Google and partners plan new subsea cables in South Pacific

Google, in partnership with In collaboration with a number of partners, including Fiji International Telecommunications, Office of Posts and Telecommunications of French Polynesia, APTelecom and Vocus Group, announced plans for two new subsea cables connecting Fiji and French Polynesia to both the United States and Australia.

• Honomoana, named after the Polynesian word for “link” (hono) and “ocean” (moana), will connect the United States and Australia to French Polynesia. 
• Tabua, named after a sacred Fijian whale’s tooth, will connect the United States and Australia to Fiji.

In addition, the South Pacific Connect initiative will construct physically diverse cable landing stations in Fiji and French Polynesia and connect them with an interlink cable. This will serve to connect transpacific routes, improve reliability, add capacity, and reduce latency for users in the Pacific Islands and around the world.

The South Pacific Connect initiative will create a ring between Australia, Fiji and French Polynesia. This ring will include pre-positioned branching units that will allow other countries and territories of Oceania to join. 

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/honomoana-and-tabua-subsea-cables-connect-south-pacific

• In September, Google announced plans for Nuvem, a cable to connect Portugal, Bermuda, and the United States. Named after the Portuguese word for “cloud,” is expected to be ready for service in 2026.

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AWS announces independent sovereign cloud in Europe

Amazon plans to launch the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a new, independent cloud for Europe. The new service will use data centers within the EU that are separate and independent from the company's existing Regions.

Amazon says the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be sovereign-by-design, and will be built on more than a decade of experience operating multiple independent clouds for the most critical and restricted workloads. It will also be built with separate, in-Region billing and usage metering systems.

The new AWS European Sovereign Cloud promises the same security, availability, and performance as existing Regions. To deliver enhanced operational resilience within the EU, only EU residents who are located in the EU will have control of the operations and support for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud 

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will launch its first AWS Region in Germany available to all European customers.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-digital-sovereignty-pledge-announcing-a-new-independent-sovereign-cloud-in-europe/

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ESnet activates 400G to four DOE National Lab

The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) activated 400G circuits to four of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories and user facilities: Argonne National Laboratory, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. 

ESnet notes that most of the data-intensive national labs will be upgrading to 400G service in the coming months. This includes Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as well as CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva whose Large Hadron Collider is one of ESnet’s largest data sources. 

The 400G circuit installations were made possible by the 2022 launch of ESnet6, the sixth iteration of ESnet’s critical data circulatory system for the DOE Office of Science research complex. ESnet6 was specifically designed to support multi-facility collaborations aligned with the DOE’s new Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) initiative, to help DOE researchers and their international collaborators effectively harness the barrage of data generated by artificial intelligence, high-resolution instrument imagery, complex long-term global studies, and more. ESnet’s traffic is increasing by a factor of 10 every 5.5 years; in 2022, the total exceeded 1.36 exabytes.

“It’s of vital importance that scientific researchers not be hindered by where they or their project’s instruments, computational resources, and data might be located,” said Inder Monga, executive director of ESnet. “Enabling 400G, which represents the networking industry’s current gold standard, will help facilitate that kind of seamless collaboration. We look forward to turning on 400G for more sites — and to upgrading to 800G as the technology begins to be available.”   

https://www.es.net/news-and-publications/esnet-news/2023/esnet-turns-on-400g-circuits-to-four-doe-national-labs/

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Cisco looks to NVIDIA AI to power Hybrid Workspaces

Cisco is working with NVIDIA to deliver AI-powered meetings for hybrid workers. 

Cisco is launching Room Kit EQX and expanding its Cinematic Meetings capabilities — both powered by NVIDIA’s AI engine — with the goal of enhancing collaboration experiences with audio and video intelligence and enabling more equitable hybrid meetings. 

The Room Kit EQX is a new, integrated collaboration solution that allows customers to deploy beautiful, future-of-meeting rooms simply and consistently across sites.  

Cisco’s Cinematic Meetings capabilities leverage an NVIDIA Jetson system-on-module to deliver collaboration experiences that reduce the impact of distance and make all meeting attendees feel like they’re in the room, even if they aren’t, a concept Cisco is calling Distance Zero.

"In order for people to want to come to the office, companies must fundamentally reimagine and reconfigure workspaces to provide seamless and immersive collaboration experience,” said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Security and Collaboration. "Our collaboration with NVIDIA helps make this possible as we expand our portfolio of AI-powered solutions that unlock the potential of hybrid workers.” 

