Saturday, January 16, 2021

TSMC Boosts Production as Intel Looks for Fab Partners

Since the late 70s, microprocessors have made their way into nearly everything: microwaves, toasters, TVs, and of course our computers. But as we enter the second decade of the new millennium, it’s Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s (TSMC) chips that are in high demand.

Friday, January 15, 2021

C-band auction tops charts with $80.9B

Bidding in the clock phase of the FCC’s C-band auction closed on Friday as the highest-grossing spectrum auction ever held in the U.S., with gross proceeds exceeding $80.9 billion. The previous record was $44.9 billion from the AWS-3 auction in 2015.

OneWeb raises $400M from SoftBank, Hughes

OneWeb is a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications company jointly owned by the U.K. government and Bharti Global. Today, London-based OneWeb secured $400 million in additional funding from SoftBank and Hughes Network Systems, according to TechCrunch. This brings the company's total funding to $1.4 billion.

AWS opens the doors on its first office in Greece

In order to support an increasing number of customers and partners using its cloud services, Amazon Web Services announced on Friday that it has opened its first office in Greece. The new office in Athens will support organizations of all stripes—startups, enterprises, and public sector agencies—as they make their transitions to the cloud.

Moore: Prepaid in 2021 – four competitive trends to watch

With a new year beginning and in the quiet before the noise of “tax season” – the busiest season of the year for prepaid carriers, this is a good time to examine four big-picture trends that will impact prepaid competition in 2021 and beyond. They are the closing of the Tracfone acquisition by Verizon, the new emphasis on multi-month plans, new trade-in programs for prepaid carriers and more focus on prepaid for internet access.

FCC approves Frontiers Chapter 11 restructuring

On Thursday, Frontier Communications announced the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has signed off on its Chapter 11 restructuring. Once it does emerge from Chapter 11, which Frontier said would happen in "early 2021", it will have shaved its debt by approximately $10 billion, and make a significant dent in its annual interest expense of approximately $1 billion.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Intel, Cybereason Beat Ransomware With Hardware Shield

Intel and security software vendor Cybereason will provide ransomware protection at the CPU level in a joint product that combines Intel’s new Hardware Shield technology, built into its upcoming vPro processors, with Cybereason’s anti-ransomware capabilities.

Huawei, ZTE Drive All Telecom Vendor Growth

Telecom network infrastructure vendors generated $55.6 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2020, according to a new report from MTN Consulting. The quarter marked a return to growth for the sector, following three consecutive quarters of decline and widespread economic malaise during the first global surge of COVID-19 infections.

Itential improves Lumen's network orchestration and automation

Lumen Technologies has tapped into Itential's orchestration and automation capabilities to improve its internal network operations. Spurred by the need to automate and improve operations across its 450,000 global route fiber miles, Lumen picked the Itential Automation Platform to improve its efficiencies.

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Cisco, Inphi Team Up to Develop Co-Packaged Optics

Roughly every two years switch silicon doubles in speed. The problem is, with every subsequent generation of switch silicon, power consumption grows exponentially outpacing bandwidth, explained Rakesh Chopra, a Cisco fellow in the common hardware group, in a blog post this week.

Cisco-Acacia deal is back on

Under amended deal, Cisco is set to acquire Acacia for $115 per share, or roughly $4.5 billion, a sweetened deal that handily beats an original offer of $2.6 billion.

Cisco Will Pay Acacia $4.5B in On-Again Acquisition

Cisco and Acacia Communications will move forward with their merger after all — but it will cost about $2 billion more than the original price. The two companies today said they amended their acquisition agreement, and Cisco will now buy Acacia for $4.5 billion. Under the original 2019 deal, Cisco planned to pay $2.6 billion for the optics vendor.

Sparklight Business turns up optical wavelength service

Sparklight Business is off and running with the launch of a new optical wavelength service on its fiber backbone. The wavelength service provides dedicated, point-to-point, high-capacity data network service to business and carrier customers throughout its 21-state footprint.

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

SeaChange CEO quits

Yossi Aloni has left the video software specialist to 'pursue other interests.' Robert Pons has been named executive chairman and will assume Aloni's duties as SeaChange seeks a new CEO.

Can Favorite Son Pat Gelsinger Save Intel?

In the latest shake up to Intel’s leadership, Intel’s favorite son Pat Gelsinger has been appointed by the company’s board of directors to lead the chipmaker, effective Feb. 15. He replaces outgoing CEO Bob Swan after just two years on the job.

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger Set to Flee for Intel

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger will be leaving that position next month to take over as CEO of Intel, replacing the chip giant’s long-time CEO Bob Swan who is set to retire. The C-level shakeup is set to take place on Feb. 15.

Gelsinger’s Departure ‘Bad News’ for VMware

The news that VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, widely regarded as one of the best CEOs in tech, will leave the virtualization giant and return to Intel as its CEO shook the industry this morning. And the general consensus among pundits and analysts is that his departure doesn’t bode well for VMware — at least in the short term.

Armis Claims 5X Better Visibility Compared to Tenable, CrowdStrike

IoT security unicorn Armis today released a new IT asset visibility and management product marking its first standalone product since it launched its device security platform in 2017. The vendor claims that Armis Asset Management can see almost five times more assets — this includes laptops, servers, clouds, virtual machines, and IoT devices — compared to standalone endpoint detection and response (EDR) and configuration and vulnerability management tools from Qualys, Tenable, CrowdStrike, and Carbon Black.

RtBrick throws in with TIP's Open BNG project

RtBrick announced on Tuesday that it's now supporting the Telecom Infra Project's Open BNG initiative. Open BNG is a new standard that was created by the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to develop open, disaggregated broadband network gateways.

5G matters to the Enterprise and its Customers

It’s hard to get through a day without hearing talk about the rise of 5G telecommunication networks and the impact they will have on life as we know it. Everybody understands that 5G will bring significant changes, although many people might not grasp what those changes will be.

Monday, January 11, 2021

AT&T scuttles sales of AT&T TV Now

Decision for the no-contract, skinny-bundle OTT-TV service follows AT&T's attempts to slow pace of pay-TV sub losses and amplify focus on AT&T TV, its new OTT-delivered, contract-based pay-TV service, and HBO Max.

Microsoft to provide cloud, AI tech to biomedicine's Terra

Microsoft announced on Monday that it's chipping in its cloud-based AI, storage and compute power to an open source health and life science project. Terra is a secure, scalable, open-source platform for biomedical researchers to access data, run analysis tools and collaborate with each other.

Operators must move quickly to capture private networking biz

With last August’s Citizens Broadband Radio Spectrum (CBRS) Priority Access License (PAL) auction in the rearview window, mobile operators need to move quickly if they want to capture what many analysts estimate could be a multi-billion-dollar opportunity — building and managing private wireless networks for enterprises and other entities including utilities and universities.

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Will XDR Dark Horses VMware, Fortinet Pull Ahead in 2021?

Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, and Microsoft were among the established security vendors that made progress in extended detection and response (XDR) last year along with newcomers including VMware. While no single provider achieved the “holy grail of security” in 2020, several made strong moves in their quest, and others formed partnerships that put them in good positions to advance this technology in 2021.

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