensuring exceptional future growth in Europe's largest market.

The transaction, subject to regulatory approvals, amounts to a total of 1.5 billion euros.

The sale of these towers has been closed at a multiple of c.23x EV/EBITDA, reflecting favourable market conditions for infrastructure deals.

With this deal, Telxius will double the size of its tower portfolio to over 32,800. Approximately 80% of its sites are in Europe, while the rest of the portfolio is in Latin America.

Telxius will finance 90% of the value of the acquisition via a capital increase -to be subscribed by its current shareholders in proportion to their participation in the company- and through internally generated resources. The remaining 10% will be financed through incremental debt.

Telxius is owned by Telefónica (50,01%), KKR (40%) while the remaining (9.99%) stake is owned by Pontegadea. 

This transaction will reduce Telefónica Group's net debt by approximately 500 million euros between 2020 and 2021, due to the contribution made by Telefónica’s partners in Telxius, net of the corresponding tax impacts.

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Telefónica claims a 50% reduction in its global CO2 emissions in 2019

Telefónica achieved a 50% reduction in its global CO2 emissions in 2019, fulfilling in advance the company's target for 2025. The company claims that it is now on target to reach its ultimate goal of zero net emissions in its four main markets by 2030. This goal was previously planned for 2050.

"Telefónica wants to support the Race to Zero campaign to accelerate the opportunity to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible," explained Ángel Vilá. "Digitalisation is essential to decarbonise the economy and is part of the solution. The digital solutions we offer our customers, as well as the greater efficiency of our networks, are helping to reduce emissions".

Vídeo https://youtu.be/7gnRPENTAYE

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Three winning bidders in Finland 5G spectrum auction

Finland's Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) conducted a spectrum auction for the frequency range of 25.1-27.5 GHz. Licenses are granted for national use in mainland Finland in three 800 megahertz bands. The spectrum can be used for the construction of 5G networks from 1 July 2020. The licenses expire in 2033.

There have been four previous spectrum auctions in Finland. The 2500-2690 MHz frequency band was auctioned in 2009, while the 791-831 MHz/832-862 MHz auction was held in 2013, the 703-733/758-788 MHz auction in 2016, and the 3410-3800 MHz auction in 2018.

Here are the auction results.

https://www.traficom.fi/en/communications/communications-networks/spectrum-auction-26-ghz-frequency-band

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Orange Marine completes repair of TAT-14 subsea cable

Orange Marine published a journal of recent repair work carried out on the TAT-14 cable in the North Sea by its ship Pierre de Fermat.

The 16-day mission in April, which involved a crew of 60, required extra precautions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://www.orange.com/en/news/2020/June/At-sea-they-watch-over-our-internet-connections

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IDC: Worldwide Ethernet Switch and Router markets decline in Q1

The Worldwide Ethernet switch market recorded $6.16 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2020 (1Q20), a decrease of 8.9% year over year, according to a new report from IDC, while the worldwide total enterprise and service provider (SP) router market revenues fell 16.4% year over year in 1Q20 to $2.99 billion.

"Weakness in the Ethernet switch and routing markets at the end of 2019 continued into the first quarter of 2020, which was exacerbated by the onset of the novel coronavirus and subsequent lockdown of economies around the globe as 1Q20 progressed," said Brad Casemore, research vice president, Datacenter and Multicloud Networks. "Meanwhile, diverging trends intensify in the Ethernet switch market as hyperscale and cloud providers invest in greater datacenter scale and higher bandwidths while enterprises continue to refresh campus networks with lower-speed switch ports."

Some highlights from IDC Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and IDC Quarterly Router Tracker:

• Despite the Ethernet switch market growing 2.3% for the full year 2019, in the fourth quarter of 2019 the market fell 2.2%, indicating that the market's slow end to 2019 spilled into 1Q20. The first quarter of 2020 was also impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that swept across the world throughout the quarter, specifically disrupting supply chains while weakening customer demand. IDC expects the negative impact of COVID-19 on both the Ethernet switch and router markets to continue in the second quarter of 2020.
• From a geographic perspective, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region declined 2.9%, with Saudi Arabia's market off 12.7% year over year. Across Europe, growth was uneven. The Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region grew 3.7% compared to a year earlier, with Russia up 23.2% year over year. The Western Europe market fell 12.9% with Germany losing 10.6% year over year and the United Kingdom off 18.4% from a year earlier.
• The Asia/Pacific region (excluding Japan and China) (APeJC) declined 7.0% year over year, with India off 11.3% and Australia declining 16.2% year over year. The People's Republic of China was down 14.6% year over year while Japan was relatively flat with a 0.1% increase compared to the first quarter of 2019. The Latin American market dropped 9.7% year over year, while the market in the United States declined 8.7% annually and Canada fell 7.2% year over year.
• Port shipments for 100Gb switches rose 52.1% year over year to $5.5 million. 100Gb revenues grew 9.9% year over year in 1Q20 to $1.28 billion, making up 20.8% of the market's revenue. 25Gb switches also saw impressive growth, with revenues increasing 58.9% to $482.9 million and port shipments growing 67.7% year over year. Lower-speed campus switches, a more mature part of the market, saw mixed results in port shipments and revenue, as average selling prices (ASPs) in this segment continue to decline. 10Gb port shipments rose 3.9% year over year, but revenue declined 21.4%. 10Gb switches make up 24.8% of the market's total revenue. 1Gb switches declined 3.8% year over year in port shipments and fell 11.9% in revenue.1Gb now accounts for 39.0% of the total Ethernet switch market's revenue.
• The worldwide enterprise and service provider router market decreased 16.4% on a year-over-year basis in 1Q20, with the major service provider segment, which accounts for 75.1% of revenues, decreasing 16.8% and the enterprise segment of the market declining 15.3%. From a regional perspective, the combined service provider and enterprise router market fell 29.4% in APeJC. Japan's total market grew 8.4% year over year and the People's Republic of China market was off 10.9%. Revenues in Western Europe declined 23.5% year over year, while the combined enterprise and service provider market in the CEE region declined 17.1%. The MEA region was down 5.2%. In the U.S., the enterprise segment was down 12.2%, while service provider revenues fell 19.6%, giving the combined markets a year-over-year drop of 17.5%. The Latin America market declined 15.9% on an annualized basis.
• Cisco finished 1Q20 with a 12.0% year-over-year decline in overall Ethernet switch revenues and market share of 51.9%. In the hotly contested 25Gb/100Gb segment, Cisco is the market leader with 39.8% of the market's revenue. Cisco's combined service provider and enterprise router revenue declined 28.1% year over year, with enterprise router revenue decreasing 18.7% and SP revenues falling 33.8%. Cisco's combined SP and enterprise router market share stands at 36.3%.
• Huawei's Ethernet switch revenue declined 14.0% on an annualized basis, giving the company a market share of 8.4%. The company's combined SP and enterprise router revenue declined 2.1% year over year, resulting in a market share of 28.8%.
• Arista Networks saw its Ethernet switch revenues decline 18.7% in 1Q20, bringing its share to 6.7% of the total market. 100Gb revenues account for 73.7% of the company's total revenue, reflecting the company's longstanding presence at hyperscalers and other cloud providers.
• HPE's Ethernet switch revenue increased 6.7% year over year, giving the company a market share of 6.2%, up from 5.3% market share the same quarter a year earlier.
• Juniper's Ethernet switch revenue rose 14.1% year over year in 1Q20, bringing its market share to 3.3%. Juniper saw a 16.0% decline in combined enterprise and SP router sales, bringing its market share in the router market to 10.5%.

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Dell’Oro: Data Center Switch market dropped 9% in Q1

The worldwide Data Center Switch market recorded its first decline in nine years, dropping 9 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group.

1Q 2020 revenue level was also the lowest in three years. The softness was broad-based across all major branded vendors, except Juniper Networks and white box vendors. Revenue from white box vendors was propelled mainly by strong demand from Google and Amazon.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has created some positive impact on the market as some customers pulled in orders in anticipation of supply shortage and elongated lead times,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Yet this upside dynamic was more than offset by the pandemic’s more pronounced negative impact on customer demand as they paused purchases due to macro-economic uncertainties. Supply constraints were not major headwinds during the first quarter but expected to become more apparent in the next quarter,” added Boujelbene.

Additional highlights from the 1Q 2020 Ethernet Switch – Data Center Report:

• The revenue decline was broad-based across all regions but was less pronounced in North America.
• We expect revenue in the market to decline high single-digit in 2020, despite some pockets of strength from certain segments.

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CoreSite completes SV8 data center campus in Santa Clara, CA

CoreSite Realty completed construction on the final phase of its new ground-up data center development on its Santa Clara campus in California.

SV8 is part of CoreSite’s Santa Clara and broader Silicon Valley connected campus. It is a 162,000 square foot, 18 megawatt capacity, purpose-built, ground-up development. Phase 3 is comprised of 54,000 square feet and six megawatts of now available capacity. The Company previously leased and placed into service Phases 1 and 2, and has preleased 11% of Phase 3.

“We designed SV8 to offer a high density, easy interconnection access, and sustainably focused operations in a highly interconnected campus to appeal to those customers who require being near the network edge to serve their high performance and low latency applications,” said Brian Warren, CoreSite’s Senior Vice President of Development and Product Engineering.

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Dell’Oro: Mobile Core Network market grew 10% in Q1

The Mobile Core Network market grew 10 percent year-over-year to nearly $8 Billion for the trailing four quarters ending in 1Q20, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. Growth is expected to accelerate over the next four quarters due to 5G Core deployments.

“There are other factors influencing the uptake. The COVID-19 pandemic is now seen mostly as a positive for the wireless infrastructure sector with more demand for voice and data. Plus the T-Mobile/Sprint merger has completed, and the new T-Mobile is moving ahead with an aggressive 5G build,” Bolan continued.

