ONF spins out Ananki, a start-up focused on private 5G

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) launched Ananki, an independent venture-backed company to deliver open source-based Software-Defined Private 5G as a commercial service to address enterprises’ unique requirements of Industry 4.0. The ambition is to enable enterprise private 5G that is hardened and optimized for industrial applications, yet as easy to consume as Wi-Fi.

Ananki’s technological foundation is ONF’s open source Aether, SD-RAN, SD-Fabric and SD-Core projects. The company will offer a private 5G solution delivered as a SaaS. 

Key attributes:

• Optimized 5G+ Experience - Software-defined, automated, AI powered, application optimized connectivity, with enhanced security enabled by a programmable data plane 
• Cloud First - pre-integrated with hyperscaler cloud and edge, delivering private 5G as a SaaS service, creating a continuously improving experience running on any multi-cloud platform
• Industry 4.0 Ready - Empowering developers to build transformative IoT, IIoT and OT solutions with rich APIs

“ONF continues to innovate in ways that magnify the power of open systems and open source across our industry. The ONF board recognizes that the lack of support for open source initiatives from commercial companies remains an inhibiting factor for scaled adoption. To meet this challenge, we have agreed to spin out Ananki as an independent company to pursue commercialization of Aether with a view that this will help accelerate the adoption and impact of open source,” states Andre Fuetsch, ONF Board Chair and AT&T CTO.

Guru Parulkar, Executive Director ONF and CEO of Ananki, comments: “Ananki is broadening the impact of the ONF’s work, and will help ONF’s Aether become much more broadly adopted.  By providing a commercially supported option for consuming Aether, many more organizations will be able to easily and economically leverage the benefits of Private 5G for building Industry 4.0 solutions.  And in turn, Ananki is committed to contributing back to the ONF open source, helping to advance the Aether platform and broaden the ONF community.”

https://ananki.io/

http://www.opennetworking.org

 ONF's Aether Edge Cloud selected for DARPA's Pronto Project

Thursday, December 03, 2020  ONF  

The Open Networking Foundation's Aether 5G Connected Edge Cloud platform is being used as the software platform for Pronto, a project backed by $30 million in DARPA funding to develop secure 5G network infrastructure. Specifically, DARPA is funding ONF to build, deploy and operate the network to support research by Cornell, Princeton and Stanford universities in the areas of network verification and closed-loop control. 

Aether (pronounced ‘ee-ther’) provides mobile connectivity and edge cloud services for distributed enterprise networks, all provisioned and managed from a centralized cloud. ONF will enhance and deploy its open source Aether software platform as the foundation for the Pronto research work, and in turn the research results will be open sourced back into Aether to help advance Aether as a platform for future secure 5G network infrastructure.

One of Pronto's goals is "to leverage network programmability to enable deep and wide network visibility, verification, and closed-loop control, giving programmers tools to build and dynamically deploy customized network functionality in a secure and reliable manner."

ONF also confirmed that it is now running a beta production deployment of Aether.  This deployment is a single unified cloud managed network interconnecting the project’s commercial partners AT&T, Ciena, Intel, Google, NTT, ONF and Telefonica. This initial deployment supports CBRS and/or 4G/LTE radio access at all sites, and is cloud managed from a shared core running in the Google public cloud.

The University campuses are being added to this Aether deployment in support of Pronto. Campus sites will be used by Pronto researchers to advance the Pronto research, serving as both a development platform and a testbed for use case experimentation. The Aether footprint is expected to grow on the university campuses as Aether’s 5G Connected Edge Cloud capabilities are leveraged both for research on additional use cases as well as for select campus operations.

“At Google Cloud, we are working closely with the telecom ecosystem to help enable 5G transformation, accelerated by the power of cloud computing. We are pleased to support the Open Networking Foundation's work to extend the availability of 5G and edge capabilities via an open source platform,” stated Shailesh Shukla, VP and GM, Networking, Google Cloud.

“Cornell is deploying Aether on campus to bring private 5G/LTE connectivity services with edge cloud capabilities into our research facilities.  We expect private 5G/LTE with connected edge cloud to become an important and integral part of our research infrastructure for many research and operational groups on the campus.  We also see the value of interconnecting a nation-wide leading infrastructure with Stanford, Princeton and ONF for collaborative research among university researchers across the country,” said David Lifka, Vice President for Information Technologies and CIO, Cornell University.

https://prontoproject.org/

https://opennetworking.org/

ONF's Aether targets Enterprise 5G/LTE-Edge-Cloud-as-a-Service

Thursday, March 05, 2020  ONF  

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced Aether – the first open-source platform for delivering Enterprise 5G/LTE-Edge-Cloud-as-a-Service.

