Telefónica expects continued growth in 2019

Telefónica repoerted 2018 revenues of €48,693m, up 2.4% organic (-6.4% reported) compared to a year earlier. In Q4, the growth rate accelerated to 3% y-o-y (-1.9% reported), reaching €12,917m. OIBDA reached €15,571m in 2018 and grew +3.5% y-o-y organic (-3.8% reported). Net debt fell for the 7th consecutive quarter and stood at €41,785m as of December 2018 (5.5% y-o-y reduction). Free cash flow excluding spectrum (€5,578m in January-December) rose 5.3% y-o-y.

José María Álvarez-Pallete, Executive Chairman, stated: "If I had to define this year 2018, I would define it as the year that passed the halfway mark in the transformation of Telefónica. Today I can assure you that Telefónica is closer to the company we want to be than to the company we were. Our solid set of fourth-quarter results reflected the improvement in business’ sustainability. Value customers and their average lifetime continued increasing, while both revenue and operating cash flow growth accelerated. In 2018, we regained customer relevance, resulting in the best-ever figure of customer satisfaction. We continued increasing the weight of high-growing revenues (broadband connectivity and services beyond connectivity) and investing in state-of-the-art technology networks. At the same time, we continued improving the Company's financial flexibility with a solid free cash flow, growing ex-spectrum, which enabled us to reduce net debt for the third consecutive year. And all this, notwithstanding the negative impact from regulation."

Highlights:

• Telefónica closed 2018 with 356.2m accesses
• LTE customers reached 117.4m, +20% y-o-y
• mobile contract accesses reached 123.8m, +7% y-o-y
• Smartphones reached 167.7 million, +6% y-o-y
• FTTx/cable accesses reached 13.2m, +21% y-o-y and represent already 61% of total fixed broadband accesses
• Pay TV accesses stood at 8.9m, +5% y-o-y The Group's FTTx/cable coverage at the end of December reached 82.7m premises passed (50.5m of own network, +14% y-o-y); 21.3m FTTH in Spain, 9.4m FTTx/cable in Hispam (+37% y-o-y) and 19.8m in Brazil
• more than 44% of our broadband customers enjoy connection speeds above 50 Mbps.
• LTE coverage reached 76% (+3.6 p.p. y-o-y; 94% in Europe and 70% in Latam)
• LTE traffic already accounted for 65% of total traffic.

Telefónica's guidance for 2019 (organic)

• Revenues: growing around 2%
• OIBDA: growing around 2%
• CapEx/Sales: around 15%

https://www.telefonica.com/en/web/press-office/-/telefonica-consolidates-its-transformation-process

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Ericsson and VMware form network virtualization alliance

Ericsson and VMware have signed a five-year alliance agreement to simplify network virtualization for communication service providers.

The agreement is expected to simplify deploying and running a combination of Ericsson applications and VMware’s vCloud NFV platform for CSPs. The alliance includes technical collaboration and interoperability testing across Ericsson’s portfolio of Virtual Network Functions, Billing and Charging solutions, Automation and Orchestration, with VMware’s vCloud NFV platform.

Honore LaBourdette, Vice President of Global Market Development, Telco NFV Group at VMware, says: “This agreement is an expansion of an ongoing successful relationship with Ericsson. This alliance agreement means a more concentrated collaboration to integrate, optimize, and provide interoperability at scale for our combined solutions, enabling speedy onboarding and deployment of VNFs. Ericsson and VMware are accelerating time to revenue and enabling carriers to provide industry-leading innovative experiences for our customers.”

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A10 ships 100 Gbps NFV solution for 5G secure apps

A10 Networks has the shipment of its Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW), a 100 Gbps virtual machine for 5G secure application services, to a major telco provider in the Middle East for its 5G environment.

"The transition to 5G is upon us, and now is the time for mobile service providers to begin the transition to NFVi to prepare their networks for 5G. A10 Networks’ Thunder CFW consolidates multiple network functions to provide lower latency and total cost of ownership. Mobile operators can more quickly transition to NFV and prepare for the 5G transition with Thunder CFW’s industry-leading scale and performance, and flexible form-factors," said Yasir Liaqatullah, vice president of product management, A10 Networks.

