After almost one year of regulatory review, AT&T closed its $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV which makes it the largest U.S. pay-TV company.  As expected, the Federal Communications Commission announced on Friday that it’s approved AT&T’s merger with DirecTV, attaching conditions intended to address the potential harms of the merger. Earlier this week, the U.S. Justice Department announced… Read more →

IHS-Infonetics released excerpts from its IHS Infonetics NFV Hardware, Software, and Services report, which forecasts the global network functions virtualization (NFV) hardware, software and services market to reach $11.6 billion in 2019, up from $2.3 billion in 2015. NFV MARKET HIGHLIGHTS: Service providers are still early in the long-term, 10- to 15-year transformation to virtualized networks Revenue… Read more →

The Joint Coordination Activity on Software-Defined Networking (JCA-SDN), was approved by ITU-T TSAG in June 2013. Mr. Takashi Egawa (NEC, Japan) was appointed as the Chairman and Ms Ying Cheng (China Unicom, China) as the vice chair of JCA-SDN, which will report its progress to TSAG. From the ITU-T’s SDN Portal: SDN is considered a major shift… Read more →

Backgrounder: IMT (International Mobile Telecommunications) has been and will continue to be deployed. IMT-2000 =3G (including LTE) and IMT-Advanced = AKA LTE Advanced or “true 4G“ are benefiting from a global approach.  The capabilities of IMT systems are being continually enhanced in line with market and technology trends.  The next step is 5G which is now known as… Read more →

Background: Despite only a “vision” with no definition or specs from ITU-R of fifth generation wireless networks (5G),  mobile vendors and wireless network operators continue to keep talking about 5G ready products and deployment — even if they’re not really even sure what 5G is yet.   In the last year, we have seen carriers announce “4.5G” and… Read more →

The latest IHS Infonetics Service Provider Capex, Revenue, and Capex by Equipment Type report notes that worldwide telecom service provider capital expenditures (CAPEX) grew 2.9%  year-over-year in 2014, to US$352 billion. CAPEX REPORT HIGHLIGHTS: In 2014, expenditures for every type of equipment except TDM voice slowly grew or stayed flat from the year prior. Europe posted… Read more →

CenturyLink will tap dark fiber in 17 states to expand gigabit broadband, benefiting approximately 500,000 small and midsize businesses (SMBs). The fiber-to-the-premises expansion will enable CenturyLink to broaden service options for SMBs and will involve the introduction of cloud-based business services from Microsoft such as Office 365. CenturyLink’s symmetrical gigabit fiber service will now reach… Read more →

Nokia Corp. said that its mainstay network business delivered “unsatisfactory profits” during the first quarter. Nokia’s network division saw its quarterly revenue rise 15% over the year to €2.67 billion ($2.94 billion), the unit’s underlying operating profit for the first quarter fell to €85 million from €216 million, Nokia said in a statement. The network division’s… Read more →

By David Dixon of FBR Captial Markets &Co.  (edited by Alan J Weissberger): Note:  As everyone knows, Verizon acquired all of Verizon WIreless from Vodafone and has sold off a good part of its wireline business to Frontier Communications.   Hence, it’s more of a wireless carrier than ever before! http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/05/us-verizon-comms-divestiture-idUSKBN0L92UG20150205 David Dixon’s Commentary: First,… Read more →

Infonetics Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), conducted in-depth surveys with businesses in the U.S. and Canada about the enterprise LAN Software Defined Networking (SDN) market and found that 72% of respondents plan to have campus LAN SDN in live production by the end of 2017. Infonetics interviewed IT purchase-decision makers at medium… Read more →