Additional highlights from the Mobile Core Network 1Q20 report:

• Revenue market share for Huawei and Ericsson combined for over half of the market, while Nokia, ZTE, and Cisco totaled over 25 percent, for the trailing four quarters ending in 1Q20.
• We forecast the Network Function Virtualization penetration will approach 70 percent in 1Q21 due to the revenue growth in 5G Core deployments.

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Dell’Oro: SD-WAN Market decelerated in Q1

The worldwide SD-WAN market continued to expand in the first quarter of 2020, but the 24 percent year over year growth rate was well below the 64 percent annual growth for 2019, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. The top five vendors, Cisco, VMware, Silver Peak, Versa, and Fortinet saw their combined revenue share climb above 60 percent in 1Q 2020.

“Demand for SD-WAN held up well in the first quarter, but supply chain disruptions induced by the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharper deceleration in vendor revenue growth,” said Shin Umeda, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “We still expect the SD-WAN market to grow by double-digits this year, but with so much macroeconomic uncertainty, strong performance won’t be a shoo-in for all vendors,” added Umeda.

Additional highlights from the 1Q 2020 Router & Carrier Ethernet Switch (CES) Report:

• Supply chain disruptions accounted for the majority of the Service Provider (SP) Router and CES Switch market decline in 1Q 2020.
• The SP Router and CES market in China showed a modest decline in 1Q 2020, but upgrades for 5G infrastructure are expected to drive strong demand over the rest of 2020.

http://www.delloro.com

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Rakuten Mobile employs Sprirent for 4G/5G testing

Rakuten Mobile is working with Sprirent Communications in support of the operator’s current LTE services, planned 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) and Standalone (SA) rollout in Japan.

Specifically, Rakuten Mobile required testing capabilities to assure the performance of new services and selected Spirent Landslide for core network testing. With LTE services now live and deployment of its 5G NSA network planned for later in the year, Spirent will work with Rakuten Mobile to ensure a solid customer experience.

Rakuten Mobile is also using the Spirent iTest network automation and verification solution for regression testing to speed validation timeframes, allowing Rakuten Mobile’s engineering teams to remain focused on new service creation for subscribers.

“We are excited to collaborate with Spirent for core network testing,” said Tareq Amin, representative director, executive vice president and CTO of Rakuten Mobile. “Given their extensive in-region and global MNO/MVNO experience, advanced methodologies for testing fully-virtualized networks and ability to serve in a consultative role, we are confident that our collaboration will allow us to offer innovative and exciting next generation mobile services to Rakuten Mobile customers.”

“Rakuten Mobile are market trendsetters and Spirent is proud to leverage our depth of experience and advanced testing solutions portfolio to ensure Japan’s newest operator can focus on achieving its vision for offering comprehensive communications services that combine a simple service plan and cutting-edge technologies,” said Spirent’s country manager for Japan, Akihiro Nakamura. “We look forward to working alongside the company as subscribers take advantage of its new services and new deployment targets are set.”

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Mavenir signs OpenRAN distribution partners

Mavenir signed two distribution partners for delivering OpenRAN solutions:

• General Datatech (GDT), a leading global provider of enterprise networking infrastructure and data center solutions
• Goodman Networks, a leader in unique offerings of Field Services, Supply Chain, Distribution, Integration Services, and network services

Mavenir has been a pioneer of OpenRAN, including founding member of OpenRAN Policy Coalition and elected board member, as well as part of the industry association, the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and was one of the first members of the O-RAN Alliance.

Founding members of the Open RAN Policy Coalition include Airspan, Altiostar, AT&T, AWS, Cisco, CommScope, Dell, DISH Network, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Mavenir, Microsoft, NEC Corporation, NewEdge Signal Solutions, NTT, Oracle, Parallel Wireless, Qualcomm, Rakuten Mobile, Samsung Electronics America, Telefónica, US Ignite, Verizon, VMWare, Vodafone, World Wide Technology, and XCOM-Labs.

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Huawei launches advertising campaign in UK

Huawei launched a major advertising campaign in the UK to respond to the rising calls by British politicians to ban it from a meaningful role in the nation's 5G and gigabit fiber projects.

Huawei Vice President Victor Zhang said: “Huawei grew up in the UK.  We’ve been here for 20 years and were integral in building the 3G and 4G networks we all use every day. Today’s letter underlines Huawei’s ongoing commitment to improving connectivity for everyone in the UK. As a private company, 100% owned by employees, our priority has been to help mobile and broadband companies build a better connected UK. Britain needs the best possible technologies, more choice, innovation and more suppliers, all of which means more secure and more resilient networks. This is fundamental to achieving the government’s Gigabit broadband target by 2025. This is our commitment to the UK.”

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AT&T rolls with Dynamic Spectrum Sharing

AT&T confirmed that Dynamic Spectrum Sharing is now live in portions of its network.

AT&T, which was among the first to present and champion DSS, said the technology will now play an essential role in widespread 5G adoption.

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