A10 Networks NFV Thunder CFW 5G-GiLAN solution includes:

• Up to 100 Gbps
• GiLAN Consolidation – Consolidates GiFW, CGNAT, application visibility and intelligent traffic steering
• Application Visibility & Control – DPI-based L7 application visibility for effective policy enforcement and control provides enhanced Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) support and compliance.
• Intelligent Traffic Steering – Subscriber-aware traffic steering to enhance new business models with differentiated service offerings for new revenue streams.
• GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) Support – GTP Firewall with granular SCTP filtering defends the mobile core against GTP-based attacks initiated from RAN or GRX/IPX networks.
• Orchestration and management – Integration with leading orchestration solutions, making A10 Networks VNF and PNF form factors highly suited for 5G environments.
• Accelerates Adoption of SDN/NFV – Achieve on-demand capacity with versatile software options (PNFs, VNFs, containers and bare metal) across SDN/NFV environments. Supports A10 FlexPool subscription-based capacity pooling licensing model for flexible consumption.

A10 Networks selected for 5G pilot in Japan

Wednesday, August 15, 2018  5G, A10, Japan  

A major Japanese mobile carrier has selected the A10 Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW) Gi/SGi firewall solution for a 5G pilot network, to complement the massive capacity demands of their existing mobile network and help lay the foundation for the mobile carrier’s 5G production network, expected to become commercially available beginning in 2020. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The Japanese carrier has previously deployed A10's solutions to deliver a variety of security and networking services, such as application delivery, IPv4 preservation/IPv6 migration technologies, DDoS protection and Threat Intelligence.

A10 said its expanded relationship with this customer includes the Thunder CFW Gi/SGi firewall 5G-GiLANTM solution to scale and secure its GiLAN, and which will serve as the backbone network for data communication services of the carrier’s 5G network.

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Samsung has shipped over 36,000 5G base stations

Samsung Electronics completed the development of its5G mmWave chipsets – comprised of Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFICs) and Digital/Analog Front End (DAFE) Application-specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) -- supporting 28GHz and 39GHz bands. The company said its chipset design, which is based on 28nm CMOS technology, enables about 25 percent reduction in size, weight and power consumption for 5G base stations when compared to the previous iterations.

Samsung’s new RFICs operate on bandwidths that have been expanded to a maximum 1.4GHz, compared to 800MHz for previous RFICs. The size of RFIC is reduced by 36 percent and overall performance is enhanced by decreasing the noise level and improving the linearity characteristics of the RF power amplifier. Samsung has developed RFIC solutions for 28GHz and 39GHz and plans to commercialize additional RFICs for 24GHz and 47GHz this year, allowing further expansions into markets that will use these higher frequency bands.

Samsung's DAFE ASIC provides analog-to-digital conversions and vice versa. The 5G DAFE manages large bandwidths of many that are hundreds of MHz and developing an ASIC allows for the reduction in size and power consumption of 5G base stations. Without investing in ASICs, the DAFE on its own would be too big and power insufficient to meet the product needs of carriers.

“Our breakthroughs in 5G R&D have been key driving forces behind successful 5G commercial services across the U.S. and Korea in 2018, with over 36,000 5G base station shipments,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. "At the forefront of ushering in the 4th Industrial Revolution, Samsung will continue to accelerate 5G commercialization, ultimately impacting industries and everyday lives by offering low latency, ultra-high speed, and massive connectivity.”

The company also noted that it has shipped over 36,000 5G base stations as of February.

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IP Infusion announces white box partnership with Infinera

IP Infusion, a supplier of carrier-grade software stacks, announced a partnership agreement with Infinera.

Specifically, Infinera will use IP Infusion’s OcNOS networking operating system to enhance its IP-based white box offerings targeting a broad range of transport applications, including packet-optimized Data Center Interconnect (DCI).

New initiatives such as the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Distributed Cell Site Gateway and ONF’s CORD reference designs are looking to disaggregated open infrastructures that offer choice, innovation and cost efficiencies.

"We are excited to partner with Infinera, a company with a distinguished track record of innovation in packet optical networking and a leader in open and disaggregated solutions for carriers, ICPs, and data center operators worldwide,” said Atsushi Ogata, President and CEO of IP Infusion.

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Toshiba develops bridge chip using PAM 4 to boost SSD speed and capacity

Toshiba Memory has developed a bridge chip for connecting flash memory chips into faster and higher capacity SSDs.

In SSDs, multiple flash memory chips are connected to a controller that manages their operation. As more flash memory chips are connected to a controller interface, operating speed degrades, so there are limits to the number of chips that can be connected. In order to increase capacity, it is necessary to increase the number of interfaces, but that results in an enormous number of high-speed signal lines connected to the controller, making it more difficult to implement the wiring on the SSD board.

