by David Dixon, FBR & Co., edited by Alan J Weissberger (emphasis added in BOLD font) We believe there is a supply shift in (cellular) capacity spectrum coupled with an increase in spectrum utilization beginning with 150MHz of 3.5GHz LTE spectrum to be auctioned by the FCC in late 2016. Last week, Verizon CEO Lowell… Read more →

Introduction: The always excellent Hot Interconnects 2015 conference was held in Santa Clara, CA, August 26-28, 2015. This article summarizes presentations and a panel session relevant to Data Center and Wide Area Networking. Facebook Panel Participation & Intra- DC invited talk by Katharine Schmidtke: A 90 minute panel session on “HPC vs. Data Center Networks” raised more… Read more →

MARKET FOR CARRIER SDN FORECAST TO GROW EXPONENTIALLY: As service providers seek service agility and operational efficiency in their networks to stay competitive, the global market for carrier software-defined networking (SDN) software, hardware and services is expected to grow from $103 million in 2014 to $5.7 billion in 2019, according to IHS. “We’re still early in… Read more →

Verizon has completed a field trial of NG-PON2 fiber-to-the-premises technology that could provide the infrastructure for download speeds up to 10 Gbps for residential and business customers. The huge telco’s current top download speed for its residential FiOS service is 500 Mbps. The new technology could “open the door” to speeds as high as 80… Read more →

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 →