DOCOMO Extends Cloud Services

NTT DOCOMO is preparing to launch an array of new personal services for smartphone and tablet users under a new "docomo cloud" brand.

The cloud strategy, which the company highlighted in its financial report issued late last month, aims to transform the company into being a "trusted personal agent" of its customers rather than a dumb pipe. Since launching its "Shabette-Concier" voice command-based app for Android on March 1, DOCOMO has logged over 2 million downloads. Starting next month, Shabette-Concier voice command-based app will be enhanced to provide precise answers to inquiries on a wide range of topics.

In June, DOCOMO will launch, Mail-Hon’yaku-Concier, an app that automatically translates text messages, such as e-mails and social networking messages, between Japanese and English/Chinese/Korean. The service uses cloud-based mobile interpretation technologies that DOCOMO currently is developing.

In August, DOCOMO will begin providing users with 5GB of free cloud storage for photos and videos. The service recognizes facial features and scenes for automatic sorting and grouping. Photo Collection will link to external services like Evernote, Eye-Fi and HighlightCam.

Also in August, DOCOMO will enhance its dmarket portal for smartphone and tablet apps and content. Content purchased from DOCOMO’s VIDEO Store, MUSIC Store, BOOK Store or ANIME Store can be enjoyed for no extra charge on multiple devices registered to the same subscriber. http://www.nttdocomo.com/pr/2012/001591.html 

Read More

Equinix to Acquire ancotel GmbH for Frankfurt Interconnect Facility

Equinix, agreed to acquire ancotel GmbH, a leading provider of carrier-neutral colocation and interconnection services in Europe.

ancotel operates a data center in Frankfurt with 2,100 square meters of capacity that serves more than 400 customers, including 200 new networks and 6,000 cross connects. ancotel’s assets also include edge nodes in Hong Kong, London and Miami. ancotel generated approximately $21.4 million in revenue in 2011, and has been growing at a greater than 20 percent CAGR for the past three years.

"The acquisition of ancotel significantly strengthens Equinix’s value proposition and capabilities both in Europe and globally," said Eric Schwartz, president, Equinix EMEA. "Both companies enjoy strong reputations in the market and serve the world’s leading companies. The agreement will also grow the total number of network customers available at Equinix from 700 to 900." http://www.equinix.com http://www.ancotel.com 

Read More

Amazon CloudFront CDN Tunes for Dynamic Content

Amazon CloudFront is now delivering dynamic content, providing Amazon Web Services customers a simple CDN solution with international reach.

Amazon CloudFront works seamlessly with dynamic applications running in Amazon EC2, without any custom coding or proprietary configurations, making the service simple to deploy and manage. Requests for dynamic, static and streaming content are all routed through Amazon CloudFront’s full worldwide network of edge locations.

Amazon CloudFront charges the same rates for both static and dynamic content.

Last October, Amazon noted that CloudFront had over 20,000 active customers which is double the number of customers from the same time last year. Currently, Amazon has 30 edge locations including Sao Paolo, Brazil (the first location in South America), Paris (launched in February 2011), and Stockholm (launched in June 2011). http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront 

Read More

TeliaSonera IC Provides European Connectivity for Facebook

TeliaSonera International Carrier has been selected to build and operate a new pan-European managed optical network for Facebook. The multi-terabit optical network will provide Facebook with connectivity between Internet exchange points in multiple European cities and their newest data center on the edge of the Arctic Circle in Luleå, Sweden.

TeliaSonera International Carrier owns and operates more than 43,000 kilometres (~27,000 miles) of fiber network, which covers more than 200 points of presence in major cities in 35 countries across Europe, North America and Asia. http://www.teliasoneraic.com 

• Earlier this year, Rostelecom, Russia’s leading long distance operator, selected TeliaSonera International Carrier to operate and manage its new backbone network between Kingisepp, Russia and Stockholm, Sweden.

Read More

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Deploys Cisco Unified Data Center

Chunghwa Telecom has selected the Cisco Unified Data Center architecture to support its "hicloud" Cloud Server Service. The deployment comprises the Cisco Unified Computing System and Cisco Nexus switches. Chunghwa Telecom's "hicloud" will provide virtual server space, cloud data security and protection, applications for smart devices and program access platforms, and other cloud services. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.cisco.com 

Read More

Verizon Wireles Sees End to Unlimited iPhone Data, Start of Shared Data

Verizon Wireless is planning to phase out unlimited mobile data plans as customers upgrade to LTE devices, said Fran Shammo, Verizon Communications' EVP & CFO, speaking at the J.P. Morgan 40th Annual Technology, Media and Telecom Conference.