Toshiba said it has overcome this problem with the development of a bridge chip that connects the controller and flash memory chips (Fig. 1), three novel techniques: a daisy chain connection including the controller and bridge chips in a ring shape; a serial communication using PAM 4; and a jitter improvement technique for eliminating a PLL circuit in the bridge chips. By using these techniques overhead of the bridge chips is reduced, and it is possible to operate a large number of flash memory chips at high speed with only a few high-speed signal lines.

The ring-shape configuration of the bridge chips and the controller reduces the number of transceivers required in the bridge chip from two pairs to one pair, it achieves chip area reduction of the bridge chip. In addition, adopting PAM 4 serial communication between the controller and the daisy-chained bridge chips lowers the operating speed in the bridge chips’ circuits and relaxes their required performance.

The prototype bridge chips were fabricated with 28nm CMOS process, and results were evaluated by connecting four bridge chips and a controller in ring-shape daisy chain.

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CoreSite opens data center in Washington DC

CoreSite has expanded its Washington DC campus with a new colocation data center. The new 25,000 square foot facility in downtown Washington connects via high-count dark fiber to CoreSite’s DC1 data center, one of the company’s key interconnection hubs on the East Coast, as well as to its Reston campus in Northern Virginia.

“The addition of our DC2 data center increases our robust ecosystem to serve customers with one of the most inter-connected data center campuses in Washington D.C.,” said Juan Font, CoreSite’s SVP of General Management. “The addition of this facility to our D.C. campus delivers large scale and efficient data center design that enables local enterprises and government agencies to solve for mission critical, performance-sensitive hybrid cloud applications, as well as serving as a diverse point of interconnection to Northern Virginia submarkets."

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Boingo appoints new CEO

Boingo announced the appointment of Mike Finley as chief executive officer, replacing current CEO and chairman of the board Dave Hagan, who has announced his desire to retire after 17 years of service to the company. Hagan will continue to serve as a member of the board, while Lance Rosenzweig, Boingo’s lead independent director, will become chairman of the board.

Prior to his appointment as Boingo’s CEO, Finley spent nearly nine years at Qualcomm, most recently as president of North America and Australia. His responsibilities included all carrier and new business development; OEM sales for mobile, computing, auto, connectivity, IOT, voice and music; product marketing; marketing and public relations; engineering services; and operations.

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Ciena's WaveLogic 5 delivers tunable bandwidth up to 800G

Ciena unveiled its latest WaveLogic coherent optics technology for greater scale, programmability and intelligence from network edge to core.

The two solutions are being introduced:

• WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) provides programmable capacity in 50G increments over a single-wavelength 800G.  The solution delivers 50 percent more capacity per wavelength and up to 20 percent higher spectral efficiency than competitive offerings. WL5e also enables an elegant evolution to emerging 400GbE-interface routers, with the ability to efficiently transport 400GbE client rates at any distance, from across the metro to across the ocean.
• WaveLogic 5 Nano (WL5n) addresses the market of footprint-optimized coherent solutions for 100G-400G applications. It supports a range of solutions that meet specific space, power and operational requirements, from standalone pluggables for 400ZR single-span DCI applications, to extended-temperature, standards-based optical modules for access applications, to compact coherent optics with seamless photonic layer integration for certain metro/regional applications.

Ciena said it has focused its WaveLogic 5 investment in key foundational technologies beyond digital signal processing (DSP) to include high-speed electro-optic components based on both silicon photonics and indium phosphide. This gives Ciena full control of the design of its coherent optical solutions to accelerate innovation and deliver significant time-to-market and cost advantages for customers.

“An important part of Ciena’s success has always been our ability to anticipate market trends and strategically invest and out-innovate the competition to solve our customers business problems. WaveLogic 5 is another example of that leadership ability at work, underpinned by the financial strength, global scale and superior engineering expertise that affords us the confidence in continuing to deliver as promised on our forward roadmap commitments,” stated Scott McFeely, Senior Vice President of Global Products and Services, Ciena.

The WaveLogic 5 solutions will begin to become available in the second half of 2019. WL5e and WL5n technology will be offered across Ciena’s Converged Packet Optical and Packet Networking portfolios, and will also be made available for use in third-party equipment via Ciena’s Optical Microsystems portfolio.

https://www.ciena.com/insights/articles/Ciena-unveils-WaveLogic-5-800G-and-so-much-more.html

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Ericsson and Juniper partnership exceeds 20 new customers

Ericsson and Juniper Networks cited growing momentum for their expanded partnership, which was announced in September 2018 and which has now passed 20 new customers worldwide.