“Edge AI is playing a vital role in bringing autonomy and improving productivity across many industries,” said Deepu Talla, Vice President of Embedded and Edge Computing, NVIDIA. “Cisco and NVIDIA have been pioneering the use of AI to enhance collaboration in the workplace, and the new line of products will bring transformative technology to this space.” 

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Cisco makes an investment in Aliro Quantum

Aliro Quantum, a start-up based in Boston, announced that Cisco Investments participated in its recently announced round of funding, joining Accenture Ventures and lead investor Flybridge Leaders Fund.

Aliro Quantum is developing foundational technologies needed for quantum networks and has filed ten patents that include 124 claims. The company has launched AliroNet, a non-QKD multipurpose entanglement-based secure network solution. Aliro is also providing the quantum network configuration, control and orchestration for the EPB Quantum Network powered by Qubitekk, America’s first industry-led, commercially available quantum network. The company was founded in 2019 by Dr. Prineha Narang, an Assistant Professor at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. 

“Quantum networking is key to the future of secure networking,” said Bill Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Optical Systems and Optics. “Through this investment, we are excited to support Aliro in advancing its research and development in this next stage of its growth."

https://www.aliroquantum.com/

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Rambus unveils 9.6 Gbps HBM3 Memory Controller IP

Rambus announced that its HBM3 Memory Controller IP is now capable of up to 9.6 Gbps performance. This represents a 50% increase over the HBM3 Gen1 data rate of 6.4 Gbps. 

The Rambus HBM3 Memory Controller can enable a total memory throughput of over 1.2 Terabytes per second (TB/s) for training of recommender systems, generative AI and other demanding data center workloads.

“HBM3 is the memory of choice for AI/ML training, with large language models requiring the constant advancement of high-performance memory technologies,” said Neeraj Paliwal, general manager of Silicon IP at Rambus. “Thanks to Rambus innovation and engineering excellence, we’re delivering the industry’s leading-edge performance of 9.6 Gbps in our HBM3 Memory Controller IP.”

“HBM is a crucial memory technology for faster, more efficient processing of large AI training and inferencing sets, such as those used for generative AI,” said Soo-Kyoum Kim, vice president, memory semiconductors at IDC. “It is critical that HBM IP providers like Rambus continually advance performance to enable leading-edge AI accelerators that meet the demanding requirements of the market.”

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MaxLinear posts Q3 sales of $135.5M, down 53% yoy

MaxLinear reported Q3 net revenue og $135.5 million, down 26% sequentially and down 53% year-over-year. Non-GAAP gross margin was 60.8%. This compares to 61.0% in the prior quarter, and 62.0% in the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.02, compared to $0.34 in the prior quarter, and $1.05 in the year-ago quarter.

“In the third quarter, we delivered $135.5 million in revenues. Our infrastructure category was up 1% sequentially and 40% year over year, primarily driven by the expanding roll-out of multi-band millimeter wave and microwave 5G wireless backhaul platform solutions.

“Even as we navigate a challenging demand environment with fiscal discipline and operational efficiency, our solid execution and innovative product offerings are enabling us to maximize strategic business opportunities across all our end markets. In 2023, we continue to lay important groundwork in Wi-Fi, ethernet, fiber broadband access gateways, and wireless and optical datacenter network infrastructure, which will be the foundation for potential future growth,” commented Kishore Seendripu, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO.

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Arelion appoints Daniel Kurgan as CEO

Arelion announced the appointment of Daniel Kurgan as President and CEO of Arelion, replacing Staffan Göjeryd who is stepping down after seven years at the helm.

Daniel Kurgan, Board Executive of Arelion since January 2022, has more than 25 years of experience from the industry and several leading positions, including 14 years as CEO of BICS, Chairman of TeleSign, Chairman of Intercloud and Senior Advisor at Drake Star. 

“Arelion enters a new chapter as an independent company after the completed spin-off from Telia, and it is the Board’s assessment that the company’s long-term development will benefit from a new leadership. We are therefore pleased to appoint Daniel Kurgan as CEO for Arelion,” said Eva Elmstedt, Chairman of the Board. “With a proven track-record from leading positions in the industry, Daniel brings with him the experience and qualifications required to lead Arelion on this new journey. Having been on the Board for two years, he is also well familiar with the company and its culture.”

