Riverbed Doubles Down on WAN Optimization

Riverbed, often thought of as an SD-WAN or networking vendor, is going back to its WAN optimization roots with a new strategy focusing on helping customers solve their application and performance challenges.

Verizon grabs RootMetric awards in Los Angeles

So far, Verizon is holding on tight to its network crown, with the latest RootMetric report underscoring Verizon’s lead in the Los Angeles market, where Verizon took home six out of seven RootScore awards, including overall performance and network reliability.

T-Mobile’s network build ‘on track’ despite COVID-19

T-Mobile’s network build is continuing and on track despite the COVID-19 crisis. In fact, it’s looking to “immediately begin deploying” more mid-band spectrum across the U.S.

Nokia keeps quiet on hostile takeover rumors

Media reports have circulated that Nokia is working with an investment firm to ward off a hostile takeover attempt by private equity, but the Finnish vendor is keeping quiet on the claims. “Nokia does not comment on rumors,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed response to FierceWireless.

Tighter margins, more grief this year for telcos—report

While the global telecom market staged a slight comeback in Q4, tighter margins due to the COVID-19 crisis will add to telcos' grief this year, according to recent research by MTN Consulting.

Comcast and Verizon see network usage settle-in during WFH

The spike in network traffic is starting to flatten with subscribers settling into their work from home (WFH) routines. Comcast said on Thursday that its residential broadband traffic increases were starting to plateau in most of its markets, including in cities such as San Francisco and Seattle that were among the first to implement stay-at-home measures.

Secure remote access-as-a-service is now a critical requirement

There is no difference in the productivity needed at the home office and the traditional physical office. Home based employees need to have an excellent application user experience independent of their device, location or network. They must be secure from external threats such as malware, phishing, and have strong protection against sensitive data loss.

Nokia share price surges on takeover rumours

Nokia share price has jumped more than 10% following rumours the equipment vendor could be the target of a hostile takeover.

Facebook doubles down on COVID-19 censorship

Under mounting pressure to counter misinformation around the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook is increasingly dictating what its users should see and think.

Verizon jumps on the video conferencing bandwagon with BlueJeans acquisition

Unperturbed by its rubbish M&A track record, US operator Verizon thinks this is a good time to be in the video conferencing game.

Europe releases guidelines for building COVID-19 apps

The European Commission has unveiled guidelines for member states creating COVID-19 apps, with perhaps an attempt to prevent mission creep from private industry.

Daily Roundup: Nokia Faces a Hostile Takeover

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Nokia Stares Down Hostile Takeover Bid

Nokia is fending off a reported hostile takeover attempt that could dramatically alter the wireless network equipment market.

Ransomware Attacks Spike 148% Amid COVID-19 Scams

Ransomware attacks skyrocketed 148% in March, compared to baseline levels in February, as corporations shift to remote work because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to VMware Carbon Black threat researchers.

Red Hat Stacks OpenStack Onto ZTE’s XCloud

Red Hat has developed a reference architecture of its OpenStack Platform for ZTE’s XCloud hardware targeted at speeding up the deployment of 5G technologies for carriers.

Waiting for a Rainy Day to Do Security Training? It’s Pouring

Now that most of the workforce — the ones who still have jobs — works from home, and hackers continue successfully using COVID-19-themed phishing emails to target companies and individuals, now is the time to invest in security training and awareness.

Smartphone users spending more time on Wi-Fi in top 50 metros

Smartphone users in all of the top 50 U.S. markets spent increasing amounts of time connected to Wi-Fi during the end of March, according to new Opensignal data, aligning with behavioral shifts at a time when states across the country ramped their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

T-Mobile deal gets final CPUC approval with conditions

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted unanimously Thursday to approve, with conditions, the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint operations in the state of California.

Verizon embraces change, innovation in time of coronavirus

While there's been plenty of reports in regards to how service providers' networks have withstood the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, there hasn't been a lot of focus on how carriers pivoted internally to keep their employees safe and their customers connected to the services they rely on.

Verizon’s 5G strategy could combine DSS, carrier aggregation

Verizon’s 5G strategy has been murky. We know that it’s deploying mmWave in dense urban areas, but it’s been unclear how the carrier will deliver 5G across broad swaths of the country. Today, analysts at LightShed Partners laid out a Verizon strategy that makes sense.

New COVID-19 app does not have to track location – Oxford University

A team of researchers at Oxford University have suggested a Bluetooth tracing app, which doesn’t track location, could combat COVID-19, but you would want 60% adoption.