The two companies also announced the following enhancements to their joint 5G transport network and security solutions:

• With the evolution of Ericsson’s solution for network slicing, Juniper’s SDN controller, NorthStar, is interworking with Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration, providing seamless control from the cell site to the packet core network – including the data center gateway. This allows automation and integration of connectivity services in the transport domain into an end-to-end network slice. With this solution, Ericsson’s Wide Area Network Orchestrator (WANO) acts as a hierarchical SDN controller in charge of configuring connectivity services.
• Transport orchestration added to Ericsson’s network slicing solution provides the network slice with guaranteed bandwidth and key performance indicators, such as latency. Slicing in the transport domain is also enhanced by combining soft network slicing through Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration and hard network slicing through Junos node slicing on Juniper’s MX Series portfolio. In combination with Ericsson Radio System, this joint solution will enable an end-to-end network slice on a shared infrastructure that can be secure, optimized and isolated.
• Security solutions from Juniper are being integrated into the Ericsson RAN offerings. In addition to the newly announced 5G High Layer vRAN, Ericsson security functionality has been complemented with Juniper SRX and vSRX gateway products as the IPSec security solution to elevate and extend the security framework across the network.
• Juniper PTX, MX and SRX will be natively integrated into Ericsson Security Manager to reduce time-to-market by automating hardening and facilitating monitoring and compliance of security policies.

Ericsson expands 5G portfolio with Juniper's edge, core and security

Wednesday, September 05, 2018  Ericsson, Juniper  

Juniper Networks and Ericsson are expanding their 18-year partnership with Ericsson with a focus on delivering an end-to-end 5G solution that combines Juniper’s routing and IP transport with Ericsson’s Router 6000 and MINI-LINK microwave portfolio for distributed, centralized and virtualized radio access.

The companies are now offering a 5G transport network solution with single pane of glass visibility to manage the new requirements of next-generation mobile service delivery.


For the go-to-market strategy, Ericsson will include Juniper’s solutions for edge, core and security as part of its end-to-end 5G transport portfolio.

The joint solution encompasses:

Access, fronthaul/backhaul:

• Ericsson Router 6000 flagship mobile backhaul portfolio. 
• Ericsson Fronthaul 6000 includes high density optical solutions that complement microwave solutions for CPRI and eCPRI transport.

Microwave radio backhaul:

• Ericsson’s MINI-LINK is a 5G-ready microwave technology.

WAN Services and IP Transport: 

• Juniper’s MX and PTX Series support mobile infrastructure for 10G/100G/400G optical transport, simplified operations with Juniper’s unique universal design, advanced Junos OS software functionality including Junos Node Slicing, Juniper Telemetry Interfaces and an open, standards-based hardware-accelerated 5G CUPS User Plane.
• Juniper’s MX Series 5G Universal Routing Platform .
• Juniper’s PTX Series Packet Transport Routers are built to optimize IP/MPLS transport for backbone, peering and converged metro core applications.
• Juniper’s transport routers offer integrated dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) interfaces with interoperability between the MX, PTX series and Ericsson’s Router 6000

Security Gateway & Gi Firewall:

• Ericsson Radio Base Stations are already integrated with the Juniper’s SRX Series Services Gateway, a high performance and highly scalable next-gen firewall platform, providing both Gi Firewall and security gateway solutions for end-to-end 4G/5G offerings. Juniper will continue to enhance its security solutions to work efficiently with Ericsson’s RAN solutions as they evolve to 5G.

Unified management and control:

• Ericsson’s management and orchestration solution will be applied across Ericsson and Juniper products, which will be fully integrated, including full FCAPS support.

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NEC demos adaptive network control for radio resources

NEC demonstrated adaptive network control technology in its multi-access edge computing (MEC) servers and base stations in a use case concerning automated driving. These trials successfully allocated radio resources (frequency bandwidth and time slots) to vehicles with high urgency as part of providing services that require real-time communication control for mobile networks.

NEC said the tests confirmed that base stations can support safe driving by steadily suppressing communications delay time to within 100 milliseconds by preferentially assigning radio resources to vehicles with high urgency based on the analysis results of vehicle location information, camera images of the area around the road and other data.