“I am honored to be appointed as CEO of Arelion. As a provider of the world’s best-connected IP backbone, our mission is to enable our customers’ growth, and to grow with them, and I am excited to build on that position in an operative role”, said Daniel Kurgan. “Having had the opportunity to be part of Arelion’s transformative journey, I know the immense potential of the company and now, as an independent company, we are in the position to realize it. I’m looking forward to working closely with the Board on the implementation of our growth strategy and to working together with all our talented people to keep the world connected.”

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Crehan: Merchant-built Ethernet SmartNIC revenues up 3X

 Revenues for the merchant-built Ethernet smartNIC market, which includes Data Processing Units (DPUs) and Infrastructure Process Units (IPUs), more than tripled year-over-year in the first half of calendar-year 2023, according to a recent report from Crehan Research Inc. This is the second consecutive half- year period in which revenues have more than tripled, result in merchant-built Ethernet SmartNICs now comprising over 20% of total merchant-built server-class Ethernet NIC market revenue (see accompanying chart).

“Up until recently, the SmartNIC market ramp was driven by a couple of the largest hyper-scale cloud service providers building their own proprietary SmartNICs for in-house deployments,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “But now, with the ramp of merchant-built SmartNICs, we are moving toward broader market and customer adoption of these products.”

Crehan’s report shows that Intel’s IPUs were the largest single contributor to the SmartNIC market increase, helped by Google Cloud deployments of these products in its C3 instances for VMS and hyperdisk block storage and, more recently, in its A3 GPU supercomputer for generative AI and large language models. Intel’s strong IPU growth helped propel its total server-class Ethernet NIC revenue market share (Foundational/Performance NICs and SmartNICs) to the top position for merchant-built server-class Ethernet NICs. AMD/Pensando has also experienced strong growth in existing and new DPU deployments, from customers including Goldman Sachs, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, NetApp, and Oracle Cloud. Nvidia was another vendor with a robust DPU increase, but instead of Ethernet, most of that increase resulted from the company's InfiniBand DPUs supporting very strong growth in its HGX Hopper and Ampere GPU-based systems.

"Despite the recent big increase in merchant-built Ethernet SmartNIC/DPU/IPU revenues, we are still in the early stages of this market, with many different

competing vendors and architectures," Crehan said. "Consequently, market shares can change significantly in a short amount of time, as evidenced by Intel’s IPU share gains."

https://crehanresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CREHAN-Data-Center-Networking-CR-October-2023.pdf

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Microsoft posts 29% growth in Azure sales

Citing growth in cloud services, Microsoft reported quartler revenue of $56.5 billion, an increase of 13% (up 12% in constant currency), net income of $22.3 billion, up 27% (up 26% in constant currency), with diluted earnings per share was $2.99 and increased 27% (up 26% in constant currency).

“With copilots, we are making the age of AI real for people and businesses everywhere,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We are rapidly infusing AI across every layer of the tech stack and for every role and business process to drive productivity gains for our customers.”

“Consistent execution by our sales teams and partners drove a strong start to the fiscal year with Microsoft Cloud revenue of $31.8 billion, up 24% (up 23% in constant currency) year-over-year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

Business Highlights

Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $18.6 billion and increased 13% (up 12% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:

• Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 15% (up 14% in constant currency) driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 18% (up 17% in constant currency)
• Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 3% (up 4% in constant currency) and Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers grew to 76.7 million
• LinkedIn revenue increased 8%
• Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 22% (up 21% in constant currency) driven by Dynamics 365 revenue growth of 28% (up 26% in constant currency)

Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $24.3 billion and increased 19%, with the following business highlights:

• Server products and cloud services revenue increased 21% driven by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 29% (up 28% in constant currency)

Revenue in More Personal Computing was $13.7 billion and increased 3% (up 2% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:

• Windows revenue increased 5% with Windows OEM revenue growth of 4% and Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue growth of 8%
• Devices revenue decreased 22%
• Xbox content and services revenue increased 13% (up 12% in constant currency)
• Search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 10% (up 9% in constant currency)

https://news.microsoft.com/2023/10/24/microsoft-cloud-strength-fuels-first-quarter-results-3/

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Advanced Photonics Coalition targets ecosystem building blocks

A new Advanced Photonics Coalition was announced at the OpticaPhotonic-Enabled Cloud Computing Industry Summit, which was hosted at Juniper Networks’ Aspiration Dome in Sunnyvale, California.

Picking up on the previous Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO), APC aims to foster cooperation across all corners of the ecosystem.