Qualcomm’s new NB-IoT chipset boasts power efficiency

Power efficiency is a top concern for IoT devices that must last for years in the field. Qualcomm Technologies says its new NB-IoT chipset for cellular connectivity requires less than one micro-amp (1uA) of sleep current. The new Qualcomm 212 LTE IoT Modem will be available in the second half of 2020.

Worst case scenario: European smartphone shipments down by 50% for 2020

IDC estimates suggest European smartphone shipments could half year-on-year for 2020 if the pandemic hits as hard as it is threatening to do.

Samsung to leverage Xilinx compute platform for 5G beamforming

Samsung will tap chipmaker Xilinx’s adaptive compute acceleration platform (ACAP) for 5G deployments, leveraging increased compute density and low power consumption for improved beamforming.

Ligado gets green light in draft FCC order

After years of making its case, Ligado is finally getting a chance to move forward on L-band spectrum, with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulating a draft order that would approve, with conditions, Ligado’s application to deploy a low-power terrestrial nationwide network to support 5G and IoT.

CWA seeks seat at the table in Frontier's bankruptcy filing

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) will petition for inclusion in Frontier Communications' Chapter 11 bankruptcy that was filed Tuesday night.

Telefónica's data traffic growth surpasses yearly increase

Over the course of a month, Telefónica's fixed data traffic growth surpassed the company's yearly cumulative traffic growth due to the COVID-19 crisis.

GSMA extends contract with Barcelona through 2024

About two months after the GSMA canceled MWC Barcelona 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the organization announced it has extended an agreement to hold the event in Barcelona through 2024. A previous contract had Barcelona as the host city until 2023.

Verizon Business buys video conferencing company BlueJeans

In order to better serve its business customers, Verizon Business has entered into an agreement to buy video conferencing company BlueJeans Network.

Apple launches a new version of its least expensive iPhone

Gadget giant Apple wasn’t about to let a global pandemic cramp its style, but don’t get too excited because the iPhone SE is just an old phone with a newer chip.

Google reveals it isn’t immune to coronavirus

In an internal memo to staff, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said the firm will slow down hiring for the rest of 2020 but will honour any offers made to new employees.

Telco revenues forecast to contract 3.4% amid COVID-19 outbreak

Research firm Analysys Mason has forecast global revenues for telecoms operators to fall by 3.4% year-on-year as the coronavirus pandemic edges the world towards recession.

Europe faces a new epidemic of telecoms mast arson

A complete lack of evidence, or support by the laws of physics, hasn’t stopped the belief that 5G spreads coronavirus from spreading rapidly.

UK astronauts answer call to help NHS mission

The UK Space Agency, in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), has created a £2.6 million fund to stimulate new projects to aid the NHS in its fight against COVID-19.

AWS Boosts Snowball Edge Device Performance

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today revealed some updates to its Snowball family of edge devices, including a new interface for managing clusters and a boost in performance and virtual CPUs (vCPU).

Google Slows Hiring, Data Center Spend Due to COVID-19

Google and parent company Alphabet aren’t immune to COVID-19-related business challenges. According to an email from CEO Sundar Pichai sent to employees on Wednesday, the tech giant will “significantly slow down the pace of hiring” for the rest of the year and reduce spending on data centers, machines, and non-essential marketing and travel.

Vast Data Grows War Chest With $100M Funding Round, $1.2B Valuation

Vast Data nearly tripled its valuation to $1.2 billion in a $100 million Series C funding round announced today, bringing its total funding to  $180 million.

Daily Roundup: Google Slows Hiring Due to COVID-19

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Coronavirus Stunts IoT Insurgence

The oft-heralded and repeatedly delayed insurgence of IoT will have to wait as a global pandemic crushes many of the industries that could benefit from increased connectivity, ABI Research analysts said this week. The rapid reversal is significant because the convergence of 5G, networks especially suited for IoT, and device proliferation was expected to bolster the technology before the pandemic hit.

Feds Downplay JEDI Ethics Violations

In a win for Microsoft, a Defense Department (DoD) report published this week found the decision to award the company the hotly contested $10 billion JEDI cloud contract was “reasonable” and “consistent with applicable law,” and it downplayed allegations of White House interference and DoD ethics violations.

