2023 5G Challenge for O-RAN solutions offers $6M in prizes

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD), is kicking off a 2023 5G Challenge that aims to accelerate the adoption of 5G open interfaces, interoperable subsystems, secure networks and multi-vendor solutions by advancing towards true plug-and-play 5G interoperability.

The 5G Challenge offers over $6 million in prize money. 

Contestants will create 5G equipment prototypes and then test to see if their subsystems can connect to other contestant’s equipment. Currently, this type of plug and play operation does not exist in the marketplace. 

Applications opened today and must be submitted via email to 5gchallenge@ntia.gov by 7:00 p.m. ET on March 1, 2023. 

The largest prize of $3,000,000 will go to the top performing contestants that work together to demonstrate network mobility. 

A webinar on the competition will be held February 9.

“A competitive wireless ecosystem is vital for our domestic and economic security. The research conducted from this competition will benefit everything from our cellphones to the secure radio networks needed for our national defense,” said Alan Davidson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information. “To ensure the U.S. remains a global leader in wireless innovation, we are looking for a diverse set of companies and researchers from across the 5G industry to come together and participate to come together and participate in this challenge competition.” 

https://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2023/ntia-and-dod-launch-competition-accelerate-adoption-openran

https://www.challenge.gov/?challenge=2023-5g-challenge

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Meta trims 2023 data center construction plans

Meta reported Q4 and full year 2022 revenue of $32.17 billion and $116.61 billion, a decrease of 4% and 1% year-over-year for the fourth quarter and full year 2022, respectively. Q4 net income was $4.652 billion, down 55% compared to a year earlier.

Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $9.2 billion, driven by investments in servers, data centers, and network infrastructure.

For 2023, Meta expects capital expenditures to be in the range of $30-33 billion, lowered from a prior estimate of $34-37 billion. The reduced outlook reflects updated plans for lower data center construction spend in 2023 as we shift to a new data center architecture that is more cost efficient and can support both AI and non-AI workloads. Substantially all of the capital expenditures continue to support all of the company's apps.

In the quarterly investor conference call, Mark Zuckerberg stated "Before getting into our product priorities, I want to discuss my management theme for 2023, which is the "year of efficiency". We closed last year with some difficult layoffs and restructuring some teams. When we did this, I said clearly that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end. Since then, we've taken some additional steps like working with our infrastructure team on how to deliver our roadmap while spending less on capex."

Some additional metrics:

• Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 2.96 billion on average for December 2022, an increase of 5% year-over-year.
• Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 3.74 billion as of December 31, 2022, an increase of 4% year-over-year.
• Facebook daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 2.00 billion on average for December 2022, an increase of 4% year-over-year.
• Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.96 billion as of December 31, 2022, an increase of 2% year-over-year.

https://investor.fb.com/home/default.aspx

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BT migrates mainframe apps to the cloud with Kyndryl

BT Group’s Digital Unit is working with Kyndryl to migrate mainframe applications which service its legacy copper business and consumer broadband products to the cloud. 

The ten-year partnership, which draws on Kyndryl’s hyperscaler capabilities and partner ecosystem, will allow BT Group to reduce mainframe operating costs and energy consumption by 70%, leading to savings worth more than £17m a year by 2026.

“We like thinking out of the box to solve complex problems – like how to move off mainframes given the prohibitive increase in legacy infrastructure cost – without rewriting decades-old applications,” explains Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at BT Group. “With that mindset, working with Kyndryl, we figured out how to turn legacy mainframes into modern digital apps and run them at a fraction of the cost.” 

Kyndryl, which currently runs BT Group’s mainframe estate, extends its partnership with BT to deliver the transformation project by 2026, accelerating the drive to reduce cost and open up data insights within these key applications. As part of the project, some applications are being “retired” (contributing to the Group’s target to get to fewer than 500 strategic systems by 2027, simplifying its technology estate), “refactored” (redeveloped into BT Group’s existing strategic systems and architecture) or rehosted (repackaged to operate in a cloud environment).

