Saturday, October 24, 2020

Microsoft Glazes 5G Operator Strategy

Microsoft is mounting a more comprehensive effort to position multiple services, some developed internally and others brought in via acquisitions, for 5G operators. The company’s recently announced Azure for Operators platform is a realization of Microsoft’s vision for the market, including services for the cloud, edge computing, IoT, network functions, and artificial intelligence (AI).
           

Friday, October 23, 2020

Ligado raises nearly $4B to support L-Band plan

Ligado Networks says it has raised nearly $4 billion in new capital, enabling the company to take a “major step” toward realizing its 5G plans for mission-critical industries and expediting the FCC’s efforts to increase the use of mid-band spectrum.
           

Verizon Business tees up managed Kubernetes for edge and cloud

Verizon Business had dropped VNS Application Edge into its Virtual Network Services (VNS) portfolio to help enterprises deploy their business applications at the edge and in multi-cloud. The platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering also includes a turnkey automation framework for managing Kubernetes clusters and containerized app deployments.
           

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Verizon VNS Vaults Kubernetes to the Edge

Verizon’s Business unit launched a new Kubernetes-based edge option for its Virtual Network Services (VNS) platform that allows enterprises to deploy applications running in containers orchestrated by Kubernetes at the edge of the network.
           

FCC: At least 41% of calls failed during T-Mobile network outage

The FCC released a report of its investigation into T-Mobile’s major network outage over the summer, determining T-Mobile didn’t follow network reliability best practices that could have avoided the more than 12-hour outage, or prevented it from becoming an issue that affected customers across the country.
           

Cradlepoint set to help Ericsson in private network space

Private networks designed for enterprise customers are seen by some analysts as the biggest opportunity created by 5G. Approaching this opportunity is a delicate dance for Ericsson, a company clearly determined not to compete with its service provider customers. Ericsson offers an integrated private network solution, but enterprise customers typically purchase it through carriers. Even though CBRS spectrum now gives companies a way to own and operate cellular networks, Ericsson is partnering with carriers to deliver private network services instead of targeting enterprise customers directly.  Ericsson’s $1.1 billion acquisition of cellular router maker Cradlepoint is another part of this strategy. Like Ericsson, Cradlepoint is partnering with AT&T, which now sells Cradlepoint routers bundled with LTE service for enterprise customers. Cradlepoint is also a longtime Ericsson partner; the two companies started working together more than a decade ago when LTE was in its infancy. Both companies sell through service providers, but Cradlepoint also sells to enterprise customers through value-added resellers.
           

Quixotic Quibi quits

Mobile streaming video startup Quibi, which was backed by Hollywood, has been forced to shut down after its narrative failed to persuade.
           

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Transforming the RAN: Engaging the benefits of the cloud

hat does cloudification of the RAN mean? What are the benefits of virtualizing and opening the RAN? What is the difference between the telco cloud and a public cloud and what does that mean for the RAN? Mr. Katti and Mr. Harvey dive into these software-centric RAN topics, and more
           

Ericsson is caught in cross-hairs between China, Sweden

A day after Sweden’s telecom regulatory authority banned Huawei and ZTE equipment in Sweden’s 5G networks on soon-to-be-auctioned spectrum, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Sweden should reverse the ban to avoid a "negative impact" on its own companies, according to Reuters.
           

T-Mobile’s Neville Ray talks 5G venture capital fund, FWA

Speaking at the CCA virtual event today, T-Mobile President of Technology Neville Ray said the carrier has created T-Mobile Ventures, a new multi-year, multi-million-dollar investment fund to fuel 5G innovation. The fund will back early and emerging growth companies that are innovating 5G products and services for the T-Mobile network.
           

Boost targets low data users with $10 plan

Describing it as the “most compelling low cost plan” in the wireless market today, Boost Mobile is offering unlimited talk and text, plus 2 GB of high-speed data, for the price of $10 a month. For another $5, customers can get 4 GB per month.
           

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Quibi calls it quits

Update: Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman announced Wednesday that the premium, short-form streaming service is shutting down and looking to sell its content and technologies.
           

Dell, VMware CEOs Render Patina for 5G

Dell Technologies’ executive team presented 5G, and its strategy for the market, as a series of compounding developments that coalesce into a grandiose opportunity for many arms of its business.
           