In the experiment, an automated driving environment was simulated in an anechoic chamber. The MEC server detected pedestrians by analyzing images of street cameras at an intersection, collected information on the location of surrounding vehicles, and shared such information with individual vehicles in real time. The commercial LTE base station was placed near the intersection, and multiple devices, such as vehicle models, cameras and smartphones, were connected to create a situation where there was a shortage of wireless resources.

https://www.nec.com/en/press/201902/global_20190221_02.html

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ZTE intros 5G Fronthaul 200G outdoor OTN platform

ZTE unveiled a 5G fronthaul 200G outdoor OTN product, the ZXMP M721 OD62, for the metro edge. The platform supports 200G connections and employs Flex-O technology to restrict the end-to-end latency within 1 microsecond.

ZTE said its fronthaul solution supports various service access types, including SDH, Ethernet, CPRI and eCPRI to meet the requirements of diversified scenarios. In addition, it supports WiFi debugging, and can automatically implement fast service provisioning, thereby simplifying operation and maintenance. 

“The ZXMP M721 OD62 demonstrates the world-leading 5G fronthaul transport capability of ZTE OTN products, and consolidates the industry-leading position of the full ZXMP M721 series as the aggregation access layer OTN. ZTE’s ZXMP M721 series has got objective assessment from the global industry analyst firm GlobalData. In the Packet-Optical Access (POA) class, it has again been rated as ‘Very Strong’ in recognition of the largest switching capacity, the highest port density, and the smallest footprint in the industry,” said Mr. Wang Taili, General Manager of ZTE Optical Transport Product. 

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Deutsche Telekom continued to grow in record year 2018

Deutsche Telekom managed to keep growing throughout 2018, with revenue up by 0.9 percent to 75.7 billion euros, representing organic growth of 3.1 percent. Adjusted EBITDA rose by 5.0 percent to 23.3 billion euros, and free cash flow increased by 13.7 percent in the full year to 6.2 billion euros. The figures exceed the carrier's financial guidance.

The DT Group’s CAPEX increased to a record level with spending before expenses for mobile spectrum reaching 12.2 billion euros. This takes the investments made by the Group worldwide in the last four years to more than 46 billion euros, around 21 billion euros of this in Germany.

Some highlights:

• In Germany, of branded mobile contract customers, 50.7 percent now use product packages combining mobile communications and fixed network, compared with 41.7 percent a year earlier. The number of MagentaEINS customers rose to 4.3 million as of the end of the year, up 17.5 percent from the end of December 2017.
• In Germany, the fiber-optic build-out, which has been driven forward year after year, is resulting in a steady rise in customer numbers. 12.2 million customers now use a fiber-optic line, up more than 27 percent compared with the end of 2017. About half of branded consumers in the broadband business are already benefiting from the high speeds of fiber-optic lines.
• While revenue remained almost stable, falling just 1.1 percent to 21.7 billion euros, adjusted EBITDA in the Germany segment increased by 2.4 percent to 8.6 billion euros. The first-time application of the new accounting standard IFRS 15 had a negative impact on revenue and a positive effect on adjusted EBITDA.
• T-Mobile US’ total revenue grew by 6.8 percent in 2018 to 43.1 billion U.S. dollars. At the same time, adjusted EBITDA rose by 13.6 percent to 11.9 billion U.S. dollars.
• In other European markets, revenue increased by 1.5 percent on an organic bases in the full year, and adjusted EBITDA by 1.8 percent. Due to the first-time consolidation of UPC in Austria, the increases in the reported figures were even higher. Revenue increased by 2.6 percent in 2018 to 11.9 billion euros. Adjusted EBITDA rose by 3.5 percent to 3.9 billion euros.

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Okinawa subsea cable to deliver 80 Tbps design capacity

The  Okinawa Cellular Telephone Company has selected NEC to design, engineer, supply, install, test and implement an optical submarine cable system connecting Okinawa Prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture in Japan.

The subsea cable will span a total length of approximately 760 km at a maximum depth of approximately 1,200 m. The cable system employs the latest optical wavelength multiplex transmission method, and the maximum design transmission capacity is 80 Tbps. The system is expected to enter service in April 2020.

https://www.nec.com/en/press/201902/global_20190218_02.html

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Vodafone rolls out 5G test in Barcelona city center

In preparation for next week's Mobile World Congress, Vodafone has rolled out a 5G network in the city centre of Barcelona. The network will be used to demonstrate peak downlink speeds of 1.5Gbps.