Aether (pronounced ‘ee-ther’) provides mobile connectivity and edge cloud services for distributed enterprise networks, all provisioned and managed from a centralized cloud.

Aether leverages existing work from ONF including the CORD and ONOS platforms. It can be run in a Kubernetes environment, and it simultaneously supports deployment on licensed (4G/5G) and unlicensed (CBRS) spectrum.

“Aether opens the door for enterprises to rapidly deploy 5G and edge cloud services to help power their digital transformations. This can be done with a variety of flexible business models including in collaboration with telco operators, cloud operators, and third party providers. It offers the flexibility to utilize a wide range of bands including 5G, licensed bands, and CBRS. This cloud-enabled platform turns mobile connectivity and enterprise mobile edge cloud capabilities into a cloud-managed service, simplifying deployment and operations while delivering scalable and cost-effective services,” states Guru Parulkar, Executive Director, ONF & Executive Director, Stanford Platform Lab.

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HyperLight and Nokia Bell Labs demonstrate 300 GBd for PAM-4

HyperLight, a start-up based in Cambridge, MA developing thin-film lithium niobate (LN) photonic integrated circuits (PICs), and Nokia Bell Labs demonstrated a new record-breaking high-speed data transmission using its ultrahigh bandwidth, linear, and low noise thin-film lithium niobate Mach Zehnder (MZM) modulator.

Using a HyperLight photonic chip, Nokia Bell Labs demonstrated a low complexity faster than Nyquist scheme without transmitter pre-processing achieving a record symbol rate of 300 GBd for PAM-4 and 570 GBd for OOK using a 100-GHz digital-band interleaved digital-to-analog converter together with HyperLight’s low voltage, linear, and low noise, 100-GHz thin-film LiNbO3 Mach Zehnder modulator (MZM). 

HyperLight says this pre-processing-free faster than Nyquist technique could be crucial for future co-packaged optics to drive the optics directly by the SerDes output without the power-hungry digital signal regeneration.

The details of these demonstrations were presented at the ECOC 2021 post-deadline sessions. The authors of the paper include Di Che and Xi Chen from Nokia Bell Labs.

In addition, HyperLight, together with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), demonstrated the first ultra-broadband Analog-to-Digital converter with a record-high acquisition bandwidth of 320 GHz. This is a significant milestone achieved using HyperLight's high bandwidth thin-film lithium niobate modulator which allowed the imprinting of radio frequency signal on an optical carrier and enabled the direct modulation of data at a record high carrier frequency of 300 GHz.

The paper authors include HyperLight CEO and Co-founder, Dr. Mian Zhang, Head of Devices, Dr. Prashanta Kharel, D. Fang, D. Drayss, G. Lihachev, P. Marin-Palomo, H. Peng, C. Füllner, A. Kuzmin, J. Liu, R. Wang, V. Snigirev, A. Lukashchuk, J. Witzens, C. Scheytt, W. Freude, S. Randel, T. J. Kippenberg, and C. Koos.

http://www.hyperlightcorp.com

HyperLight claims breakthrough with its lithium niobate optical modulator

Sunday, March 14, 2021  HyperLight, Optical, Start-Up  

HyperLight, a start-up based in Cambridge, MA developing thin-film lithium niobate (LN) photonic integrated circuits (PICs), announced breakthrough voltage-bandwidth performances in integrated electro-optic modulators. 

HyperLight says its electro-optic PIC could lead to orders of magnitude energy consumption reduction for next generation optical networking.

Current electro-optic modulators require extremely high radio-frequency (RF) driving voltages (> 5 V) as the analog bandwidth in ethernet ports approaches 100 GHz for future terabits per sec capacity transceivers. In comparison, a typical CMOS RF modulator driver delivers less than 0.5 V at such frequencies. Compound semiconductor modulator drivers can deliver voltage > 1 V at significantly increased cost and energy consumption but still fall short to meet the optimum driving voltage. The limited voltage-bandwidth performance in electro-optic modulators poses a serious challenge for meeting tight power consumption requirements from network builders.

HyperLight's integrated electro-optic modulator is capable of 3-dB bandwidth > 100 GHz, a previously impossible voltage-bandwidth achievement. The results are described in a manuscript entitled “Breaking voltage-bandwidth limits in integrated lithium niobate modulators using micro-structured electrodes,” published in Optica on March 8th, 2021.