“It’s exciting to be partnering with BT Group on such an ambitious and critical programme. Migrating from mainframes to cloud extends the usefulness and lifespan of these applications in a modern, micro-services led, cloud-centric way and helps unlock intelligent data insights. We’re excited to draw on our deep knowledge, ecosystem of partners and community of industry leading experts to help deliver this transformation,” comments Petra Goude, Global Practice Leader, Core Enterprise & zCloud, Kyndryl.

https://www.kyndryl.com/us/en/about-us/news/2023/01/bt-group-hires-kyndryl-mainframe-cloud

What's next for Private 5G in 2023?

Tuesday, January 24, 2023    

Where will Private 5G find the most traction in 2023?Here are 3 predictions from Kyndryl’s Paul Savill.https://youtu.be/xdp4W1-XFEY— Check out other 2023 Predictions —See what other experts have to say on NextGenInfra — Amplify your MWC 2023 presence —Looking to record your video for our channel for our MWC 2023 Showcase in Barcelona?  We will be there! Book your session now.&nb...

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EE activates 5G on the London Underground,

EE is activating 5G on the London Underground, with the network’s high-speed coverage live at three stations – Archway and Tufnell Park on the Northern line, as well as Notting Hill Gate on the Central line.

In addition to continuous 5G coverage from ticket hall to platform at all three stations, 5G is also live within the tunnel segment at Notting Hill Gate and the same will be true for Archway and Tufnell Park shortly.  

EE notes that he arrival of 5G comes just weeks after 4G landed on the Central and Northern lines for the first time.

Coverage is provided in partnership with BAI Communications.

https://newsroom.ee.co.uk/ee-delivers-5g-connectivity-to-the-london-underground-for-the-first-time/

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Mavenir powers OpenBeam radios with AMD RFSoC devices

Mavenir has incorporated the AMD Zynq Ultrascale+ RFSoC devices into its OpenBeam Radio Portfolio. The radio solutions can be used for a wide range of use cases, including basic coverage across all frequency bands, outdoor small cells, for public and private networks providing business and consumer services in both urban and rural environments.

Mavenir also confirmed that its Converged Packet Core has been validated on AMD EPYC CPUs. This means Mavenir’s cloud-native, fully containerized, virtualized Converged Packet Core (4G & 5G) solution can now be deployed on AMD EPYC server CPUs to provide CSPs with more options to implement virtual network functions in cloud data centers.

The elements validated include AMF, SMF, UPF, UDSF, NRF, NSSF, AUSF, UDM, and UDR network functions. Additionally, PCF, NEF, BSF, MME, SecGw, PCRF, MME and SGSN network functions will be validated in the coming months.

“Mavenir’s commitment to enabling networks built on software that runs on any cloud revolves around giving CSPs the ability to use the best components that fit their specific needs, in the cell-site and in the data center,” said Bejoy Pankajakshan, EVP, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, Mavenir. “Mavenir and AMD are working together to give CSPs multiple options and help them optimize power consumption, network efficiency and total cost of ownership in the radio access as well as the core network.”

“Cloud-native telecom networks empower CSPs with systems that offer flexibility, lower operational cost, ease of system management, and a broader ecosystem for value add, innovation, and upgrade capabilities as network requirements grow,” said Salil Raje, senior vice president and general manager, Data Center and Communications Group, AMD. “We are extremely proud of our close collaboration with Mavenir to help deliver exceptional TCO and predictable scalability along with high performance and power efficient solutions to telecommunications operators leveraging AMD data center products.”

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Pilot Photonics intros widely tunable laser

Pilot Photonics introduced a widely tunable laser module offering nanosecond switching and narrow linewidth.

Pilot Photonics said its laser is based on a monolithic InP chip fabricated on an active-passive platform. Electro-optic tuning with reverse-voltage bias of tuning sections allows mA-order dark currents and facilitates nanosecond switching speeds with low power dissipation. It offers more than 30nm of wavelength tuning range in either the C-band or the O-band, and linewidth of 150kHz. Currently available in 14-pin butterfly package or integrated into an OEM or laboratory instrument form-factor module, the
company is also developing a nano-iTLA module for high volume applications.