Vodafone confirmed that it is on track to launch 5G in a number of European cities during the second half of 2019. The carrier has already completed trials over a four-week period with three 5G smartphones that will be launched in 2019. Both the smartphones and Vodafone’s 5G network were fully compliant with the latest version of the industry standard for Non-Standalone 5G - 3GPP’s ‘Release 15’, which was only approved in December 2018.

Other notes

• Vodafone has invested €90 million in Milan to build the first 5G network in Italy, covering over 80% of the city. It has launched 31 5G use cases to date working with 38 industrial and public sector partners. The use cases cover the fields of health and wellbeing; security and surveillance; smart energy and smart cities; mobility and transport; manufacturing and industry 4.0; education; entertainment; and the digital divide. The use cases include a 5G Connected Ambulance developed with San Raffaele hospital; Europe’s first live 5G news broadcast with Sky; and a self-driving robotic vehicle delivering books at the Polytechnic University of Milan campus. Vodafone has also allocated €10 million over four years for the ‘Action for 5G’ competition for start-ups, SMEs and social businesses.
• Vodafone UK is trialling 5G in seven cities and successfully completed the country’s first holographic call in September 2018 when England and Manchester City Women’s Captain, Steph Houghton MBE who broadcast from Manchester to Vodafone’s headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire in order to give footballing tips to 11-year-old Manchester City and Lionesses fan, Iris.
• Vodafone Germany won the international Paul Pietsch Award in 2019 for its work in making the 5G standard fit for connected and autonomous driving in future utilising its 5G Mobility Lab and auto test track near Dusseldorf. It is now working with German broadcaster WDR to test the distribution of TV and Video on Demand content over 5G.
• Vodafone Spain, which completed the world’s first 5G call at Mobile World Congress in 2018, has 5G cell sites across six cities. The company is also supporting the development of 5G connected surgery in Spain working with L’Hospital Clinic in Barcelona to enable a specialist surgeon to guide an operation by another surgeon without being physically present.

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Xilinx updates Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC chip for 5G sub-6GHz

Xilinx has updated its Zynq UltraScale+ Radio Frequency (RF) System-on-Chip (SoC) portfolio for greater RF performance and scalability.

The new Zynq devices can cover the entire sub-6 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum, which is a critical need for next-generation 5G deployment. They support direct RF sampling of up to 5 giga-samples per-second (GS/S) 14-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and 10 GS/S 14-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs), both up to 6 GHz of analog bandwidth.

The portfolio now includes:

• Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC Gen 2: Sampling now with production scheduled for June 2019, this device meets regional deployment timelines in Asia and supports 5G New Radio.
• Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC Gen 3: Provides full sub-6GHz direct-RF support, extended millimeter wave interface, and up to 20 percent power reduction in the RF data converter subsystem compared to the base portfolio. The product will be available in 2H 2019.

"We are committed to helping our customers accelerate innovation, and are especially excited to drive the development of adaptable, intelligent 5G infrastructure with these new, higher performing additions to the Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC portfolio," said Liam Madden, executive vice president of hardware and systems product development, Xilinx. "Now with complete coverage of sub-6GHz spectrum bands, it will give our customers even more of a competitive advantage by allowing them to accelerate the design and development of next-gen systems today."

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ADVA posts Q4 revenue of EUR 131.5 million, up 12% YoY

ADVA reported revenues of EUR 131.5 million for Q4 2018, up by 4.2% from EUR 126.2 million in Q3 2018 and up by 12.2% from EUR 117.2 million in the same year-ago period. Pro forma operating income for Q4 2018 was EUR 8.1 million (6.2% of revenues), compared to EUR 6.8 million (5.4% of revenues) in Q3 2018 and a pro forma operating income of EUR 4.5 million in the same year-ago period. Net income for Q4 2018 was EUR 3.6 million, down from EUR 3.9 million in Q3 2018 and significantly improved in comparison to the same year-ago period net loss of EUR 0.9 million.

"We have steered a steady course in these turbulent times, remaining focused on our key goals to ensure both stability and continuity,” said Uli Dopfer, CFO, ADVA. “In all four quarters of 2018, we were able to increase our revenues sequentially. Our profitability also developed in a positive direction. In addition to successfully developing existing customers, we have won important new projects in all regions. At the same time, consolidation in our industry has further reduced the number of competitors, further sharpening our profile as an innovative telecommunications supplier with a unique blend of innovation and customer focus.”