“We believe the significantly improved electro-optic modulation performance in our integrated LN platform will lead to a paradigm shift for both analog and digital ultra-high speed RF links,” said Mian Zhang, author, CEO of HyperLight. “For example, using sub-volt modulators for digital applications, high speed electronic drivers may have largely reduced gain-bandwidth requirements or possibly be completely bypassed with modulators directly driven from electronic processors. This would save building and running costs for network operators. For RF links, the low-voltage, high bandwidth and excellent optical power handling ability could enable sensitive and low noise millimeter wave (mmWave) photonic links in ultrahigh-frequency bands.”

http://www.hyperlightcorp.com

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FCC releases $1.9 billion Supply Chain Reimbursement Program

The FCC posted information for communication service providers seeking funding from the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program for costs incurred for the removal, replacement, and disposal of Huawei and ZTE equipment and services obtained on or before June 30, 2020.

The $1.9 billion funding program is open to communications service providers with 10 million or fewer customers, including schools, libraries and healthcare providers that provide advanced communications services. The program will open on Friday, October 29, 2021 at 12:00 AM ET and close on Friday, January 14, 2022 at 11:59 PM ET.

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Huawei intros four optical infrastructure products

At its annual HUAWEI CONNECT 2021 event,  Huawei launched four new optical infrastructure products: a hybrid OTN (H-OTN) platform supporting Native Hard Pipes (NHPs) technology,  an OptiXsense platform for fiber monitoring, an industrial optical terminal, and a 10G mini optical terminal.

Huawei H-OTN supporting NHPs - the new platform integrates OTN and Optical Line Termination (OLT) device capabilities while guaranteeing the absolute security of core services and slashing latency by over 60%.

Huawei OptiXsense is designed for enhanced signal collection. It features an enhanced-Optical Digital Signal Processor (e-oDSP) module designed "to correct blind spot errors, raising the effective signal collection rate to 99.9% and achieving zero false negatives." It offers vibration wave identification engine powered by a 32-dimensional vibration wave analysis algorithm that increases the event recognition accuracy to 97%.

Huawei OptiXstar 2.0 industrial optical terminal is designed to carry video backhaul, sensing, and mechanical control services. An  precision circuit design auxiliary algorithm has been introduced to suppress circuit loop energy, satisfying the intrinsic safety requirements and eliminating the need for underground explosion-proof boxes. A detection algorithm 2.0 enables network switchover within 30 ms when a link or port fails.

Huawei 10G mini optical terminal brings for XGS PON campus customers. The product size is only one fifth of the industry average. With a built-in patented photoelectric composite connector, the power loss and optical path insertion loss of the device is 50% and 67% lower than the industry average, respectively. Moreover, it provides up to 90 W power supply for Wi-Fi 6 APs.

"Digital transformation is now shifting from office scenarios to core production scenarios, which poses higher requirements on digital infrastructure," said Richard Jin, President of Huawei Optical Business Product Line. "This requires optical communication networks to be more reliable and secure, and optical sensing technology to provide higher identification precision for optical services. As a leader in the optical industry, Huawei has been continuously investing in basic research and technical innovation, and is committed to building ubiquitous optical connections. With its leading optical products and solutions, Huawei will enable various industries to dive into digital."

https://huaweihub.com.au/huawei-innovating-nonstop-for-faster-digitalisation/

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Nokia supplies XGS-PON to Telecom Slovenia

Telekom Slovenije has designated Nokia as a partner vendor for the supply of XGS-PON equipment for its FTTH network.  The deployment of the Quillion chipset-powered Nokia ISAM FX series will replace some existing access nodes and will also support the newly built FTTH network which covers the entire country.

Sandy Motley, President, Fixed Networks at Nokia said: “The global investment in fiber highlights the competitive advantage that ultra-fast networks bring. Nokia is the leader in 10Gb/s symmetrical PON and the only vendor to enable a smooth evolution to 25G speeds. We are proud to work with Telekom Slovenije to bring high-speed broadband to customers on the largest FTTH network in Slovenia.”

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Astera raises $50 million for data center connectivity silicon

Astera Labs, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, raised $50 million in an over subscribed Series-C funding round for its silicon solutions for intelligent systems.

Astera Labs recently launched its Aries Smart Retimer portfolio for Compute Express Link (CXL) 2.0 and PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 that enable workload-optimized platforms in the cloud. The company is also developing ASIC and module solutions that unlock complex system topologies critical to mainstreaming data-intensive applications such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

The new funding was led by Fidelity Management and Research. Fidelity was joined in this funding round by Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners, with continued participation from existing investors Avigdor Willenz Group, GlobalLink1 Capital, Intel Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, and VentureTech Alliance. Prior to this round, Astera Labs raised only $35 million over three years.