“Our mission is for optical fabs to be leading and creating the world's best technology in terms of reliability, validation, and trust. This allows for the creation of building blocks for Silicon Photonics ICs that are put together in an assured way using foundry Process Development Kit to accelerate production.”

https://www.advanced-photonics.org

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Alphabet's Google Cloud posts $8.41 billion in sales in Q3

Alphabet reported quarterly revenue of $77 billion, up 11% over the same period last year.

Google Cloud accounted for $8.411 billion, compared to $6.868 billion a year ago.

Sundar Pichai, CEO, said: “I’m pleased with our financial results and our product momentum this quarter, with AI- driven innovations across Search, YouTube, Cloud, our Pixel devices and more. We’re continuing to focus on making AI more helpful for everyone; there’s exciting progress and lots more to come.”

Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer; CFO said: “The fundamental strength of our business was apparent again in Q3, with $77 billion in revenue, up 11% year over year, driven by meaningful growth in Search and YouTube, and momentum in Cloud. We continue to focus on judicious capital allocation to deliver sustainable financial value.”

https://abc.xyz/investor/

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Verizon's Q3 revenue dips .6%, dividend increased

Verizon reported total operating revenue of $33.3 billion for Q3, a decrease of 2.6 percent from Q3 2022. Net income was $4.9 billion, a decrease of 2.8 percent from Q3 2022.

"We continued to make steady progress in the third quarter with a clear focus on growing wireless service revenue, delivering healthy consolidated adjusted EBITDA and increasing free cash flow," said Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg. "Our financial discipline, combined with our healthy balance sheet, enabled us to increase our dividend for the 17th consecutive year, which is the longest current streak of dividend increases in the U.S. telecom industry."

Highlights:

• Total broadband net additions of 434,000, representing the fourth consecutive quarter that Verizon reported more than 400,000 broadband net additions. Total broadband net additions included 384,000 fixed wireless net additions, an increase of 42,000 fixed wireless net additions from third-quarter 2022. Verizon now has approximately 10.3 million total broadband subscribers, including nearly 2.7 million subscribers on its fixed wireless service.
• 72,000 Fios Internet net additions, an increase from 61,000 Fios Internet net additions in third-quarter 2022. 
• Total wireless service revenue2 of $19.3 billion, a 2.9 percent increase year over year.
• Postpaid phone net additions of 100,000, and retail postpaid net additions of 581,000.
• Total retail postpaid churn of 1.15 percent, and retail postpaid phone churn of 0.90 percent.
• Wireless service revenue increased 2.9 percent year over year. This increase was driven by growth in retail postpaid Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA), partially offset by a decline in retail postpaid phone connections and prepaid connections.
• Total Verizon Business revenue was $7.5 billion in third-quarter 2023, a decrease of 4.0 percent year over year. Lower wireline revenue and lower wireless equipment revenue was partially offset by higher wireless service revenue.
• Business wireless service revenue was $3.4 billion, an increase of 2.9 percent year over year. This growth was driven by continued strong net additions and pricing actions implemented in recent quarters. 
• Business reported 330,000 wireless retail postpaid net additions in third-quarter 2023, including 151,000 postpaid phone net additions. This was the ninth consecutive quarter that Business reported more than 125,000 postpaid phone net additions. Business continues to grow volumes and expand its relationships with customers strengthening its position as a wireless market share leader.

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-reports-strong-3q-results-momentum-raises-free-cash-flow-guidance

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Orange Q3 revenues up 1.8%

Orange Group reported revenues for the third quarter of 2023 were 10,999 million euros, an increase of 1.8%, or 194 million euros, year on year (compared with +2.6% in 2Q and +2.0% in H1). 

Revenue growth in the quarter was driven by retail services [2], which grew by 3.8%, or 304 million euros (+4.3% in 2Q and +3.6% in H1). This increase, in absolute terms, was more than double the decline in revenues from wholesale services, which continued to decrease, falling 6.7% or -123 million euros (-4.1% in 2Q and -5.9% in H1).

In France, continued growth in retail services excluding PSTN (+3.4%) and in mobile equipment sales (+3.0%) offset the anticipated decline in wholesale services revenues. Revenues thus continued their improvement, falling -0.5% (-1.3% in 2Q and -1.8% in 1Q).

In Europe, revenues from retail services continued to grow, up 2.3%, thanks to the value strategy and in spite of an unfavorable baseline effect related to progressive price increases during 2022. 