Ericsson Swings to Profit, Posts Gains in China

Ericsson reported a sales surge in China during the third quarter of 2020, boosting its year-over-year revenue in the region by 39%. The company’s resolve to win or expand contracts in China “contributed positively to profits in Q3 and are expected to improve further,” CEO Börje Ekholm said in a statement.
           

SK Hynix Gobbles Up Intel NAND

SK hynix will take over Intel‘s NAND memory and storage business. The $9 billion acquisition includes Intel’s SSD, NAND component and wafer business, as well as its Dalian memory manufacturing facility in China.
           

Verizon, Ericsson, Qualcomm hit 5G peak speed of 5 Gbps in test

Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm today said they demonstrated 5G peak speeds of 5.06 Gbps in a lab environment. Their demo used 5G mmWave spectrum along with carrier aggregation, a technology that combines multiple channels of spectrum. For the demo, the companies combined eight separate channels of spectrum to achieve the multi-gigabit speeds.
           

Blaber: Qualcomm summit proves 5G momentum impossible to ignore

Much has changed since the 2019 5G Summit in Barcelona. A global pandemic has had a dramatic impact on people’s lives and transformed our thinking about the importance of connectivity. This was the starting point for Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon’s opening keynote for the virtual 5G Summit, stating that “under normal circumstances, it would have taken five to 10 years for everyone to recognize the potential and benefits of 5G. Today, we’re actively shaping this future.” While 5G has its critics, it’s impossible to ignore the momentum and potential it holds.
           

Windstream Enterprise boosts SD-WAN insights on its portal

Windstream Enterprises has upgraded its WE Connect Management Portal to give users more visibility across their SD-WAN networks. The WE Connect Insight Engine offers customers a set of visuals that show performance analysis and trends in their applications, network access and devices across all of their locations.
           

Monday, October 19, 2020

Can Cybersecurity Weather Election, COVID-19 Perfect Storm?

Cybersecurity professionals report that 82% of attacks now involve counter incident response (IR) with destructive attacks — often the final stage of counter IR — happening 54% of the time, according to VMware Carbon Black’s latest Global Incident Response Threat Report.
           

Azure Space Makes Orbit the New Cloud Battleground

A new battleground is emerging for cloud providers looking to outshine the competition, and you only have to look up to find it. No, not the sun, don’t look at that. I’m talking about the thousands of satellites that crisscross our skies. This is where Amazon and Azure and are waging battle.
           

IBM Struggles Dampen Hybrid Cloud Enthusiasm

IBM reported another difficult fiscal quarter highlighted by ongoing customer struggles tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, a positive return on its $34 billion Red Hat investment, internal IBM upheaval that will see it focus on hybrid cloud, and ongoing optimism from IBM management that it can somehow turn it all around.
           

Cisco Unifies Services Routers Under Catalyst Umbrella

Cisco unveiled the Catalyst routing line today, which is designed to meet the needs of the cloud-first enterprise. The new routers aim to consolidate much of Cisco’s Integrated Services Routers (ISR), Aggregation Services Routers, (ASR), and Cloud Services Routers (CSR) under a single product name.
           

Qualcomm Vows to Break Into 5G RAN Chipset Market

Qualcomm is broadening its 5G radio access network (RAN) chipset business with three platforms that it plans to start shipping to vendors in the first half of 2022. The chipmaker claims its pedigree in the semiconductor market for devices makes it uniquely positioned for the virtualized RAN space.
           

Google’s Preston Marshall ribs AT&T in friendly CBRS exchange

AT&T has publicly jumped on the private wireless bandwagon in the past two weeks. Today, it said it’s adding Nokia’s technology to its stable of private wireless solutions. This follows close on the heels of last week’s similar news that it would offer Ericsson’s technology for private wireless. 
           

Comcast Business teams up with Aruba on VPN service for WFH

With the security perimeter bounding beyond office spaces due to Covid-19, companies large and small have ramped up their remote work offerings. With Covid-19 as the backdrop, Comcast Business has teamed up with HPE's Aruba to offer an enterprise-grade VPN service that's called Teleworker VPN.
           

Lumen bows self-service online portal

On Monday, Lumen announced an online self-service portal that lets businesses buy and configure their networking, edge cloud and security solutions in minutes. Those products and solutions can be ordered, purchased and deployed via the new online portal, according to Lumen.
           

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Verizon Forks Edge for Private Networks on Azure

Verizon’s nascent mobile edge computing (MEC) platform has reached a fork in the road. One path leads to a public cloud-based edge on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and the other leads to private edge services for enterprises on Microsoft Azure.
           

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