“We are thrilled to join forces with Fidelity, Atreides, and Valor to cement our leadership position in intelligent cloud connectivity solutions and usher Astera Labs into the next growth phase of our company,” said Jitendra Mohan, CEO, Astera Labs. “With this investment and increased collaboration with our manufacturing partners, we will rapidly scale our worldwide operations to satisfy incredible customer demand and launch multiple new product lines to solve the industry’s most pressing connectivity challenges.”

“CXL has opened a new era of data center system architecture that is critical to realize the vision of AI in the cloud,” said Sanjay Gajendra, Chief Business Officer, Astera Labs. “We are leading the industry with design wins at the five most significant CPU/GPU/AI processor platforms in the world and the majority of Cloud customers. This positions us well to capitalize on CXL’s exciting new capabilities for cache-coherent and memory interconnects.”

http://www.AsteraLabs.com

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Keysight teams with Taiwan's National Central University Optical Sciences Center

Keysight Technologies is collaborating with Taiwan-based National Central University Optical Sciences Center (NCUOSC) on the design and test validation efficiency of gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) applications. 

Wide band gap (WBG) materials, such as GaN and SiC, offer rapid switching speeds, low loss and withstand high temperature and voltage characteristics. As a result, these materials are leveraged in consumer power products, fast charging, electric vehicles and rail transit, as well as 5G infrastructures and data center servers. However, these advantages increase the complexity of design and testing.

“Keysight’s PD1500A DPT enables NCUOSC to reliably characterize wide-bandgap devices and effectively innovate GaN and SiC applications. Its safety protection, scalable and optional test fixtures deliver the flexibility we needed for future expansions,” said Professor Yue-Ming Hsin, Director of NCUOSC. “In addition to the PD1500A, we also setup the Keysight B1505A/N1265A Power Device Analyzer/Curve Tracer to serve the complete and crucial characterizations of WBG semiconductors. It's our pleasure to collaborate with Keysight and contribute to the ecosystem of 5G/6G and electric vehicles.”

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SenseOn raises $20 million for AI cyber platform

SenseOn, a start-up based in London, raised US$20 million in Series A funding for its AI-based cyber security platform.

SenseOn combines broad detection and response capabilities across traditionally siloed security domains with AI-based automation and an open security data cloud. Its unified platform proactively detects and shuts down threats including ransomware, hacking / data theft and malicious insiders, solving critical security challenges in a rapidly evolving IT landscape. It’s also uniquely suited to hybrid and remote work settings as it can be rapidly deployed across any endpoint or network inside and outside the traditional perimeter.

The round was led by Eight Roads Ventures and was supported by existing investors MMC Ventures, Crane Venture Partners and Winton Ventures Limited.

CEO of SenseOn, David Atkinson commented: “We are facing a new reality whereby attackers are advancing more quickly than legacy approaches can keep up with, but hybrid and multi-cloud environments are far more complex than we yet know how to defend. Added to this, the volume and speed of data is beyond what legacy architecture was ever designed to handle. The daily headlines show legacy approaches don’t work and if we don’t do something courageous now as a security community or we aren’t going to stand a chance in the future. We chose to partner with Eight Roads Ventures because of their ability to support SenseOn’s vision, thanks to their collaborative partnership style, their strong knowledge of the cyber industry and their global footprint.”

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Huawei's Meng Wanzhou resolves legal case brought by U.S.

Wanzhou Meng, Chief Financial Officer of Huawei Technologies, reached an agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division (CES), and the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division (MLARS). As a result, the U.S. Department of Justice withdrew its request to the Ministry of Justice of Canada that Meng be extradited to the United States. This clears the way for her to return to China after having been under house arrest in Vancouver since December 2018.

Meng pleaded not guilty to fraud charges but agreed to a four-page statement of facts regarding the case.

At the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Associated Chief Justice Heather Holmes released Meng from all bail conditions set by the Canadian justice system.

Hours after Meng was freed, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada announced that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor had likewise been released from detention in China and were on their way back to Canada.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the U.S. Department of Justice issued the following statements:

“In entering into the deferred prosecution agreement, Meng has taken responsibility for her principal role in perpetrating a scheme to defraud a global financial institution,” stated Acting U.S. Attorney Boeckmann.  “Her admissions in the statement of facts confirm that, while acting as the Chief Financial Officer for Huawei, Meng made multiple material misrepresentations to a senior executive of a financial institution regarding Huawei’s business operations in Iran in an effort to preserve Huawei’s banking relationship with the financial institution.  The truth about Huawei’s business in Iran, which Meng concealed, would have been important to the financial institution’s decision to continue its banking relationship with Huawei.  Meng’s admissions confirm the crux of the government’s allegations in the prosecution of this financial fraud—that Meng and her fellow Huawei employees engaged in a concerted effort to deceive global financial institutions, the U.S. government, and the public about Huawei’s activities in Iran.” 