Africa & Middle East continued to post very strong growth of 12.2%, driven by double-digit increases in its four growth engines (+17.8% for mobile data, +17.0% for fixed broadband, +28.2% for Orange Money and +20.3% for B2B across the board).

Growth in IT & Integration services revenues in the Enterprise sector accelerated to 9.3% (+8.8% in 2Q and +7.1% in H1) and more than offset the structural decline in the Voice and Data legacy businesses. Enterprise revenues increased 0.6%, reflecting stable mobile revenues, with the growth in services being offset by the decrease in equipment sales.

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Ceragon Networks to acquire Siklu

Ceragon Networks agreed to acquire Siklu, a provider of multi-Gigabit “wireless fiber” connectivity in urban, suburban and rural areas, for an enterprise value of $13-15 million. 

As consideration to Siklu’s shareholders, Ceragon will issue approximately 1.5 million ordinary shares. Ceragon is expected to assume financial liabilities of approximately $10-12 million, of which approximately $2.5 million are classified as long-term debt.

Ceragon is expected to generate approximately $25-$29 million in incremental 2024 revenue from this acquisition. The acquisition is expected to be accretive to the consolidated gross margins of Ceragon as Siklu’s margins are at levels significantly higher than Ceragon’s historical margins. Ceragon management expects the combination to improve Siklu’s results by leveraging Ceragon’s working capital management capabilities, as well as expanded profitability following synergies. Inclusive of these business improvements, management anticipates the transaction to be accretive to non-GAAP earnings by the second half of 2024.

Doron Arazi, Ceragon CEO, said “We expect this combination to accelerate our growth strategy, by improving our key financial metrics and reducing customer concentration in the short and long run. We have identified near-term opportunities to bring Siklu products to regions and customers where Ceragon has an established presence, and, for the longer term, to combine Ceragon products to create a more comprehensive offering primarily to private networks and small service providers in general, and leveraging Siklu’s millimeter-wave leadership position in North America to increase our presence in this key market in particular.”

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#OCPSummit23: 800ZR/ZR+ OSFP for Regional Data Center Interconnects

 A new class of 800 Gbps ZR/ZR+ coherent pluggable optical modules are about to arrive on the scene for connecting data centers across metro and regional distances. Radha Nagarajan, SVP and CTO, Optical and Cloud from Marvell, gives us the run down:

• These new pluggable modules are designed to convert a switch or a router into a transport platform, capable of connecting data centers with a single hop up to 120 km or multiple hops up to several hundred kilometers.
• The significance of increasing data rates inside data centers, enabling a single fiber capacity of 25.6 terabits between data centers, allowing for larger aggregation of data to pass between data centers.
• The success of 800G depends on multiple factors including Marvell's new Orion DSP, which was released in the middle of this year, high-speed TIAs, drivers, and silicon photonics

https://youtu.be/2Ku1LENjzbE

Filmed at OCP Summit 2023 (#OCPSummit23) in San Jose. Want to be involved our video series? Contact info@nextgeninfra.io

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#OCPSummit23: Future Tech Symposium - AI, Quantum, Sustainability

 Wondering how to get involved in the future of technology and showcase your innovative ideas to a global audience? Lesya Dymyd, OCP Future Tech Symposium Chair from Open Compute Project, explains:

• The Future Technology Symposium is a global forum that invites industry professionals, researchers, and startups to submit papers, attend, and present their work to a global audience. The symposium covers five technological tracks including data center sustainability, Network AI HPC, Quantum, and server power.
• The submission process involves submitting a two-page paper in the IE format. Selected authors get the opportunity to present at the global or regional summit. The symposium also includes poster sessions and tech demos, providing a platform to visually represent and demonstrate your R&D projects.
• The Future Technology Symposium is an excellent opportunity for individuals from various backgrounds - professors, research assistants, students, and startup entrepreneurs - to find the right audience and get feedback on their research. The next Future Technology Symposium will take place on April 24 and 25th in Lisbon, Portugal.

https://youtu.be/1UaLSemH4W8

Join us in shaping the future of technology and submit your papers for the upcoming symposium. Stay tuned for the call for papers!

Filmed at OCP Summit 2023 (#OCPSummit23) in San Jose. Want to be involved our video series? Contact info@nextgeninfra.io

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SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom develop LLM for telcos

SK Telecom (SKT) and Deutsche Telekom will jointly develop an industry-specific language model (LLM) to serve as a digital assistant in customer service.