"We have been working with our partner SMART Photonics on a couple of innovative tunable laser designs made possible with their PIC platform" said Dr. Frank Smyth, founder and CTO at Pilot Photonics. "These devices target specific challenges that our customers are facing, and we are delighted to help solve them".

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MaxLinear posts Q4 revenue of $290.6 million, up 17% year-over-year

MaxLinear reported Q4 revenue of $290.6 million, up 2% sequentially and up 17% year-over-year. GAAP gross margin was 56.2%, compared to 58.6% in the prior quarter, and 57.2% in the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $1.07, compared to diluted earnings per share of $1.05 in the prior quarter, and diluted earnings per share of $0.86 in the year-ago quarter.

“In the fourth quarter, we continued our strong execution with revenue up 2% sequentially and up 17% year-over-year, bringing fiscal 2022 revenues to over $1 billion. In particular, in Q4, our Wi-Fi business delivered substantial sequential and year-over-year growth. Our connectivity category almost doubled in Q4 year-over-year, driven by our differentiated Wi-Fi6 feature set. Our results included strong cash flows from operations of approximately $69 million in Q4 and approximately $389 million for the full year. Over the last two years, we have delivered transformative growth and strong financials while balancing disciplined expense management along with investments in technology innovation. Now, as we enter 2023, we have conviction in our strong long-term growth prospects, owing to our developing technology leadership, accelerating design-win momentum, and expanding target markets, including Wi-Fi, fiber access, wireless and optical infrastructure. We are also looking forward to our pending acquisition of Silicon Motion, and are excited for the future growth opportunities of our comprehensive product portfolio,” commented Kishore Seendripu, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO.

MaxLinear to acquire Silicon Motion for NAND flash controllers

Thursday, May 05, 2022  MaxLinear, Mergers And Acquisitions, Silicon  

MaxLinear agreed to acquire Silicon Motion in a cash and stock transaction that values the combined company at $8 billion in enterprise value.Silicon Motion, which was founded in 1997 in Taipei, Taiwan, specializes in NAND flash controller integrated circuits for solid-state storage devices. The company claims that more NAND flash components, including current and up-coming generations of 3D flash produced by Intel, Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix,...

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Dell'Oro: Sustained broadband spending through 2027

Sales of PON equipment for fiber-to-the-home deployments, cable broadband access equipment, and fixed wireless CPE will all increase from 2022 to 2027, as service providers continue to expand their fiber and DOCSIS 4.0 networks, while expanding the types of services they deliver to residential subscribers, according to a recent report from Dell'Oro Group.

"Service providers around the world continue to transition their broadband networks to fiber and retire their existing copper and DSL networks," said Jeff Heynen, Vice President at Dell'Oro Group. "With markets expected to become more competitive, broadband providers will have to continue spending in order to differentiate their services not only by increasing advertised speeds, but also improving latency and expanding managed Wi-Fi services," added Heynen.

Additional highlights from the Broadband Access & Home Networking 5-Year January 2023 Forecast Report:

• PON equipment revenue is expected to grow from $11.0 B in 2022 to $13.2 B in 2027, driven largely by XGS-PON deployments in North America, EMEA, and CALA.
• Revenue for Cable Distributed Access Equipment (Virtual CCAP, Remote PHY Devices, Remote MACPHY Devices, and Remote OLTs) is expected to reach $1.5 B by 2027, as operators ramp their DOCSIS 4.0 and fiber deployments.
• Revenue for Fixed Wireless CPE is expected to reach $2.2 B by 2027, led by shipments of 5G sub-6GHz and 5G Millimeter Wave units.

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Colt connects to new Barcelona Cable Landing Station

Colt Technology Services (Colt) is the first carrier to connect to AFT-IX's new Barcelona Cable Landing Station (Barcelona CLS). 

AFR-IX Telecom is already using Colt’s network in the African market to provide an internet service to African operators and customers to connect them to European data centers via Colt’s routes.