Some notes according to court filings, and as agreed to by Meng in the DPA’s statement of facts as recorded by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York:

"Between 2010 and 2014, Huawei controlled Skycom’s business operations in Iran, and Skycom was owned by an entity controlled by Huawei.  All significant Skycom business decisions were made by Huawei.  Moreover, Skycom’s country manager—the head of the business—was a Huawei employee.  Individuals employed by Skycom believed they worked for Huawei. 

In December 2012 and January 2013, various news organizations, including Reuters, reported that Skycom offered to sell “embargoed” equipment from a U.S. computer equipment manufacturer in Iran in potential violation of U.S. export controls law, and that Huawei had close ties with Skycom.  

In 2013, when questioned by financial institutions in Hong Kong, Huawei employees, including Meng, asserted that Skycom was just a local business partner of Huawei in Iran and that Skycom had not conducted Iran-related transactions using its accounts at the financial institutions. Meng also told the financial institution that Huawei “operates in Iran in strict compliance with applicable laws, regulations and sanctions” and that “there has been no violation of export control regulations” by “Huawei or any third party Huawei works with.”  

Between 2010 and 2014, Huawei caused Skycom to conduct approximately $100 million worth of U.S.-dollar transactions through Financial Institution 1 that cleared through the United States, at least some of which supported its work in Iran in violation of U.S. law, including $7.5 million for Iran-based contractors from the U.K. staffing company to do work in Iran.

For its part, Huawei has yet to comment on the agreement.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/huawei-cfo-wanzhou-meng-admits-misleading-global-financial-institution

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Dell'Oro: Cloud data center capex on a 20% growth pace

Cloud data center capex is forecast for over 20 percent growth year-over-year in the next four quarters, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. However, Enterprise spending, while showing signs of recovery, is expected to be hampered in the near-term by the on-going supply chain constraints.

“The Cloud service providers’ digestion cycle has persisted longer than predicted due to the continued market uncertainty,” said Baron Fung, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “We anticipate another Cloud expansion cycle to commence starting in the second half of this year, with the service providers increasing their deployment of the latest generation of servers based on the Intel Ice Lake and AMD EPYC Milan x86 processors. While the on-going supply chain issues may hinder investments, the Enterprise, rather than the Cloud is likely to be impacted,” explained Fung.

Additional highlights from the 2Q 2021 Data Center Capex Quarterly Report:

• Worldwide data center capex forecast to grow 9 percent in 2021.
• Network infrastructure spending is projected to outgrow IT infrastructure spending this year.
• Google and Microsoft to lead all Cloud service providers in data center capex in the next four quarters, collectively launching services in 13 new regions.

Separately, Dell'Oro Group announced the launch of its new Data Center Physical Infrastructure research program. The first report will be released in November 2021.

“We are in the midst of extensive digital transformation, accelerated by the global pandemic, where the limits of power and cooling infrastructure are being tested,” said Lucas Beran, Principal Analyst with Dell’Oro Group. “This is leading to technology transformation related to data center power systems, thermal management, and software monitoring to drive sustainable data centers of the future. I look forward to quantifying and forecasting these market developments with timely, accurate, and detailed analysis,” continued Beran.

https://www.delloro.com/news/data-center-capex-to-grow-20-percent-in-the-next-four-quarters/

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Video: 3 Key SD-WAN Trends for Enterprise Networking

https://youtu.be/jRxtBj7ptqk

SD-WAN is about delivering a real, unified, automation simplification to the enterprises for all their networking needs. In this video, Sunil Khandekar, General Manager/Founder of Nuage Networks from Nokia, shares three SD-WAN trends for enterprise networking that they are actively participating in.

Download the SD-WAN & SASE Report (Updated for 2021) here: https://ngi.how/sd-wan-sase-2020

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Dell’Oro: SASE to to hit double-digit billion-dollar revenue by 2025

SASE is expected to hit double-digit billion-dollar revenue by 2025, according to an updated report from Dell'Oro Group.

“As enterprises pivot towards becoming cloud-first and mobile-friendly, they are running into the structural deficiencies of the hub-and-spoke model and need alternatives,” said Mauricio Sanchez, Director at Dell’Oro Group. “The need for more agility, better scalability, and ubiquitous security has driven the vendor community to respond with the convergence of software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and secure web gateway (SWG) solutions into a new architecture under the SASE umbrella. As a result, enterprises’ interest in SASE is skyrocketing.”