Some notes from his presentation:

• Verizon Wireless is looking to introduce data share plans this summer, allowing customers to share a bucket of GBs across multiple devices on the account 
•  LTE iPad sales are going quite nicely without a carrier subsidy. Smartphone penetration was at 47% at the end of Q1. 
• The company is confident that its spectrum deal with the cable operators will get regulatory clearance. VZ sees the enterprise space going more to the cloud and security-type services.

Read More

RADWIN Supplies Wireless for Israeli "Safe City" Video Surveillance

The Be'er Sheva Municipality in Israel has deployed RADWIN 2000 radios in a large-scale video surveillance project.

High-definition cameras are installed throughout the city in places such as traffic intersections and public parks. The RADWIN radios transfer high-resolution video from the megapixel PTZ cameras back to the municipality's control center.

Shimon Halfon, VP Projects, Bynet Systems Applications, said: "RADWIN 2000 systems backhaul video from as many as 8 cameras per site and transmit video over 5 Km with high capacity of 50 Mbps and zero latency. Systems operate in particularly challenging city conditions, including non-line-of-sight, high interference and extreme environmental forces such as strong winds, fog, dust, and harsh climate."

Read More

Equinix to Acquire ancotel GmbH for Frankfurt Interconnect Facility

Equinix, agreed to acquire ancotel GmbH, a leading provider of carrier-neutral colocation and interconnection services in Europe.

ancotel operates a data center in Frankfurt with 2,100 square meters of capacity that serves more than 400 customers, including 200 new networks and 6,000 cross connects. ancotel’s assets also include edge nodes in Hong Kong, London and Miami. ancotel generated approximately $21.4 million in revenue in 2011, and has been growing at a greater than 20 percent CAGR for the past three years.

"The acquisition of ancotel significantly strengthens Equinix’s value proposition and capabilities both in Europe and globally," said Eric Schwartz, president, Equinix EMEA. "Both companies enjoy strong reputations in the market and serve the world’s leading companies. The agreement will also grow the total number of network customers available at Equinix from 700 to 900."

Read More

Telefónica Adds in Latin America But Europe Drags

The total number of accesses served by Telefónica reached 309 million as of the end of March, up 7% over the year earlier thanks to growth in Latin America.

Revenues totalled 15,511 million euros in the first quarter of 2012, a 0.5% year-on-year increase (-1.8% in the previous quarter), driven by higher sales at Telefónica Latinoamérica (+8.3% year-on-year), which more than offset lower revenues at the European businesses (-6.6% year-on-year). Excluding the negative impact of mobile termination rates cuts, revenues rose by 1.6% from the first quarter of 2011.

OIBDA totalled 5,081 million euros, down 8.8% compared to last year, while operating income was 2,511 million euros. Meanwhile, consolidated net profit for the quarter stood at 748 million euros and was impacted primarily by Telco’s writedown.

“Our earnings for the first three months of 2012 reflect the strategic priorities set for the full year and the success of the company's shift in commercial strategy, which began in the second half of 2011," said Telefónica Chairman César Alierta. “These results are in line with internal estimates and thus allow us to reiterate our financial and operational guidance announced for 2012."

Some highlights from the quarterly report:

• The company is seeking to implement a new approach to handsets subsidies, reducing its upfront costs
• The company is moving from voice to data-centric tariffs
• Smartphones represent 81% of new commercial activity in Europe in Q1
• There were 2x mobile net adds in Latin America vs. Q1 11.
• The company describes Latin America as its "engine for growth".
• There was a similar revenue contribution from Brazil (23%) and Spain (25%).
• CapEx(ex-spectrum)/sales was 11% in Q1, up 1% over the same period last year. CapEx totalled 1,712 million euros in the quarter, up 10.3% year-on-year. The Company continued to devote the bulk of its investments to growth and transformation projects (81% of total CapEx),fostering the expansion of broadband services, both fixed and mobile.
• The company blamed commercial and regulatory costs for its drop in OIBDA.
• Telefónica’s mobile accesses growth in Latin America accelerated to 13% year-on-year in the first quarter boosting the accesses base to 170.8 million users.
• Telefónica’s fixed accesses in Latin America rose by 2% year-on-year to 34.6 million accesses. The Company’s retail broadband accesses climbed by 12% year-on-year to reach 8.0 million and net additions of pay TV customers totalled 2.3 million, up 23% year-on-year. 75% of fixed accesses now include some bundled offer package (+7 percentage points year-onyear), while 89% of broadband accesses are subscribed to a double or triple-play offer.

http://www.telefonica.com 

Read More

ITU: Broadband Remain Unaffordable in Many Markets

While there are some 600 million broadband lines in service worldwide, affordability remains a major obstacle, particularly in Africa, where fixed broadband access costs on average three times monthly per capita income, according to the ITU's newly published "Trends in Telecommunication Reform" annual report.