Colt operates in more than 220 cities in over 30 countries and connects more than 1,000 data centres and over 31,000 connected buildings in the largest business centres in Europe, Asia and North America. Colt’s network in Spain and Portugal is already serving Lisbon, Bilbao, Madrid and Barcelona, and has 13 connection points to data centers in Barcelona.

Colt will be able to offer, from Barcelona CLS, services like  data centre interconnection (Data Centre Interconnect), inter-network traffic exchange (IP Transit) or dark fibre (non-active fibre optic circuits that enable the capacity of customers to be expanded in times of need).

Colt will enable Barcelona CLS to connect to Europe’s major digital hubs (Paris, London, Frankfurt) and provide an express terrestrial route to other key regional cable landing stations such as Lisbon, Bilbao and Marseilles, installing new submarine cables and capacity in the US, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Barcelona Cable Landing Station offers alternative to Marseille

Monday, January 18, 2021  Catalonia, Spain, Subsea  

A new Barcelona Cable Landing Station is expected to come into operation the first quarter of 2022 with the aim of being the digital port of reference in the Mediterranean. The facility, which is an initiative of AFR-IX Telecom, is the first international submarine cable landing station in Catalonia. Currently, Marseille is the primary landing point for most submarine fibre-optic cables of the Mediterranean. Organizers of the Barcelona Cable...

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Juniper reports strong Q4 momentum, sales up 11% yoy

Juniper Networks reported Q4 2022 revenue of $1,448.8 million, an increase of 11% year-over-year, and an increase of 2% sequentially. GAAP operating margin was 14.0%, an increase from 11.8% in the fourth quarter of 2021, and an increase from 10.6% in the third quarter of 2022.

“We experienced strong business momentum during the December quarter, including a second consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year revenue growth, a record performance by our enterprise business, and our second-highest cloud revenue quarter,” said Juniper’s CEO, Rami Rahim. “Our experience-first networking strategy, focused on leveraging AI and cloud-delivered automation to improve customer operations and the end-user experience, continues to resonate across the markets we serve. We believe our differentiated solutions, along with our go-to-market investments and strong backlog, should position us to deliver another year of solid revenue growth in 2023.”

“In addition to record revenue results, we achieved strong profitability during the December quarter, as non-GAAP gross and operating margin both exceeded the mid-point of our forecast and enabled us to beat the mid-point of our non-GAAP EPS outlook,” said Juniper’s CFO, Ken Miller. “We remain focused on delivering profitable growth and are confident in our ability to expand our non-GAAP operating margin by at least 100 basis points in 2023.”

On an investor conference call, Juniper executives noted a "normalization of buying patterns" amongst Cloud and Service Provider customers, following a a year in which many of these accounts placed multiple quarters of demand in advance of knowing requirements to account for extended lead times.

During the fourth quarter, total product orders declined more than 20% year-over-year. Adjusted orders declined single digits year-over-year, versus difficult comparison but grew sequentially. Juniper ended the year with backlog of more than $2.0 billion, which is down sequentially, but up on a year-over-year basis.

• Enterprise had record revenue and was the largest vertical in the fourth quarter, increasing 32% year-over-year and 16% sequentially, 14% year-over-year and increased 1% sequentially. 
• Service Provider declined 8% year-over-year and 10% seq revenue grew 30% year-over-year and 19% sequent grew 50% year-over-year and 13% sequentially. 
• Automated WAN was down 4% year-over-year and 10% sequentially.
• Total Software and Related Services revenue was $305 million, an increase of 26% year-over-year.
• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR3) grew 43% year-over-year. Juniper exited the year with $294 million in ARR.
• Total Security revenue was $169 million, up 5% year-over-year and up 21% sequentially.
• In reviewing  top 10 customers for the quarter, six were Cloud, three were Service Provider, and one was Enterprise. Our top 10 customers accounted for 34% of our total revenue as compared to 33% in Q4'21.

https://investor.juniper.net/investor-relations/events/default.aspx

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux now on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Red Hat and Oracle announced a multi-stage alliance to offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as a supported operating system. 