Additional highlights from the SASE advanced research report:

• The number of SASE technology vendors has grown from a handful to 35.
• Over the past year, communications service providers have rapidly embraced SASE due to many technology vendor choices, the ease and low risk of deployment, and new revenue potential.
• Two major SASE implementations types exist in the market, unified and disaggregated. Unified type consists of single-vendor, tightly integrated SASE platforms. Disaggregated type is a multi-vendor or multi-product implementation with less integration than unified. Unified type will grow faster than disaggregated, but not surpass it by total revenue through 2025.

https://www.delloro.com/news/shift-to-cloud-and-mobile-friendly-it-will-drive-sase-to-double-yearly-through-2025/

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Japan's Keio University carries 53 Gbps over plastic optical fiber

Researchers at Keio University developed a plastic optical fiber (POF) capable of carrying 53 Gbps error-free.

A part of this research result was published in the international academic journal " Optics Letters " (August 1, 2021). Details of the results of this research will be announced at the International Conference on Plastic Optical Fibers (POF2021) to be held in November 2021.

https://www.keio.ac.jp/ja/press-releases/2021/9/24/28-82658/

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NTT DATA collaborates with Mavenir on ORAN

NTT DATA and Mavenir Systems agreed to collaborate globally to provide products, solutions, systems and integration services for 5G networks based on cloud native, open architecture-based systems, including Open RAN to drive openness and virtualization in 5G networks. 

The two companies will combine various IT and telecommunication services, including integration services provided by NTT DATA worldwide, with Mavenir's Open Virtualized RAN (vRAN) solutions and Converged Packet Core to support the adoption of Open vRAN by telecommunications carriers and the realization of Digital Transformation by enterprises and telecom operators using 5G. NTT DATA and Mavenir will provide network services with the added value that open and virtualized 5G networks can bring. In particular, the two companies will prioritize and work closely together on pioneering projects to drive open architecture-based approaches in enabling bigger and broader ecosystems to unlock the true potential of 5G networks.

To date, NTT DATA and Mavenir have realized one of the first cloud-native 5G standalone (SA) campus networks at "Ensō – The Space for Creators" in Germany. 

NTT DOCOMO's Open RAN Ecosystem has also selected NTT DATA as a system integrator and Mavenir as a RAN software provider and is working to realize Open vRAN in telecom operators. Through these efforts, the two companies have enhanced the feasibility of their collaboration.

https://www.nttdata.com/global/en/media/press-release/2021/september/ntt-data-and-mavenir-to-collaborate-globally-on-5g-open-ran-based-networks

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Intel breaks ground on $20 billion fabs in AZ

Intel broke ground on two new fabs (52 and 62) at the company’s Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Arizona. When fully operational in 2024, the new fabs will manufacture Intel’s most advanced process technologies, including Intel 20A featuring the new RibbonFET and PowerVia innovations. The capacity is expected to be used for Intel's own products as well as for customers of the newly formed Intel Foundry Services.

“Today’s celebration marks an important milestone as we work to boost capacity and meet the incredible demand for semiconductors: the foundational technology for the digitization of everything. We are ushering in a new era of innovation – for Intel, for Arizona and for the world. This $20 billion expansion will bring our total investment in Arizona to more than $50 billion since opening the site over 40 years ago. As the only U.S.-based leading-edge chipmaker, we are committed to building on this long-term investment and helping the United States regain semiconductor leadership,” stated Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO.

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Acacia debuts single-carrier 1.2 Tbps pluggable powered by new DSP

Acacia, which is now part of Cisco, introduced the first, single-carrier 1.2 terabits per second (1.2T) faceplate pluggable coherent module powered by its "Jannu" 5nm CMOS digital signal processor (DSP) ASIC. 

The new 1.2 Tbps pluggable, which represents the 8th generation of Acacia's coherent module family, combines the Jannu DSP with 3D Siliconization packaging technology, including the silicon photonics integrated circuit (SiPh PIC), high-speed modulator driver and transimpedance amplifier (TIA) in a single opto-electronic package.

“Today is an exciting new milestone in Acacia’s history as we once again introduce an exciting new product that delivers the type of disruption needed to cost-effectively scale network capacity in the future,” said Mehrdad Givehchi, Sr. Director of Engineering for Hardware and Software and Founder at Acacia. “With every generation of product, we have been able to deliver higher transmission data rates, lower power consumption and higher performance and I am proud to see this new product carry on that legacy.”

Acacia notes that its new Coherent Interconnect Module 8 (CIM 8) can address transmission of multiple 400GbE client interfaces, delivering 1.2T per carrier capacity for high-capacity DCI interfaces and 800G per carrier capacity over most optical links using 4 bits/symbol (~16QAM) modulation.