SKT and Deutsche Telekom plan to collaborate with AI companies such as Anthropic (Claude 2) and Meta (LLaMa2) to co-develop a multilingual – i.e, German, English, Korean, etc. - large language model (LLM) tailored to the needs of telcos. They plan to unveil the first version of the telco-specific LLM in the first quarter of 2024.  The aim is to support telecommunications companies, e.g. in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, in setting up their own digital assistants based on generative AI. 

“AI shows impressive potential to significantly enhance human problem-solving capabilities. To maximize its use especially in customer service, we need to adapt existing large language models and train them with our unique data. This will elevate our generative AI tools," says Claudia Nemat, Member of the Board of Management for Technology and Innovation at Deutsche Telekom.

“Through our partnership with Deutsche Telekom, we have secured a strong opportunity and momentum to gain global AI leadership and drive new growth,” said Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT. “By combining the strengths and capabilities of the two companies in AI technology, platform and infrastructure, we expect to empower enterprises in many different industries to deliver new and higher value to their customers.” 

This marks the start of the "Global Telco AI Alliance" of Deutsche Telekom, e&, Singtel and SK Telecom, which was announced in the summer. 

Deutsche Telekom's "Ask Magenta Voice" is now available on the mobile phone hotline. Customers are no longer asked to present their concerns in several levels in keywords, but can speak it freely in natural language, as was already the case in the chat. 

https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/sk-telecom-and-deutsche-telekom-to-jointly-develop-llm-1051746

Global Telco AI Alliance gets underway

Thursday, July 27, 2023    

A new Global Telco AI Alliance backed by SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, e& and Singtel aims to transform the existing telco business and create new business opportunities with AI services.Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in Seoul, the four carriers agreed to jointly develop a Telco AI Platform to serve as the core foundation for new AI services, including those designed to improve the existing telco services, digital assistants,...

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Telefónica Tech opens Virtual Data Center in Barcelona

Telefónica Tech is expanding its global Virtual Data Center (VDC) service with the launch of a new node in Catalonia in the Terrassa (Barcelona) data center. Telefónica Tech will now be able to offer companies and local administrations a cloud service, managed or self-managed, integrated with communications, security, hosting and housing solutions in the same data center.

The ‘Virtual Data Center’ service, based on technology from multiple leading manufacturers such as VMware or Zeto and its own innovations, allows companies to host applications in a secure environment and create hybrid environments from private clouds hosted in the customer’s own facilities or from Nabiax data centers, from which Telefónica provides its services.

The deployment of this new node will facilitate the digital transformation of catalan companies by offering them a flexible, elastic and customisable virtual platform to migrate their systems to the cloud. With the ‘Virtual Data Center’ service deployed in Catalonia, Telefónica Tech brings the cloud to Catalan customers who need geographic proximity and minimum computation and processing latencies. In addition, the service allows companies to avoid making investments in equipment and pay only for usage, allocating resources according to business needs.

Telefónica Tech’s Virtual Data Center service also has high security standards and contributes to guaranteeing data sovereignty. To this end, it has a data center designed to offer maximum levels of availability and various value-added services, such as GPUs, backup, disaster recovery, Kubernetes, multi-factor authentication and encryption of virtual machines. In addition, the Virtual Data Center service has all the operational procedures and controls aligned with ISO 27000, SOC 1/2 and the European Security Level Scheme (ENS) certifications.

https://www.telefonica.com/en/communication-room/press-room/telefonica-tech-expands-its-vdc-service-with-a-new-node-in-barcelona/

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NBN Co cuts wholesale prices despite inflation

NBN Co’s new wholesale prices, which come into effect on 1 December 2023, will see significant reductions in the prices of entry level and higher speed tiers.

• The 12/1 Mbps Basic Bundle, which has been discounted by $10 to be available for a wholesale price of $12. 
• The 25/5 Mbps product has been discounted by $9 and will be available for a wholesale price of $26.
• The 50/20 Mbps product, will see a $5 wholesale price increase to $50, however, it includes a 40 per cent increase in included data. 

NBN Co will remove CVC (capacity) charges from  higher speed tier products from 1 December 2023 and reduce our wholesale prices. The 100/20 Mbps product will see a $3 price reduction to $55; the 250/25 Mbps will be reduced by $8 to $60, and the 1000/50 Mbps will be reduced by $10 to $70.

https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-statements/statement-on-nbn-wholesale-prices

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