With this strategic collaboration, certified configurations of OCI flexible virtual machines can now run Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and customers can also migrate existing workloads already running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on OCI with greater confidence. OCI flexible virtual machines can scale in increments as small as a single CPU to optimize price-performance and minimize wasted resources. Customers can also contact both Red Hat and Oracle support to help resolve potential issues, with an expanded transparent, joint support agreement.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux forms the backbone of Red Hat’s hybrid cloud technology portfolio, which includes Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and additional technologies to support the modern cloud-native stack. With this collaboration, joint customers of Red Hat and Oracle can now create a foundation for future-forward computing deployments on Red Hat Enterprise Linux while still retaining the value of existing IT investments.

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Ciena upgrades Honotua subsea cable in French Polynesia

French Polynesian telecom operator ONATi, a subsidiary of the OPT French Polynesia Group, has selected Intelia and Ciena to increase the capacity of the Honotua international submarine cable to 300 Gbps. The last stage of operations was successfully carried out in October 2022 thanks to the engagement and expertise of the ONATi, Intelia and Ciena teams.

The Honotua international cable was upgraded using Ciena’s GeoMesh Solution powered by the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform and WaveLogic Ai technology providing 300 Gbps of capacity on a cable system supporting an upgrade path to 5 Tbps of total capacity. The Honotua international cable is a 4,500km submarine communication system that interconnects several islands of French Polynesia from Tahiti to Hawaii. The Honotua international cable system was deployed in 2009, and it is owned and operated by the OPT French Polynesia Group to supply connectivity to more than 220,000 mobile subscribers, 45,000 fixed internet customers and 16,000 audio-visual multimedia users.

Intelia served as the local integrator. 

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Orange Belgium and Telenet sign wholesale agreements

Orange Belgium, which serves over three million customers, and Telenet have signed two commercial fixed wholesale agreements, which entry into force is subject to the completion of the transaction related to the acquisition of 75% minus one share of VOO by Orange Belgium. 

The agreements will provide access to each other’s fixed networks for a 15-year period and cover both current Hybrid Fiber Coaxial and future Fiber to the Home technologies in both network areas. Orange Belgium believes these agreements will foster investment, benefit the customer and competition in the Belgian telecom market. Orange Belgium firstly secures an access to Telenet’s Hybrid Fiber Coaxial network and to its future Fiber to the Home network for 15 years, a key enabler to strengthen its nationwide convergent strategy. Secondly, Orange Belgium will provide Telenet wholesale access to VOO and Brutélé’s Hybrid Fiber Coaxial network and to its future Fiber to the Home network in the regions of Wallonia and Brussels-Capital. It will also secure Telenet as a wholesale customer, increasing network penetration and return on modernization investments.

Xavier Pichon, CEO of Orange Belgium, commented: "It is a major step forward in the deployment of our leading nationwide multi-gigabit strategy. With the acquisition of VOO, we have an ambitious investment plan to upgrade the network and to provide multi-gigabit connectivity to our customers. The agreement on the Telenet network, will complement our ability to provide a Hybrid Fiber Coaxial and Fiber to the Home multi-gigabit connectivity value proposition to our customers wherever they live. We also welcome Telenet as a wholesale customer on our future VOO network. These agreements will foster competition and network investments nationwide”.

https://newsroom.orange.com/orange-belgium-and-telenet-sign-two-commercial-wholesale-agreements-providing-access-to-each-others-hybrid-fiber-coaxial-and-fiber-to-the-home-networks/?lang=en

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Orange Group appoints CEOs for France and Spain

Jean-François Fallacher has been appointed CEO of Orange France effective April 3, replacing Fabienne Dulac, who is moving to a new role after eight years at the helm of Orange France. Fabienne Dulac will remain on the Executive Committee and will contribute to the deployment of the upcoming strategic plan.

Ludovic Pech, the current Chief Financial Officer of Orange Middle East & Africa, has been appointed CEO of Orange Spain, replacing Jean-François Fallacher who will remain a member of Orange Spain's Board of Directors.

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Frontier rolls with 5 Gbps fiber residential service

Frontier is launching a 5 Gig residential Internet service across its fiber network.