In contrast, mobile cellular and mobile broadband services remains very competitive in 92 percent of all markets. By the end of 2011, ITU estimated that the number of mobile-cellular subscriptions reached close to 6 billion, representing a global penetration of 86.7 percent and a penetration level of 78.8 percent in developing countries.

Subtitled ‘Smart Regulation for a Broadband World', this year's report sheds light on the often complex legal and regulatory issues now emerging as broadband becomes pervasive and increasingly serves as a driving force for the development of other economic sectors. Case studies and decision trees are provided for national regulators who are working through the process of developing a broadband plan for their country. Ultimately, there is not a single "right" universal service funding model, according to the report, but there are common principles such as economic efficiency, equity, competitive neutrality, technological neutrality, certainty, transparency, and cost effectiveness. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/treg/publications/trends12.html 

Read More

Verizon Advances Control Plane Strategy, 100G Metro Deployments

Verizon is making progress on two key initiatives that are transforming its global optical network: advanced control plane technology and the extension of 100G into its metro networks.

The integration of additional control plane technology allows electronic devices on its optical network to more easily communicate with each other, simplifying operations and allowing for near real-time provisioning of specified new circuits. Verizon has deployed the Ciena 5430 Reconfigurable Switching System, which features advanced Optical Transport Network aggregation and switching software. The control plane initiative enables end-to-end optical transport network functionality and global mesh architecture capabilities.

Verizon noted that it has been a pioneer in mesh network architecture, beginning deployments in 2006, which gives the company significant flexibility and precision in routing choices. This architecture creates additional paths to quickly and seamlessly reroute traffic in the event of multiple breaks or network disruptions.

The extension of 100G technology into its metro network worldwide, which follows earlier deployment of 100G in its long haul network, provide greater scalability while supporting higher access speeds. Verizon expects to implement this technology into major metro markets around the world during the first half of 2013.

"By combining our expanded control plane capabilities with extended 100G technology, Verizon is building the network of the future," said Ihab Tarazi, vice president of global IP and transport planning and technology for Verizon. "It’s no longer about miles and scope. It’s about leveraging strategies that further enable us to deliver http://www.verizon.com 

Read More

ADVA Tests OpenFlow for Multi-Layer Network Virtualization

ADVA Optical Networking is pioneering the use of OpenFlow technology to dynamically control wavelength-switched optical networks. Working in cooperation with the University of Essex as part of the OFELIA project, ADVA has developed an optical OpenFlow implementation based on its FSP 3000 transmission platform.

Project OFELIA provides researchers with a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) testbed to experiment with new applications using a web-services approach. The aim is to use a common OpenFlow control for both the packet and optical layers.

The SDN facility at University of Essex comprises packet switches and application servers that can be dynamically connected by optical lightpaths. External users can directly access the facility via GÉANT, a high-bandwidth pan-European backbone that interconnects national research and education networks. Web-based tools and services enable users to request network resources from OFELIA and run, control and monitor their own SDN applications.

"SDN presents a tremendous opportunity for customers to streamline and automate network infrastructure and operations,” said Christoph Glingener, CTO, ADVA Optical Networking. “While server and storage virtualization have been widely adopted, network virtualization is still in its infancy. SDN closes this gap by offering programmable network control, better scalability and faster adoption to virtual machine mobility. We have proven that SDN can seamlessly extend into the optical domain and enables network virtualization across multiple layers. The OpenFlow approach extends our existing SDN solution employing our RAYcontrol control plane."

"It has been exciting developing this OpenFlow solution with the team at ADVA Optical Networking”, commented Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, head of the High Performance Networks Group, University of Essex. “Together we have built an SDN testbed with packet and wavelength switches under a common OpenFlow control. This is something that has never been done before. Researchers can now obtain slices of network infrastructure to program their own virtual multi-layer networks. They can use optical switching alongside packet switching to adapt bandwidth, latency and power consumption to their application needs." http://www.advaoptical.com http://www.fp7-ofelia.eu/ 

Read More

Telstra Announces Application Assured Networking Service

Telstra introduced an "Application Assured Networking" service that provides enterprises with more control over the increasing number of financial, relationship management, IP telephony, video conferencing and other business applications on their network. The new service will initially allow an organisation to produce reports on how networks are being used by applications which can be viewed via an easy-to-use secure online portal on the Telstra Business and Enterprise website.