GSMA Sees ‘Strong Momentum’ for Future MWC Events

Industry trade group GSMA added a year to its plans for hosting the annual MWC Barcelona event in that city, which comes in the wake of this year’s event being cancelled at the last minute due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak.

Telefónica’s Security Biz Taps Google Cloud’s Chronicle

Telefónica’s security business ElevenPaths is working with Google Cloud’s Chronicle to integrate Chronicle’s security analytics services into ElevenPaths’ managed security services for enterprises in Europe and Latin America.

Telefónica's ElevenPaths and Google Cloud's Chronicle team up

Telefónica's cybersecurity company, ElevenPaths, is collaborating with Google Cloud's cybersecurity company, Chronicle, to develop managed security services for enterprise customers across Europe and Latin America.

Ligado slams NTIA over GPS ‘fearmongering’

Less than a week after FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly asked President Donald Trump to step in to free up federal spectrum for 5G, Ligado blasted the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for trying to usurp the FCC’s authority over commercial radio spectrum.

Prepaid not hit as hard by pandemic, as 73% of stores stay open

While the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is impacting most every industry, prepaid wireless brands aren’t getting hit quite as hard as postpaid, according to Wave7 Research.

BT picks Ericsson for 4G, 5G core

BT, along with the U.K. government, has been a bit resistant to remove Huawei equipment from telecom networks. But the British government has been under a lot of pressure from the United States to cut Huawei out. As a compromise, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided in January that Huawei gear must be removed from the nation’s core network. Huawei can supply gear for the country’s 5G radio access networks, but it will be restricted to a 35% cap in the RAN.

Nuage Networks teams up with Asavie for mobile SD-WAN

With millions of employees working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, Nuage Networks is partnering with Asavie to deliver an SD-WAN solution across desktop, mobile and IoT devices.

Toothless German regulator capitulates during 4G coverage review

German telco regulator, Bundesnetzagentur, is seemingly searching for its dentures as it lets all three mobile network operators escape punishment for missing coverage obligation deadlines.

Frontier Communications drops into Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Frontier Communications filed for bankruptcy Tuesday night to kick-start a prearranged $10 billion debt-cutting proposal backed by its bondholders.

Legendary Silicon Valley siblings form multi-cloud startup

The Khan brothers are back in action. Alkira is the company, and multi-cloud networking is the game. 

Washington State sues Facebook over political ads

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a lawsuit against Facebook for selling political ads without maintaining information for the public as required by campaign finance law.

Samsung claims new 5G speed record

Samsung Electronics says it managed to hit 8.5 Gbps over 5G in a lab, using 800 MHz of millimetre-wave spectrum over a couple of devices.

Proximus is halting some 5G deployment to calm health fears

Belgian telco Proximus will halt 5G network deployment in the city of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve to hold a Town Hall to address all health concerns of citizens.

Ericsson gets to the core of BT’s 5G network

Swedish kit vendor Ericsson is celebrating a deal win with UK telco BT, which will be deploying Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core on its Network Cloud.

Daily Roundup: Awake Security Displaces Cisco

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Ericsson Beats Out 5G Rivals to Replace BT’s Huawei Gear

Ericsson beat out rivals in replacing Huawei core network equipment for BT’s ongoing 5G network deployment. The deal follows a recent move by the United Kingdom to limit the use of equipment from China-based vendors in 5G networks.

Samsung Taps Xilinx for 5G Beamforming

Samsung plans to use the Xilinx Versal adaptive compute acceleration platform (ACAP) in 5G New Radio (NR) gear, the companies announced today. The platform provides five times the compute density of traditional digital signal processors and enables more efficient beamforming in 5G commercial deployments, according to the chipmaker.

Nuage Tags Asavie for SD-WAN Extension

Nuage Networks today announced a deal with Asavie to extend its SD-WAN beyond the branch to remote workers, mobile devices, and IoT. It will see Nuage pair its SD-WAN 2.0 offering with Asavie’s SD Edge platform that was announced last week.

Awake Security Scores $36M, Displaces Cisco, RSA, and Darktrace

Awake Security today raised $36 million in Series C financing bringing its total raised to nearly $80 million. The 3-year-old startup says it will use the capital to meet the growing demand for the network detection and response platform.

Ericsson lands Nex-Tech contract for 5G EPC, RAN

Ericsson will provide 5G Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and Radio Access Network (RAN) technology to Nex-Tech Wireless, supporting its 5G NR Non-standalone (NSA) deployment at key sites in Kansas.