“Digitization continues to transform networks and drive the investment focus towards us,” commented Brian Protiva, CEO, ADVA. “The rapid development and rollout of artificial intelligence, edge computing solutions, IoT and 5G require a robust and scalable telecommunications infrastructure with greater optical transmission capacity, new models for providing communication services, and increasingly precise network synchronization. Our key investments address each of these issues and clearly underline the value of our acquisition strategy. From this solid base, we’re creating new growth opportunities that we will capitalize on.”

https://www.advaoptical.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/20190221-adva-posts-annual-revenues-of-eur-502-million-for-2018

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Orange and NTT enter R&D pact

Orange and NTT have entered into a strategic R&D pact covering multiple technology domains including 5G, network transformation, AI, IoT, cloud services, etc.

“As Europe embarks on its own 5G journey, our collaboration with NTT will be very precious. Both parties share a commitment to continuous learning and cultural exchange, which I fundamentally believe is essential in today’s global environment. The mutualisation of our respective research learnings will enable us to identify and develop better services for customers in our respective regions, and support the development of our multinational business customers internationally,” stated Stéphane Richard, chairman & CEO, Orange Group.

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Deutsche Telekom deploys MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud

MobiledgeX, the edge computing company founded by Deutsche Telekom AG, unveiled its architecture for connecting mobile users to application cloud containers created by aggregating existing operator network resources.

Deutsche Telekom is now using the MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 to power the first world's first public mobile edge network deployment and is already supporting the prototyping of developer use cases such as live trials around Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM).

The solution MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 leverages application cloud containers created by aggregating existing operator network resources. At runtime, MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 spins up the containers on-demand in edge cloud locations (also known as “cloudlets”) that optimally fulfill the needs of the desired application and user quality of experience.

“Deutsche Telekom is proud to lead a global effort toward a smart, mobile, digital society and recognizes that ubiquitous edge availability is the foundation for this vision. For operators, Edge-Cloud R1.0’s ability to quickly aggregate existing 4G and 5G resources and make them available anywhere they are needed across the network means an extremely low barrier to entry for scalable edge deployments that can be immediately monetized. When edge networks are deployed widely, developers and device makers can more easily define business and use cases for new offerings that can be rolled out across a large number of users. The milestone announced today is an important moment not just for Deutsche Telekom and MobiledgeX, but the broader mobile ecosystem eager to capitalize on the massive edge opportunity in the lead-up to 5G,” stated Walter Goldenits, CTO of Telekom Deutschland in Germany.

Key features of MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0:

• Device and platform-independent SDKs for Android and IOS devices in Java, C++, C# or REST that support edge node discovery, built-in identity and verified location services, with the ability to connect automatically to the nearest edge location. MobiledgeX will release these SDKs as open source to speed development times and flexibility.
• A Distributed Matching Engine (DME) that is natively borne and integrated into Telekom Deutschland’s mobile network in Germany. The DME allows developers to ensure the identity and location of application users while guaranteeing their privacy as this data remains within the boundaries of the mobile service provider and is not disclosed to MobiledgeX.
• A fully multi-tenant control plane that supports zero-touch provisioning of edge cloud resources via a Cloudlet Resource Manager. This architecture is massively scalable based on the number of distributed edge cloud locations and enables the operator to bring any combination of compute, storage and network resource pools to add to capacity independently of a preferred Virtualization Infrastructure Management (VIM) layer. For example, while Deutsche Telekom edge cloud resource pools are virtualized using OpenStack, MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 equally supports other industry- standard VIMs such as VMware or native Kubernetes.
• A global edge cloud SAAS portal that allows operators to visualize application delivery performance and developers to deploy their application containers.

MobiledgeX is highlighting the following use cases :

• Automatically deploying application backends close to users based on their Verified Location and Identity. MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 instantiates application containers to support streaming workloads similar to lambda functions ideally suited for increasingly immersive and massively multi-user workloads like multi-player gaming, robotics and AR maintenance that must ascertain trusted identity and location. The built-in “verified location” service automatically correlates GPS-reported location from the device using telemetry extracted from the mobile service provider’s infrastructure and directs mobile client to appropriate edge location.
• Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality Performance Support. Makes lower latency available natively in the mobile network and geographically closer to end user devices. Enables AR and MR experiences on smart glasses or wearables where these devices do not natively provide the required CPU and GPU hardware capabilities, either due to cost, weight or power consumption reasons.
•  Video and Image Processing that meets local privacy regulations. Platform guarantees in- country containment and privacy of user data, offering country-specific control planes that ensure country-specific applications and data remain in the country to satisfy GDPR and other privacy regulations.