Telstra said its goal is to optimise the network to ensure the performance of enterprise applications that really count. Enterprises can define application policies for the network which applies Quality of Service and bandwidth controls in real-time or as scheduled.

The new service is available on the Telstra Next IP network. Peer Industries is the first Telstra customer to use the Application Assured Networking service. http://www.telstra.com 

Read More

Telstra Announces Application Assured Networking Service

Telstra introduced an "Application Assured Networking" service that provides enterprises with more control over the increasing number of financial, relationship management, IP telephony, video conferencing and other business applications on their network.  The new service will initially allow an organisation to produce reports on how networks are being used by applications which can be viewed via an easy-to-use secure online portal on the Telstra Business and Enterprise website.



Telstra said its goal is to optimise the network to ensure the performance of enterprise applications that really count. Enterprises can define application policies for the network which applies Quality of Service and bandwidth controls in real-time or as scheduled.


The new service is available on the Telstra Next IP network.  Peer Industries is the first Telstra customer to use the Application Assured Networking service.
http://www.telstra.com

Read More

BT Stays Ahead of Schedule, Increases Dividend

BT reported overall revenue, excluding transit, of GBP 19.307 billion for the fiscal year ending 31-March-2012, down 1.9% for the year. EBITDA came in at over GBP 6 billion, a year earlier than the company's turn around plan anticipated. The company has proposed a final dividend of 5.7p, up 14%, giving a full year dividend of 8.3p, up 12%.

"In what remains a challenging environment we have delivered another year of growth in profits and free cash flow. Our financial strength has allowed us to invest in the business, make a 2bn pounds payment into the pension fund, reward employees and deliver double digit growth in shareholder returns," stated Ian Livingston, Chief Executive.

Some highlights:

Net labour costs decreased by 1% to £4,812m after adjusting for certain labour related costs of £87m classified as other costs in the prior year.

Capital expenditure was £2,594m, in line with a target for the year of around £2.6bn. BT expects capital expenditure to remain at around £2.6bn in 2013.

BT added 589,000 retail broadband customers in the year, representing 54% of the broadband market net additions of 1,085,000 and taking our retail broadband customer base to around 6.3m, up 10%.

Net additions for BT Infinity, the company's super-fast broadband service, were 131,000 in the quarter, and the customer base currently stands at over 550,000.

BT Vision added 28,000 customers in the quarter, bringing the customer base to over 700,000, up 23% on last year.

Business revenue decreased by 6% in the quarter and 5% in the year. Revenue continued to be impacted by lower IT hardware sales reflecting market conditions and a decision in the second quarter to move away from low-margin IT hardware trade sales.
http://www.btplc.com

Read More

ADVA Tests OpenFlow for Multi-Layer Network Virtualization Appliance

ADVA Optical Networking is pioneering the use of OpenFlow technology to dynamically control wavelength-switched optical networks. Working in cooperation with the University of Essex as part of the OFELIA project, ADVA has developed an optical OpenFlow implementation based on its FSP 3000 transmission platform.

Project OFELIA provides researchers with a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) testbed to experiment with new applications using a web-services approach. The aim is to use a common OpenFlow control for both the packet and optical layers.

The SDN facility at University of Essex comprises packet switches and application servers that can be dynamically connected by optical lightpaths. External users can directly access the facility via GÉANT, a high-bandwidth pan-European backbone that interconnects national research and education networks. Web-based tools and services enable users to request network resources from OFELIA and run, control and monitor their own SDN applications.

"SDN presents a tremendous opportunity for customers to streamline and automate network infrastructure and operations,” said Christoph Glingener, CTO, ADVA Optical Networking. “While server and storage virtualization have been widely adopted, network virtualization is still in its infancy. SDN closes this gap by offering programmable network control, better scalability and faster adoption to virtual machine mobility. We have proven that SDN can seamlessly extend into the optical domain and enables network virtualization across multiple layers. The OpenFlow approach extends our existing SDN solution employing our RAYcontrol control plane."

"It has been exciting developing this OpenFlow solution with the team at ADVA Optical Networking”, commented Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, head of the High Performance Networks Group, University of Essex. “Together we have built an SDN testbed with packet and wavelength switches under a common OpenFlow control. This is something that has never been done before. Researchers can now obtain slices of network infrastructure to program their own virtual multi-layer networks. They can use optical switching alongside packet switching to adapt bandwidth, latency and power consumption to their application needs."