The Jannu DSP features Acacia’s second-generation 3D Shaping technology, which leverages enhanced probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) algorithms and Adaptive Baud Rate. This provides continuous baud rate adjustment up to 140Gbaud to optimize utilization of available spectrum in a single-span or in cascaded ROADM paths. The Jannu DSP also includes Acacia’s advanced line-rate processing algorithms to efficiently overcome fiber transmission impairments over greenfield or brownfield fiber infrastructures. These power-efficient algorithms are designed to compensate linear and non-linear impairments, as well as provide state-of-polarization (SOP) tracking with industry leading response times. In addition, the Jannu DSP leverages Acacia’s new soft-decision error correction (SD-FEC) to further enhance performance.

https://acacia-inc.com/blog/acacia-unveils-industrys-first-single-carrier-1-2t-multi-haul-pluggable-module/

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Telefónica chooses IBM, Red Hat, Juniper for UNICA Next 5G core

Telefónica will use IBM intelligent automation software and services to implement UNICA Next – Telefónica's first-ever, cloud-native, 5G core network platform.

Specifically, Telefónica has engaged IBM Global Business Services, a leading systems integrator and the digital transformation services and consultancy arm of IBM, Red Hat and Juniper networking to deploy the cloud-native platform. The platform is planned to be a new open-standard open-networking technology compliant platform that will be deployed across multiple central, regional, and distributed data centers offering low latency and high bandwidth, while able to deliver services in an agile manner. UNICA Next data centers are planned to be deployed starting in October 2021 and its scalable architecture is designed to address ETSI and other relevant industry standards.

The new network is built on IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation, Red Hat OpenShift, and Juniper Networks Apstra and QFX technology aligned to deliver streamlined end-to-end orchestration and operations. 

IBM says the integration of its automation software  with UNICA Next allows for intent-driven orchestration supporting the end-to-end lifecycle management of different network cloud elements and network functions, including 5G core. 

"Building out the UNICA Next platform with its next-generation network architecture shows how important it is to build the infrastructure now to support the deployment of 5G. 5G has the potential to support thousands of use cases and applications for consumers and enterprises in all industries. Our collaboration will not only help us to harness the potential of 5G, but also prepare for the future through a hybrid-cloud led technology and business transformation. With IBM, Telefónica is combining the latency and bandwidth advancements of 5G with the customization and intelligence of the cloud: we anticipate the results will be transformative in Europe and beyond," said Javier Gutierrez, director of strategy, network, and IT development for Telefónica.

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2021-09-23-Telefonica-Chooses-IBM-To-Implement-Its-First-Ever-Cloud-Native-5G-Core-Network-Platform

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Ekinops expands collaboration with the b<>com research institute

Ekinops announced a new research collaboration with b<>com, a private Institute of Research and Technology in France with labs in Rennes, Paris, Brest, and Lannion.

The collaboration, which utilizes b<>com's private-public partnership model, will see the two organizations work together to develop technologies for private cloud infrastructures with use cases in eHealth, artificial intelligence and telecoms. The collaboration will focus on developing new generations of hardware and software platforms using a bare-metal "service containers" approach that optimizes resource allocation while meeting evolving connectivity demands in solutions that are robust, compact and easily integrated into any environment. It will also look to develop solutions that are flexible enough to host services that can support IoT or Edge Computing use cases, such as real-time pattern or object recognition, Cloud services while offering 4G, 5G or fiber access.

Ekinops has previously collaborated with b<>com on optical transport solutions.

"Having already successfully applied virtualization to business use cases with our OneOS6-LIM technology, this new research collaboration will allow us to address different environments and services. A bare-metal integrated container approach in OneOS6 would offer the benefits of both worlds of physical (pCPE) and virtualized (uCPE) platforms," comments Sylvain Quartier, VP Marketing & Product Strategy Access at Ekinops. "We are delighted to have found with b<>com, once again, ambitious technological innovation supporting companies, and it is with great motivation that we continue our collaboration with their experts," he adds.

"Our ambition is to imagine the private networks of tomorrow while meeting the needs of companies today," says Mathieu Lagrange, Director of Networks and Security at b<>com. "The challenges of the transformation that lies ahead are numerous, whether it is AI or real-time computing, for example, to serve the performance, resilience and security of these future networks. The results of our joint research will probably be applied first to very demanding uses in terms of security and processing of high-definition video streams with very low latency, for example in the healthcare field," he concludes.

