Nokia reports a strong Q2 21 on the back of fixed-line infrastructure growth

All the indicators are moving in the right direction for Finnish kit vendor Nokia, which saw its share price jump after announcing its Q2 2021 numbers.

Supply Chain Squeeze Depresses Nokia’s Growth

The supply-chain squeeze will limit Nokia’s growth through at least 2021, CEO Pekka Lundmark said during the company’s second-quarter 2021 earnings call. 

Fortinet Rings In Robust Q2 With ZTNA Bundle, Firewall

Fortinet rang in a strong second quarter today by launching a new enterprise-class firewall and subscription security service targeting remote access and identity management.

Cisco Goes All Hybrid With ‘No Return to Office’ Policy

Cisco says it’s all in on all hybrid work, and today the company announced a “no return to office” policy that lets individual employees and their managers decide how and where each staffer will work.

Red Hat Nuzzles Nutanix to Vex VMware Velocity

Red Hat and Nutanix are cozying up to make it easier for their respective customers to tap into their joint hybrid-cloud focused offerings. The move is predicated on vocal demand from customers and allows both to better target rivals like VMware.

Daily Roundup: Juniper Posts Strong Q2, Warns of Supply Chain Headwinds

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Amazon Cloud Biz Hits $59B Run Rate

Amazon’s cloud growth rate continued to climb in the second quarter of 2021, indicating a potential ongoing upward trend for the world’s largest hyperscaler. 

New broadband clause in U.S. infra deal could hurt AT&T, Lumen

New Street Research warned AT&T, Frontier Communications and Lumen Technologies could be negatively impacted by a new broadband provision which takes aim at “digital redlining" in the latest version of a $1.2 trillion U.S. infrastructure deal.

U.S. counts more than 417K cell sites as of 2020

As carriers densify networks and build out 5G, the number of cell sites in the U.S. grew to 417,215 by the end of 2020, according to a survey from CTIA.

Verizon bags $78.8M Air National Guard contract

Verizon’s Public Sector business inked its second deal with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in as many months, this time nabbing a $78.8 million contract to help the Air National Guard (ANG) modernize its network services.

T-Mobile targets Boost, Cricket in new prepaid offer

T-Mobile is taking the gloves off – if they were ever on – in its fight for prepaid customers. Today, the company announced that Metro by T-Mobile is offering a $25/month plan to entice Boost and Cricket customers over to its 5G network. The offer starts July 29.

Inside the zero-trust networking and SASE land grab — Raynovich

You may be overwhelmed with cybersecurity acronyms and buzzwords — I know that as an analyst it's hard to follow FWaaS, SWG, DLP, DDoS, APT, ATP, and ASVs. Now some new ones have arrived — Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), so it's important to define what they are and what they mean.

Pica8 hires 2 familiar networking veterans

Pica8 hired two familiar software and networking industry veterans. Kelly LeBlanc has been appointed as chief marketing officer, and Mike Hoffman has been hired as chief revenue officer. These hires follow on the heels of its recent Series C funding of more than $20 million.

Turns out young people don’t really watch TV news

UK communications regulator Ofcom has worked out that younger people mainly get their news from the internet.

Juniper revenue tops $1.1B in Q2 as record orders roll in

Juniper Networks posted strong Q2 2021 results, with revenue rising 8% year-on-year despite challenges associated with a global semiconductor shortage.

Eurobites: Telecom Italia sees earnings slide 5.8% in Q2

Also in today’s EMEA regional round-up: Arcep consults on 5G interference; Vodafone ads rapped; Spotify hits bum note on MAUs.

US tech giants make tons of cash, again

Another quarter, another record haul for America’s technology giants as Apple, Google and Microsoft all report their Q2 numbers.

Juniper Posts Strong Q2, Warns of Supply Chain Headwinds

Juniper Networks this week posted strong second-quarter revenues marking the company’s second consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. However, ongoing growth could be impacted by broader supply chain constraints.

Daily Roundup: Google Cloud Losses Shrink 59%, Revenue Hits $4.6B

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Linkerd Nabs CNCF Diploma, Counters Istio’s ‘Empty Calories’

Linkerd hit graduation status at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), marking a significant milestone as the first service mesh to earn a diploma. It also adds much-needed stability to the service mesh space that has been dogged by considerable consternation following Google’s controversial move last year for the popular Istio service mesh project.

Microsoft, Rakuten, VMware Execs Reject Open RAN Criticism

Open radio access network (RAN) criticism? “We’ve heard enough of it,” Rakuten Mobile CTO Tareq Amin said during the Open RAN Policy Coalition’s Quad Open RAN Forum. 

How to Fix Cybersecurity Skills Gap? Competitive Pay

How to close the cybersecurity skills gap? Here’s a novel idea: pay security professionals better.

Orange Taps Palo Alto Networks for Cloud Security

Orange this week tapped Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Cloud platform to protect its own internal cloud migration.

New York tops 5G availability among major cities, lags on speed

Among 30 major cities around the world, 5G users are likely to be connected most often in New York. But when it comes to speed, NYC ranks near the bottom of the list, according to a new Ookla report.

Qualcomm and Capgemini team for private networks

Qualcomm has partnered with Capgemini to help the integrator offer clients “off-the-shelf” private wireless networks. The partners foresee Capgemini pairing Qualcomm’s radio solutions with edge compute resources and core network elements supplied by other vendors.

STL’s $21M purchase of Clearcomm advances its U.K. fiber goals

India-based STL purchased U.K-based Clearcomm Group for about $21.5 million to advance its fiber ambitions, especially its fiber ambitions in Britain.

Google Cloud revenue climbs 54% in Q2

Alphabet executives detailed plans to continue aggressive investments in the company’s Google Cloud business, as the unit posted a 54% year-on-year jump in revenue in Q2.

Researchers tease capacity gains from fiber with optical combs

A group of researchers inched closer to untangling the problem of how to add capacity to fiber networks in a way that’s both simple and easy to control, announcing a breakthrough in optical comb technology.

Vodafone wants U.K. government to propel 5G private networks

The U.K. government is pursuing an initiative to “level up” parts of Britain that are less prosperous than the London area. Vodafone UK commissioned a report that finds 5G private networks are a way to level up manufacturing operations in rural parts of the U.K. And Vodafone makes several recommendations to the U.K. government to tap private wireless networks for manufacturing.

Crown Castle cuts small cell outlook in half for 2021, 2022

Crown Castle International expects to roll out about 5,000 small cells in 2021 compared to its previous expectation for about 10,000 small cells, a change it attributes to a combination of factors, including carriers’ desire to use macro sites for near-term 5G deployments.