QCT gains recognition in telecom via Rakuten

The Taiwanese data center hardware company QCT won a starring role in Rakuten Mobile’s network build. And the company in recent years has become a contender against U.S. server vendors Dell Technologies and HPE.

ZTE wins a chunk of China Mobile’s 5G core work

Chinese kit vendor ZTE has won the bid for a bunch of work on the standalone 5G core of China Mobile.

Quibi positions itself as a complement to Netflix

With the streaming world becoming ever more congested, it’s not clear how many more services the industry can tolerate, but Quibi doesn’t think it has to worry about that.

Dish’s ability to build 4th network in question

As the coronavirus inflicts havoc on financial markets, it’s a big question mark as to whether Dish Network will be able to live up to its commitment to build a fourth nationwide wireless network under the timeline required by the U.S. government.

Charter notches 119,000 new internet subscribers in March

According to a Tuesday 8K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Charter Communications added 119,000 new internet subscribers last month. Charter is offering free internet access for 60 days during the coronavirus pandemic, so it remains to be seen how many of those new subscribers will stick with it after the free access ends.

Samsung achieves 5G mmWave speeds of 8.5 Gbps across 2 devices

Samsung Electronics says it achieved the industry’s fastest 5G speeds in a lab demonstration that used carrier aggregation to combine multiple channels of mmWave spectrum into 800 MHz.

Verizon Business: Five trends for the workplace of the future

Verizon Business President Sowmyanarayan Sampath sees some emerging trends for enterprises as the industry works its way through the coronavirus pandemic.

Broadband usage hits a record high on Easter Sunday—OpenVault

Driven in part by video conferencing, broadband usage spiked to a record high on Easter Sunday, according to data from OpenVault. Easter Sunday downstream consumption hit 16.3 GB per subscriber, which marked an increase of almost 16% over the previous Sunday (14.1 GB) and of 37.9% over Sunday, March 1 (11.8 GB), the latter of which was before COVID-19 social distancing measures started to take effect.

Cisco serves up $2.5B in financing for COVID-19 relief

On Tuesday, Cisco announced a new $2.5 billion financing program to help its customers and partners stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. The new Business Resiliency Program gives Cisco's customers some breathing room by deferring 95% of their payments until the start of 2021.

Ofcom to investigate 5G conspiracy comments as telco abuse continues

Telecoms infrastructure and staff are becoming the victims of the 5G conspiracy theories as Ofcom launches a full investigation into the short-sighted comments of TV Presenter Eamonn Holmes.

Cellnex doubles down on Portugal with €375 million NOS acquisition

Ambitious Spanish tower specialist Cellnex is going to drop at least €375 million to the towering operations of operator NOS.

AT&T 4G LTE connects IoT robots to kill germs, stock shelves

AT&T is connecting IoT robots, in new partnerships with Xenex and Brain Corp., that aim to help hospitals and retail establishments like grocery stores keep facilities clean, kill germs and keep shelves stocked more efficiently.

Softbank warns of $17bn blow to Vision Fund investments

COVID-19 is causing waves across the world, and now Japanese telco Softbank has warned the pandemic might well be the cause of ¥1.8 trillion ($17 billion) loss in the investment unit.

Nervous Huawei launches fresh UK charm offensive

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened Western suspicion towards China and Huawei is clearly worried that may cause further problems for its UK operations.

Google and Apple come together to build tracking APIs for COVID-19

In response to the on-going outbreak, Google and Apple have announced a partnership to assist Governments around the world in building applications to combat the coronavirus.

EDGE IS THE NEW CORE

Let’s face it, the debate is over when it comes to whether telcos should create innovative and localized services in the core or at the edge. If past performance is an indicator of future success, it’s clear telcos need a radical transformation of their self-defined legacy network hierarchies. This allows them to get away from rigid network boundaries and focus on net-new opportunities to drive growth and revenues. To create these new opportunities, they must go closer to the edge -- where the users are -- and have a flexible and nimble architectural approach. While this is a new model from a telco perspective,  it is business as usual for cloud providers, their real competition.

Omdia SD-WAN Report: Fuel to VMware, Cisco Fire?

SD-WAN market revenue skyrocketed to $639.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, more than doubling from the $364.5 million during the same period in 2018, according to Omdia’s latest Data Center Network Equipment Market Tracker.

AMD Chips Give Clouds, Data Centers EPYC Power

AMD announced its latest EPYC data center processors with support from cloud providers, server manufactures, and software providers including IBM Cloud, Microsoft, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), VMware, and others.