"Ekinops' ambition is to have a product ready for the market in 2022. This will most likely apply to the field of cyber security, a strong topic for us in the context of our SD-WAN Xpress solution," adds Sylvain Quartier.

http://www.ekinops.com

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Equinix builds 5G edge-to-cloud sandbox with Nokia

Equinix has established a 5G and Edge Technology Development Center at its Infomart facility in Dallas to provide a production-ready interconnection sandbox environment from the radio network to the cloud. The facility includes a fully operational, non-standalone 5G network from Nokia to test and validate various 5G services and use cases. 

Equinix says its new 5G and Edge Technology Development Center will bring together mobile network operators (MNOs), cloud platforms, technology vendors and enterprises  to test, demonstrate and accelerate complex 5G and edge scenarios—key activities that will make 5G deployments available to enterprises in the future. Equinix Fabric directly, securely and dynamically connects distributed infrastructure and digital ecosystems on Platform Equinix. Customers can establish data center-to-data center network connections on demand between any two Equinix Fabric locations within a metro or globally via software-defined interconnection.

"As we look to a future where 5G is ubiquitous, the way that IP traffic moves between networks around the world will change completely, and interconnected data centers will play a crucial role in this new 5G-dominated future," said Sean Hemphill, VP Webscale Business at Nokia. "Equinix's approach to digital infrastructure enables access to a large ecosystem of end users and service providers. Nokia IP solutions underpin Equinix Fabric, providing seamless interconnection between its global data centers. We're pleased that Equinix Fabric will bring the power of interconnection to help customers test real-world 5G and edge deployments."

"As companies develop new 5G technologies and services, they need a real-world environment to test and bring their concepts to life," said Justin Dustzadeh, CTO, Equinix. "With Equinix's rich ecosystem of service providers, partners and clouds, the 5G and Edge Technology Development Center is an ideal place to fully test their concepts in a real way, enabling them to bring new capabilities to market, accelerate adoption and deliver new revenue streams faster."

Jim Poole, VP Business Development, Equinix added, "We're excited to invite private enterprises, commercial organizations and researchers across industries to Dallas to test, validate and accelerate complex 5G deployments and interoperability scenarios."

Equinix to acquire iconic Infomart Dallas colo data center for $800m

Wednesday, February 14, 2018  Equinix  

Equinix has agreed to acquire the Infomart Dallas data center, including its operations and tenants, from ASB Real Estate Investments for $800 million.

The iconic Infomart building, which is located at 1950 N. Stemmons Freeway in Dallas, is one of the largest interconnection hubs in the U.S. and one of the largest buildings in Texas at 1.6 million square feet (147,094.2 m2) over 7 floors.Infomart is currently home to four of eight Equinix Dallas International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers (DA1, DA2, DA3 and DA6), which combined, support approximately 3,500 built out cabinets.

Equinix said the transaction increases the number of its owned assets by four, increasing recurring revenue from owned assets to more than 45 percent. The facility offers multiple, diverse fiber entry points, and provides significant expansion opportunities to Equinix through the existing underdeveloped capacity (approximately 11MW of power), as well as the potential to develop additional capacity (approximately 40MW of power) on land adjacent to the Infomart building. It currently has approximately 45 tenants, including networks, colocation providers, office tenants and Equinix. Today, Equinix is the largest tenant accounting for approximately 40 percent of the lease revenues from the facilities

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BT to employ Oracle's Cloud Native Converged Policy Mgt

BT Group has selected Oracle Communications' Cloud Native Converged Policy Management to optimize its network resources and bring new 5G offerings to market faster. 

Oracle's solution will enable BT to quickly and seamlessly test and implement 5G services—such as live streaming and zero-rated 5G content—across its EE mobile network.

The policy design engine will enable BT to test and quickly implement new 5G service plans and experiences, such as live streaming and augmented reality (AR), reducing testing and implementation time to a matter of minutes, instead of months. Oracle's policy management will also give BT the flexibility to optimize network and subscriber resources to launch 5G-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) service offerings to consumer and enterprise customers.

"BT Group, and EE in particular, have a long-standing, successful track record with Oracle," said Howard Watson, Chief Technology Officer, BT. "As we move to this next evolution in networking, Oracle is helping us reduce complexity with solutions that ease the migration to 5G and provide the flexibility needed both to introduce innovative new services, and also ensure we're offering our customers the right levels of service according to their needs. Working with Oracle further supports our ambitions towards delivering a mobile network that continues to exceed customer expectations."

"Oracle Communications technology is helping forward-thinking operators such as BT, future-proof their 5G vision," said Andrew Morawski, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications, Networks. "With a unified, future-ready policy management platform, BT can optimize network resources appropriately and bring new, innovative services and experiences to customers more quickly."

https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/bt-and-oracle-accelerate-delivery-of-5g-services-2021-09-23/

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