The 5 Gig offer starts at $154.99 a month with autopay and includes uncapped data + Wi-Fi router + free installation + premium tech support.

“We set a standard with network-wide 2 Gig internet last year, and now we’ve done it again,” said John Harrobin, Frontier’s Executive Vice President of Consumer. “Our 5 Gig offer meets the growing demand for multi-gig speeds and delivers the ‘un-cable’ experience by making the fastest upload and download speeds available throughout our fiber network.”

www.frontier.com

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NTT deploys Liquid Immersion Cooling at its new Mumbai data center

NTT Ltd., e of the world’s top 3 data center service providers, is deploying Liquid Immersion Cooling (LIC) and Direct Contact Liquid Cooling (DCLC) technologies at its Navi Mumbai Data Center. India becomes the first country across NTT’s global data center platform to deploy these alternative cooling technologies.

The one-of-its-kind facility is part of its Mahape campus, which has a capacity of 4.8 MW spread over 13,740 square feet area built. The campus is planned with the capacity for up to 4 data centers, reaching up to 150 MW of IT load. 

Speaking about this, Mr Sharad Sanghi, Managing Director of NTT Ltd. in India & Acting Senior Executive Vice President, Data Center and Marine Cable, NTT Ltd. said, “At NTT, we are guided by the principle of universal wellness, a people-first approach for our own personnel, the communities we operate in, and the overall global environment. The deployment of green data center technologies as demonstrated by this facility is going to be a tremendous validation for alternative cooling technologies. As India’s largest data center operator, we recognize the impact that DCLC and LIC cooling can have in significantly reducing the power consumption in future data centers. By successfully integrating these advanced processes, we have taken another step in building a connected future in a sustainable and responsible manner on a global scale.”

NTT Ltd. expands its global data center ambitions

Wednesday, August 19, 2020  Data Centers, NTT  

NTT Ltd.’s Global Data Centers division is preparing to launch new data center capacity in India, the UK, Japan, USA, Germany, Malaysia and Indonesia.  When fully complete, these data centers will provide over 400 megawatts (MW) of IT load across these markets. Plans include:a Mumbai, India – NTT Ltd. will go live with its new Mumbai 7 Data Center by Q3 2020 in its Chandivali campus. The Mumbai 7 Data Center will offer 25 MW of IT load....

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NTT DOCOMO demos indoor 5G base station with multisector antenna

NTT DOCOMO, Nihon Dengyo Kosaku, and Fujitsu Ltd.  demonstrated a 5G indoor base station incorporating a multisector antenna using the 28GHz band.

The prototype device incorporates circuitry just 1/10th the size of a conventional indoor base station,.

The demonstration, in which a conventional 5G base station control unit communicated with the new device via a 28GHz signal, confirmed that a single multisector antenna can receive radio waves in all directions using radio beam control. DOCOMO previously measured the directivity of a single element in a multisector antenna in 2022, but the DOCOMO believes that this was the world's first demonstration to use a multisector antenna in a 5G base station equipped for radio beam control.

A multisector antenna divides its surrounding 360-degree space into multiple areas (sectors) for transmitting and receiving radio waves simultaneously and independently in each sector. The antenna used in the demonstration contained 12 directional elements arranged in a radial pattern, each of which effectively transmitted and received radio waves in a specific direction. 

https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/

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Antel tests VMware's Telco Cloud Platform

Antel, the leading Mobile Operator in Uruguay, is testing the VMware Telco Cloud Platform to support a Proof of Concept (PoC).

VMware says its cloud native architecture will help Antel gain operational efficiencies and bring services and innovation to market faster. Using this integrated platform will allow Antel to deploy new network functions on the same Telco Cloud architecture from core to RAN to edge, enabling the scale and agility needed to deliver services on the 5G network.