Alkira Claims Multi-Cloud Cure, $30M in Funding

Alkira has emerged from the shadows, following more than a year of secrecy, with the launch of its first product and $30 million of Series A funding.

Cisco Paves Rakuten’s Virtual Roaming Road

Cisco expanded the reach of Rakuten Mobile’s nascent 4G LTE network in Japan with an inter-network roaming service that allows Rakuten Mobile customers to roam on rival KDDI’s network across the country. The move also deepens Cisco’s support of Rakuten Mobile’s 5G ambitions.

Daily Roundup: Cisco Links Rakuten Mobile

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5G, Edge (Mostly) Unencumbered by Pandemic

A global pandemic is crippling entire industries but the 5G market and its prospects will scrape by largely unscathed compared to other markets, according to ABI Research.

Arm Joins O-RAN Alliance in 5G Infrastructure Push

Arm has its sights set on taking over the 5G infrastructure market, announcing today its entrance into the O-RAN alliance.

VMware Boosts Hybrid-Cloud Visibility, Management

VMware pushed its operations management tool to the cloud with a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) form factor and newly added hybrid cloud support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and vSphere Kubernetes deployments in addition to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Cisco $2.5B Financing Initiative Targets COVID-19 Impact

Cisco today announced $2.5 billion in special financing in a bid to help businesses overcome the economic challenges brought on by COVID-19 and efforts to contain the spread of the virus.

VMware Tanzu Gains Features, Availability

VMware’s Kubernetes focus continues unabated with the vendor today bolstering its broader Tanzu portfolio targeted at helping enterprises bridge the gap between development and production. The updates include application and infrastructure additions that are designed to ease operations in a Kubernetes environment and also further integrate VMware’s extensive Kubernetes properties.

CenturyLink's adaptive networks flourish during COVID-19 crisis

CenturyLink's decision to build adaptive networks is paying off during the coronavirus pandemic. CenturyLink uses "adaptive networks" to describe its software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization-based networks. Laurinda Pang, CenturyLink’s president of international and global accounts management, cited her company's adaptive networks in a recent blog post.

T-Mobile, Dish among best positioned: analysts

T-Mobile, cable and Dish Network are well positioned to benefit from the trends as the U.S. heads into a recession while Verizon and AT&T “will be caught between a slowing industry and share loss to challengers,” according to analysts at Wall Street firm New Street Research.

FCC eyes cutting off China Telecom from U.S. market

The Department of Justice is leading a group of U.S. agencies that are recommending that the FCC revoke and terminate China Telecom’s right to provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States.

How CSPs can change their game due the COVID-19 crisis

While no one can be certain what the telecommunications landscape will be like a few months from now, let alone a year from now, the coronavirus pandemic could give communication service providers (CSPs) a chance for an industry refresh.

AT&T's core network traffic increases at a lower rate

While AT&T's core network traffic is still above its baseline levels, the increases actually dropped a bit last week. AT&T's core network traffic, which includes business, home broadband and wireless usage, went from a 26% increase—compared to a similar day at the end of February— on Thursday to an 18% increase on Saturday.

More speed for 5G with zero-touch network slicing

Blue Planet® 5G Automation solution enables zero-touch orchestration of network slices, including design, activation, modification and deactivation, for 5G Core, xHaul, and the RAN. Learn more.

Top Internet Connectivity Trends in Business Aviation for 2020

From mid-cabin aircraft all the way up to ultra-long-range business jets, business aviation companies are now demanding fast, “no-compromise,” reliable in-flight connectivity. But only recently has the connectivity demand for mid-cabin business aircrafts, such as the Embraer Praetor and the Gulfstream G280, increased to match that of intercontinental business jets, such as the Gulfstream G650ER.

Ericsson Expands 5G, DSS Deal With Nex-Tech Wireless

Ericsson bolstered a deal to provide 5G network equipment to Kansas-based rural operator Nex-Tech Wireless, which said it plans to launch the its 5G service before mid-year.

VMware Patches Critical Bug That Exposes Sensitive Data

VMware issued a patch for a critical bug that could allow an attacker to steal companies’ sensitive data.

Daily Roundup: VMware Patches Critical Bug

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Nokia: traffic surges are flattening but DDoS is on the up

Nokia has released its latest update on internet traffic during the coronavirus outbreak, and while networks seem to be standing up to the strain, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) traffic is on the up.