Read More

Infonetics: Carrier Wi-Fi Market Takes Off

Infonetics is predicting that the global carrier WiFi equipment market will grow in the high double-digit percents annually at least through 2016, when it will hit $2.1 billion. This pace is already established as Infonetics notes that global revenue for carrier WiFi equipment -- including mobile WiFi access points, WiFi hotspot access points, and WiFi hotspot controllers -- grew 35% in 2011 from 2010.

"Our many recent conversations with mobile operators and equipment vendors validate our view that mobile operators are hot for hotspots,” notes Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave, mobile offload, and mobile broadband devices at Infonetics Research. "The carrier WiFi equipment market has grown consistently since 2007, initially driven by exploding demand from mobile operators augmenting their 3G and 4G deployments with WiFi hotspot services. The strongest new growth driver is mobile operators deploying carrier WiFi to offload a portion of their mobile data traffic."

Some notes from the Infonetics' Carrier Wi-Fi Survey:

• Two-thirds of the service providers that Infonetics interviewed have already deployed 20,000 to over 150,000 WiFi access points (APs) in public spaces.
• Street coverage is seen as one of the areas of greatest deficit for WiFi coverage; by 2013, the percentage of service providers planning to deploy WiFi for street coverage jumps to 79%.
• Complementing the mobile data service by enhancing throughput is currently the top deployment driver for carrier WiFi, followed by the scarcity of licensed spectrum.
• Nearly all respondent carriers plan to increase the number of access points deployed by 2013, so Infonetics expects significant carrier WiFi deployment over the coming year.
• Smartphones and tablets are named by mobile operators as the top mobile broadband devices driving their 2013 deployments of public WiFi networks.

Read More

Sprint Offers Extended Mobile Safety Enhancements

Sprint introduced a collection of mobile family safety and device security bundles aimed at protecting mobile users. Sprint Guardian features mobile apps from Safely and Lookout for use of Sprint Android-powered devices.

Safely provides location tracking for phone-carrying children. Parents can lock their child’s phone on demand or schedule locks – during dinner, school or late at night. They can browse the child’s contacts and apps downloaded to the phone. Safely also enforces limits on texting while driving when traveling more than 10 mph. Incoming calls are sent to voicemail and distracting alerts are suspended while a car is in motion. The service is priced at for $9.99 per month for up to five lines on an account.

Lookout is a service that protects mobile devices from loss and malware for $4.99 per month for up to five lines on an account.

Sprint customers also have the option to purchase both bundles for a single monthly fee of $14.98.

"With Sprint Guardian, we’re helping to make it easy for individuals and families to manage how their children are using their mobile phone and giving them the tools they need to protect their wireless devices from theft, loss and malware," said Fared Adib, vice president-Product Development, Sprint. “Sprint is pleased to be the first in the industry to unify innovative safety and security applications from Safely and Lookout in two simple bundles at a great value for our customers." http://www.sprint.com http://www.safely.com 

Read More

Huawei Achieves 150 Mbps in European LTE Cat 4 Field Trial

Huawei has achieved data rates of 150 Mbps in an LTE Category 4 field trial on a commercial LTE network in Europe.

The trial was based on an LTE Category 4 device powered by the first Hisilicon LTE multi-mode chipset to support LTE R9. http://www.huawei.com 

Read More

Ericsson Debuts Smaller Smart Services Router, Adds Akamai CDN Sharing

Ericsson has expanded its Smart Services Router 8000 portfolio with a smaller 10-slot model operators to deploy the SSR family in different parts of the network: IP Edge and aggregation. A 20-slot version of the SSR debuted last year.


The 10-slot SSR 8010 consumes only 3.3 watts per gigabit of traffic throughput and offers a smaller footprint while using the same universal slots, hosting the same hardware and software components, and using a common management system as the larger chassis.


Jan Häglund, Head of Product Area IP & Broadband, Ericsson, says: "The introduction of the SSR 8010 highlights Ericsson's ongoing focus on developing 4th-generation IP solutions that can scale in multiple dimensions - data, control and service. Given we anticipate that the traffic between data centers and end users will quadruple to close to 1,000 exabytes annually by 2016, demand for smart solutions of this type is expected to be strong."


The SSR 8010 will be commercially available in Q3 2012.


Separately, Ericsson announced its Smart Cloud Accelerator solution for providing a unified caching solution for content delivery.  It optimizes over-the-top traffic and monetizes cloud content for operators, adding Akamai capabilities to Ericsson's SSR 8000 family of routing gateways. This allow operators to manage and deliver both their own content and that provided by third parties.


Ericsson confirmed that is using unified caching technology from Akamai to provide for dynamic capacity sharing between operators and their CDN customers, as well as over-the-top Internet traffic.

Read More