Deutsche Telekom's MobiledgeX venture aligns with SK Telecom

Thursday, December 13, 2018  Edge, MobiledgeX, SK Telecom  

MobiledgeX, the independent mobile edge computing provider founded by Deutsche Telekom, announced an agreement with SK Telecom to enable a new generation of connected devices, content and experiences, creating new business models and revenue opportunities leading into 5G.

MobiledgeX is focused on delivering developer-facing edge cloud services and bringing mobility to those services, dynamically placing application back-end as close to mobile devices as possible and removing them when not needed. MobiledgeX, Deutsche Telekom and Intel have partnered with Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to form an Edge Application Developer project group to ensure the gained insights and supporting source code are available to all.

"Deutsche Telekom created MobiledgeX as an independent company to drive strategic collaboration across the world’s leading telecoms, public cloud providers, device makers and the surrounding ecosystem - enabling a new era of business models, operating efficiencies and mobile experiences. We are particularly excited to announce SK Telecom’s participation in this collaborative ecosystem where everybody wins. SK Telecom is a global leader in 5G which follows their rich tradition of innovation within their network, strategic partnerships and developer engagement. This new era is underway,” says Eric Braun, Chief Commercial Officer of MobiledgeX.

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Qualcomm's 2nd gen 5G modem targets 7 Gbps peak downlink

Qualcomm has begun sampling its 2nd generation 5G New Radio (NR) modem chip --  a 7-nanometer device that supports 5G NR mmWave and sub-6 GHz spectrum bands with up to 7 Gbps download speeds and 3 Gbps upload speeds over 5G, and Category 22 LTE with up to 2.5 Gbps LTE download speeds.

The Snapdragon X55 5G modem is designed for global 5G rollouts and is expected to hit the market in commercial devices by late 2019. Target applications include premium smartphones, mobile hotspots, Always Connected PCs, laptops, tablets, fixed wireless access points, extended reality devices, and automotive applications.


Qualcomm highlights support for all major frequency bands, whether mmWave or sub-6 GHz, supports TDD and FDD modes of operations and is capable of both Standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) network deployments – providing flexibility and enabling virtually all deployment types globally. The modem is also engineered to support dynamic spectrum sharing between 4G and 5G, enabling operators to accelerate 5G deployments by using their existing 4G spectrum holdings to deliver both 4G & 5G services dynamically. It supports 100 MHz envelope tracking technology, and adaptive antenna tuning for 5G sub-6 GHz, designed for power-efficient connectivity.

“Qualcomm Technologies is spearheading the first wave of 5G launches with our first generation 5G mobile platform. With significant evolution in capabilities and performance, our second generation commercial 5G modem is a true testament to the maturity and leadership of our 5G technology. We expect our 5G platform to accelerate 5G commercial momentum and power virtually all 5G launches in 2019 while significantly expanding the global 5G rollout footprint,” said Cristiano Amon, president, Qualcomm Incorporated.

The Snapdragon X55 5G modem pairs with the newly announced 5G mmWave antenna module (QTM525), a new single-chip 14nm RF transceiver for 5G sub-6 GHz and LTE, and sub-6 GHz RF front-end modules to deliver the next generation modem-to-antenna solution for all major spectrum bands. The new QTM525 5G mmWave antenna module builds on the innovation of Qualcomm Technologies’ first mmWave antenna module by reducing the height of the module to support 5G smartphone designs sleeker than 8 millimeters thick. The new module adds support for band n258 (24.25 – 27.5 GHz) for North America, Europe and Australia on top of bands n257 (26.5 – 29.5 GHz), n260 (37 – 40 GHz) and n261 (27.5 – 28.35 GHz) already supported by its predecessors. Qualcomm is also launching the world’s first announced 5G 100MHz envelope tracking solution, QET6100, as well as a family of integrated 5G/4G power amplifier (PA) and diversity modules, and the QAT3555 5G adaptive antenna tuning solution.

“OEMs face a range of formidable design challenges when it comes to 5G. The need to support multimode operation from 5G to 2G, along with an ever-increasing number of band combinations, brings unprecedented complexity,” added Amon. “Discrete modem or RF solutions are no longer sufficient. Qualcomm Technologies is unique in the mobile industry by offering a comprehensive modem-to-antenna solution, and we are pioneering efforts in all aspects of 5G and ready to enable our customers with these capabilities to help them commercialize the first wave of 5G devices this year.”
https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-x55-5g-modem

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