This PoC between Antel and VMware was made possible with the help of AT Innovando Juntos, a local partner; the three companies are working together to help Antel build a world class 5G network to support the growing demands of the consumer and enterprise customers in Uruguay.

www.vmware.com

Video: Multi-Cloud Flexibility for Telco Cloud and Edge (VMware)

Thursday, January 19, 2023    

 -- Check out our 2023 Telco Cloud and Edge Site --Download latest report on Telco Cloud at NextGenInfraThe advent of 5G is driving deep changes in the way that telcos deploy and manage their networks. Telco Cloud infrastructure must adopt a distributed, multi-cloud architecture. It must also be ready to leverage public cloud capabilities to benefit from new business opportunities.Here are the insider views of Ram Venketaramani, Senior Director,...

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LightRiver signs with Brazil's Precision Solutions

LightRiver, an optical network integration solution provider, announced a partnership with Brazil-based Precision Solutions to transform how organizations in South America can manage and view their optical network hardware regardless of their current vendor(s). 

LightRiver's netFLEX Transport Domain Orchestration and Control Software solution is a network automation platform designed to address the complexities of disparate optical transport networks, suppliers, and technologies.

"Precision Solutions is well known as a high-quality, cost-effective integrator in the South American market, and LightRiver's netFLEX is an essential addition to our product portfolio as it helps our customers to manage their networks effectively," comments Eduardo Ken, CEO of Precision Solutions. "The South American market, specifically Brazil, has several customer tiers. From big international players to small ISPs, all of them will benefit from the operational capacity and simplicity that only netFLEX can offer."

"We are honored to work with Precision Solutions and expand our netFLEX offering on a greater global scale," states Mike Jonas, President, Global Customer Operations for LightRiver. "Our award-winning netFLEX serves as an essential tool for companies worldwide, ensuring customers' success with optical networking and management."

The partnership between LightRiver and Precision Solutions will cover the resale and first-tier local support for netFLEX in the region. It also gives existing netFLEX customers the advantage of having the first technical support tier in its native language.

https://lightriver.com.

https://www.precisionsolutions.com.br

Private investment firm acquires LightRiver

Monday, April 04, 2022  Lightriver  

Grain Management, a leading private investment firm, has acquired LightRiver’s Technologies & Software entities from CVF Capital Partners and Plexus Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed.Since its establishment in 1998, LightRiver has delivered over $1 billion in carrier-grade transport network solutions, including certified design, professional staging services, deployment services, and network automation products to over 150 clients in...

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Qwilt supplies its Open Caching for Japan's J:Com

J:COM, Japan’s leading cable broadband and multi-channel video provider, is now using  Qwilt’s Open Caching in its video delivery network.

The deployment brings streaming content closer to J:COM’s 5.62 million subscribing households than ever before, enabling a superior over-the-top (OTT) streaming experience for J:COM customers.

The solution is comprised of Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud, which provides Quality-as-a-Service content delivery, pushing content caching and delivery far out to the edge of the carrier network.

J:COM, which initially deployed Qwilt’s first-generation caching product in 2016, now has Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud solution deeply embedded within its network, moving content closer to J:COM subscribers than any other commercial or private CDN. Qwilt’s solution reduces the cost of building network capacity and substantially improves delivery quality to ensure J:COM can scale for less and serve media and applications at the highest quality.

J:COM has 28 Qwilt Open Caching nodes in Japan and content publishers are already delivering content on the Qwilt platform. For example, on April 9th, 2022, J:COM leveraged the platform to deliver live streams of Japan's highly anticipated middleweight unification boxing fight between Gennadiy Golovkin and Ryota Murata.

Qwilt notes that each low-cost edge server can be utilized by other virtual network function (VNF) based services making it cost-effective enough to distribute throughout the service provider’s access network. The partnership allows J:COM to rapidly scale up and creates a foundation for future use cases, including site delivery and edge computing.

Jiro Inoue, Network Operation at J:COM, said: “As demand for live video streaming increases, so too does our need to create a scalable network that equips us for the future of content delivery. Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud solution significantly boosts our network capacity and accelerates our ability to deliver reliable, high-quality live and VoD streaming throughout Japan. We were delighted with the results of our use of Qwilt’s platform to stream the Golovkin vs. Murata fight. The outcome was a flawless streaming experience of the highest quality to our viewers across Japan.”

https://www.qwilt.com

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